ther's health, he looked me right in the face and
says he, 'Jane, I've been to Sodom and Gomorrah.' And says I, 'Uncle
Billy, that's about the hardest thing ever I heard said about a
Kentucky legislature, and I've heard some pretty hard things in my
day and time.' And says he: 'No, Jane; you misunderstand me. I ain't
referrin' to the legislature; the legislature's all right.' Says he:
'We set sixty days and drawed our pay regular, and we passed pretty
nigh a hundred bills, and might 'a' passed that many more if we'd kept
on settin'; but as the constitution don't permit us to set longer,
why, of course, we had to adjourn and come on home, leavin' a good
deal o' business unfinished. No,' says he, 'it ain't the legislature
I'm talkin' about, it's the women, the women.' Says he: 'There was a
time when it was some pleasure for a man to go up to the legislature.
Us men, we'd git together and resolute, and debate, and pass our
bills, and everything'd go off as smooth as satin. Now and then we
might git a disturbin' sort of a letter from some o' the home folks
about somethin' we'd been doin' that didn't suit 'em, a dog-tax or
somethin' o' that sort, but they'd be too fur to worry us much. But,'
says he, 'the way the women has got to carryin' on, if it wasn't for
the pay and the honor o' the thing, I'd ruther stay right here on my
farm than to go up yonder to Frankfort and rastle with a lot o' women
that's strayed so far from the foot-steps o' their mothers and
grandmothers that nothin' but a miracle could bring 'em back.' Says
he: 'We could hardly pass a bill in any peace whatsoever, for them
women. If we set out to give a little money to the State College, why,
here'd come a delegation o' women from Lexin'ton wantin' to know
whether the gyirls would git their share of it.' Says he: 'There ain't
a right or a privilege goin' that they don't want to cut it half in
two, and give the littlest half to us men and keep the biggest half
for the women; some of 'em even goes so far as to say that women ought
to vote. And,' says he, 'they've got to clubbin' together, and what
one woman can't think of, the others can; and there was hardly a man
in the legislature that wasn't pestered with havin' to look after some
sort o' bill that'd been hatched up in one o' these here clubs. I got
so outdone with 'em,' says he, 'that whenever a bill'd' come up, I'd
say to whoever was settin' by me, "Has the women got anything to do
with it?" And if they h