new dress, they find plenty of time to cut it all up inte strips, jist to pucker it up and set it on again. They have plenty of time to dress up in their very best and patrol the streets as regular as a watchman, and to go to all the shows, and parties, and concerts, and centennials and the like, and to flirt with every man they can lay holt of and ketch 'em with their fringes. They find plenty of time for all this, but when it comes to an act as simple as putting a letter in the post-office, they are dreadful short for time.

Betsey-The study it would take to make a woman vote intelligably would be too wearing on her.

Saman.-Too wearing! Do you think it would be any more exhausting to her to read a little about the nation she lives in, and the laws what protects her, than to pour over novels all day long? These very women who thinks the President's bureau is a chest of drawers where he keeps his best clothes, and the tariff is a wild horse the Senators keep to ride on-jest let 'em get on the track of a love-sick hero and a swoonin' heroine, and they will wade through half a dozen volumes, but what they will follow 'em clean to Finis to see 'em married there. Let there be a young woman hid in a certain hole, guarded by one hundred and ten pirates, and a young man trying to get at her, though at present laying chained in an underground dungeon with his rival setting on his back; what does a woman care for time or treasure till she sees the pirates all killed with one double revolver, and the young woman lifted out, swoonin' but happy, by the brave hero. If there had been a woman hid on the island of Patmos, and Paul's letters to the churches had only been love-letters to her, there would n't be such a thick coat of dust on Bibles as there is. And s'pose women don't read about the laws,

they would still know as much as some men voters I know (she looks sternly at JOSIAH). I have seen men voters whose study into national affairs did n't wear on 'em enough to kill 'em at all. I have seen voters who did n't know as much as their wives did. I have seen Irish voters whose intellects was n't tiresome to carry round, and whose knowledge concerning public affairs was n't so good as it was about rum, who would sell their votes for a drink of whiskey, and keep it up all day, drinking and voting, and voting and drinking, and I guess women would n't be any worse.

Betsey-But how awful and revolting it would sound. to hear the fair and softer sect talking about tariffs and corkusses!

Saman.-I don't know but I had as liver hear 'em talkin' about corkusses as to hear 'em backbitin' their neighbors and tearin' the charicters of other women into bits, and talkin' about such little things as women will sometimes. Why, in a small place a woman can't buy a calico apron without the neighborhood holdin' an inquest over it. Some think she ought to have it; some think it is extravagant in her; some think the flower on it is too young for her, and then they will quarrel whether she ought to make it with a bib or not. The very reason why men's talk is, very often, a nobler thing than a woman's, is because they have nobler things to talk about. Betsey Bobbitt, when did you ever know a passel of men sit down and spend a whole afternoon. talkin' about each other's vest, and mistrustin' such a feller painted? Fill a woman's mind with big noblesized thoughts, and she wont want to talk such little backbitin' gossip as she does now.

Betsey-Well, Samantha, all I have to say is, it is not woman's spear to vote.

Josiah-No, it haint! Women would always vote for the hansomest men.

Saman. Then, Josiah, you would stand a small chance. Josiah-Women would vote for them what praised their babies most; they would n't stand up to principal like men do, and then how they would clog up the roads 'lection day, tryin' to get all the news they couldwomen have got such itchin' ears.

Saman.-Itchin' ears! talk about itchin' ears, Josiah Allen! Here you have sot all the mornin' blackin' your boots; you have rubbed holes thro' 'em just for an excuse to hear me and Betsey Bobbitt talk. And it aint the first time, nuther, for I have known you, Josiah Allen, when I have had female visitors, to leave your work and come in and lay on that lounge behind the stove till you was most sweltered, pretendin' you was readin'.

Josiah (drawing on his boots)-I was a-readin'.

Saman. I have ketched you laughin' over a funeral sermon and a President's message. What is there highlarious in a funeral sermon, Josiah Allen? What is there exileratin' in a President's message?

Josiah-Well, I guess I had better go and water the

steers.

Saman.-I think you had as well. [Exit JOSIAH.] Betsey-But, Samantha, men do admire clingin' women, like a vine to a stately tree; it is a beautiful sight. Saman.-It may be so. I never was much of a clinger myself. Still, if females want to cling, I haint no objections; but this I do say, if men think that women are obleeged to be vines, they ought to feel obleeged to make trees of themselves for 'em to run on-but they wont. Some of 'em seem sot against bein' trees. And as I have Faid, if a vine aint got no trec convenient to run on, or

if the tree she is clingin' to falls, through inherent rottenness at the core, or if the string should break, what is to become of the clinger ef she can't do nothin' but cling? Betsey-Woman's spear

Saman.-Woman's spear! I'm wore out! Woman's spear is where she can do most good. If God had meant women to be men's shadows, he would have made ghosts and fantoms of 'em at first. All this talk about women's votin' makin' 'em have to fight, and men to wash dishes, is sheer nonsense. You may shet up a lion for years in a room full of cambric needles and tattin' shettles, and you can't get him to do anything but roar at 'em; it aint a lion's nature to do fine sewin'. You may tie up a old hen as long as you please, and you can't break her of wantin' to make a nest and scratch for her chickens. You may plant a acorn and a rose-bush to shade your house, but all the legislators in creation can't make the acorn tree blow out red poseys, no more thun they can make the rose-bush stand up straight as a giant. And their being planted beside of each other and watered out of the same waterin'-jug do n't alter their natural turn They will both help to shade your window, but they will do it in their own way, which is different. And men and women voting side by side would no more alter their natural dispositions than singing Watts' hymns together would; one will sing base and the other treble so long as the world stands. Mebby, Betsey, ef you was a clerk, or a teacher, or a telegraph operator, that was starving on a third of the salary they pays men in the same condition, you would go some for women's rights.

Betsey-Well, Samantha, I must go. You and me will never think alike.

Saman. Never while the world stands. Good-bye, Betsey. [Exit BETSEY.]

W

LOCHIEL'S WARNING.

IZARD.-Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array! For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,

And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight:
They rally!—they bleed !—for their kingdom and crown;
Woe, woe to the riders that trample them down!
Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.
But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war,
What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?
'Tis thine, O Glanullin! whose bride shall await,
Like a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate.
A steed comes at morning: no rider is there;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep Albin! to death and captivity led!
Oh, weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead:
For a merciless sword o'er Culloden shall wave,
Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave.
Lochiel.-Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling

seer,

if Culloden so dreadful appear,

gory

Or,
Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight,

This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright.

Wizard.-Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn?

Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn!
Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth,

From his home in the dark-rolling clouds of the North?
Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode
Companionless, bearing destruction abroad;
But down let him stoop from his havoc on high!

Ah! home let him speed-for the spoiler is nigh.