The Middleman wuzn’t dishonest: he convinced Josiah on it. He had shipped the colored eggs somewhere, and of course he couldn’t pay as much, and he never had hearn of _Ratage_ or _Satage_. He wuz a real pleasant Middleman, and hearing me say how much I wanted to see the Woman’s Parade, he invited us to go upstairs and set by a winder, where there was a good view on’t. We’d eat our lunch on the train and we accepted his invitation, and sot down by a winder then and there, though it wuz a hour or so before the time sot for the Parade. And I should have taken solid comfort watchin’ the endless procession of men and women and vehicles of all sorts and descriptions, but Josiah made so many slightin’ remarks on the dress of the females passin’ below on the sidewalk, that it made me feel bad. And to tell the truth, though I didn’t think best to own up to it to him, I _did_ blush for my sect to see the way some on ’em rigged themselves out. “See that thing!” Josiah sez, as a woman passed by with her hat drawed down over one eye, and a long quill standin’ out straight behind more’n a foot, an’ her dress puckered in so ’round the bottom, she couldn’t have took a long step if a mad dog wuz chasin’ her—to say nothin’ of bein’ perched up on such high heels, that she fairly tottled when she walked. Sez Josiah: “Does that _thing_ know enough to vote?” “No,” sez I, reasonably, “she don’t. But most probable if she had bigger things to think about she’d loosen the puckerin’ strings ’round her ankles, push her hat back out of her eyes, an’ get down on her feet again.” “Why, Samantha,” says he, “if you had on one of them skirts tied ’round your ankles, if I wuz a-dyin’ on the upper shelf in the buttery, you couldn’t step up on a chair to get to me to save your life, an’ I’d have to die there alone.” “Why should you be dyin’ on the buttery shelf, Josiah?” sez I. “Oh, that wuz jest a figger of speech, Samantha.” “But folks ort to be mejum in figgers of speech, Josiah, and not go too fur.” “Do you think, Samantha, that anybody can go too fur in describin’ them fool skirts, and them slit skirts, and the immodesty and indecensy of some of them dresses?” [Illustration: “Sez Josiah, ‘Does that thing know enough to vote?’”] “I don’t know as they can,” sez I, sadly. “Jest look at that thing,” sez he again. And as I looked, the hot blush of shame mantillied my cheeks, for I felt that my sect was disgraced by the sight. She wuz real pretty, but she didn’t have much of any clothes on, and what she did wear wuzn’t in the right place; not at all. Sez Josiah, “That girl would look much more modest and decent if she wuz naked, for then she might be took for a statute.”