[Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition by Marietta Holley]@TWC D-Link bookSamantha at the St. Louis Exposition CHAPTER XIV 4/24
But I am talkin' from the standpoint of legislators and highest officials, and if they call 'em respectable, and throw the mantilly of law and order over 'em it is only justice to let the mantilly spread out, so it will cover the males and females too.
Agin I quote the words of the poet to you, 'what is sass for the goose ort to be sass for the gander.'" Says she, "Such things are looked on so different in a man, they can hold their heads up jest as high as they did before." "Not if I had my way," sez I."If the female is dragged off to the Home for Fallen Wimmen let the same team come back and haul the men off to the Home for Fallen Men, tie 'em up with the same rope, preach to 'em from the same text, let 'em out when they've both repented and want to do better.
That's my scheme," sez I. "Oh, shaw!" sez Jane Olive, "it wouldn't work." "Why not ?" sez I."I'll bet if that course wuz took for the next five years with fallen men you wouldn't have to raise so much money for fallen wimmen; I'll bet it would ameliorate their condition more than anything else would." "It don't hurt a man," sez Jane Olive agin. "Why don't it hurt 'em ?" sez I."If it makes a woman so bad the hull world calls her ruined and lost, and prints her name out in the daily papers, as they always do, givin' her full name and address and sayin' some wild young man (but nameless) of respectable family was implicated, and talks of her as if Heaven wuz shet aginst her, and she has got to pray and repent in sack-cloth and ashes all the rest of her days, and never, never git her old place back in the eyes of the community, it hain't reasonable to spoze it don't hurt a man a mite to fall at the same time and in the same way.
There is no sense in it, and I'll bet if you hunt round in your city you'll find where fallen men are kep' hid away till they can repent and reform. "Why," sez I, "men's hearts and souls and morals are made out of exactly the same stuff that wimmens be.
And as I said before, let a man and a woman fall out of a high winder together it smashes him jest as bad as it duz her.
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