Whole book · 16 sections
By JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE,
Author of “Samantha at Saratoga,” “Sweet Cicely,” “Miss
Richards’ Boy,” Etc.
NEW YORK:
THE F. M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY
Nos. 72-76 Walker Street.
Reprinted from Peterson’s Magazine
By Special Arrangement.
Copyright, 1892, by
The F. M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Tirzah Ann and Whitfield—Tirzah Ann is Josiah’s darter, you know—make a likely couple, though I say it that shouldn’t. Whitfield is indestrius, and she is equinomical, which makes things go well. But Tirzah Ann is dretful ambitious, and wants to do as other folks do, and so knowin’ it is very genteel to go off in the summer for a rest, why she wanted to go off for a rest, too. And Whitfield bein’ perfectly bound up in her, of course wanted to do jist what she wanted to. I thought it wus foolish in her. But I always had very deep and filosofical idees on these things.
Now, rests are as likely things as ever wus—so are changes. But I have said, and I say still, that I had ruther lay down to hum, as the poet saith, “on my own delightful feather bed,” with a fan and newspaper, and take a rest, than dress up and travel off two or three hundred milds in search of it, through the burnin’ sun, with achin’ body, wet with presperation all over. It seems to me I could get more rest out of the former than out of the more latter course, and proceedin’.
Howsomever, everybody to their own mind.
Likewise with changes. I have said, and I say still, that changes are likely and respectable, if you can get holt of ’em, but how can you?
Havin’ such powerful and eloquent emotions as I have, such principles a-performin’ inside of my mind, enjoyin’ such idees and aspirations, and longings, and hopes, and joys, and despairs, and—everything, I s’pose that is what makes me think that what is goin’ on ’round me—the outside of me—hain’t of so much consequence. I seem to live inside of myself (as it were), more than I do on the outside. And so it don’t seem of much consequence what the lay of the land ’round me may happen to be, whether it is sort o’ hilly and mountaneous, or more level like. Or whether steam-cars may be a-goin by me (on the outside of me), or boats a-sailin’ round me, or milk wagons.
You see, the real change—the real rest would have to be on the inside, and not on the outside. Nobody, no matter what their weight may be by the steelyards, can carry ’round such grand, hefty principles as I carry ’round, without gettin’ tired, or enjoy the lofty hopes, and desires, and aspirations that I enjoy, and meditate on all the sad, and mysterious, and puzzlin’ conundrums of the old world, as I meditate on ’em, without gettin’ fairly tuckered out. Great hearts enjoy greatly, and suffer greatly, and so, sometimes, when heart-tired and brain-weary, if I could quell down them lofty and soarin’ emotions, and make ’em lay still for a spell, and shet up my heart like a buro draw, and hang up the key, and onscrew my head, and lay it onto the manteltry-piece, then I could go off and enjoy a change that would be truly refreshin’ and delightful.
But as it is, from Janesville clear to Antipithies, the puzzlin’ perplexities and contradictions, the woes and the cares of the old world, foller right on after us as tight as our shadders. Our pure and soarin’ desires, our blind mistakes and deep despairs, our longings, strivings, memories, heart-aches, all the joys and burdens of a soul, has to be carried by us up the steepest mountains or down to the lowest vallies. The same emotions that was a-performin’ inside of our minds down in the Yo Semety, will be a-performin’ jist the same up on the Pyramids. The same questionin’ eyes, sort o’ glad, and sort o’ sorrowful, that looked out over New York harber, will look out over the Bay of Naples, and then beyond ’em both, out into a deeper and more mysterious ocean, the boundless sea that lays beyond everything, and before everything, and ’round everything. That great, misty sea of the unknown, the past, the hereafter; tryin’ to see what we hain’t never seen, and wonderin’ when we shall see it, and how, and where, and wherefore, and why? Tryin’ to hear the murmur of the waves that we know are a-washin’ up ’round us on every side, that nobody hain’t never heard, but we know are there; tryin’ to ketch a glimpse of them shadowy sails that are floatin’ in and out forevermore with a freight of immortal souls, bearin’ ’em here and away. We know we have sailed on ’em once, and have got to agin, and can’t ketch no glimpse on ’em, can’t know nothin’ about em; sealed baby lips—silent, dead lips never tellin’ us nothin’ about ’em. Each soul has got to embark, and sail out alone, out into the silence and the shadows, out into the mysterious Beyond.
Standin’ as we do on the narrow, precarious ground of the present, the mortal, and them endless, eternal seas, a-beatin’ ’round us, on every side of us, bottomless, shoreless, ageless, and we a not seein’ either of ’em, under them awful, and lofty, and curious circumstances, what difference does it really make to us whether we are a-settin’ down or a-standin’ up; whether we are on a hill or in a valley; whether a lot of us have got together like aunts in a aunt hill, or whether we are more alone like storks or ostriges?
We can’t get away from ourselves—can’t get a real change nohow, unless we knock our heads in and make idiots and lunys of ourselves. Movin’ our bodys round here and there is only a shadow of a change—a mockery. As if I should dress up my Josiah in a soldier coat, or baby clothes, there he is, inside of ’em, clear Josiah—no change in him, only a little difference in his outside circumstances.
This is a very deep and curious subject. I have talked eloquently on it, I know, and my readers know, and I could go on, and filosifize on it jest as eloquent and deep, fur hours and hours. But I have already episoded too fur, and to resoom, and continue on.
I told Tirzah Ann I thought it wus foolish in her to go off and rest, when they both, she and Whitfield, too, looked so awful rested now, and as bright as dollars. And that babe—well, it always wus the most beautiful child in the hull world, and the smartest child; but it does seem more as if it was smarter than ever, and beautifuler.
You see, their yard is large and shady, and the little thing havin’ got so it could run alone, would be out in the yard, a-playin’ round, most all the time. It was dretful good for her, and she enjoyed it, and Tirzah Ann enjoyed it, too; for after she got her work done up, all she had to do was to set in the door, and watch that little, pretty thing a-playin’ round, and bein’ perfectly happy.
It was a fair and lovely evenin’, though very warm; my salaratus had nearly gi’n out, and I had made the last drawin’ of tea for supper, and so, when I had got the dishes washed up, and Josiah had milked, he hitched up the old mare, and calm and serene in our two minds as the air of the evenin’, we rode down to Janesville, to get these necessarys, and a little beefsteak for breakfast, and see the children.
We found that Thomas J. and Maggie had gone to tea to her folkses, that afternoon, but Tirzah Ann and Whitfield wus to home, and I don’t want to see a prettier sight than I see, as we druv up.
There Tirzah Ann sat out on the portico, all dressed up in a cool, mull dress—it was one I bought for her, before she was married, but it wus washed and done up clean, and looked as good as new. It was pure white, with little bunches of blue forget-me-nots on it, and she had a bunch of the same posys in her hair and in the bosom of her frock, (there is a hull bed of ’em in the yard.) She is a master hand for dressin’ up, and lookin’ pretty, but at the same time, would be very equinomical, if she wus let alone. She looked the picture of health and enjoyment, plump and rosy, and happy as a queen. And she was a queen. Queen of her husband’s heart, and settin’ up on that pure and lofty throne of constant and deathless love, she looked first-rate, and felt so.
It had been a very warm day, really hot, and Whitfield, I s’pose, had come home kinder tired, so he had stretched himself out at full length on the grass, in front of the portico; and there he lay, with his hands clasped under his head, a-talkin’ and laughin’, and lookin’ up into Tirzah Ann’s face, as radiant and lovin’ as if she was the sun, and he a sunflower. But that simily, though very poetical and figurative, don’t half express the good looks, and health, and happiness on both their faces, as they looked at each other, and that babe, that most beautifulest of children, a-toddlin’ round, first up to one, and then the other, with her bright eyes a-dancin’, and her cheeks red as roses.
