“Good land!” sez she, “nothin’ would tempt me to patronize anything so brazen and onwomanly as a out-door meetin’ of wimmen, and so onhealthy and immodest.” I see she looked reproachfully at Polly as she said it. Polly wuz arrangin’ some posies in a vase, and looked as sweet as the posies did, but considerable firm too, and I see from Lorinda’s looks that Polly wuz one who had to leave father and mother for principle’s sake. But I sez, “You’re cookin’ this minute, Lorinda, for a out-door meetin’” (she wuz makin’ angel cake). “And why is this meetin’ any more onwomanly or immodest than the camp-meetin’ where you wuz converted, and baptized the next Sunday in the creek?” “Oh, them wuz religious meetin’s,” sez she. “Well,” sez I, “mebby these wimmen think their meetin’ is religious. You know the Bible sez, ‘Faith and works should go together,’ and some of the leaders of this movement have showed by their works as religious a sperit and wielded aginst injustice to young workin’ wimmen as powerful a weepon as that axe of the ’Postles the Bible tells about. And you said you went every day to the Hudson-Fulton doin’s and hearn every out-door lecture; you writ me that there wuz probable a million wimmen attendin’ them out-door meetin’s, and that wuz curosity and pleasure huntin’ that took them, and this is a meetin’ of justice and right.” “Oh, shaw!” sez Lorinda agin, with her eye on Polly. “Wimmen have all the rights they want or need.” Lorinda’s husband bein’ rich and lettin’ her have her way she is real foot loose, and don’t feel the need of any more rights for herself, but I told her then and there some of the wrongs and sufferin’s of Serepta Pester, and bein’ good-hearted (but obstinate and bigoted) she gin in that the errents wuz hefty, and that Serepta wuz to be pitied, but she insisted that wimmen’s votin’ wouldn’t help matters. But Euphrasia Pottle, a poor relation from Troy, spoke up. “After my husband died one of my girls went into a factory and gits about half what the men git for the same work, and my oldest girl who teaches in the public school don’t git half as much for the same work as men do, and her school rooms are dark, stuffy, onhealthy, and crowded so the children are half-choked for air, and the light so poor they’re havin’ their eyesight spilte for life, and new school books not needed at all, are demanded constantly, so some-one can make money.” “Yes,” sez I, “do you spoze, Lorinda, if intelligent mothers helped control such things they would let their children be made sick and blind and the money that should be used for food for poor hungry children be squandered on _on_-necessary books they are too faint with hunger to study.” “But wimmen’s votin’ wouldn’t help in such things,” sez Lorinda, as she stirred her angel cake vigorously.