Josiah Allen on the Woman Question
female equality down into the dirt where it belongs. We find that wimmen wuz made and manufactured jest because men wuz kinder lonesome. As Uncle Sime well sez, "It wuz jest a happen that wimmen wuz made at all. Adam happened to feel kinder lonesome alone on that big farm, and probable needed wimmen's help. And he happened to have a extra rib he could spare as well as not, and so wimmen wuz made out of that spare rib. But," sez Uncle Sime, "Adam would have been as well agin off if Eve hadn't been made, and I should have told him so if I had been there." Sez he bitterly, "Men hain't been lonesome since wimmen wuz made. Oh, no! she has kep' her clack goin', and kep' men's noses down on the grindstun ever sence."

"Well," sez I, "Simon, it wuz noble in Adam to be willin' to lose one of his ribs to make her, for who knows to what hites men might have riz up if he hadn't parted with it. If us men have riz up to such a hite with one rib lackin' who knows how fur we should have gone up with the hull on 'em."

"That hain't the pint," sez Uncle Sime. "The pint is, how dast wimmen feel so big and claim to be equal to us men, when they think how, and why, and what out of they wuz created. Wimmen ort to feel thankful and grateful to men that she wuz made at all. How would she felt if she hadn't been made? I guess she would feel pretty cheap and not put on so many airs, and be hikein' round preachin' to her superiors."

In his excitement Uncle Sime had enunciated that crushin' argument in a ruther loud tone. We wuz settin' on the back stoop and Samantha comin' out to shake the table-cloth must have hearn it. But instead of actin' humiliated and crushed by that masterly argument she looked at us kinder queer over her specs, folded her table-cloth camly and said nothin'.

And after she went in Uncle Sime resoomed his unanswerable arguments. "Why, beside Bible proofs I can prove it in a scientific way. Weigh up a man's bones in the stillyards and they'll weigh one hundred pounds more or less, jest the bones. And now jest think on the preposterous idee of that one little rib bone a risin' up right in the face of science and reason, and pretendin' to be equal to the hull carcass. And worse yet tryin' to stomp on him and bring him down to her level by votin'. Why, if Adam had hearn to me and kep' that rib bone where it wuz, jest think what the world would have escaped, think of the jealousies, angers, revenges, weariness, expenses, wars, ruin and bloodshed caused through the centuries by changin' that rib bone into a female!"

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