My Wife and I by Harriet Beecher Stowe--Delphi Classics (Illustrated) by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author:Harriet Beecher Stowe [STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Parts Edition 8 of 44 by Delphi Classics
Publisher: Delphi Classics (Parts Edition)
Published: 2017-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXII. I RECEIVE A MORAL SHOWER-BATH

A DAY or two after, as I was sitting in my room, busy writing, I heard a light footstep on the stairs, and a voice saying, “Oh yes! this is Mr. Henderson’s room — thank you,” and the next moment a jaunty, dashing young woman, with bold blue eyes and curling brown hair, with a little wicked-looking cap with nodding cock’s-feathers set askew on her head, came marching up and seated herself at my writing-table. I gazed in blank amazement. The apparition burst out laughing, and, seizing me frankly by the hand, said: —

“Look here, Hal! don’t you know me? Well, my dear fellow, if you don’t, it’s time you did! I read your last ‘thingumajig’ in the ‘Milky Way,’ and came round to make your acquaintance.”

I gazed in dumb amazement while she went on: —

“My dear fellow, I have come to enlighten you,” — and as she said this she drew somewhat near to me, and laid her arm confidingly on my shoulder, and looked coaxingly in my face. The look of amazement which I gave, under these circumstances, seemed to cause her great amusement.

“Ha! ha!” she said, “didn’t I tell ’em so? You ain’t half out of the shell yet. You ain’t really hatched. You go for the emancipation of woman; but bless you, boy, you haven’t the least idea what it means — not a bit of it, sonny, have you now? Confess!” she said, stroking my shoulder caressingly.

“Really, madam — I confess,” I said hesitatingly, “I haven’t the honor” —

“Not the honor of my acquaintance, you was going to say; well, that’s exactly what you ‘re getting now. I read your piece in the ‘Milky Way,’ and, said I, that boy’s in heathen darkness yet, and I ‘m going round to enlighten him. You mean well, Hal! but this is a great subject. You haven’t seen through it. Lord bless you, child! you ain’t a woman, and I am — that’s just the difference.” Now, I ask any of my readers, what is a modest young man, in this nineteenth century, — having been brought up to adore and reverence woman as a goddess, — to do, when he finds himself vis-à-vis with her in such embarrassing relations as mine were becoming? I had heard before of Miss Audacia Dangyereyes as a somewhat noted character in New York circles, but did not expect to be brought so unceremoniously, and without the least preparation of mind, into such very intimate relations with her.

“Now, look here, bub!” she said, “I’m just a-going to prove to you, in five minutes, that you’ve been writing about what you don’t know anything about. You’ve been asserting, in your blind way, the rights of woman to liberty and equality; the rights of women, in short, to do anything that men do. Well, here comes a woman to your room who takes her rights, practically, and does just what a man would do. I claim my right

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