But the minute she ketched sight of her grandpa and me and the mare, she jest run down to the gate, as fast as her little legs could carry her, and I guess she got a pretty good kissin’ from Josiah and me. And Whitfield and Tirzah Ann came hurryin’ down to the gate, glad enough to see us, as they always be. Josiah, of course, had to take that beautiful child for a little ride, and Whitfield said he guessed he would go, too. So I got out, and went in, and as we sot there on the stoop, Tirzah Ann up and told me what she and Whitfield wus a-goin’ to do. They wus agoin’ away for a rest.
“Why,” said I, “I hardly ever, in my hull life, see anybody look so rested as you do now, both on you. How, under the sun, can you be rested any more than you be now?”
“Well,” she said, “it’s so very genteel to go. Mrs. Skidmore is a-goin’, and Mrs. Skidmore says nobody who made any pretensions to bein’ genteel stayed to home durin’ the heated term, no matter how cool the place wus they wus a-livin’ in.”
“What do they go for mostly?” says I, in a very cool way; for I didn’t like the idee.
“Oh, for health and——”
But says I, interruptin’ of her:
“Hain’t you and Whitfield enjoyin’ good health?”
“Never could be better health than we both have got,” says she. “But,” says she, “folks go for health and pleasure.”
But says I:
“Hain’t you a-takin’ comfort here—solid comfort?”
“Yes,” says she. “Nobody can be happier than Whitfield and I, every day of our life.”
“Wall, then,” says I, coolly, “you had better let well enough alone.”
But says she:
“Folks go for a rest. Whitfield and I thought we would go for a rest.”
“Rest from what?” says I. Says I, “don’t you and Whitfield feel fresh and rested every mornin’, ready to take up the laber of the day with a willin’ heart?” Says I, “Do you either on you have any more work to do than is good for your health to do? Don’t you find plenty of time for rest and recreation, every day as you go along?” Says I, “It is with health jist as it is with cleanin’ house: I don’t believe in lettin’ things get all run down and nasty, and then, once a year, tear everything to pieces, and do up all the hull cleanin’ of a year to once, and then let everything go agin for another year. No! I believe in keepin’ things slick and comfortable day by day, and year by year. In business, have a daily mixture of cleanin’ and comfort—in health, have a daily mixture of laber, recreation and rest.” Says I, takin’ breath:
“I mean for folks like you and Whitfield, who can do so. Of course, some have to work beyond their strength—let them take their rest and comfort when they can git it. Better take it once a year, like a box of pills, than not at all. But as for you and Whitfield, I say agin, in the words of the poet, ‘Better let well enough alone.’”
But says she:
“I want to do as other folks do. I am bound to not let Mrs. Skidmore get the upper hand of me. I want to be genteel.”
“Wall,” says I, “if you are determined to foller them paths, Tirzah Ann, you mustn’t come to your ma for advice. She knows nothin’ about them pathways; she never walked in ’em.”
“Mrs. Skidmore,” says she, “said that all the aristocracy of Janesville will go away for the summer for a change, and I thought a change would do Whitfield and me good.”
“A change!” says I, in low axents, a-lookin’ round the charming, lovely prospect, the clean, cool cottage, with its open doors and windows, and white, ruffled curtains swayin’ in the cool breeze; the green, velvet grass, the bright flower beds, the climbing, blossoming vines, the birds singing in the orchard, the blue lake layin’ so calm and peaceful in the distance, shinin’ over the green hills and forests, and the wide, cloudless sky bending above all like a benediction. “A change,” says I, in low, tremblin’ tones of emotion. “Eve wanted a change in Paradise, and she got it, too.”
But, says Tirzah Ann, for my axents impressed her fearfully:
“Don’t you believe in a change for the summer? Don’t you think they are healthy?”
I didn’t go onto the heights and depths of filosofy, on which I so many times had flew and doven; she had heard my soarin’ idees on the subject time and time again; and eloquence, when it is as soarin’ and lofty as mine, is dretful tuckerin’, especially after doin’ a hard day’s work, so I merely said, tacklin’ another side of the subject, says I:
“When anybody is a-bakin’ up alive in crowded cities, when the hot sun is shinin’ back on ’em from brick walls and stony roads, when all the air that comes to them comes hot and suffocatin’, like a simon blowin’ over a desert—to such, a change of body is sweet, and is truly healthy. But,” says I, lookin’ ’round agin on the cool and entrancin’ beauty and freshness of the land and other scape, “to you whom Providence has placed in a Eden of beauty and bloom, I agin repeat the words of the poet: ‘Better let well enough alone.’”
I could see by the looks of her face that I hadn’t convinced her. But at that very minute, Josiah came back and hollered to me that he guessed we had better be a-goin’ back, for he wus afraid the hens would get out, and get into the turnips; he had jist set out a new bed, and the hens wus bewitched to eat tops off; we had shet ’em up, but felt it wus resky to not watch ’em.
So we started, but not before I told Whitfield my mind about their goin’ off for a rest. I said but little, for Josiah wus hollerin’, but what I did say wus very smart, and to the purpose. But if you’ll believe it, after all my eloquent talk, and everything, the very next week they went off for the summer. They came to see us the day before they went, but their plans wus all laid (they wus goin’ to the same place Skidmore and his wife went), and their tickets wus bought, so I didn’t say nothin’ more—what wus the use? Thinks’s I, bought wit is the best, if you don’t pay too much for it. They’ll find out for themselves whether I wus in the right or not. But bad as I thought it wus goin’ to be, little did I think it would be as bad as it wus, little did I think Tirzah Ann would be brought home on a bed, but she wus; and Whitfield walked with a cane, and had his arm in a sling. But as I told Josiah, “if anybody wus a mind to chase up pleasure so uncommon tight it wusn’t no wonder if they got lamed by it.”
Wall, the very next day after they got back from their trip, I went to see ’em, and Tirzah Ann told me all about it, all the sufferin’s and hardships they had enjoyed on their rest, and pleasure exertion. There wasn’t a dry eye in my head while I was a-listenin’ to her, and lookin’ into their feeble and used up lookin’ faces. She and Whitfield wus poor as snails; I never see either of ’em in half so poor order before. They hadn’t no ambition nor strength to work, they looked gloomy and morbid, their morals had got all run down, their best clothes wus all worn out. And that babe, I could have wept and cried to see how that little thing looked, jest as poor as a little snail, and pale as a little fantom. And, oh, how fearfully cross! It was dretful affectin’ to me to see her so snappish. She reminded me of her grandpa, in his fractious hours.
It wus a dretful affectin’ scene to me, I told Tirzah Ann, says I, “Your mean and Whitfield’s don’t look no more like your old means than if they didn’t belong to the same persons.”
Tirzah Ann burst right out a-crying, and says she:
“Mother, one week’s more rest would have tuckered me completely out; I should have died off.”
I wiped my own spectacles, I was so affected, and says I, in choked up axents:
“You know I told you just how it would be; I told you you was happy enough to home, and you hadn’t better go off in search of rest or of pleasure.”
And says she, breakin’ right down agin, “One week more of such pleasure and recreation, would have been my death blow.”
Says I, “I believe it, I believe you; you couldn’t have stood another mite of rest and recreation, without it’s killin’ of you—anybody can see that by lookin’ at your mean.” But says I, knowin’ it wus my duty to be calm, “It is all over now, Tirzah Ann; you hain’t got to go through it agin; you must try to overcome your feelin’s. Tell your ma all about it. Mebby it will do you good, in the words of the him, ‘Speak, and let the worst be known. Speakin’ may relieve you.’”
