The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1884-10-02
Bill Nye on Female Suffrage.

Puck: Fair one, in whose eyes the
light of hope and youth and joy 1 see,
you ask what think of female suffrage,
and you desire to know how it works
in the Far West, where it has been
tried. answer that it works all right
enough, but it doesn't tear up the politi-
cal greensward and purify the ballot
as you might think it would. If you
will come up here, however, and sit
near me, and look up into my deep,
earnest, violet eyes, while the other
people are engaged in discussing our
young man and our boy-while the
great world, too. has its eve on every
thing else except the gentle gazelle
the mother of future Congressman, it
will be good time for me to buzz in
your pinkest ear.
Female suffrage isn't what we need
to raise the price of wheat so much as
some other things. In this land of the
brave and home of the free, my own
native land, if you please, each name
| represents the labors, the trials and
victories OF a lifetime.
America permits every infant born
under the star-spangled banner-long
may it wave-to begin the work of max
ing himself or herself, as the case may
be, something or nothing. Is it not
true, Ethel? Blood and lineage high
don't count much here, Ethel. I'd
rather have good, vigorous, plcbian
| blood in America, Ethel, than to have
royal blood with trichinn in it. With
| pure heart and liver that will not
shlrk any responsibility, we may ac-
complish much. So it is not, after all,
the pc digree or the prerogative which
is to make Rome howl, fair maid.
There are men IN this great land,
Ethel. who swing their hats and howl
and get drunk and vote who do not
know so much all their lives as YOU
forget when you are asleep. So it's
not qualification, you see, but-let us
step INTO the conservatory moment
while murmur into your ear a thought
which came to me several years ago.
Which would you prefer, Ethel-to run
the government or to run the man who
runs the government?
see by the tell-tale color that comes
and goes in your cheek, and by the
manner in which you struggle to swal-
low your fan, that you twig.
Mind you, do not say that the OBJ
ject of a joyous being like yourself
should be to marry man and run him:
but say this without fear of successful
contradiction, that the overwhelming
percentage of my own sex enters the
marriage state during life. Continuing
the argument from this premise, l am
led to say, and still without fear of sue
cessful contradiction, that in each case.
where have looked up the date Ihave
found that these men have married one
of your sex.
This leads me to say that while mar
rage may not be an object toward
which We should struggle, it is con-
dition of things which is certainly
alarmingly prevalent.
And that is why said that female
suffrage need not rack your gentle
mind. Let that job out. BE the natu-
raj, noble, unreasonable, irresistible,
hilarious, fearful. comforting, sunny
package of neutrality-suspicious. con-
tradictions that you are now, only try
to be sensible and useful, and you will
be solid with the masses, Ethel; YOU
will be solid with the masses.
SO live that when thy summons comes
to join the matrimonial caravan that
moves toward the connubial goal, thou
60 not like the half-paid hired man,
plugging potatoes; but, sustained and
soothed by common sense, approach
thy doom like one who wraps the cellar
door about him and lies down to pleas
| ant dreams