Samantha on the Woman Question Part 5

"This talk about wimmen bein' outside and above all partic.i.p.ation in the laws of her country, is jest as pretty as anything I ever hearn, and jest as simple. Why, you might jest as well throw a lot of snowflakes into the street, and say, 'Some of 'em are female flakes and mustn't be trompled on.' The great march of life tromples on 'em all alike; they fall from one common sky, and are trodden down into one common ground.

"Men and wimmen are made with divine impulses and desires, and human needs and weaknesses, needin' the same heavenly light, and the same human aids and helps. The law should mete out to them the same rewards and punishments.

"Serepta sez you call wimmen angels, and you don't give 'em the rights of the lowest beasts that crawl on the earth. And Serepta told me to tell you that she didn't ask the rights of a angel; she would be perfectly contented and proud, if you would give her the rights of a dog--the a.s.sured political rights of a yeller dog.' She said yeller and I'm bound on doin' her 'errent jest as she wanted it done, word for word.

"A dog, Serepta sez, don't have to be hung if it breaks the laws it is not allowed any hand in making; a dog don't have to pay taxes on its bone to a Govermunt that withholds every right of citizens.h.i.+p from it; a dog hain't called undogly if it is industrious and hunts quietly round for its bone to the best of its ability, and tries to git its share of the crumbs that falls from that table bills are laid on.

"A dog hain't preached to about its duty to keep home sweet and sacred, and then see that home turned into a place of danger and torment under laws that these very preachers have made legal and respectable. A dog don't have to see its property taxed to advance laws it believes ruinous, and that breaks its own heart and the heart of other dear dogs. A dog don't have to listen to soul-sickening speeches from them that deny it freedom and justice, about its bein' a damask rose and a seraph, when it knows it hain't; it knows, if it knows anything, that it is jest a plain dog.

"You see Serepta has been embittered by the trials that politics, corrupt legislation have brought right onto her. She didn't want nothin' to do with 'em, but they come onto her onexpected and onbeknown, and she feels that she must do everything she can to alter matters. She wants to help make the laws that have such a overpowerin' influence over her. She believes they can't be much worse than they are now, and may be a little better."

"Ah," interrupted the Senator, "if Serepta wishes to change political affairs, let her influence her children, her boys, and they will carry her benign and n.o.ble influence forward into the centuries."

"But the law took her boy, her little boy and girl, away from her. Through the influence of the Whiskey Ring, of which her husband wuz a s.h.i.+nin'

member, he got possession of her boy. And so the law has made it perfectly impossible for her to mould it indirectly through him, what Serepta duz she must do herself."

"Ah! my dear woman. A sad thing for Serepta; I trust _you_ have no grievance of this kind, I trust that your estimable husband is, as it were, estimable."

"Yes, Josiah Allen is a good man, as good as men can be. You know men or wimmen can't be only jest about so good anyway. But he's my choice, and he don't drink a drop."

"Pardon me, madam, but if you are happy in your married relations, and your husband is a temperate good man, why do you feel so upon this subject?"

"Why, good land! if you understood the nature of a woman you would know my love for him, my happiness, the content and safety I feel about him and our boy, makes me realize the sufferin's of Serepta in havin' her husband and boy lost to her; makes me realize the depth of a wife's and mother's agony when she sees the one she loves goin' down, down so low she can't reach him; makes me feel how she must yearn to help him in some safe sure way.

"High trees cast long shadows. The happier and more blessed a woman's life is, the more duz she feel for them that are less blessed than she. Highest love goes lowest, like that love that left Heaven and descended to earth, and into it that He might lift up the lowly. The pityin' words of Him who went about pleasin' not Himself, hants me and inspires me; I'm sorry for Serepta, sorry for the hull wimmen race of the nation, and for the men too.

Lots of 'em are good creeters, better than wimmen, some on 'em. They want to do right, but don't exactly see the way to do it. In the old slavery times some of the masters wuz more to be pitied than the slaves. They could see the injustice, feel the wrong they wuz doin', but old chains of Custom bound 'em, social customs and idees had hardened into habits of thought.

