CHAPTER XII.


Submit wuz very skairt to heern him go on (she felt more nervous on
account of an extra hard day's work), and I myself wuz beat out, but I
wuzn't afraid at all of him, though he did go on elegant, and dretful
empressive and even skairful.

He stood up on the same old ground that men have always stood up on,
the ground of man's great strength and capability, and wimmen's utter
weakness, helplessness, and incapacity. Josiah enlarged almost wildly on
the subject of how high, how inaccessibley lofty the Conference wuz, and
the utter impossibility of a weak, helpless, fragaile bein' like a women
ever gettin' up on it, much less settin' on it. And then, oh how vividly
he depictered it, how he and every other male Methodist in the land
loved wimmen too well, worshipped 'em too deeply to put such a wearin'
job onto 'em. Oh how Josiah Allen soared up in eloquence. Submit shed
tears, or, that is, I thought she did--I see her wipe her eyes any way.
Some think that about the time the Samuel Danker anniversary comes
round, she is more nervous and deprested. It wuz very near now, and
take that with her hard work that day, it accounts some for her extra
depression--though, without any doubt, it wuz Josiah's talk that started
the tears.

I couldn't bear to see Submit look so mournful and deprested, and so,
though I wuz that tired myself that I could hardly hold my head up, yet
I did take my bits in my teeth, as you may say, and asked him--