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immortality, onless indeed, you lived in Injeany, where you could git divorces and change your names wunst in 10 or 15 years? S'pos'n' all uv you hed bin fortunate enough to win sich virgin souls ez me, could you endure charms like mine for a eternity? Methinks not. I know that ef I hed a husband he would bless Eve for interdoosin' death into the world.

I progress. Woman then, is man's ekal, but is she okke. pyin, her proper speer? Alas not! we are deprived uv the ballot, and ain't allowed to make stump speeches or take part in pollitix. Is it right? True we ain't ez yit learned in these matters, but what uv that? How many men vote who know what they'r votin' for, and how many stump speakers know what they'r talkin' about? I demand the ballot. I want to be a torch-light procession. I want to sit in Congris among the other old grannies. I want to demon. strate my fitness for governin' by comin' home elevated on 'leckshun nights. I want to assoom that speer which Nacher fitted me for ekally with man, but from which maskeline jealousy hez thus far excluded me. Don't say we're weak and frivolus! Weak! why I wunst know'd a female friend uv mine who hed strength reglerly to carry her husband, who weighed 200 pounds averdupois, into the house every night, after he was lifted off from a dray onto which his friends which could stand more fluids than he could hed de. posited him. Many a time I've seed her lift that barrel uv whiskey with a man outside uv it.

Ez I heard some wicked boys who wuz a playin cards say I pass.

Matrimony, thus far in the world's history, hez bin our only destiny. I am glad I hed allus strength uv mind enough to resist all propositions lookin' to my enslavement. I hed too much respeck for myself to make myself the slave uv a man. Wunst, indeed, I might hev done so, but the merest accident in the world saved me. A young man, in my younger days, when the bloom wuz on the peach, ere sleepless nights spent in meditatin' the wrongs uv my sex hed worn furrows into these wunst blushin cheeks, a young man come to our house and conversed sweetly with me. It wuz my fust beau; and oh, my sisters, hed he that night asked me to be his'n I should hev bin weak enough to hev sed yes,

and I would hev bin a washer uv dishes and a mender uv stockins for life. But fate saved me. HE DIDN'T ASK ME-that night nor never afterwards-and, hallelujy! I'm free!

Again. I demand the right uv standin up in the cars the same as men, instead of havin' a dozen uv 'em start up when I enter coz I'm a woman! Why should they? Wuz these limbs given me by Nacher, for what? I resent with skor-rr-n the implied insult. I hev seen bearded men stand up to let a little chit uv 18 (0, my sisters, ef there is a provokin' objick in this world it's a smooth-faced girl uv 18; they know so little of life and let on they know so much,) set down, when the night afore that same girl hed waltzed 20 miles, and ef she hadn't tired all her partners out, could hev waltzed 20 more. I'm disgusted with sich.

There hev bin women in the world who hev done suthin. There wuz the queen uv Sheba, who wuz eggselled only by Solomon, and all that surprized her in him wuz that he could support 3000 women. Bless Solomon's heart, I'd like to see him do it now! Where could he find a house big enough to hold 'em? He'd hev to put a wing on each side of the temple, and put another story on top uv it. And there wuz Joan of Arc, who walloped the English, who wuz maid uv Orleans, which wuzn't the same as Noah's Ark, for that wuz made of gopher wood, besides the latter was pitched without and pitched within. There wuz Queen Elizabeth, who wuz the Virgin Queen, and-but I propel.

How shall we gain our lost rights, and assume that position in the world to which we are entitled to? O, my sisters, these is a question upon which I have cogitated long and vigorously. We might do it by pisenin' all the men, but we would be robbed uv one-half uv our triumph, for they wouldn't be alive to see how well we did things without 'em; and besides, who'd pay our bills, and then what would become uv the next generation? We might resolve to do no more uv the degradin' work they hev imposed onto us, but if we didn't who would? One week's eatin' what they would cook would sicken a well-regulated woman; and besides, they might not let us eat at all. We can't be nothin' else but women, but let us be women in a grand style. Let's refuse to

kiss 'em or be kissed by 'em till they come to terms; let's preserve a keerful coldness toward 'em till they acknowledge our ekality. This I have practiced for years. I allow no young man to throw his arms around my waist, and pressin' me to his buzzum, imprint upon my virgin lips the impassioned kiss uv love. Ef one should attempt it this minute, I should exclaim, "My civil rights fust, the marriage rights afterward!" Try it, young sisters! and ef that don't fetch 'em to terms, write me post-paid, and I'll send suthin' that will.

