[Illustration: FILLIN’ WOMAN’S SPEAH UNDER DIFFICULTIES.]
Says I, “That is just my opinion Horace! I have been cheated by pickin’ out a calico dress in the evenin’. Things look different by daylight, from what they do by candle light. Old beliefs that have looked first rate to you, may look different under the brighter light of new discoveries. As you rise higher above the earth you see stars you couldn’t ketch sight of in a suller way. And the world’s cry of fickle mindedness, may be the angels’ war whoop, settin’ us on to heavenly warfare’.”
Horace seemed agin to be almost lost in thought, and I waited respectfully, for him to find and recover himself. Finally he spake,
“I have been sincere Josiah Allen’s wife, in thinkin’ that matrimony was woman’s only spear, but the occurances of the past 25 or 30 minutes has convinced me that wimmen may be too zealous a carryin’ out that spear. I admit Josiah Allen’s wife, that any new state of public affairs that would make woman more independent of matrimony, less zealous, less reckless in handlein’ that spear, might be more or less beneficial both to herself, and to man.”
Here he paused and sithed. He thought of Betsey. But I spoke right up in glad and triumphant tones,
“Horace, I am ready to depart this minute for Jonesville. Now I can lay my head in peace upon my goose feather pillow.”
I riz up in deep emotion, and Horace he riz up too. It was a thrillin’ moment. At last he spoke in agitated tones, for he thought still of what he had jest passed through.
“My benefactor, I tremble to think what might have happened had you not been present.” And he ran his forefinger through his almost snowy hair.
“My kind preserver, I want to give you some little token of my friendship at parting. Will you accept as a slight token of my dethless gratitude, ‘What I know about Farming,’ and two papers of lettice seed?”
I hung back, I thought of Josiah. But Horace argued with me, says he, “I respect your constancy to Josiah, but intellect--spoken or written--scorns all the barriers of sex and circumstance, and is as free to all, as the sunshine that beats down on the just and the unjust, the Liberal Republicans and the Grant party, or the married and the single.” Says he, “take the book without any scruples, and as for the lettice seed, I can recommend it, I think Josiah would relish it.”