I

"SHE WANTED HER RIGHTS"


Lorinda Cagwin invited Josiah and me to a reunion of the Allen family at
her home nigh Washington, D.C., the birthplace of the first Allen we knowed
anything about, and Josiah said:

"Bein' one of the best lookin' and influential Allens on earth now, it
would be expected on him to attend to it."

And I fell in with the idee, partly to be done as I would be done by if
it wuz the relation on my side, and partly because by goin' I could hit
two birds with one stun, as the poet sez. Indeed, I could hit four on 'em.

My own cousin, Diantha Trimble, lived in a city nigh Lorinda's and I had
promised to visit her if I wuz ever nigh her, and help bear her burdens for
a spell, of which burden more anon and bom-by.

Diantha wuz one bird, the Reunion another, and the third bird I had in my
mind's eye wuz the big outdoor meeting of the suffragists that wuz to be
held in the city where Diantha lived, only a little ways from Lorinda's.

And the fourth bird and the biggest one I wuz aimin' to hit from this tower
of ourn wuz Washington, D.C. I wanted to visit the Capitol of our country,
the center of our great civilization that stands like the sun in the solar
system, sendin' out beams of power and wisdom and law and order, and