on 'em marry a man and stay to home, when they hadn't no man and no home to stay in. Why, I wuz fairly browbeat and stumped to see what a ticklish place I would stood in with the Jonesvillians, if I had writ my chapter as I laid out to, that wimmen _must_ marry and must _not_ vote.

I see I had got to turn round and take a new tact. But it wuz like tearin' a bulldog from a good shank bone to uproot a man from that inborn belief. And I thought it over pro and con, con and pro, till my head got fairly dizzy and in one of the dizziest spells this thought come to me that mebby Simon's bein' a bacheldor had hampered him and colored his advice, and thinkses I before I lay down in the dust my old beloved belief for good and all, it won't do any hurt to jest mention the subject casually to Samantha agin, which I did.

I sez in a meachiner axent than I ginerally use, for I felt fur more meachin' than I had felt, sez I, "Samantha, wimmen ort to marry instead of votin'."

And she sez, "Why can't they do both? Men marry and vote."

"But," sez I, recoverin' with a herculaneum effort a little of my usual feelin' of male superiority, "that is very different, Samantha. Men have bigger, roomier minds, wimmen and politics can sort o' run side by side through 'em without crowdin' each other. But female minds bein' more narrer and contracted they naterally can't, and hadn't ort to try to hold more'n one on 'em."

But," sez I with a last effort to put forth the beautious arguments that my sect has clung to for ages, I sez in a deep protectin' axent, "marriage is the holiest, the most beautifulest state on this earth."

"Yes," sez Samantha reasonably, "a happy marriage is, I guess, about as nigh Heaven as folks ever git on earth, but how many do you find, Josiah?"

"Oceans on 'em," sez I, "oceans on 'em," for I wuzn't goin' to spile my argument entirely till I had to.

"Yes," sez Samantha, "there is once in a while one that looks so from the outside, and mebby it looks so from the inside. But," sez she, "the hands of divorce lawyers are pretty busy nowadays. Marriage," sez Samantha, "is a divine institution, but its beauty has been dimmed by the rust of unjust and foolish idees and practices. Always when time honored customs change from the old to the new, from bad to better, there is a period of upheaval and unrest, until the new becomes natural and common."

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