They hain’t a-goin’ to stand the figger of woman and Justice on top of the world, and then let woman herself grope along in the deepest and darkest swamps and morasses of injustice and oppression, taxed without representation, condemned and hung by laws they have no voice in makin’.

Goin’ on in the future as in the past—­bringin’ children into the world, dearer to ’em than their heart’s blood, and then have their hearts torn out of ’em to see these children go to ruin before ’em through the foolishness and wickedness of laws they have no power to prevent—­nay, if they are rich, to see their loved ones helped to their doom by their own wealth; taxed to extend and perpetuate these means of death and Hell, and they with their hands bound by the chains of Slavery and old Custom.

But things are a-goin’ to be different.  I see it plain.  And I looked on that figger with big emotions in my heart, and my umbrell in my hand.

I knew the Nation wuzn’t a-goin’ to depicter woman with the hull earth at her feet, and then deny her the rights of the poorest dog that walks that globe.  No; that would be makin’ too light of her, and makin’ perfect fools of themselves.

They wouldn’t of their own accord put a septer in her hand, if they laid out to keep her where she is now—­under the rule of the lowest criminal landed on our shores, and beneath niggers, and Injuns, and a-settin’ on the same bench in a even row with idiots, lunaticks, and criminals.

No; I think better of ’em; they are a-goin’ to carry out the idee of that silver image in the gold of practical justice, I believe.

If I hadn’t thought so, I would a-histed up my umbrell and hit that septer of hern, and knocked that globe out from under her feet.

And them four mountaineers, a-guardin’ her with rifles in their hands, might have led me off to prison for it if they had wanted too—­I would a done it anyway.

But, as I sez, I hope for better things, and what give me the most courage of anything about it wuz that Justice had got her bandages off.

That is jest what I have wanted her to do for a long time.  I had advised Justice jest as if she had been my own Mother-in-law.  I had argued with her time and agin to take that bandage offen her eyes.

And when I see that she had took my advice, and meditated on what happiness and freedom wuz ahead for my sect, and realized plain that it wuz probable all my doin’s—­why, the proud and happy emotions that swelled my breast most broke off four buttons offen my bask waist.  And onbeknown to me I carried myself in that proud and stately way that Josiah asked me anxiously—­

“If I had got a crick in my back?”

I told him, “No, I hadn’t got any crick, but I had proud and lofty emotions on the inside of my soul that no man could give or take away.”

“Wall,” sez he, “you walked considerable like our old peacock when she wants to show off.”