And I see, indeed, that she needed relief. Wall, she up and told me the hull on it. And I found out that Mrs. Skidmore wus to the bottom of it all—she, and Tirzah Ann’s ambition. I could see that them wus to blame for the hull on it.
Mrs. Skidmore is the wife of the other lawyer in Janesville; they moved there in the spring. She wus awful big feelin’, and wus determined from the first to lead the fashion—tried to be awful genteel and put on sights of airs.
And Tirzah Ann bein’ ambitius, and knowin’ that she looked a good deal better than Mrs. Skidmore did, and knew as much agin, and knowin’ that Whitfield wus a better lawyer than her husband wus, and twice as well off, wusn’t goin’ to stand none of her airs. Mrs. Skidmore seemed to sort o’ look down on Tirzah Ann, for she never felt as I did on that subject.
Now, if anybody wants to feel above me, I look on it in this light, I filosofize on it in this way: it probably does them some good, and it don’t do me a mite of hurt, so I let ’em feel. I have always made a practice of it—it don’t disturb me the width of a horse-hair. Because somebody feels as if they wus better than I am, that don’t make ’em so; if it did, I should probably get up more interest on the subject. But it don’t; it don’t make them a mite better, nor me a mite worse, so what hurt does it do anyway?
As I said, it probably makes them feel sort o’ good, and I feel ferst-rate about it; jest as cool and happy and comfortable as a cluster cowcumber at sunrise. That’s the way I filosofize on it. But not studyin’ it out as I have, not divin’ into the subject so deep as I have doven, it galled Tirzah Ann to see Mrs. Skidmore put on such airs. She said:
“She wus poor, and humbly, and did’t know much, and it maddened her to see her feel so big, and put on such airs.”
And then I had to go deep into reeson and filosofy agin to convince her; says I:
“Such folks have to put on more airs than them that have got sunthin’ to feel big over.” Says I, “It is reeson and filosify that if anybody has got a uncommon intellect, or beauty, or wealth, they don’t, as a general thing, put on the airs that them do that hain’t got nothing’; they don’t have to; they have got sunthin’ to hold ’em up—they can stand without airs. But when anybody hain’t got no intellect, nor riches, nor nothin’—when they hain’t got nothin’ only jest air to hold ’em up, it stands to reeson that they have got to have a good deal of it.”
I had studied it all out, so it wus as plain to me as anything. But Tirzah Ann couldn’t see it in that light, and would get as mad as a hen at Mrs. Skidmore ever sense they came to Janesville, and was bound she shouldn’t go by her and out-do her. And so when Mrs. Skidmore gin it out in Janesville that she and her husband wus a goin’ away for the summer, for rest and pleasure, Tirzah Ann said to herself that she and her husband would go for rest and pleasure, if they both died in the attempt. Wall, three days before they started, Tirzah Ann found that Mrs. Skidmore had got one dress more than she had, and a polenay, so she went to the store and got the material and ingredients, and sot up day and night a-makin’ of ’em up; it most killed her a-hurryin’ so.
Wall, they started the same day, and went to the same place the Skidmores did—a fashionable summer resort—and put up to the same tavern, to rest and recreate. But Mrs. Skidmore bein’ a healthy, raw-boned woman, could stand as much agin rest as Tirzah Ann could. Why, Tirzah Ann says the rest wus enough to wear out a leather wemen, and how she stood it for two weeks wus more than she could tell. You see she wusn’t used to hard work. I had always favored her and gone ahead with the work myself, and Whitfield had been as careful of her, and as good as a woman to help her, and this rest came tough on it; it wus dretful hard on her to be put through so.
You see she had to dress up two or three times a day, and keep the babe dressed up slick. And she had to promenade down to the waterin’-place, and drink jist such a time, and it went against her stomach, and almost upset her every time. And she had to go a-ridin’, and out on the water in boats and yots, and that made her sick, too, and had to play crokey, and be up till midnight to parties. You see she had to do all this, ruther than let Mrs. Skidmore get in ahead on her, and do more than she did, and be more genteel than she wus, and rest more.
And then the town bein’ full, and runnin’ over, they wus cooped up in a little mite of a room up three flights of stairs; that, in itself, wus enough to wear Tirzah Ann out; she never could climb stairs worth a cent. And their room wus very small, and the air close, nearly tight, and hot as an oven; they wus used to great, cool, airy rooms to hum; and the babe couldn’t stand the hotness and the tightness, and she began to enjoy poor health, and cried most all the time, and that wore on Tirzah Ann; and to hum, the babe could play round in the yard all day a’most, but here she hung right on to her ma.
And then the rooms on one side of ’em wus occupied by a young man a-learnin’ to play on the flute; he had been disappointed in love, and he would try to make up tunes as he went along sort o’ tragedy style, and dirge-like, the most unearthly and woe-begone sounds, they say, that they ever heard or heard on. They say it wus enough to make anybody’s blood run cold in their veins to hear ’em; he kept his room most of the time, and played day and night. He had ruther be alone day times and play, than go into company, and nights he couldn’t sleep, so he would set up and play. They wus sorry for him, they said they wus; they knew his mind must be in a awful state, and his sufferin’s intense, or he couldn’t harrow up anybody’s feelin’s so. But that didn’t make it more the easier for them.
Tirzah Ann and Whitfield both says that tongue can’t never tell the sufferin’s they underwent from that flute, and their feelin’s for that young man; they expected every day to hear he had made way with himself, his agony seemed so great, and he would groan and rithe so fearful, when he wasn’t playin’.
And the room on the other side of ’em wus occupied by a young woman who owned a melodien; she went into company a good deal, and her spells of playin’ and singin’ would come on after she had got home from parties. She had a good many bo’s, and wus happy dispositioned naturally; and they said some nights, it would seem as if there wouldn’t be no end to her playin’ and singin’ love songs, and performin’ quiet pieces, polkys, and waltzes, and such. Tirzah Ann and Whitfield are both good-hearted as they can be, and they said they didn’t want to throw no shade over young hearts; they had been young themselves not much more than two years ago; they knew by experience what it wus to be sentimental, and they felt to sympathize with the gladness and highlarity of a young heart, and they didn’t want to do nothin’ to break it up. But still it came tough on ’em—dretful. I s’pose the sufferin’s couldn’t be told that they suffered from them two musicianers. And the babe not bein’ used to such rackets, nights, would get skairt, and almost go into hysterick fits. And two or three nights, Tirzah Ann had ’em, too—the hystericks. I don’t know what kept Whitfield up; he says no mony would tempt him to go through it agin; I s’pose she almost tore him to pieces; but she wasn’t to blame, she didn’t know what she was a-doin’.
It hain’t no use to blame Tirzah Ann now, after it is all over with; but she sees it plain enough now, and she’s a-sufferin’ from the effects of it, her tryin’ to keep up with Mrs. Skidmore, and do all she done. And there is where her morals get all run down, and Whitfield’s, too.
To think of them two, she that was Tirzah Ann Allan, and Whitfield Minkley! to think of them two! brought up as they had been, with such parents and step-parents as they had, settin’ under such a preacher as they had always set under! to think of them two a-dancin’!
Why, if anybody else had told me, if it had come through two or three, I would have despised the idee of believin’ it. But it didn’t come through anybody; she owned it up to me herself; I couldn’t hardly believe my ear when she told me, but I had to. They had parties there every evenin’ in the parlor, and Mrs. Skidmore and her husband went to ’em, and they danced. I didn’t say nothin’ to hurt her feelin’s, her mean looked so dretful, and I see she was a-gettin’ her pay for her sinfulness, but I groaned loud and frequent, while she wus a-tellin’ me of this, (entirely unbeknown to me).
