Samantha on the Woman Question
by Marietta Holley
“Josiah Allen’s Wife”
Author of
“Samantha at Saratoga,” “My Opinions” and“Betsey Bobbet’s,” etc.
Contents
ILLUSTRATIONS
I.
“SHE WANTED HER RIGHTS”
Lorinda Cagwin invited Josiah and me to a reunion of the Allen family at herhome nigh Washington, D.C., the birthplace of the first Allen we knowedanything about, and Josiah said:
“Bein’ one of the best lookin’ and influential Allens onearth 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 wuzthe relation on my side, and partly because by goin’ I could hit twobirds 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 hadpromised to visit her if I wuz ever nigh her, and help bear her burdens for aspell, of which burden more anon and bom-by.
Diantha wuz one bird, the Reunion another, and the third bird I had in mymind’s eye wuz the big outdoor meeting of the suffragists that wuz to beheld 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 thistower of ourn wuz Washington, D.C. I wanted to visit the Capitol of ourcountry, the center of our great civilization that stands like the sun in thesolar system, sendin’ out beams of power and wisdom and law and order,and justice and injustice, and money and oratory, and talk and talk, and windand everything, to the