I knowed by the look on her linement that she meant to intimidate that there had been shiftlessnes and stealin' goin' on in that direction, and in other public works through the country, but I refused to notice the slur on my sect. That slur that females love to sling at us and which we'd better treat with silent contemp, jest as I did now, for no knowin' if we'd stoop to argy with 'em about it, what figgers and statistics they may bring up, to prove their slurs, so as I say I passed it over with silent disdain, but I sez in a safe general way, fur removed from probable figgers she would be apt to throw at me to prove her reckless insertions, I sez, puttin' a sad look onto my linement: "Wimmen's extravagance makes the heart of man to ache and often drives him to a ontimely tomb, strivin' for fashionable display, strivin' for rights she don't need." And bein' anxious to change the subject at that juncter (I always think it is best to change the flow of my thought occasionally) I put on a sort of a solemn, fraid look on my linement, "Such talk as you wimmen talk is revolutionary, Samantha, and is liable to lead to war." And then, if you'll believe it, so contrary and hard to conquer is females, she took advantage of that speech of mine to invay on the expenditure of war. She asked me then and there how many billions wuz spent every year by male men on the extravagance of man-made war, its preperation and consequences. I told her coldly and with a irony as iron as our old cook stove, that as much as she expected of me, she couldn't expect me to figger up to a cent what war had cost the nation. Sez I, "With the barn chores on my hands, and my great work of destroyin' Woman's Suffrage do you expect me to keep track of every cent the nation has spent on war?" "No," sez she, "one man couldn't reckon it up if he spent his hull lifetime at it, but jest the money spent on it yearly is two billion five hundred million. But," sez she, "it seems that the enormous extravagance of man in this direction and others don't unfit him for the franchise. And if you should spend a few years tryin' to reckon up the gigantic expenditure in money and misery, the horrors and extravagance of war and its effects, you might feel like talkin' less about wimmen's extravagance and how it makes her onfit to be a citizen of the country she's born into, and helps to support with her labor and taxes." Oh, how aggravatin' a woman can be when she sets out to be. Much as I think of Samantha and the tendrils of my great heart are wropped completely round her, as big as she is round her waist--yet sometimes on occasions like this I almost wish I wuz a bacheldor, a fur off lonely man in some distant cave, or on some lonesome mountain peak, encumbered not by a female who thinks she has a right to argy with me and irritate me.