Here was where Whitfield got so lame. He never had danced a step before in his life, nor Tirzah Ann nuther. But Skidmore and his wife danced every night, and Tirzah Ann, bein’ so ambitius, was determined that she and Whitfield should dance as much as they did, if they fell down a-doin’ of it; and not bein’ used to it, it almost killed ’em, besides loosening their mussels, so that it will be weeks and weeks before they get as strong and as firm as they wus before, and I don’t know as they ever will. When mussels get to totterin’, it is almost impossible to get ’em as firm as they wus before. But truely they got their pay, Whitfield bein’ so tuckered out with the rest and recreation he had been a-havin’, it lamed him awfully, rheumatiz set in, and he wus most bed-rid. And then a base ball hit him, when he was a-playin’; a base ball hit him on the elbo’, right on the crazy-bone; I s’pose he wus most crazy, the pain wus terrible, but the doctor says, with care, he may get over it, and use his arm agin. At present, it is in a sling.
It seemed to hurt Tirzah Ann more innardly; it brought on a kind of weakness. But where she got her death-blow (as it were), what laid her up, and made her sick a-bed, was goin’ in a-bathin’, and drinkin’ so much mineral water. Ridin’ out on the water was bad for ’em both, as I said; made ’em as sick as snipes, they were dretfully sick every time they went, almost split their stomachs. But if she had kep’ on top of the water, it would have been better for her, sick as she was. But she wasn’t goin’ to have Mrs. Skidmore bathe, and she not, not if she got drowned in the operations. She was always afraid of deep water—dretful. But in she went, and got skairt, the minute the water was over her ankles; it skairt her so, she had sort o’ cramps, and gin up she was a-drowndin’, and that made it worse for her, and she did crumple right down in the water, and would have been drownded, if a man hadn’t rescued of her; she wus a-sinkin’ for the third time, when he laid holt of her hair, and yanked her out.
But she hain’t got over the fright yet, and I am afraid she never will. Whitfield says now, night after night, she will jump right up inside of the bed, and ketch holt of him, and yell the most uneerthly yells he ever, ever heard; and night after night, in the dead of night, she will jump right over him, onto the floor, thinkin’ she is drowndin’ agin; it makes it hard for ’em both, dretful.
The mineral water, they say, told awfully, and it went against Tirzah Ann’s stomach so, that she couldn’t hardly get down a tumblerful a day; she wus always dretful dainty and sort o’ delicate-like. But Mrs. Skidmore bein’ so tough, could drink seven tumblersful right down. And it seems she acted sort o’ overbearin’ and haughty, because Tirzah Ann couldn’t drink so much as she could. And put on airs about it. And Tirzah Ann couldn’t stand that, so one day, it wus the day before she came home, she said to herself that Mrs. Skidmore shouldn’t have that to feel big over no longer, so she drinked down five tumblersful, and wus a-tryin’ to get down the other two, when she wus took sick sudden and violent, and I s’pose a sicker critter never lived than she wus. It acted on her like a emetic, and she had all the symptoms of billerous colic. I s’pose they wus awful skairt about her, and she was skairt about herself; she thought she wus a-dyin’, and she made Whitfield promise on a Testament to carry her, the next day, to Janesville, alive or dead. So he wus as good as his word, and brought her home, the next day, on a bed.
They got round the house in a day or two, but they have been laid up for repairs (as you may say,) ever sense. They are sick critters, now, both on ’em. Never, never, did I see such awful effects from rest and recreation before. As they both say, one week’s more rest would have finished ’em for this world.
And besides these outside sufferin’s that are plain to be seen, there are innurd hurts that are fur worse. Outside bruises and hurts can be reached with arneky and wormwood, but how can you bathe a wounded sperit, or rub it with hot flannel? You can’t do it.
Now, this that I am goin’ to say now, I wouldn’t have get round for the world—it must be kept! But seein’ I am on this subject, I feel it to be my duty to tell the truth, and the hull truth. But it musn’t go no further: it must be kept.
Tirzah Ann didn’t tell this right out to me, but I gathered it from little things I heard her and Whitfield say, and from what others said who wus there.
If I didn’t feel it to be my bounden duty to write the truth, and if it wusn’t for its bein’ a solemn warnin’ to them who may have felt a hankerin’ toward goin’ off on a trip, I couldn’t write out the awful words. But it must be kept.
I mistrust, and almost know, that Tirzah Ann flirted—flirted with a man! You see Mrs. Skidmore, wantin’ to appear fashionable and genteel, flirted with men, and I know jest as well as I want to know, that Tirzah Ann did, not wantin’ to be outdone.
I know she and Whitfield quarreled, dretfully, for the first time in their lives; that I had right from her own mouth. But she didn’t tell me what it wus about; she looked sort o’ sheepish and weakin’, and turned the subject, and I hain’t one to pump.
But I s’pose from what they both said to me, they came pretty nigh partin’. And I know jest as well as if I see it myself, that Tirzah Ann bein’ so ambitius, and not wantin’ to be outdone by Mrs. Skidmore, went to flirtin’, and I mistrust it wus with old Skidmore himself. I know he and Whitfield don’t speak. Tirzah Ann never could bear him, but I s’pose she wanted to gall Mrs. Skidmore.
Oh, such doin’s, such doin’s! You hain’t no idee how it worked up Josiah and me, and mortified us. As I told Josiah that night—after we went to bed, we wus a-talkin’ the matter over—and says I:
“Josiah Allen, what would their morals have been, if they had rested and recreated any longer?”
And he groaned out, and sayed what galled him the worst wus to think of “the money they had throwed away.” Says he, “it will cramp ’em for months and months.” And it did.
They have been havin’ pleasure exertions all summer here to Jonesville. Every week a most they would go off on a exertion after pleasure, and Josiah was all up in end to go too.
That man is a well principled man, as I ever see, but if he had his head he would be worse than any young man I ever see to foller up picnics, and 4th of Julys, and camp meetings, and all pleasure exertions. But I don’t encourage him in it. I have said to him time and agin, “There is a time for everything, Josiah Allen, and afer any body has lost all their teeth, and every might of hair, on the top of their head, it is time for ’em to stop goin’ to pleasure exertions.”
But good land! I might jest as well talk to the wind! if that man should get to be as old as Mr. Methusler, and be a goin’ a thousand years old, he would prick up his ears if he should hear of an exertion. All summer long that man has beset me to go to ’em, for he wouldn’t go without me. Old Bunker Hill himself, haint any sounder in principle than Josiah Allen, and I have had to work head-work to make excuses, and quell him down. But last week the old folks was goin’ to have one out on the lake, on an island, and that man sot his foot down that go he would.
We was to the breakfast-table a talkin’ it over, and says I, “I shan’t go, for I am afraid of big water anyway.”
Says Josiah, “You are jest as liable to be killed in one place as another.”
Says I, with a almost frigid air, as I passed him his coffee, “Mebby I shall be drownded on dry land, Josiah Allen; but I don’t believe it.”
Says he in a complainin’ tone, “I can’t get you started onto a exertion for pleasure any way.”
Says I, in a almost eloquent way, “I don’t believe in makin’ such exertions after pleasure. I don’t believe in chasin’ of her up.” Says I, “Let her come of her own free will.” Says I, “You can’t catch her by chasin’ of her up, no more than you can fetch a shower up in a drewth, by goin’ out doors, and running after a cloud up in the heavens above you. Sit down, and be patient, and when it gets ready the refreshin’ rain drops will begin to fall without any of your help. And it is jest so with Pleasure, Josiah Allen; you may chase her up over all the ocians, and big mountains of the earth, and she will keep ahead of you all the time; but set down, and not fatigue yourself a thinkin’ about her, and like as not she will come right into your house unbeknown to you.”
“Wall,” says he, “I guess I’ll have another griddle cake, Samantha.” And as he took it, and poured the maple syrup over it, he added gently, but firmly, “I shall go, Samantha, to this exertion, and I should be glad to have you present at it, because it seems jest to me, as if I should fall overboard durin’ the day.”