ONLY A CURL.-E. B. BROWNING.

Friends of faces unknown, and a land
Unvisited over the sea,

Who tell me how lonely you stand
With a single gold curl in the hand,
Held up to be looked at by me,-

While you ask me to ponder, and say
What a father and mother can do
With the bright fellow-locks put away,
Out of reach, beyond kiss, in the clay,
Where the violets press nearer than you,-

Shall I speak like a poet, or run

Into weak woman's tears for relief?
Oh, children-I never lost one;

Yet my arm's round my own little son,
And love knows the secret of grief.

And I feel what it must be and is,
When God draws a new angel so,
Through the house of a man up to His,
What a murmur of music you miss,
And a rapture of light you forego:

How you think, staring on at the door
Where the face of your angel flashed in,
That its brightness, familiar before,
Burns off from you ever the more

For the dark of your sorrow and sin.

DDD*

"God lent him and takes him," you sigh.
Nay, there let me break with your pain:
God's generous in giving, say I,

And the thing which he gives, I deny
That he ever can take back again.

He gives what he gives: I appeal

To all who bear babes; in the hour
When the veil of the body we feel
Rent around us-while torments reveal
The motherhood's advent in power,

And the babe cries-has each of us known
By apocalypse-God being there
Full in nature-the child is our own,
Life of life, love of love, moan of moan,
Through all changes, all times, everywhere,

He's ours, and forever. Believe,

O father!--O mother, look back
To the first love's assurance! To give
Means, with God, not to tempt or deceive,
With a cup thrust in Benjamin's sack.

He gives what he gives. Be content!
He resumes nothing given-be sure
God lend? Where the usurers lent
In his temple, indignant he went,
And scourged away all those impure.
He lends not, but gives to the end,

As he loves to the end. If it seem
That he draws back a gift, comprehend
"Tis to add to it, rather, amend,
And finish it up to your dream,—

Or keep as a mother may, toys

Too costly, though given by herself,
Till the room shall be stiller from noise,
And the children more fit for such joys,
Kept over their heads on the shelf.

So look up friends! you who indeed

Have possessed in your house a sweet piece Of the heaven which men strive for, must need Be more earnest than others are-speed

When they loiter, persist where they cease.
You know how one angel smiles there,-
Then, courage. "Tis easy for you

To be drawn by a single gold hair
Of that curl, from earth's storm and despair
To the safe place above us. Adieu.

MY CHILD.-JOHN PIERPONT.

I cannot make him dead!
His fair sunshiny head

Is ever bounding round my study chair;
Yet when my eyes, now dim
With tears, I turn to him,

The vision vanishes,—he is not there!

I walk my parlor floor,

And through the open door,

I hear a footfall on the chamber stair;
I'm stepping toward the hall

To give the boy a call;

And then bethink me that he is not there!

I thread the crowded street;

A satchelled lad I meet,

With the same beaming eyes and colored hair; And as he's running by,

Follow him with my eye,

Scarcely believing that he is not there!

I know his face is hid
Under the coffin lid;

Closed are his eyes; cold is his forehead fair;
My hand that marble felt;

O'er it in prayer I knelt;

Yet my heart whispers that he is not there!

I cannot make him dead!
When passing by the bed,

So long watched over with parental care,

My spirit and my eye

Seek him inquiringly,

Before the thought comes that he is not there!

When at the cool gray break

Of day, from sleep I wake,

With my first breathing of the morning air

My soul goes up with joy,

To Him who gave my boy;

Then comes the sad thought that--he is not there!

When at the day's calm close,

Before we seek repose,

I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer;

Whate'er I may be saying,

I am in spirit praying

For our boy's spirit, though-he is not there!

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