"They realized the size and heft of the evil, but didn't know how to grapple with it, and throw it. So now, many men see the evils of this time, want to help, but don't know the best way to lay holt of 'em. Life is a curious conundrum anyway, and hard to guess. But we can try to git the right answer to it as fur as we can. Serepta feels that one of the answers to the conundrum is in gittin' her rights. I myself have got all the rights I need or want, as fur as my own happiness is concerned. My home is my castle (a story and a half wooden one, but dear). My towers elevate me, the companions.h.i.+p of my friends give social happiness, our children are prosperous and happy. We have property enough for all the comforts of life.

And above all other things my Josiah is my love and my theme."

"Ah, yes!" sez he, "love is a woman's empire, and in that she should find her full content--her entire happiness and thought. A womanly woman will not look outside that lovely and safe and beautious empire."

Sez I firmly, "If she hain't a idiot she can't help it. Love is the most beautiful thing on earth, the most holy and satisfyin'. But I do not ask you as a politician, but as a human bein', which would you like best, the love of a strong, earnest tender nature, for in man or woman 'the strongest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring,' which would you like best, the love and respect of such a nature full of wit, of tenderness, of infinite variety, or the love of a fool?

"A fool's love is wearin', it is insipid at best, and it turns to vinegar.

Why, sweetened water must turn to vinegar, it is its nater. And if a woman is bright and true-hearted, she can't help seein' through an injustice. She may be happy in her own home. Domestic affection, social enjoyments, the delights of a cultured home and society, and the companions.h.i.+p of the man she loves and who loves her, will, if she is a true woman, satisfy her own personal needs and desires, and she would far ruther for her own selfish happiness rest quietly in that love, that most blessed home.

"But the bright quick intellect that delights you can't help seein' an injustice, can't help seein' through shams of all kinds, sham sentiment, sham compliments, sham justice. The tender lovin' nature that blesses your life can't help feelin' pity for them less blessed than herself. She looks down through the love-guarded lattice of her home from which your care would fain bar out all sights of woe and squaler, she looks down and sees the weary toilers below, the hopeless, the wretched. She sees the steep hills they have to climb, carryin' their crosses, she sees 'em go down into the mire, dragged there by the love that should lift 'em up. She would not be the woman you love if she could restrain her hand from liftin' up the fallen, wipin' tears from weepin' eyes, speakin' brave words for them that can't speak for themselves. The very strength of her affection that would hold you up if you were in trouble or disgrace yearns to help all sorrowin'

hearts.

"Down in your heart you can't help admirin' her for this, we can't help respectin' the one that advocates the right, the true, even if they are our conquerors. Wimmen hain't angels; now to be candid, you know they hain't.

They hain't any better than men. Men are considerable likely; and it seems curious to me that they should act so in this one thing. For men ort to be more honest and open than wimmen. They hain't had to cajole and wheedle and use little trickeries and deceits and indirect ways as wimmen have. Why, cramp a tree limb and see if it will grow as straight and vigorous as it would in full freedom and suns.h.i.+ne.

"Men ort to be n.o.bler than women, sincerer, braver. And they ort to be ashamed of this one trick of theirn, for they know they hain't honest in it, they hain't generous. Give wimmen two or three generations of moral and legal freedom and see if men will laugh at 'em for their little deceits and affectations. No, men will be gentler, and wimmen n.o.bler, and they will both come nearer bein' angels, though most probable they won't be any too good then, I hain't a mite afraid of it."

VI

"CONCERNING MOTH-MILLERS AND MINNY FISH"

The Senator kinder sithed, and that sithe sort o' brought me down onto my feet agin as it were, and a sense of my duty, and I spoke out agin:

"Can you and will you do Serepta's errents?"

He evaded a direct answer by sayin', "As you alluded to the little indirect ways of women, dearest madam, you will pardon me for saying that it is my belief that the soft gentle brains of females are unfitted for the deep hard problems men have to grapple with. They are too doll-like, too angelically and sweetly frivolous."

"No doubt," sez I, "some wimmen are frivolous and some men foolish, for as Mrs. Poyser said, 'G.o.d made women to match the men,' but these few hadn't ort to disfranchise the hull race of men and wimmen. And as to soft brains, Maria Mitch.e.l.l discovered planets hid from masculine eyes from the beginnin' of time, and do you think that wimmen can't see the black spots on the body politic, that darkens the life of her and her children?