Men are deep. Now that man knew that no amount of religious preachin’ could stir me up like that one speech. For though I haint no hand to coo, and don’t encourage him in bein’ spooney at all, he knows that I am wrapped almost completely up in him. I went.
We had got to start about the middle of the night, for the lake was 15 miles from Jonesville, and the old mare bein’ so slow, we had got to start a hour or 2 ahead of the rest. I told Josiah in the first ont, that I had jest as lives set up all night, as to be routed out at 2 o’clock. But he was so animated and happy at the idee of goin’, that he looked on the bright side of everything, and he said that he would go to bed before dark, and get as much sleep as we commonly did! So we went to bed the sun an hour high. But we hadn’t more’n settled down into the bed, when we heard a buggy and a single wagon stop to the gate, and I got up and peeked through the window, and I see, it was visitors come to spend the evenin’. Elder Wesley Minkly and his family, and Deacon Dobbins’ folks. Josiah vowed that he wouldn’t stir one step out of that bed that night. But I argued with him pretty sharp, while I was throwin’ on my clothes, and I finally got him started up. I haint deceitful, but I thought if I got my clothes all on, before they came in I wouldn’t tell ’em that I had been to bed that time of day. And I did get all dressed up, even to my handkerchief pin. And I guess they had been there as much as ten minutes before I thought that I hadn’t took my night-cap off. They looked dretful curious at me, and I felt awful meachin. But I jest ketched it off, and never said nothin’. But when Josiah came out of the bedroom, with what little hair he has got standin’ out in every direction, no 2 hairs a layin’ the same way, and one of his galluses a hangin’ ’most to the floor under his best coat, I up and told ’em. I thought mebby they wouldn’t stay long. But Deacon Dobbins’ folks seemed to be all waked up on the subject of religion, and they proposed we should turn it into a kind of a conference meetin’, so they never went home till after 10 o’clock.
It was most 11 o’clock when Josiah and me got to bed agin. And then jest as I was gettin’ into a drowse, I heard the cat in the buttery, and I got up to let her out. And that roused Josiah up, and he thought he heard the cattle in the garden, and he got up and went out. And there we was a marchin’ round most all night. And if we would get into a nap, Josiah would think it was mornin’, and he would start up and go out to look at the clock. He seemed so afraid we would be belated, and not get to that exertion in time. And there we was on our feet most all night. I lost myself once, for I dreamt that Josiah was a droundin’, and Deacon Dobbins was on the shore a prayin’ for him. It started me so, that I jest ketched hold of Josiah and hollered. It skairt him awfully, and says he, “What does ail you, Samantha? I haint been asleep before, to-night, and now you have rousted me up for good. I wonder what time it is.” And then he got out of bed again, and went out and looked at the clock. It was half-past one, and he said, “he didn’t believe we had better go to sleep again, for fear we would be too late for the exertion, and he wouldn’t miss that for nothin’.”
“Exertion,” says I, in a awful cold tone. “I should think we had had exertion enough for one spell.”
But I got up at 2 o’clock, and made a cup of tea, as strong as I could, for we both felt beat out, worse than if we had watched in sickness.
But as bad, and wore out as Josiah felt bodily, he was all animated in his mind about what a good time he was a goin’ to have. He acted foolish, and I told him so. I wanted to wear my brown and black gingham, and a shaker, but Josiah insisted that I should wear a new lawn dress that he had brought me home as a present, and I had jest made up. So jest to please him I put it on, and my best bonnet. And that man, all I could do and say, would wear a pair of pantaloons I had been a makin’ for Thomas Jefferson. They was gettin’ up a military company to Thomas J’s school, and these pantaloons was white with a blue stripe down the sides, a kind of uniform. Josiah took a awful fancy to ’em. And says he:
“I will wear ’em Samantha, they look so dressy.”
Says I, “They hain’t hardly done. I was goin’ to stitch that blue stripe on the left leg on again. They haint finished as they ought to be, and I would not wear ’em. It looks vain in you.”
Says he, “I will wear ’em, Samantha. I will be dressed up, for once.”
I didn’t contend with him. Thinks I, we are makin’ fools of ourselves, by goin’ at all, and if he wants to make a little bigger fool of himself by wearin’ them white pantaloons, I won’t stand in his light. And then I had got some machine oil onto ’em, so I felt that I had got to wash ’em any way, before Thomas J. took ’em to school. So he put ’em on.
I had good vittles, and a sight of ’em. The basket wouldn’t hold ’em. So Josiah had to put a bottle of raspberry jell into the pocket of his dress coat, and lots of other little things, such as spoons, and knives, and forks, in his pantaloons, and breast pockets. He looked like Captain Kidd, armed up to the teeth, and I told him so. But good land! he would have carried a knife in his mouth, if I had asked him to, he felt so neat about goin’, and boasted so, on what a splendid exertion it was goin’ to be.
We got to the lake about eight o’clock, for the old mare went slow. We was about the first ones there, but they kep’ a comin’, and before 10 o’clock we all got there. There was about 20 old fools of us, when we all got collected together. And about 10 o’clock we set sail for the island.
I had made up my mind from the first on’t to face trouble, and so it didn’t put me out so much when Deacon Dobbins in getting into the boat stept onto my new lawn dress, and tore a hole in it as big as my two hands, and ripped it half offen the waist. But Josiah havin’ felt so animated and tickled about the exertion, it worked him up awfully when, jest after we had got well out onto the lake, the wind took his hat off and blew it away out onto the lake. He had made up his mind to look so pretty that day, and be so dressed up, that it worked him up awfully. And then the sun beat down onto him; and if he had had any hair onto his head it would have seemed more shady. But I did the best I could by him, I stood by him, and pinned on his red bandanna handkerchief onto his head. But as I was a fixin’ it on, I see there was something more than mortification that ailed him. The lake was rough, and the boat rocked, and I see he was beginning to be awful sick. He looked deathly. Pretty soon I felt bad too. Oh! the wretchedness of that time. I have enjoyed poor health considerable in my life, but never did I enjoy so much sickness, in so short a time, as I did on that pleasure exertion to the island. I suppose our bein’ up all night a most, made it worse. When we reached the island we was both weak as cats.
I set right down on a stun, and held my head for a spell, for it did seem as if it would split open. After a while I staggered up onto my feet, and finally I got so I could walk straight, and sense things a little. Then I began to take the things out of my dinner-basket. The butter had all melted, so we had to dip it out with a spoon. And a lot of water had swashed over the side of the boat, so my pies, and tarts, and delicate cake, and cookies, looked awful mixed up. But no worse than the rest of the companies did. But we did the best we could, and begun to make preparations to eat, for the man that owned the boat said he knew it would rain before night, by the way the sun scalded. There wasn’t a man or a woman there but what the perspiration jest poured down their faces. We was a haggard and melancholy lookin’ set. There was a piece of woods a little ways off, but it was up quite a rise of ground, and there wasn’t one of us but what had the rheumatiz, more or less. We made up a fire on the sand, though it seemed as if it was hot enough to steep the tea and coffee as it was.
After we got the fire started, I histed a umbrell, and sat down under it, and fanned myself hard, for I was afraid of a sunstroke.
Wall, I guess I had set there ten minutes or more, when all of a sudden I thought, where is Josiah! I hadn’t seen him since we had got there. I riz right up and asked the company, almost wildly, “if they had seen my companion Josiah?” They said “No, they hadn’t.” But Celestine Wilkins’ little girl, who had come with her grandpa and grandma Gowdey, spoke up, and says she, “I seen him a goin’ off toward the woods; he acted dreadfully strange, too, he seemed to be a-walkin’ off side-ways.”
