“See that thing!” Josiah sez, as a woman passed by with her hat drawed down over one eye, and a long quill standin’ out straight behind more’n a foot, an’ her dress puckered in so ’round the bottom, she couldn’t have took a long step if a mad dog wuz chasin’ her—to say nothin’ of bein’ perched up on such high heels, that she fairly tottled when she walked.
Sez Josiah: “Does that thing know enough to vote?”
“No,” sez I, reasonably, “she don’t. But most probable if she had bigger things to think about she’d loosen the puckerin’ strings ’round her ankles, push her hat back out of her eyes, an’ get down on her feet again.”
“Why, Samantha,” says he, “if you had on one of them skirts tied ’round your ankles, if I wuz a-dyin’ on the upper shelf in the buttery, you couldn’t step up on a chair to get to me to save your life, an’ I’d have to die there alone.”
“Why should you be dyin’ on the buttery shelf, Josiah?” sez I.
“Oh, that wuz jest a figger of speech, Samantha.”
“But folks ort to be mejum in figgers of speech, Josiah, and not go too fur.”
“Do you think, Samantha, that anybody can go too fur in describin’ them fool skirts, and them slit skirts, and the immodesty and indecensy of some of them dresses?”
