Josiah Allen on the Woman Question
didn't feel like it. And my mind is so strong and keen I see immegiately how that would spile my argument that females must turn their backs on Rights, and marry at all hazards and under all circumstances. For it stands to reason that a woman can't marry if a man is not forthcomin', and hadn't ort to be blamed for it. And I could see every time a man hung back it left a female in the lurch.

"I see I must wiggle out on't the best I could for I'll be hanged when it come down to brass tacks and I figgered it out, I dassent print a word of what I'd writ; as beautious and eloquent as it wuz I had got to drop it unwiltingly into the waist basket. For I see that besides a lackage of men caused by hangin' back which wuz of itself a overwhelmin' argument, I see how lots of the females wuz situated that had turned their backs on matrimony. Susan Jane Adsit stayed to home to take care of her old father, and by the time he died she'd got off the notion of marryin'.

"Huldah Pendergrast wuz humbly as the old Harry, and Samantha sez that a man always puts a pretty face before reason or religion, 'tennyrate no man had ever asked her to marry I knowed, so how could she help her single state.

"Amelia Burpee wuz left a orphan with five younger children that she promised her dyin' ma to take care on, and when she got them all rared up and settled down in life, she wuz too tuckered out to think of matrimony.

"And Serepta Corkins wuz a born man hater, would git over the fence ruther than meet one in the road. She didn't want a man, and Heaven knows a man didn't want her.

"Luella Pitkin's bo died durin' engagement, and she never wanted to look at a man after that. And her sister, Drusilla, wuz all took up with music, and no man could ever take the place with her of B flat, or high G.And Abigail Mooney's feller she wuz engaged to got led off and married another girl, and Abigail went into a incline and the doctor had hard work to raise her up, besides all her own folks did with spignut and wild cherry bark and other strengthenin' and soothin' herbs.

And Almina Hagadone's feller left her because she fell and broke her hip durin' engagement. And Id'no but it wuz for the best, for how could she bring up a fambly with only one hip.

And so it went on, the hull train of single wimmen swep' through my brain, follered by a crowd of widders, grass, and hay, and sod. And as I mentally stared at 'em I see what I'd done on insistin' that they should every one 
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