And as she built up, achievement by achievement, the domestic woman-history of the valley, Jane showed in the most insidious way possible how the pioneer women had been really the warp on which had been woven the woof of the whole history of their part of the Nation, political, financial, and religious.  I never heard anything like it in all my life, and as I looked down those long tables at those aroused, tense, farmer faces, I knew Jane had cracked the geological crust of the Harpeth Valley, and built a brake that would stop any whirlwind on the woman-question that might attempt to come in on us over the Ridge from the outside world.  They saw her point and were hard hit.  When “Votes for Women” gets to coming down Providence Road the farmers will hitch up a wagon and take mother and the children with a well-packed lunch basket to meet it half way.  This is a prophecy!

Then, after Jane sat down, I don’t believe such a speechifying ever was before as resounded out over the river, even in the time of Old Hickory.  Everybody had something to say and got to his feet to say it well, even if some of them did brandish a turkey wing or a Iamb rib to emphasize their points.

And the women were the funniest things I ever beheld, as we were treated to one maiden speech after another, issuing from the lips of plump matrons anywhere from thirty to sixty.  They had never done it before, but liked it after they had tried.

Mother Mayberry from Providence, who is the grand old woman of the whole valley, having established her claim to the title thirty years ago by taking up her dead doctor husband’s practice and “riding saddlebags to suffering ever since,” as she puts it, broke the feminine ice by rising from her seat by the side of one of the entranced Magnates,—­who had been so delighted with her and her philosophies that he could hardly do his dinner justice,—­and addressing the rally in her wonderful old voice with her white curls flying and her cheeks as pink as a girl’s.

“Children,” she said, after everybody had clapped and clapped so she couldn’t get a start for several minutes, “The Harpeth Valley women have been a-marching along behind the men for many a day, because their strong shoulders had to break undergrowth for both, but now husbands and fathers and sons have got their feet up on the bluff of Paradise Ridge, and it does look like they will be a-reaching down their hands to help us up, in the break of a new day, to stand by their side; and I, for one, say mount!—­I’m ready!”

A perfect war of applause answered her, and Dickie’s father got up to go down the whole length of the table to shake hands with her, but had to wait until she came out of the embrace of Nell’s fluffy arms, and got a hand free from the Magnate on one side and Aunt Augusta on the other.

Even Sallie began to look speechful, and I believe she would have got up and spoken a few words on the subject of women, and how they need men to look after them, but she said something to Mr. Haley, who shook his head and then got up and prosed beautifully to us for ten minutes, and would have gone on longer, if he hadn’t seen Henrietta begin to look mutinous.