r hull property and her heart's blood. How mothers are
importuned by male statesmen to bring big families into a world full
of temptation and ruin, but have no legal rights to protect them from
the black dangers licensed by these law-makers.

His face looked so queer, I worried some thinkin' I should git him to
cryin' instead of laughin'; but I hurried and told him how our
statesmen would flare up now and then and turribly threaten the Mormon
who keeps on marryin' some new wives every little while, and then
elect him to Congress, and sculp his head on our warship to show
foreign nations that America approves of such doin's. And I told him
how girls and boys, hardly out of pantalettes and knee breeches, could
git married in five minutes, but have to spend months and money to
break the ties so easily made and prove they are morally fit to care
for the children born of that careless five minute ceremony.

His linement looked scornful at the idee. And I told him how they tax
wimmen without representation, and then spend millions rasin' statutes
to our forefathers for fightin' agin the same thing. And how statesmen
trust wimmen with their happiness, their lives and their honor, but
deny 'em the rights they give to wicked men, degenerates, and men
whose heads are so soft a fly will slump in if it lights on 'em. To
such men (as well as better ones) they give the right to govern the
wimmen they love, their good inteligent wives and mothers, rule 'em
through life, and award punishment and death to 'em.

"And such men," sez I, "say wimmen don't know enough to vote."

The very idee wuz so weak and inconsistent that it made the man
statute hysterical, and he bust out into a peal of derisive laughter,
and I took my dollar and walked off, though I knowed enough could be
said on this subject to make a stun statute hystericky. I lay out to
send the dollar to the W. C. T. U.

Jest after this I met Bildad, and he sez, "I jest see Josiah; he wuz
in Steeple Chase Park, talkin' with some girls there."

I didn't wait to ask what they wuz talkin' about, I hoped it wuz
religion, but felt dubersome, and hurried there fast as I could. I
crossed the automobile track where crowded cars wuz runnin' all the
while round and round, past the rows of big high headed mettlesome
hosses (this is a pun; they wuz made of metal).

But I passed 'em all as if they wuzn't there; for my mind wuz all took
up with the thought, should I find my pardner there