Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer and punctuation errors have been corrected, but dialect, unconventional and inconsistent spellings(haint/hain’t, their/thier, etc) are left untouched.
Cover image created by the transcriber, andplaced in the public domain.
MR. BOBBET TELLS NEWS.
MY OPINIONS
AND
BETSEY BOBBET’S.
DESIGNED AS
A BEACON LIGHT,
TO GUIDE WOMEN TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS,
BUT WHICH MAY BE READ BY
MEMBERS OF THE STERNER SECT,
WITHOUT INJURY TO THEMSELVES
OR THE BOOK.
BY
JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE.
“Who will read the Book, Samantha, when it is rote?”
PUBLISHED BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY,
HARTFORD, CONN.:
AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY.
1884.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by the
AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
This Book is Dedicated
To my own Lawful Pardner,
JOSIAH.
Whom (although I have been his Consort
for a little upwards of 14 years)
I still Love with a
CAST-IRON DEVOTEDNESS.
PREFACE.
Which is to be read, if it haint askin’ too much ofthe kind hearted reader.
In the first days of our married life, I strainednearly every nerve to help my companion Josiah alongand take care of his children by his former consort,the subject of black African slavery also wearin’ onme, and a mortgage of 200 and 50 dollars on the farm.But as we prospered and the mortgage was cleared,and the children were off to school, the black Africanalso bein’ liberated about the same time of the mortgage,then my mind bein’ free from these cares—thegreat subject of Wimmen’s Rites kept a goarin’ me,and a voice kept a sayin’ inside of me,
“Josiah Allen’s wife, write a book givin’ yourviews on the great subject of Wimmen’s Rites.” ButI hung back in spirit from the idea and says I, to myself,“I never went to school much and don’t knownothin’ about grammer, and I never could spell wortha cent.”
But still that deep voice kept a ’swaiden me—“JosiahAllen’s wife, write a book.”
Says I, “I can’t write a book, I don’t know no undergrounddungeons, I haint acquainted with no hauntedhouses, I never see a hero suspended over a abyss by[vii]his gallusses, I never beheld a heroine swoon away, Inever see a Injun tommy hawked, nor a ghost; Inever had any of these advantages; I can’t write a