“A dog don't have to see its property taxed to advance laws that it believes ruinous, and that breaks its own heart and the hearts of other dear dogs. “A dog don't have to listen to soul-sickening speeches from them that deny it freedom and justice--about its bein' a damosk rose, and a seraphine, when it knows it hain't: it knows, if it knows any thing, that it is a dog. “You see, Dorlesky has been kinder embittered by her trials that politics, corrupt legislation, has brought right onto her. She didn't want nothin' to do with 'em; but they come right onto her unexpected and unbeknown, and she feels jest so. She feels she must do every thing she can to alter matters. She wants to help make the laws that have such a overpowerin' influence over her, herself. She believes from her soul that they can't be much worse than they be now, and may be a little better.” “Ah! if Dorlesky wishes to influence political affairs, let her influence her children,--her boys,--and they will carry her benign and noble influence forward into the centuries.” “But the law has took her boy, her little boy and girl, away from her. Through the influence of the Whisky Ring, of which her husband was a shinin' member, he got possession of her boy. And so, the law has made it perfectly impossible for her to mould it indirectly through him. What Dorlesky does, she must do herself.” “Ah! A sad thing for Dorlesky. I trust that you have no grievance of the kind, I trust that your estimable husband is--as it were, estimable.” “Yes, Josiah Allen is a good man. As good as men _can_ be. You know, men or wimmen either can't be only jest about so good anyway. But he is my choice, and he don't drink a drop.” “Pardon me, madam; but if you are happy, as you say, in your marriage relations, and your husband is a temperate, good man, why do you feel so upon this subject?” “Why, good land! if you understand the nature of a woman, you would know that my love for him, my happiness, the content and safety I feel about him, and our boy, makes me realize the sufferin's of Dorlesky in havin' her husband and boy lost to her, makes me realize the depth of a wive's, of a mother's, agony, when she sees the one she loves goin' down, goin' down so low that she can't reach him; makes me feel how she must yearn to help him in some safe, sure way. “High trees cast long shadows. The happier and more blessed a woman's life is, the more does she feel for them who are less blessed than she. Highest love goes lowest, if need be. Witness the love that left Heaven, and descended onto the earth, and into it, that He might lift up the lowly.