Chapter XLVI

MRS. JUPITER'S SOLILOQUY, TAKEN DOWN IN SHORT-HAND.--BY FANNY FERN.

Sitting is the only posture for deliberation. Certainly. Don't 'the House' always 'sit' when any national egg is hatching? The philosophy and naturalness of the maxim is unmistakeably obvious. It accounts, too, for something I've never been able to comprehend, viz., how in the name of all that's astounding I became Mrs. Jonas Jupiter. I was not sitting when Jonas laid his moustache at my feet. If the Legislature would give me a chance to reconsider the subject, gunpowder shouldn't take me off my chair till I did it ample justice. Jonas probably knew what he was about, when he imposed on my simplicity that way. Nicodemus! to think I should have made such a life-time mistake, all for want of a chair! My veneration for furniture will be on the progressive for the future. I incline to the opinion that men are exceedingly artful. It's surprising how like Moses they can _talk_, and how like Judas they can _act_. If it wasn't that I'm bound to collect their mental skeletons to hang up in my dissecting-room, I should eschew the whole sex. But 'tis a pretty little amusement to the female naturalist to label the different specimens. As far as my scientific research extends, they have one defect in common, viz., that where the heart should be, there is a decided vacuum. It is a trifling oversight of Dame Nature's which her elbow should be jogged to rectify in her future productions. This little amendment in the masculine organization would be excruciatingly refreshing to the female lover of variety. No amount of brains, in my opinion, is an equivalent for this omission, but when heart and brains are _both lacking_!--saints and angels, what an abortion!