“Had the sufferins’ we had undergone made him delirious?” says I to myself, and then I started off on the run toward the woods, and old Miss Bobbet, and Miss Gowdey, and Sister Minkley, and Deacon Dobbins’ wife, all rushed after me. Oh, the agony of them 2 or 3 minutes, my mind so distracted with forebodins, and the perspiration a pourin’ down. But all of a sudden on the edge of the woods we found him. Miss Gowdey weighed 100 pounds less than me. He sat backed up against a tree, in a awful cramped position, with his left leg under him. He looked dretful uncomfortable, but when Miss Gowdey hollered out “Oh, here you be; we have been skairt about you. What is the matter?” he smiled a dretful sick smile, and says he, “Oh, I thought I would come out here, and meditate a spell. It was always a real treat to me to meditate.”
Jest then I came up a pantin’ for breath, and as the women all turned to face Josiah he scowled at me, and shook his fist at them 4 wimmen, and made the most mysterious motions with his hands toward ’em. But the minute they turned round he smiled in a sickish way, and pretended to go to whistlin’.
Says I, “What is the matter, Josiah Allen? What are you here for?”
“I am a meditatin’, Samantha.”
Says I, “Do you come down, and jine the company this minute, Josiah Allen. You was in a awful taken’ to come with ’em, and what will they think to see you act so?”
The wemmin happened to be lookin’ the other way for a minute, and he looked at me as if he would take my head off, and made the strangest motions toward ’em, but the minute they looked at him, he would pretend to smile that deathly smile.
Says I, “Come, Josiah Allen, we’re goin’ to get dinner right away, for we are afraid it will rain.”
“Oh, wall,” says he, “a little rain, more or less, haint a goin’ to hinder a man from meditatin!”
I was wore out, and says I, “Do you stop meditatin’ this minute, Josiah Allen.”
Says he, “I won’t stop, Samantha. I let you have your way a good deal of the time; but when I take it into my head to meditate, you hain’t a goin’ to break it up.”
Just at that minute they called to me from the shore, to come that minute to find some of my dishes. And we had to start off. But, oh, the gloom of my mind that was added to the lameness of my body. Them strange motions, and looks of Josiah, were on me. Had the sufferins’ of the night added to the trials of the day made him crazy. I thought more’n as likely as not I had got a luny on my hands for the rest of my days. And then, oh, how the sun did scald down onto me, and the wind took the smoke so into my face, that there wasn’t hardly a dry eye in my head. And then a perfect swarm of yeller wasps lit down onto our vittles as quick as we laid ’em down, so you couldn’t touch a thing without running a chance to be stung. Oh, the agony of that time. But I kep’ to work, and when we had got dinner most ready, I went back to call Josiah again. Old Miss Bobbet said she would go with me, for she thought she see a wild turnip in the woods there, and her boy Shakespeare had a awful cold, and she would dig one to give him. So we started up the hill again. He set jest in the same position, all huddled up, with his leg under him, as uncomfortable lookin’ a creeter as I ever see. But when we both stood in front of him, he pretended to look careless and happy, and smiled that sickish smile.
Says I, “Come, Josiah Allen, dinner is ready.”
“O, I hain’t hungry,” says he. “The table will probably be full. I had just as leves wait.”
“Table full!” says I. “You know just as well as I do that we are eatin’ on the ground. Do you come and eat your dinner this minute.”
“Yes, do come,” says Miss Bobbet.
“Oh,” says he, with that ghastly smile, a pertendin’ to joke, “I have got plenty to eat here; I can eat muskeeters.”
The air was black with ’em, I couldn’t deny it.
“The muskeeters will eat you, more likely,” says I. “Look at your face and hands.”
“Yes, they have eat considerable of a dinner out of me, but I don’t begrech ’em. I haint small enough, I hope, to begrech ’em one meal.”
Miss Bobbet went off in search of her wild turnip, and Josiah whispered to me with a savage look, and a tone sharp as a sharp axe:
“Can’t you bring 40 or 50 more wimmin up here? You couldn’ come here a minute, without a lot of other wimmin tied to your heels!”
I began to see daylight, and after Miss Bobbet got her wild turnip, I made some excuse to send her on ahead, and then Josiah told me.
It seems he had set down on that bottle of raspberry jell. That blue stripe on the side wasn’t hardly finished, as I said, and I hadn’t fastened my thread properly, so when he got to pullin’ at ’em to try to wipe off the jell, the thread started, and bein’ sewed on a machine, that seam jest ripped right open from top to bottom. That was what he walked off sideways toward the woods for. Josiah Allen’s wife haint one to desert a companion in distress. I pinned ’em up as well as I could, and I didn’t say a word to hurt his feelin’s, only I jest said this to him, as I was a fixin’ ’em. I fastened my grey eye firmly and almost sternly onto him, and says I, “Josiah Allen, is this pleasure?” Says I, “You was determined to come.”
“Throw that in my face again, will you? What if I wuz? There goes a pin into my leg. I should think I had suffered enough without your stabin’ of me with pins.”
“Wall, then stand still, and not be a caperin’ round so. How do you suppose I can do anything with you a tossin’ round so?”
“Wall, don’t be so aggravatin’ then.”
I fixed ’em as well as I could, but they looked pretty bad, and then there they was all covered with jell too. What to do I didn’t know. But finally I told him I would put my shawl onto him. So I doubled it up corner ways, as big as I could, so it almost touched the ground behind, and he walked back to the table with me. I told him it was best to tell the company all about it, but he jest put his foot down that he wouldn’t, and I told him if he wouldn’t that he must make his own excuses to the company about wearin’ the shawl. So he told ’em that he always loved to wear summer shawls, he thought it made a man look so dressy.
But he looked as if he would sink, all the time he was a sayin’ it. They all looked dretful curious at him, and he looked as meachin’ as if he had stole a sheep, and he never took a minute’s comfort nor I nuther. He was sick all the way back to the shore and so was I. And jest as we got into our wagons and started for home, the rain begun to pour down. The wind turned our old umberell inside out in no time; my lawn dress was most spilte before, and now I give up my bunnet. And I says to Josiah:
“This bunnet and dress are spilte, Josiah Allen, and I shall have to buy some new ones.”
“Wall! wall! who said you wouldn’t!” he snapped out.
But it wore on him. Oh, how the rain poured down. Josiah havin’ nothin’ but his handkerchief on his head felt it more than I did. I had took a apron to put on a gettin’ dinner, and I tried to make him let me pin it on to his head. But, says he, firmly:
“I haint proud and haughty, Samantha, but I do feel above ridin’ out with a pink apron on for a hat.”
“Wall, then,” says I, “get as wet as sop if you had rather.”
I didn’t say no more, but there we jest sot and suffered. The rain poured down, the wind howled at us, the old mare went slow, the rheumatiz laid hold of both of us, and the thought of the new bunnet and dress was a wearin’ on Josiah, I knew.
There wasn’t a house for the first 7 miles, and after we had got there I thought we wouldn’t go in, for we had to get home to milk, any way, and we was both as wet as we could be. After I had beset him about the apron, we didn’t say hardly a word for as much as 13 miles or so; but I did speak once, as he leaned forward with the rain a-drippin’ offen his bandanna handkerchief onto his white pantaloons. I says to him in stern tones:
“Is this pleasure, Josiah Allen?”
He gave the old mare a awful cut, an says he, “I’d like to know what you want to be so agrevatin’ for?”
I didn’t multiply any more words with him, only as we drove up to our door-step, and he helped me out into a mud puddle, I says to him:
“Mebby you’ll hear to me another time, Josiah Allen.”
And I’ll bet he will. I haint afraid to bet a ten cent bill, that that man won’t never open his mouth to me again about a Pleasure Exertion.
