“Wall, accordin' to your tell, they treat you like one, don't they?”
“Yes,” says he, “speakin' in a wild animal way.” Says he, growin' excited, “I wish I wuz a African lion right out of a jungle: I'd teach them Jonesvillians to get out of my way. I'd love, when they was snickerin', and pokin' fun at me, and actin' and jeerin' and sneerin', and callin' me all to nort, I'd love to spring onto 'em, and roar.”
“Hush, Josiah,” says I. “Be calm! be calm!”
“I won't be calm! I can't see into it,” he hollered. “Why, what lifted Letitia Lanfear right up, didn't lift me up. Hain't what's sass for the goose, sass for the gander?”
“No,” says I sadly. “It hain't the same sass. The geese have to get the same strength from it,—strength to swim in the same water, fly over the same fences, from the same pursuers and avengers; and they have to grow the same feathers out of it; but the sass, the sass is fur different.
“But,” says I, “I don't approve of all your piece. A man, as a general thing, has as much time as a woman has. And I'd love to see the time that I couldn't do a job as short as puttin' a letter in the post-office. Why, I never see the time, even when the children was little, and in cleanin' house, or sugarin'-time, but what I could ride into Jonesville every day, to say nothin' of once a year, and lay a vote onto a pole. And you have as much time as I do, unless it is springs and falls and hayin'-time. And if I could do it, you could. I don't approve of such talk.
“And you know very well that you and I had better spend a little of our spare time a studyin' into matters, so as to vote intelligently; study into the laws that govern us both,—that hang us if we break 'em, and protect us if we obey 'em,—than to spend it a whittling shingles, or wonderin' whether Miss Bobbet's next baby will be a boy or a girl.”
“Wall,” says he, takin' his hand down, and winkin',—a sort of a shrewd, knowin' wink, but a sad and dejected one, too, as I ever see wunk,—