AUNT JEMIMA ON THE WOMAN QUESTION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 32, 17 December 1897, Page 33 (Supplement)

AUNT JEMIMA ON THE WOMAN QUESTION.

(F. A. S., in Boston Transcipt.)

Aunt Jemima gave a real old-fashioned quilting party the other day in honour of a niece who was visiting her, and freed her mind in this little lecture to her guests, who were all young girls :—: — "We are livin', galls, in a fast age — a progressive age they call it, when women are a-puttin' on airs and a-settin" up to be the equals of man. 'Twan't so when I was a gall. Women didn't then pretend that they'd a right to vote and sing bass, and speechify in public. Galls didn't go galivanting off to college and universities, and rack their braino over ologies and furrin' lingos till they was turned inside out. " Do you suppose that, if I'd a ben one of that sort of young women, Solon Petti bone would ever have took a fancy to me, and chose me out of twenty other galls that was just a-dying for him ? For Squire Pettibone, whose weepin' relict I now am, was a great man in his day, a member of the school committee, a justice of the peace, head of (he board of selek men. He served two terms in the State Legislatur, and was even talked of for Congress 1 "He was a man of deep larnin' and great powers of mind. He read a good deal, but it was mostly in science books too deep for me. Whenever in his weekly newspapers he came to a artikel headed ' Women's Spere," ' Advice to Wives.' and sich like, he'd insist on readin' it to me, even if I had to leave my salt risin' a-runnin' over, or the dinner-table a-standin' on the floor, to listen. Sometimes of an evenin', arter the children was all asleep, and I sot in the chimbly corner a-darnin' stockins or doin' up my week's mendin', he'd take dauwn some lamed voluin from the book-case that he allers kep under lock and key, and if he come acrost enything suited to my needs or capacerty he kindly read it to me. E'enamost all the larnin' I ever got came in this way. " I remember just as if it was yisterdayhow kinder pleased-like he'd look over at me and the work I was a-doin', while he read some lines from Sheridan Knowles, beginnin' — ' Women act ther parts When they do make their ordered households know 'em,' — or these words from another great poet — Shakespeare or Martin Farquhar Tupper, I disremember which — ' What I do most admire in woman Is her affections, but not her intellek.' " One line of Vargil was a pertikelar favourite of his'n. He said it in his sort of hectorin' way to me so often that, though I don't know no Latin (I should hope not). I lamed this lingo by heart .and can repeat it naow : ' Varium et mittab'de senij)"r /(/•min.a. 1 " (Husband said it meant, ' More fickle than the winged winds is woman.') " At family prayers, which he kept up constant, and where he was the most eddifyin' of men, he used to ransack the scripturs for passages improvin' to me and the galls — such .is — " ' Wives, be in subjection to your husbands.' " ' Whose adornin' let it not be that outard adornin' of plaitin' the hair, of wearin' of gold, or of putlhi' ou ot apparel, but the ornerment of a meek and quiet spent.' " But the verses he set the must by wa-. them of King Solomon describin' the vartuous woman. 1 know the hull <m 'em by hctrt. Them books upon woman's spore by Dr. Todd and Dr. Fulton come out jest afore he died, and was the solace of his last hours. How many times when I was a-ministerin' araound his uyin' pillow ho quoted to me them lovely words of Dr. Fulton : ' Woman is God's first gift to man, and to be helper to man is nobler than to be queen of heaven. For this God created you. For this he preserves you.' " One day the squire added, smilin', ' Jemima, you've ben to me a meek, lovin, industrus, devoted, obejent wife. 1 shall leave you the income of a third of my estate as long as you remain my widder. No son of my own can bear my name and honours, but the Pettibone name must be kep' up, and tother two-thirds — the hull when you are done with it — goes to Solon Pettibone, my second cousin's son, who is named arter me. When galls gets so uppish and inderpendent in their idees as our gall*, they's better be leit Bcratch for theirselves. I leave 'em jest one dollar apiece.' " No, Susan Maria, I don't think that was too bad. Our galls went agin' their par's teechins, and it was his duty to punish 'ein. " For nigh upon thirty years I was blest with this high, improvin' companionship, and, though a poor cretur at best, I tried in my humble way to be a help-meet for my husband. The squire was a master-hand for good victuals, and I made his likens and dislikens in this line sich a study, that I ontirely won his heart. And, galls, the straightest road to any man's heart leads right through his stummick. From rise to set of sun, my work wos never done. I looked well arter the ways of my household. I never ate the bread of idleness. My husband was known in the gates, when he sot among the elders of the land, and that was glory enough for me. " You ask if the squire was kind to me, Matilda Jane ! He made me keep my place ; I don't suppose you'd call that kind, but I was content. If I'd gone on the way lots of women in these days is goin' on, he'd a shut me up in a lunatic asylum, and sarved me right. He had a tremenjus will of his own, and I didn't dare to oppose it. Ido believe that if he'd a smit me on the one cheek I'd a- turned to him t'other one also, in all things he was lord and master. 1 had promised to serve, honour and obey him, and I kept my word. If I'd a sot up my Ebenezer, and tried to have my ■say contrary wise to his'n, i should aroused a spent no power on airth could quell. You have heord of the iron hand in the of ■velvet. That was Squire Pettibone exactly. He just took it quietly 'for granted that his word was law— like unto that of the Medes and the Persians, which changeth not. " My galls — there was three on 'cm — didn't grow up as they'd ■orter under such pius teachin's. They used to say to me : ' Mar,

you're a drudge and a slave. You don't dare say your soul's your own — you hain't got the sperit of the worm that turns when it's trod upon. Par thinks all women his inferiors, and he's allus bewailin' the heavy cross laid upon him in having his children all darters instid of sons.' (It was a heavy cross. I never could forgive myself for loadin' him with sich a burden.)

" Jenny, our eldest, thought her par kept a-dingin' into her ears John Milton's works, ' one tongue is enough for a woman' — Jenny, she went on and learned Latin, French, and German, in spite of him. He used to call her his polyglot darter. Susanna, she went through college, and then up and studied medicine. Ruth, arter gittin' a high-up edication, graderwated from the Boston School of Oratory, and now reads and elocutes in public.

" Jenny, she's married, and keeps house in a new-fangled, labour-savins 1 sort of way, and seems to have her say about everything-. Her husband thinks there's only one perfect woman on the airth, and seems so dazed and dumfounded like at his luck in marry in' that one that he don't even have sperit enough to manage his own household.

" Susanna says that she is wedded to her perfession. Ruth, who allers was a saucy minx, declares that she is wedded to her art ; that she don't want to be like her mar — a man's slave while he lives, and his relict arter he is dead. They're bright, good-lookin' galls, if I do say it, and might have their pick of the best, if 't want for their obstreporous ways and highfalutin' notions.

" If their par could come back to the airth and Bee how things is agoin' on everywhere, even in the bosom of his own famerly, he'd find hisself a sayin' oftener than ever, ' We-al, this ere is a curus world 1 ' and would be likely to make still more frekent use of that favourite phrase of his'n. when things in the world didn't go on to suit him, ' 0 temporal O 3lo*ex!"