wife, "I want to be soothed and comforted."

And if you'll believe it she told him, "if he wanted to be soothed to soothe himself." Jest so hash and onfeelin' she spoke. He said she wuz splittin' kindlin' wood at the time to git supper, and she struck at that wood as if she would bring the woodhouse down. And I guess from his tell that he gin it to her hot and heavy. But 'tennyrate she refused outright to soothe and comfort him, and if that hain't a wife's duty what is? It has always been called so, as I told Samantha. She asked what Cephas and I wuz talkin' so long about, and I had to tell her.

And she said she see Miss Slinker go home from Deacon Gowdey's where she'd done a two weeks washin'. She wuz pushin' the baby carriage in front of her with her twins in it, and a bag of potatoes, and little Cephas draggin' at her skirts and cryin' to be carried, and she looked as if she would sink down in her tracts. And it seemed, sez Samantha, "as tired as she wuz she had to split wood to git supper. And how could she soothe and comfort anybody droudgin' round as she had all day and all wore out? Under the circumstances it wuzn't reasonable in Cephas to ask it."That's jest the way on't, wimmen will argy and argy and try to have the last word. I wouldn't say no more for I knowed it wuz no use. But I must say that when Samantha has the time she's always ready to soothe and comfort me if I'm in trouble. She sez it is a woman's nater to want to help and comfort the man she loves, but he ort to be reasonable and not ask it of her as Cephas did. Under such circumstances she said it wouldn't hurt him to soothe her a spell.

I see I couldn't make no headway arguin' with her, so I kep' demute and went to writin' on the subject I'd laid out to hold forth on which is as follers.

When the first thought of writin' this great work bust onto my soul like the blazin' sun risin' up and pourin' down his dazzlin' beams onto Jonesville and the surroundin' world, there wuz one idee that stood towerin' up like a Light House. One fundamental truth I laid out to lift up so high and make so plain that even a female's feeble comprehension could grasp it, and see its first and primary importance. And that wuz that wimmen should not try to have Rights, but at all hazards and under all circumstances not fail to marry a man, and secondly I laid out to prove that them two things Matrimony and Rights could never by any possibility be combined and run together.

"For truly these two great truths are what we male men have considered the very ground work and 

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