ed that word "boss;" that was one of his favorite
expressions--that he was "boss". Imagine a young man and a young woman
courting, walking out in the moonlight, and the nightingale singing a
song of pain and love, as though the thorn touched her heart--imagine
them stopping there in the moonlight and starlight and song, and saying
"Now here, let's settle who's boss!" I tell you it is an infamous
word, and an infamous feeling--a man who is "boss," who is going to
govern his family, and when he speaks let all the rest of them be
still--some mighty idea is about to be launched from his mouth. Do you
know I dislike this man unspeakably; and a cross man I hate above all
things.

What right has he to murder the sunshine of the day? What right has he
to assassinate the joy of life? Where you go home you ought to feel
the light there is in the house; if it is in the night it will burst
out of doors and windows and illuminate the darkness. It is just as
well to go home a ray of sunshine as an old sour, cross curmudgeon, who
thinks he is the head of the family. Wise men think their mighty
brains have been in a turmoil; they have been thinking about who will
be alderman from the fifth ward; they have been thinking about
politics; great and mighty questions have been engaging their minds;
they have bought calico at 8 cents, or 6, and want to sell it for 7.
Think of the intellectual strain that must have been upon a man, and
when he gets home everybody else in the house must look out for his
comfort. A woman who has only taken care of five or six children, and
one or two of them may be sick; has been nursing them and singing to
them, and taking care of them, and trying to make one yard of cloth do
the work of two--she, of course, is fresh and fine, and ready to wait
upon this great gentleman--the head of the family I don't like him a
bit!

Do you know another thing? I despise a stingy man. I don't see how it
is possible for a man to die worth fifty millions of dollars, or ten
millions of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every
day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a
man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty
or thirty millions of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see
how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he
could keep a pile of lumber where hundreds and thousands of men were
drowning in the sea. I shoul