Samantha at the St. Louis ExpositionHolley, Marietta
General
Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition
Holley, Marietta
Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : Saint Louis, Mo.) -- Fiction
Sez I, "Jane Olive, I am spozin'. Mark you well, I don't say they are
respectable; I say they are the depths of infamy. But I am talkin' from
the standpoint of legislators and highest officials, and if they call
'em respectable, and throw the mantilly of law and order over 'em it is
only justice to let the mantilly spread out, so it will cover the males
and females too. Agin I quote the words of the poet to you, 'what is
sass for the goose ort to be sass for the gander.'"
Says she, "Such things are looked on so different in a man, they can
hold their heads up jest as high as they did before."
"Not if I had my way," sez I. "If the female is dragged off to the Home
for Fallen Wimmen let the same team come back and haul the men off to
the Home for Fallen Men, tie 'em up with the same rope, preach to 'em
from the same text, let 'em out when they've both repented and want to
do better. That's my scheme," sez I.
"Oh, shaw!" sez Jane Olive, "it wouldn't work."
"Why not?" sez I. "I'll bet if that course wuz took for the next five
years with fallen men you wouldn't have to raise so much money for
fallen wimmen; I'll bet it would ameliorate their condition more than
anything else would."
"It don't hurt a man," sez Jane Olive agin.
"Why don't it hurt 'em?" sez I. "If it makes a woman so bad the hull
world calls her ruined and lost, and prints her name out in the daily
papers, as they always do, givin' her full name and address and sayin'
some wild young man (but nameless) of respectable family was implicated,
and talks of her as if Heaven wuz shet aginst her, and she has got to
pray and repent in sack-cloth and ashes all the rest of her days, and
never, never git her old place back in the eyes of the community, it
hain't reasonable to spoze it don't hurt a man a mite to fall at the
same time and in the same way. There is no sense in it, and I'll bet if
you hunt round in your city you'll find where fallen men are kep' hid
away till they can repent and reform.
"Why," sez I, "men's hearts and souls and morals are made out of exactly
the same stuff that wimmens be. And as I said before, let a man and a
woman fall out of a high winder together it smashes him jest as bad as
it duz her. They have to be carried off to hospitals jest the same, the
same doctor tends 'em, the same medicine has to be administered to 'em
and they have to come back slowly to health agin. It takes the same
length of time to lose the marks of the woonds and bruises, and they
have to hobble round on the same kind of crutches. And why under the
sun, moon and stars there is any difference in the woonds on their souls
and morals I can't see, nor I don't believe you can."
Agin she snorted and acted real high headed, and sez she, "There hain't
no such a Home as that you're talkin' about, and never wuz."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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