Come not with keys of rank and splendor My heart's cold portals to unlock, 'Tis vain to search for feelin's tender Too late you'll find you've struck a rock; For Betsy Bobbett I'll remain _unless_ I see my duty plain. 'Tis vain for you to pine and languish, I cannot soothe your bosom's pain, In vain are all your groans, your blandishments I warn you are in vain; For Betsy Bobbett I'll remain _unless_ I see my duty plain. You needn't lay no underhanded Plots to ketch me, men desist Or in the dust you will be landed For to the last I will resist. For Betsy Bobbett I'll remain _unless_ I see my duty plain. VII ABOUT WIMMEN'S FOOLISH LOVE FOR PETICKULARS How folkses emotions will sometimes rise up entirely onexpected and onbeknown to them, and git the better on 'em. Of course we male Americans have always foreboded and felt dretful about a certain subject. But this mornin' it come over me like a black flood, the realizin' sense of the enormous labor that votin' would bring onto weak delicate females, and how impossible it wuz for their fraguile constitution and puny strength to stand up under it. Why, how many many times we statesmen have said and preached and lectured that wimmen wuzn't much more nor less than angels, and ort to be treated as such. Tender delicate flowers, to be kep' from every chillin' breeze of life that tried to blow onto 'em. Such talk has been one of the greatest comforts of us men, and has been very affectin' and effective with lots of females. As I say I've knowed it and held forth on it for years and years, ever since this loathsome doctrine of Wimmen's Rights become so prominent in Jonesville. But as many different emotions as I've had about it, never wuz my feelin's so wrought up as upon this occasion I speak of. My steeled pen fairly trembled in my hands, shook by my devotion to Samantha, and my determination if possible to keep her beloved and delicate form from sinkin' down under the awful fateeg of votin', and havin' Rights. I wuz so excited and strung up by my feelin's, that I felt that I must warn her agin about it that very minute, and I hollered to her to come to me to once. I spoze my voice wuz skairful, my feelin's wuz such, and she come a hurryin' in wipin' her hands on her apron, and sez she, "For the land's sake! what is the matter, Josiah? Have you got a crick?" "No," sez I, "I've fell into fur deeper waters than any crick. It come over me like a overwhelmin' flood, the thought of the weakness of wimmen, and the arjous and tuckerin' job of votin', and how impossible it wuz for weak wimmen to not sink down under it, and I felt I had to warn you about it this very minute, and entreat you agin to shun it as you would a pizen serpent."