I tell you agin it is a perilous and agonizin' epock of time for the male sect at home and abroad. Men in America havin' to set curled up on a bench by the side of the road, and see weak wimmen, underlin's, a marchin' by 'em in the center of the street with brass bands and banners a flyin'. And in England the highest official of the Empire held by the collar and shook by a weak female jest like a spitball thrower of a schoolboy, and couldn't resent it in court owin' to his havin' so much dignity at the stake. Oh, my downtrod sect! what are we a comin' to? I do git so wrought up a meditatin' on the dretful things that are a happenin' to us men nowdays, and how browbeat and how humiliated we are by our inferiors, I git so cast down and deprested that my melancholy sperit has to bust out in poetry. For some time I've had them feelin's. Now last Christmas night I had such a spell, and I had to git out of bed and put Samantha's crazy quilt round me (and it seemed as if that insane quilt made me feel more high strung and wild) and go out in the settin' room and ease my strugglin' sperit in verse. Why, sometimes it seems if I didn't have this safety valve to my bustin', swellin' emotions it seems almost as if I should have to be hooped to keep myself together. But poetry kinder easies me a little. Now last Saturday night I writ the follerin' verses as late as leven P.M. We'd been to meetin' as usual, and had a splendid Christmas dinner. Samantha, as I have mentioned prior and before this, with all the weaknesses and shortcomin's of her inferior sect, is a masterly cook. But it is all nonsense her thinkin' I et too much; I didn't eat more'n four pieces of mince pie, and three helpin's of plum puddin', besides the turkey and vegetables and salad and such. If a strong man belongin' to a strong and superior sect can't stand that, it is a pity. She insisted that it wuz a nightmair that sot on my chist and rid me out of bed into the settin' room that time o' night. But it wuzn't no such thing, it wuz my melancholy and deprested sperit that overcome me a thinkin' of my sect and what wuzn't to be.