“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 companionship 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.”