Jest think on't, oh, my sect! who have been used to sneakin' up back stairs to look down on men seated in state at banquet tables, or peak from the gallery at the Capitol to see 'em nobly engaged in makin' laws to govern her, tellin' her how to spend the money she earned herself, and how long to send her to jail, and where and when to hang her, and etcetery; while she could only jest peak at 'em. Oh, my soul! wuzn't it a agreeable state of affairs the doin's here at Festival Hall? As I said to Josiah as we sot there, "Don't it show my sect is lookin' up?" And he said he never found wimmen backward in lookin' up, he said he never see a place that would dant 'em and stop their tongues from waggin'. He made light of the great incident and would been glad to had men dedicate it; indeed he jest the same as told me he felt the Exposition had stood in its own light in not havin' a certain leadin' man in Jonesville, who wuz way up in political and moral life, havin' held the offices of path-master and deacon. "But," sez he, with some bitterness of sperit and speakin' skornfully: "What if wimmen did dedicate it? They can git up dressed in their silks and shiffoniers, and talk, talk, but they can't vote no matter how well off they be. They've got to pony up and pay taxes and toe the mark in law jest as men tell 'em to." "Why," sez he, warmin' with his subject, "we men can set on you in juries and you can't help yourselves, and hang you and so forth. And you W.C.T.U. wimmen would have to let your tax money go to pay for drinkin' shacks if we men of Jonesville, and the world, took it into our heads to make you. Why," sez he, lookin' more and more big feelin' as he went on, as why shouldn't he, as he recounted men's glorious advantages, "Nate Flanders, who is most a fool, can vote and make you knuckle down and do as he tells you to. And don't you remember that time the 'lection run so clost they got up old bed-ridden Nate Haskins, whose brain had been softenin' for years, and his wife had to dress him and git him ready for the pole, he callin' on his wife, Nancy, to put on every identical garment and tell where it went, and when they got him to the pole he wouldn't vote because Nance wuzn't there to tell him which ticket to vote. She'd jest kep' that voter alive for years, and been head and hands for him, but she couldn't vote and he could." Everybody has seen hosses run off the track when they wuz goin' too fast; Josiah wuz so engaged in runnin' wimmen's pride down, he didn't realize where he wuz gallopin' to. "And there wuz Jane Ellis who lost her husband and two boys through drinkin', she had to let her tax money be used to help nominate a license man, who opened a liquor saloon right under her nose, and the last boy she had took to drinkin' and killed himself last week drunk as a fool." "I'd be ashamed to boast of that, Josiah Allen, I'd be ashamed on't."