You see what made him whip her at all wuz she wuz cross to him. They had nine little children, she thought two or three children would be about all one woman could bring up well by hand, when that hand wuz so stiff and sore with hard work.
But he had read some scareful talk from high quarters about Race Suicide. Some men do git real wrought up about it and want everybody to have all the children they can, jest as fast as they can, though wimmen don’t all feel so.
Aunt Hetty Sidman said, “If men had to born ’em and nuss ’em themselves, she didn’t spoze they would be so enthusiastick about it after they had had a few, ‘specially if they done their own housework themselves,” and Aunt Hetty said that some of the men who wuz exhortin’ wimmen to have big families, had better spend some of their strength and wind in tryin’ to make this world a safer place for children to be born into.
She said they’d be better off in Nonentity than here in this world with saloons on every corner, and war-dogs howlin’ at ’em.
I don’t know exactly what she meant by Nonentity, but guess she meant the world we all stay in, before we are born into this one.
Aunt Hetty has lost five boys, two by battle and three by licensed saloons, that makes her talk real bitter, but to resoom. I told Josiah that men needn’t worry about Race Suicide, for you might as well try to stop a hen from makin’ a nest, as to stop wimmen from wantin’ a baby to love and hold on her heart. But sez I, “Folks ort to be moderate and mejum in babies as well as in everything else.”
But Drusilly’s husband wanted twelve boys he said, to be law-abidin’ citizens as their Pa wuz, and a protection to the Govermunt, and to be ready to man the new warships, if a war broke out. But her babies wuz real pretty and cunning, and she wuz so weak-minded she couldn’t enjoy the thought that if our male statesmen got to scrappin’ with some other nation’s male law-makers and made another war, of havin’ her grown-up babies face the cannons. I spoze it wuz when she wuz so awful tired she felt so.
You see she had to do every mite of her housework, and milk cows, and make butter and cheese, and cook and wash and scour, and take all the care of the children day and night in sickness and health, and make their clothes and keep ’em clean. And when there wuz so many of ’em and she enjoyin’ real poor health, I spoze she sometimes thought more of her own achin’ back than she did of the good of the Govermunt—and she would git kinder discouraged sometimes and be cross to him. And knowin’ his own motives wuz so high and loyal, he felt that he ort to whip her, so he did.