Says I, “You seem to think that votin’ is goin’ to be such a weight onto a woman that it will drag her right down from her home into public and political affairs and leave her there. Such talk is simple, for love and domestic happiness will be the other weight to the steelyards, as long as the world stands, and keep a woman’s heart and mind jest as straight as a string. Votin’ haint a goin’ to spile any woman at all, be she married, or be she single, and there is a class at the mercy of the world, fightin’ its hard battle alone--it will _help_ them. The idee of its hurtin’ a woman to know a little somethin’, is in my mind awful simple. That was what the slaveholders said about the black Africans--it would hurt ’em to know too much. That is what Mr. Pope says to-day about his church members. But I say that any belief, or custom that relies on oppression and ignorance and weakness to help it on in any degree, ought to be exploded up. Beautiful weakness and simplicity, haint my style at all in the line of wimmen. I have seen beautiful simplicities before now, and they are always affected, selfish critters, sly, underhanded, their minds all took up with little petty gossip and plottin’s. Why they can’t set a teacup on the table in a open-hearted noble way. They have to plot on some byway to get it there, unbeknown to somebody. Their mouths have been drawed so into simpers, that they couldn’t laugh a open generous laugh to save their lives. Always havin’ some spear ready under their soft mantilly, to sweetly spear some other woman in the back. Horace, they haint my style. Beautiful weakness and simplicity may do for one evenin’ in a ball room. But it don’t wear well for all the cares and emergencies that come in a life of from 40 to 50 years. Was George Washington’s mother any the less a industrious equinomical and affectionate wife and mother, because she took a interest in public affairs?” And says I, with a lower and more modest tone, “Is Josiah Allen’s wife on that account any the less devoted to Josiah?”
He knew I was perfectly devoted to that man. He set mewsin’ silently for a time seemin’ly on somethin’ I had said heretofore, and finally he spoke up. “The case of Victory is very different. A crown that descends on a hereditary head is a different thing.”