life"; he bein' such a master hand for wantin' to do everything faithful
and do his very best for his customers, it wuz spozed he wanted to do the
best for the law, and so when he got to whippin' Drusilly, he would whip
her too severe, he would be too faithful to it.

You see what made him whip her at all wuz she wuz cross to him. They had
nine little children, she thought two or three children would be about all
one woman could bring up well by hand, when that hand wuz so stiff and sore
with hard work.

But he had read some scareful talk from high quarters about Race Suicide.
Some men do git real wrought up about it and want everybody to have all the
children they can, jest as fast as they can, though wimmen don't all feel
so.

Aunt Hetty Sidman said, "If men had to born 'em and nuss 'em themselves,
she didn't spoze they would be so enthusiastick about it after they had
had a few, 'specially if they done their own housework themselves," and
Aunt Hetty said that some of the men who wuz exhortin' wimmen to have big
families, had better spend some of their strength and wind in tryin' to
make this world a safer place for children to be born into.

She said they'd be better off in Nonentity than here in this world with
saloons on every corner, and war-dogs howlin' at 'em.

I don't know exactly what she meant by Nonentity, but guess she meant the
world we all stay in, before we are born into this one.

Aunt Hetty has lost five boys, two by battle and three by licensed saloons,
that makes her talk real bitter, but to resoom. I told Josiah that men