Last summer, as the days grew hot, Josiah grew fearfully cross. And his worst spells would come on to him, as he would come home from Jonesville.
You see, an old friend of his’n, Jake Mandagood by name, was a-takin’ in boarders, and makin’ money by ’em. And s’pose, from what I learned afterward, that he kep’ a-throwin’ them boarders into Josiah’s face, and sayin’ if it wuzn’t for his wife, he could make jest as much money. Jake Mandagood had heerd me talk on the subject time and agin. For my feelin’s about summer boarders, and takin’ of ’em in, had always been cast-iron. I wouldn’t take ’em in, I had allers said.
Josiah, like other pardners of his sect, is very fond of havin’ things as he wants ’em; and he is also fond of makin’ money; and I s’pose that wus what made him so fearfully cross to me. But I was skairt most to death, seein’ him come home lookin’ so manger, and crosser than any bear out of a circus.
Thinks I to myself: “Mebby, he is a-enjoyin’ poor health.” And then, thinks I: “Mebby, he is a-backslidin’, or mebby, he is backslid.”
And one day, I says to him, says I:
“Josiah Allen, what is the matter with you? You don’t act like the same man you did, several weeks ago. I am goin’ to steep you up some catnip, and thorough-wort, and see if that won’t make you feel better; and some boneset.”
“I don’t want none of your boneset and catnip,” says he, impatient-like.
“Wall, then,” says I, in still more anxious tones, “if it ’taint yur health that is a-sufferin’, is it yur morals? Do you feel totterin’, Josiah? Tell yur pardner.”
“My morals feel all right.”
Says I, anxiously: “if yur hain’t enjoyin’ poor health, Josiah, and yur morals feel firm, why is there such a change in yur mean?” says I. “Yur mean don’t seem no more like the mean it used to be, than if it belonged to another man.”
But, instead of answering my affectionate arguments, he jumped up, and started for the barn.
And, oh! how feerfully, feerfully cross he wus, for the next several days. Finally, to the breakfast-table, one mornin’, I says to him, in tones that would be replied to:
“Josiah Allen, you are a-carryin’ sunthin’ on yur mind.” And says I, firmly: “Yur mind hain’t strong enough to carry it. You must and shall let yur pardner help you!”
Seein’ I was immovably sot onto the determination to make him tell, he up and told me all about it.
Says he: “Summer boarders is what ails me; I want to take ’em in.”
And then he went on to tell how awfully he wus a-hankerin’ after ’em. Now, he knew, piles and piles of money wus to be made by it—and what awful pretty business it wus, too. Nothin’ but fun, to take ’em in! Anybody could take sights and sights of comfort with ’em. He said Mandagood said so. And, it wus so dreadful profitable, too. And he up and told me that Mandagood wus a-twittin’ him, all the time, that, if it wuzn’t for me, he could make jest as much as he chose.
Mandagood knew well how I felt on the subject. He knew well I was principled against it, and sot. I don’t like Mandagood. He misuses his wife, in the wurst way. Works her down almost to skin and bone. They don’t live happy together at all. He is always envious of anybody that lives pleasant and agreeable with their pardners, and loves to break it up. And I shall always believe that it wus one great reason why he twitted Josiah so. And, for Mandagood to keep at him all the time, and throw them dozen boarders in his face, it hain’t no wonder to me that Josiah felt hurt.
Josiah went on, from half to three-quarters of an hour, a-pleadin’ with me, and a-bringin’ up arguments, to prove out what a beautiful business it wus, and how awful happifying; and, finally, says he, with a sad and melancholy look:
“I don’t want to say a word to turn your mind, Samantha; but, I will say this, that the idee that I can’t take boarders in, is a-wearin’ on me; it is a-wearin’ on me so, that I don’t know but it will wear me completely out.”
I didn’t say nothin’; but I felt strange and curious. I knew that my companion wus a man of small heft—I knew it wouldn’t take near so much to wear him out, as it would a heftier man—and the agony that I see printed on his eyebrows, seemed to pierce clear to my very heart. But, I didn’t say nothin’.
I see how fearfully he was a-sufferin’, and my affection for that man is like an oxes, as has often been remarked.
And, oh! what a wild commotion began to go on inside of me, between my principles and my affections.
As I have remarked and said, I wus principled against takin’ in summer boarders. I had seen ’em took in, time and agin’ and seen the effects of it. And I had said, and said it calmly, that boarders was a moth. I had said, and I have weighed my words, (as it were,) as I said it, that when a woman done her own housework, it wus all she ort to do, to take care of her own menfolks, and her house, and housen-stuff. And hired girls, I wus immovably sot against from my birth.
Home seemed to me to be a peaceful haven, jest large enough for two barks; my bark, and Josiah’s bark. And when foreign schooners, (to foller up my simely), sailed in, they generally proved in the end to be ships of war, pirate fleets, stealin’ happiness and ease, and runnin’ up the death’s head of our lost joy at the masthead.
But, I am a-eppisodin’, and a-wanderin’ off into fields of poesy; and to resume, and go on. Any female woman, who has got a beloved pardner, and also a heart inside of her breast bones, knows how the conflict ended. I yielded, and giv’ in. And, that very day, Josiah went and engaged ’em.
He had heerd of ’em from Mandagood. They wus boarders that Mandagood had had the summer before, and they had applied to him for board agin; but, he told Josiah, that he would giv’ ’em up to him. He said “He wouldn’t be selfish and onneighborly, he would give ’em up.”
“Why,” says Josiah, as he wus a tellin’ it over to me, “Mandagood acted fairly tickled at the idee of givin’ ’em up to me. There hain’t a selfish hair in Jake Mandagood’s head—not a hair!”
I thought it looked kinder queer, to think that Mandagood should act so awful willin’ to give them boarders up to Josiah and me, knowin’, as I did, that he was as selfish as the common run of men, if not selfisher. But I didn’t tell my thoughts. No, I didn’t say a word. Neither did I say a word when he said there wus four children in the family that wus a-comin’. No, I held firm. The job was undertook by me, for the savin’ of my pardner. I had undertook it in a martyr way, a almost John Rogers way, and I wuzn’t goin’ to spile the job by murmurin’s and complainin’s.
But, oh! how animated Josiah Allen wus that day, after he had come back from engagin’ of ’em. His appetite all came back, powerfully. He eat a feerful dinner. His restlessness, and oneasyness, had disappeared; his affectionate demeanor all returned. He would have acted spoony, if he had so much as a crumb of encouragement from me. But, I didn’t encourage him. There was a loftiness and majesty in my mean, (caused by my principles), that almost awed him. I looked firstrate, and acted so.
And, Josiah Allen, as I have said, how highlarious he was. He wus goin’ to make so much money by ’em. Says he: “Besides the happiness we shall enjoy with ’em, the almost perfect bliss, jest think of four dollars a week apiece for the man and wife, and two dollars apiece for the children.”
“Lemme see,” says he, dreamily. “Twice four is eight, and no orts to carry; four times two is eight, and eight and eight is sixteen—sixteen dollars a week! Why, Samantha,” says he, “that will support us. There hain’t no need of our ever liftin’ our fingers agin, if we can only keep ’em right with us, always.”
“Who is goin’ to cook and wait on ’em?” says I, almost coldly. Not real cold, but sort o’ coolishlike. For I hain’t one, when I tackle a cross, to go carryin’ it along, groanin’ and cryin’ out loud, all the way. No, if I can’t carry it along, without makin’ too much fuss, I’ll drop it and tackle another one. So, as I say, my tone wuzn’t frigid; but, sort o’ cool-like.
“Who’ll wait on them?” says I.
“Get a girl, get two girls,” says Josiah. Says he: “Think of sixteen dollars a week. You can keep a variety of hired girls, you kin, on that. Besides the pure happiness we are going to enjoy with ’em, we can have everything we want. Thank fortune, Samantha, we have now got a competency.”
