Samantha on the Woman Question, Marietta Holley [epub ebook reader .txt] 📗

It was only a few days after we got home from New York that Josiah come into the house dretful excited. He’d had a invitation to attend a meetin’ of the Creation Searchin’ Society.

“Why,” sez I, “did they invite you? You are not a member?”

“No,” sez he, “but they want me to help ’em be indignant. It is a indignation meetin’.”

“Indignant about what?” I sez.

“Fur be it from me, Samantha, to muddle up your head and hurt your feelin’s by tellin’ you what it’s fur.” And he went out quick and shet the door. But I got a splendid dinner and afterwards he told me of his own accord.

I am not a member, of course, for the president, Philander Daggett, said it would lower the prestige of the society in the eyes of the world to have even one female member. This meetin’ wuz called last week for the purpose of bein’ indignant over the militant doin’s of the English Suffragettes. Josiah and several others in Jonesville wuz invited to be present at this meetin’ as sort of honorary members, as they wuz competent to be jest as indignant as any other male men over the tribulations of their sect.

Josiah said so much about the meetin’, and his Honorary Indignation, that he got me curious, and wantin’ to go myself, to see how it wuz carried on. But I didn’t have no hopes on’t till Philander Daggett’s new young wife come to visit me and I told her how much I wanted to go, and she bein’ real good-natered said she would make Philander let me in.

He objected, of course, but she is pretty and young, and his nater bein’ kinder softened and sweetened by the honey of the honeymoon, she got round him. And he said that if we would set up in a corner of the gallery behind the melodeon, and keep our veils on, he would let her and me in. But we must keep it secret as the grave, for he would lose all the influence he had with the other members and be turned out of the Presidential chair if it wuz knowed that he had lifted wimmen up to such a hite, and gin ’em such a opportunity to feel as if they wuz equal to men.

Well, we went early and Josiah left me to Philander’s and went on to do some errents. He thought I wuz to spend the evenin’ with her in becomin’ seclusion, a-knittin’ on his blue and white socks, as a woman should. But after visitin’ a spell, jest after it got duskish, we went out the back door and went cross lots, and got there ensconced in the dark corner without anybody seein’ us and before the meetin’ begun.

Philander opened the meetin’ by readin’ the moments of the last meetin’, which wuz one of sympathy with the police of Washington for their noble efforts to break up the Woman’s Parade, and after their almost Herculaneum labor to teach wimmen her proper place, and all the help they got from the hoodlum and slum elements, they had failed in a measure, and the wimmen, though stunned, insulted, spit on, struck, broken boneded, maimed, and tore to pieces, had succeeded in their disgustin’ onwomanly undertakin’.

But it wuz motioned and carried that a vote of thanks be sent ’em and recorded in the moments that the Creation Searchers had no blame but only sympathy and admiration for the hard worked Policemen for they had done all they could to protect wimmen’s delicacy and retirin’ modesty, and put her in her place, and no man in Washington or Jonesville could do more. He read these moments, in a real tender sympathizin’ voice, and I spoze the members sympathized with him, or I judged so from their linements as I went forward, still as a mouse, and peeked down on ’em.

He then stopped a minute and took a drink of water; I spoze his sympathetic emotions had het him up, and kinder dried his mouth, some. And then he went on to state that this meetin’ wuz called to show to the world, abroad and nigh by, the burnin’ indignation this body felt, as a society, at the turrible sufferin’s and insults bein’ heaped onto their male brethren in England by the indecent and disgraceful doin’s of the militant Suffragettes, and to devise, if possible, some way to help their male brethren acrost the sea. “For,” sez he, “pizen will spread. How do we know how soon them very wimmen who had to be spit on and struck and tore to pieces in Washington to try to make ’em keep their place, the sacred and tender place they have always held enthroned as angels in a man’s heart—”

Here he stopped and took out his bandanna handkerchief, and wiped his eyes, and kinder choked. But I knew it wuz all a orator’s art, and it didn’t affect me, though I see a number of the members wipe their eyes, for this talk appealed to the inheriant chivalry of men, and their desire to protect wimmen, we have always hearn so much about.

“How do we know,” he continued, “how soon they may turn aginst their best friends, them who actuated by the loftiest and tenderest emotions, and determination to protect the weaker sect at any cost, took their valuable time to try to keep wimmen down where they ort to be, angels of the home, who knows but they may turn and throw stuns at the Capitol an’ badger an’ torment our noble lawmakers, a-tryin’ to make ’em listen to their silly petitions for justice?”

