f
the meanin' of the word--sallerys, office, makin' the laws that bind
both of the sexes, rulin' things generally, translatin' Bibles to suit
their own idees, preachin' at 'em, etc., etc. Do you see, Samantha?" sez
he, proudly and loftily.

"Yes," sez I, as I filled up my tea-pot, for the water had at last
biled. "Yes, I see."

And I spoze he thought he had convinced me, for he acted high headeder
and haughtier for as much as an hour and a half. And I didn't say
anything to break it up, for I see he had stated it jest as he and all
his sect looked at it, and good land! I couldn't convince the hull male
sect if I tried--clergymen, statesmen and all--so I didn't try, and I
wuz truly beat out with my day's work, and I didn't drop more than one
idee more. I simply dropped this remark es I poured out his tea and put
some good cream into it--I merely sez:

"There is three times es many wimmen in the meetin' house es there is
men."

"Yes," sez he, "that is one of the pints I have been explainin' to you,"
and then he went on agin real high headed, and skairt, about the old
ground, of the willingness of the meetin' house to shelter wimmen in its
folds, and how much they needed gaurdin' and guidin', and about their
delicacy of frame, and how unfitted they wuz to tackle anything hard,
and what a grief it wuz to the male sect to see 'em a-tryin' to set on
Conferences or mount rostrums, etc., etc.

And I didn't try to break up his argument, but simply repeated the
question I had put to him--for es I said before, I wuz tired, and
skairt, and giddy yet from my hard labor and my great and hazardus
elevatin'; I had not, es you may say, recovered yet from my
recuperation, and so I sez agin them words--

"Is rostrums much higher than them barells to stand on?" And Josiah said
agin, "it wuz suthin' entirely different;" he said barells and rostrums
wuz so fur apart that you couldn't look at both on 'em in one day
hardly, let alone a minute. And he went on once more with a long
argument full of Bible quotations and everything.

And I wuz too tuckered out to say much more. But I did contend for it to
the last, that I didn't believe a rostrum would be any more tottlin' and
skairful a place than the barell I had been a-standin' on all day, nor
the work I'd do on it any harder than the scrapin' of the ceilin' of
that meetin house.

And I don't believe it would, I stand jest as firm on it to-day as I did
then.

CHAPTER XX.