I see that he was imposin’ on me. But I wasn’t goin’ to have my nose throwed in my face by him, and says I, “I am aware that my nose is a pretty sizeable one. But,” says I, in about as sarcastic a voice as I ever used in my life “it is a nose that haint never been wore off, and made smaller a pokin’ into other folks’es affairs. Pokin’ round a tryin’ to find wives where there haint none.”
“But mom, I was married between daylight and dark, and--”
But I wouldn’t stay to hear another word of his apoligys, I jest turned my back onto him, when the door opened agin, and a woman came out, and I’ll be hanged if her nose didn’t look like mine--a honorable Roman. The man looked at her in a kind of a undecided way, but she walked right up and took holt of his arm, and he brightened up, and says he. “Are you goin’ home now Mary Ann?”
“Yes,” says she, “but my name haint Mary Ann, it is Mehitable.”
“Wall,” said he, “I knew there was a M in it.” And he walked off with her, with a proud and triumphant mene.
The young black African opened the door and says he, “Josiah Allen’s wife, and Betsey Bobbet, mom.” He had asked us our names jest before he opened it.
Miss Woodhull was a standin’ pretty near the door, a talkin’ with 3 wimmin as we went in. But she come forward immediatly and put out her hand. I took it in mine, and shook it a very little, mebby 3 or 4 times back and forth. But she must have felt by that cool, cautious shake, that I differed from her in her views, and had come to give her a real talkin’ to.
One of the wimmen she was a talkin’ to, had jest about as noble a lookin’ face as I ever see, with short white curls a fallin’ all round it. The beholder could see by the first glance onto that face, that she hadn’t spent all the immortal energies of her soul in makin’ clover leaf tattin’, or in cuttin’ calico up into little pieces, jest to sew ’em togather agin into blazin’ stars and sunflower bedquilts. It was the face of an earnest noble woman, who had asked God what He wanted her to do, and then hadn’t shirked out of doin’ it. Who had gripped holt of life’s plough, and hadn’t looked back because the furrows turned over pretty hard, and the stumps was thick.
She knew by experience that there was never any greensward so hard to break up, as old prejudices and customs; and no stumps so hard to get round as the ridicule and misconceptions of the world. What made her face look so calm then, when she was doin’ all this hard work? Because she knew she was makin’ a clearin’ right through the wilderness that in the future was goin’ to blossom like a rose. She was givin’ her life for others, and nobody ever did this since the days of Jesus, but what somethin’ of his peace is wrote doun on thier forwards. That is the way Elizabeth Cady Stanton looked to me, as Miss Woodhull introduced me and Betsey to her, and to the two other ladies with her.