tottlin' than theirn?"

He didn't try to dispute me and bowed his head on his breast in a almost
meachin' way. He knowed he wuz beat on every side, and almost to the end of
his chain of rusty, broken old arguments. But anon he brightened up agin
and sez, ketchin' holt of the last shackly link of his argument:

"You seem to place a great deal of dependence on the Bible. The Bible is
aginst the idee. The Bible teaches man's supremacy, man's absolute power
and might and authority."

"Why, how you talk," sez I. "In the very first chapter the Bible tells how
man wuz turned right round by a woman, tells how she not only turned man
round to do as she wanted him to, but turned the hull world over.

"That hain't nothin' I approve of; I don't speak of it because I like the
idee. That wuzn't done in a open honorable manner as things should be done.
No, Eve ruled by indirect influence, the gently influencing men way, that
politicians are so fond of. And she brought ruin and destruction onto the
hull world by it.

"A few years later when men and wimmen grew wiser, when we hear of wimmen
rulin' Israel openly and honestly, like Miriam, Deborah and other likely
old four mothers, things went on better. They didn't act meachin' and
tempt, and act indirect."

He sithed powerful and sot round oneasy in his chair. And sez he, "I
thought wimmen wuz taught by the Bible to serve and love their homes."

"So they be. And every true woman loves to serve. Home is my supreme