In conclusion, he entreated ’em to remember that the eye of the world wuz on ’em, expectin’ ’em to be loyal to the badgered and woman endangered sect abroad, and try to suggest some way to stop them woman’s disgraceful doin’s.

Cyrenus Presly always loves to talk, and he always looks on the dark side of things, and he riz up and said “he didn’t believe nothin’ could be done, for by all he’d read about ’em, the men had tried everything possible to keep wimmen down where they ort to be, they had turned deaf ears to their complaints, wouldn’t hear one word they said, they had tried drivin’ and draggin’ and insults of all kinds, and breakin’ their bones, and imprisonment, and stuffin’ ’em with rubber tubes, thrust through their nose down into their throats. And he couldn’t think of a thing more that could be done by men, and keep the position men always had held as wimmen’s gardeens and protectors, and he said he thought men might jest as well keep still and let ’em go on and bring the world to ruin, for that was what they wuz bound to do, and they couldn’t be stopped unless they wuz killed off.”

Phileman Huffstater is a old bachelder, and hates wimmen. He had been on a drunk and looked dretful, tobacco juice runnin’ down his face, his red hair all towsled up, and his clothes stiff with dirt. He wuzn’t invited, but had come of his own accord. He had to hang onto the seat in front of him as he riz up and said: “He believed that wuz the best and only way out on’t, for men to rise up and kill off the weaker sect, for their wuzn’t never no trouble of any name or nater, but what wimmen wuz to the bottom on’t, and the world would be better off without ’em.” But Philander scorfed at him and reminded him that such hullsale doin’s would put an end to the world’s bein’ populated at all.

But Phileman said in a hicuppin’, maudlin way that “the world had better stop, if there had got to be such doin’s, wimmen risin’ up on every side, and pretendin’ to be equal with men.”

Here his knee jints kinder gin out under him, and he slid down onto the seat and went to sleep.

I guess the members wuz kinder shamed of Phileman, for Lime Peedick jumped up quick as scat and said, “It seemed the Englishmen had tried most everything else, and he wondered how it would work if them militant wimmen could be ketched and a dose of sunthin’ bitter and sickenin’ poured down ’em. Every time they broached that loathsome doctrine of equal rights, and tried to make lawmakers listen to their petitions, jest ketch ’em and pour down ’em a big dose of wormwood or sunthin’ else bitter and sickenin’, and he guessed they would git tired on’t.”

But here Josiah jumped up quick and said, “he objected,” he said, “that would endanger the right wimmen always had, and ort to have of cookin’ good vittles for men and doin’ their housework, and bearin’ and bringin’ up their children, and makin’ and mendin’ and waitin’ on ’em. He said nothin’ short of a Gatlin gun could keep Samantha from speakin’ her mind about such things, and he wuzn’t willin’ to have her made sick to the stomach, and incapacitated from cookin’ by any such proceedin’s.”

The members argued quite awhile on this pint, but finally come round to Josiah’s idees, and the meetin’ for a few minutes seemed to come to a standstill, till old Cornelius Snyder got up slowly and feebly. He has spazzums and can’t hardly wobble. His wife has to support him, wash and dress him, and take care on him like a baby. But he has the use of his tongue, and he got some man to bring him there, and he leaned heavy on his cane, and kinder stiddied himself on it and offered this suggestion:

“How would it do to tie females up when they got to thinkin’ they wuz equal to men, halter ’em, rope ’em, and let ’em see if they wuz?”

But this idee wuz objected to for the same reason Josiah had advanced, as Philander well said, “wimmen had got to go foot loose in order to do the housework and cookin’.”

Uncle Sime Bentley, who wuz awful indignant, said, “I motion that men shall take away all the rights that wimmen have now, turn ’em out of the meetin’ house, and grange.”

But before he’d hardly got the words out of his mouth, seven of the members riz up and as many as five spoke out to once with different exclamations:

“That won’t do! we can’t do that! Who’ll do all the work! Who’ll git up grange banquets and rummage sales, and paper and paint and put down carpets in the meetin’ house, and git up socials and entertainments to help pay the minister’s salary, and carry on the Sunday School? and tend to its picnics and suppers, and take care of the children? We can’t do this, much as we’d love to.”

One horsey, sporty member, also under the influence of liquor, riz