Kentucky -- Fiction; Older women -- Fiction; Widows -- Fiction
"What was I talkin' about, honey? Oh, yes; them women's clubs. Well, I
set there listenin' to 'em tellin' how their clubs had worked for this
thing and that, and how hard it was to git men to see things the way
they saw 'em, and it come over me all at once that they was contendin'
with the same sort o' troubles us women down in Goshen had when we got
our organ and our cyarpet for the church. I ricollect when we was
talkin' about the cyarpet Silas Petty says: 'What's the use o' havin'
that cyarpet? Hasn't this church got along fifteen years with jest
these good pine boards underfoot?' And Sally Ann says: 'Yes; you men
folks think that because things has always been thus and so, they've
always got to be. But,' says she, 'I've noticed that when a thing
always has been, most likely it's a thing that ought never to 'a'
been.' And from what I could gether, listenin' to the ladies read
their papers, there was the same old trouble betwixt the clubs and the
legislatures that there used to be down in Goshen church, the women
wantin' to go on, and the men pullin' back and standin' still.
"And one lady told about Emperor William over yonder in Germany
sayin' that women oughtn't to do anything but cook and go to church
and nurse the children, and says I, 'That's Silas Petty over again.'
And then she went on to tell how some o' the men was findin' fault
with women because families wasn't as large as they was in their
great-grandmothers' day. And thinks I to myself, 'That's jest like
old man Bob Crawford.'
"Well, one after another they'd stand up and tell about all the good
works their clubs had done, sendin' books to the mountain people,
tryin' to make better schools for the children, and havin' laws made
to keep women and little children from bein' worked to death in
factories and mills, and I declare, child, it reminded me more of an
old-fashioned experience meetin' than anything I could think of, and
says I to myself: 'Why, Uncle Billy's all wrong. This ain't Sodom and
Gomorrah; it's the comin' of the kingdom of God on earth.' And when
the meetin' was about to break, Henrietta got up and says, 'Grandma,
the ladies want you to make them a speech'; and I jest laughed right
out and says I: 'Why, honey, I can't make a speech. Whoever heard of a
old woman like me makin' a speech?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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