"
"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."
And I sez, "I don't blame the good Priest for sendin' them away from the
Lord's table, sayin', 'I will give no communion to a Jezabel.' And the pity
of it is," sez I, "lots of them girls are innocent and don't realize what
construction will be put on the dress they blindly copy from some furrin
fashion plate."
Then quite an old woman passed by, also robed or disrobed in the prevailin'
fashion, and Josiah sez, soty vosy, "I should think she wuz old enough to
know sunthin'. Who wants to see her old bones?" And he sez to me, real
uppish, "Do you think them things know enough to vote?"
But jest then a young man went by dressed fashionably, but if he hadn't had
the arm of a companion, he couldn't have walked a step; his face wuz red
and swollen, and dissipated, and what expression wuz left in his face wuz a
fool expression, and both had cigarettes in their mouths, and I sez, "Does
_that_ thing know enough to vote?" And jest behind them come a lot
of furrin laborers, rough and rowdy-lookin', with no more expression in
their faces than a mule or any other animal.
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