Strange as it wuz I hadn't thought on that side of the subject till Simon pinted it out to me, my barn chores and fambly cares are so wearin' on me that it had slipped my mind, though probable I should thought on't of my own accord when I had time. But I see the minute my attention wuz drawed to it that I must meller the chapter down for the good of my own sect. And after Simon went home (he had come to borry a auger) I meditated on the other side, what you might call the off side of the argument and I see different from what I had seen. And I brung up convincin' incidents and let 'em run through my mind. Firstly, I see I wuz hittin' my dear friend Simon, hittin' him hard, for he wuz a bacheldor, though he thought too much on me to mention his own wownded feelin's. But when I realized what I had done it fairly stunted me, for it wuz like kickin' my own shins with a hard cowhide boot to hit Simon. And I see that take it with all the grass and hay widowers, and what you might call plain bacheldors, there wuz a good many male Jonesvillians who would had reason to feel riled up, and I wuzn't one to cast no slurs onto my own sect. Id'no why a number of them bacheldors hadn't married, for they wuz well off and might have married if they'd wanted to. I guess it wuz jest because they didn't feel like it. And my mind is so strong and keen I see immegiately how that would spile my argument that females must turn their backs on Rights, and marry at all hazards and under all circumstances. For it stands to reason that a woman can't marry if a man is not forthcomin', and hadn't ort to be blamed for it. And I could see every time a man hung back it left a female in the lurch. I see I must wiggle out on't the best I could for I'll be hanged when it come down to brass tacks and I figgered it out, I dassent print a word of what I'd writ; as beautious and eloquent as it wuz I had got to drop it onwillin'ly into the waist basket. For I see that besides a lackage of men caused by hangin' back which wuz of itself a overwhelmin' argument, I see how lots of the females wuz situated that had turned their backs on matrimony. Susan Jane Adsit stayed to home to take care of her old father, and by the time he died she'd got off the notion of marryin'. Huldah Pendergrast wuz humbly as the old Harry, and Samantha sez that a man always puts a pretty face before reason or religion, 'tennyrate no man had ever asked her to marry I knowed, so how could she help her single state. Amelia Burpee wuz left a orphan with five younger children that she promised her dyin' ma to take care on, and when she got them all rared up and settled down in life, she wuz too tuckered out to think of matrimony. And Serepta Corkins wuz a born man hater, would git over the fence ruther than meet one in the road. She didn't want a man, and Heaven knows a man didn't want her.