"Madame Curie discovered the light that looks through solid wood and iron, and you think wimmen can't see through unjust laws and practices, the rampant evils of to-day, and see what is on the other side, see a remedy for 'em. Florence Nightingale could mother and help cure an army, and why hain't men willin' to let wimmen help cure a sick legislation, kinder mother it, and encourage it to do better? She might much better be doin'

that, than playin' bridge-whist, or rastlin' with hobble skirts, and it wouldn't devour any more time."

He sot demute for a few minutes and then he sez, "While on the subject of women's achievements, dearest madam, allow me to ask you, if they have reached the importance you claim for them, why is it that so few women are made immortal by bein' represented in the Hall of Fame? And why are the four or five females represented there put away by themselves in a remote unadorned corner with no roof to protect them from the rough winds and storms that beat upon them?"

Sez I, "That's a good ill.u.s.tration of what I've been sayin'. It wuz owin'

to a woman's gift that America has a Hall of Fame, and it would seem that common courtesy would give wimmen an equally desirable place amongst the Immortals. Do you spoze that if women formed half the committee of selection--which they should since it wuz a woman's gift that made such a place possible--do you spoze that if she had an equal voice with men, the names of n.o.ble wimmen would be tucked away in a remote unroofed corner?

"Edgar Allan Poe's genius wuz worthy a place among the Immortals, no doubt; his poems and stories excite wonder and admiration. But do they move the soul like Mrs. Stowe's immortal story that thrilled the world and helped free a race?--yes, two races--for the curse of slavery held the white race in bondage, too. Yet she and her three or four woman companions face the stormy winds in an out-of-the-way corner, while Poe occupies his honorable sightly place among his fifty or more male companions.

"Wimmen have always been admonished to not strive for right and justice but to lean on men's generosity and chivalry. Here wuz a place where that chivalry would have shone, but it didn't seem to materialize, and if wimmen had leaned on it, it would have proved a weak staff, indeed.

"Such things as this are constantly occurring and show plain that wimmen needs the ballot to protect her from all sorts of wrongs and indignities.

Men take wimmen's money, as they did here, and use it to uplift themselves, and lower her, like taxin' her heavily and often unjustly and usin' this money to help forward unjust laws which she abominates. And so it goes on, and will, until women are men's equals legally and politically."

"Ahem--you present things in a new light. I never looked at this matter with your eyes."

"No, you looked at 'em through a man's eyes; such things are so customary that men do 'em without thinkin', from habit and custom, like hus.h.i.+n' up children's talk, when they interrupt grown-ups."

Agin he sot demute for a short s.p.a.ce, and then said, "I feel that natural human instinct is aginst the change. In savage races that knew nothin' of civilization, male force and strength always ruled."

"Why," sez I, "history tells us of savage races where wimmen always rule, though I don't think they ort to--ability and goodness ort to rule."

"Nature is aginst it," sez he.

But I sez firmly, "Bees and lots of other insects and animals always have a female for queen and ruler. They rule blindly and entirely, right on through the centuries, but we are enlightened and should not encourage it.

In my opinion the male bee has just as good a right to be monarch as his female pardner has, if he is as good and knows as much. I never believed in the female workin' ones killin' off the male drones to save winterin' 'em; they might give 'em some light ch.o.r.es to do round the hive to pay for their board. I love justice and that would be _my_ way."

Agin he sithed. "Modern history don't seem to favor the scheme--" But his axent wuz as weak as a cat and his boughten smile seemed crackin' and wearin' out; he knowed better.

Sez I, "We won't argy long on that p'int, for I might overwhelm you if I approved of overwhelmin', but, will merely ask you to cast one eye on England. Was the rain of Victoria the Good less peaceful and prosperous than that of the male rulers who preceded her? And you can then throw your other eye over to Holland: is their sweet queen less worthy and beloved to-day than other European monarchs? And is her throne more shaky and tottlin' than theirn?"

He didn't try to dispute me and bowed his head on his breast in a almost meachin' way. He knowed he wuz beat on every side, and almost to the end of his chain of rusty, broken old arguments. But anon he brightened up agin and sez, ketchin' holt of the last shackly link of his argument:

"You seem to place a great deal of dependence on the Bible. The Bible is aginst the idee. The Bible teaches man's supremacy, man's absolute power and might and authority."

"Why, how you talk," sez I. "In the very first chapter the Bible tells how man wuz turned right round by a woman, tells how she not only turned man round to do as she wanted him to, but turned the hull world over.