“Wal,” says I, in the same coolish tones, or pretty nigh the same, “time will tell.”
Wal, they came on a Friday mornin’, on the five o’clock train. Josiah had to meet ’em to the depot, and he felt so afraid that he should miss ’em, and somebody else would undermind him, and get ’em as boarders, that he wus up about three o’clock; and went out and milked by candlelight, so’s to be sure to be there in season.
And I had to get up, and cook his breakfast, before daylight; feelin’ like a fool, too, for he had kept me awake all night, a-most, a-walkin’ ’round the house, a-lookin’ at the clock, to see what time it wus; and, if he said to me once, he said thirty times durin’ the night:
“It would be jest my luck to have somebody get in ahead of me to the cars, and undermind me at the last minute, and get ’em away from us.”
Says I, in a dry tone (not as dry as I had used sometimes, but dryish):
“I guess there won’t be no danger, Josiah.”
Wal, at about a-quarter to seven he driv’ up with ’em; a tall, waspish-lookin’ woman, and four children; the man they said wouldn’t be there till Saturday night. I thought the woman had a singular look to her: I thought so when I first sot my eyes on her. And the oldest boy, about thirteen years old, he looked awful curious. I thought, to myself, as they walked up to the house, side by side, that I never, in all my hull life, seed a waspisher and more spindliner-lookin’ woman and a curiouser, stranger-lookin’ boy. The three children that come along behind ’em, seemed to be pretty much of a size, and looked healthy, and full of witchcraft, as we found afterward, they indeed was.
Wal, I had a hard tussle of it, through the day, to cook and do for ’em. Their appetites wus tremendous, ’specially the woman and oldest boy. They wuzn’t healthy appetites, I could see that in a minute. Their eyes would look holler and hungry, and they would look voraciously at the empty, deep dishes, and tureens, after they had eat them all empty—eat enough for four men.
Why, it did beat all: Josiah looked at me, in silent wonder and dismay, as he see the vittles disappear before the woman and boy. The other three children eat about as common, healthy children do: about twice what Josiah and me did. But there wuzn’t nothin’ mysterious about ’em. But, the woman and Bill—that was the biggest boy’s name—they made me feel curious; curiouser than I had ever felt. For, truly, I thought to myself, if their legs and arms hain’t holler, how do they hold it?
It wus, to me, a new and interestin’ spectacle, to be studied over, and philosophized upon; but, to Josiah, it was a canker, as I see the very first meal. I could see by the looks of his face, that them two appetites of theirn was sunthin’ he hadn’t reckoned and calculated on; and I could see, plain, havin’ watched the changes of my companion’s face, as close as astronimers watch the moon, I could see them two appetites of theirn wus a-wearin’ on him.
Wal, I thought mebby they was kinder starved out, comin’ right from a city boardin’-house, and a few of my good meals would quell ’em down. But, no; instead of growin’ lighter, them two appetites of theirn seemed, if possible, to grow consuminer and consuminer, though I cooked lavish and profuse, as I always did. They devoured everything before ’em, and looked hungry at the plates and tablecloth.
And Josiah looked on in perfect agony, I knew. (He is very close). But he didn’t say nothin’. And it seemed so awful mysterious to me, that I would get perfectly lost, and by the side of myself, a-reasonin’ and philosophizin’ on it, whether their legs wus holler, or not holler. And, if they wus holler, how they could walk ’round on ’em; and if they wuzn’t holler, where the vittles went to.
“Will they never stop eatin’?” said Josiah, and he got madder every day. He vowed he would charge extra.
It was after we went to bed, that he said this. But I told him to talk low; for her room wus jest over ours, and says I, in a low but firm axent:
“Don’t you do no such thing, Josiah Allen. Do you realize how it would look? What a sound it would have in the community? You agreed to take ’em for four dollars, and they’d call it mean.”
“Wal!” he hollered out. “Do you s’pose I am goin’ to board people for nothin’? I took men and wimmen and children to board. I didn’t agree to board elephants and rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses and whales and sea serpents. And I won’t neither, unless I have my pay for it; it wuzn’t in the bill.”
“Do you keep still, Josiah Allen,” I whispered. “She’ll hear you calling her a sea-serpent.”
“Let her hear me. I say, agin, it wuzn’t in the bill!” He hollered this out louder than ever. I s’pose he meant it wuzn’t in the bargain; but he was nearly delirious. He is close, I can’t deny it; nearly tight.
But, jest that minute, before I could say a word, we heard an awful noise, right over our heads. It sounded as if the hull roof had fallen in.
Says Josiah, leaping out of bed, “The old chimbley has fell in.”
“No!” says I, follerin’ him, “It is the roof.”
And we both started for up stairs, on a run.
I sent him back from the head of the stairs, howsomever; for, in the awful fright he hadn’t realized his condition, and wuzn’t dressed. I waited for him at the top of the stairway; for, to tell you the truth, I dassent go on. He hurried-on his clothes, and he went on ahead, and there she lay; there Miss Danks wus, on the floor, in a historical fit.
Josiah, thinkin’ she was dead, run in and ketched her up, and went to put her on the bed; and she, just as they will in historicks, clawed right into his hair, and tore out almost all he had on the nigh side. Then she struck him a feerful blow on the off eye and made it black and blue for a week. She didn’t know what she was about. She wuzn’t to blame, though the hair was a great loss to him, and I won’t deny it. Wal, we stood over her, most all night, to keep the breath of life in her. And the oldest boy bein’ skairt, it brought on some fits he wus in the habit of havin’, a sort of fallin’ fits. He’d fall anywhere; he fell onto Josiah twice that night, almost knocked him down; he was awful large of his age. Dredful big and fat. It seemed as if there was sunthin’ wrong about his heft, it was so oncommon hefty, for a boy of his age. He looked bloated. His eyes, which was a pale blue, seemed to be kinder sot back into his head, and his cheeks stood out below, some like balloons. And his mouth wus kinder open a good deal of the time, as if it was hard work for him to breathe. He breathed thick and wheezy, dredful oncomfortable. His complexion looked bad, too; sallow, and sort o’ tallery lookin’. He acted dreadful lazy, and heavy at the best of times, and in them fits he seemed to be as heavy as lead.
Wal, that wus the third night after they got there; and, from that night, as long as they staid, she had the historicks, frequent and violent; and Bill had his fallin’ fits; and you wouldn’t believe unless you see it, how many things that boy broke, in fallin’ on ’em in them fits. It beat all, how unfortunate he wus. They always come onto him unexpected, and it seemed as if they always come onto him while he wus in front of sunthin’ to smash all to bits. I can’t begin to tell how many things he destroyed, jest by them fits: finally, I says to Josiah, one day, says I:
“Did you ever see, Josiah Allen, anybody so unlucky as that boy is in his fits: seems as if he’ll break everything in the house, if it goes on.”
Says he: “It’s a pity he don’t break his cussed neck.”
I don’t know as I wus ever more tried with Josiah Allen than I wus then, or ever give him a firmer, eloquenter lecture, against swearin’. But, in my heart I couldn’t help pityin’ him, for I knew Bill had jest fell onto some tomato-plants, of a extra kind, and set out, and broke ’em short off. And it wus only the day before, that he fell, as he was lookin’ at the colt; it was only a week old; but it was a uncommon nice one, and Josiah thought his eyes of it; and Bill wus admirin’ of it; there wuzn’t nothin’ ugly about him; but a fit come on, and he fell right onto the colt, and the colt, not expectin’ of it, and bein’ entirely unprepared, fell flat down, and the boy on it. And the colt jest lived, that is all. Josiah says it never will be worth anythin’; he thinks it broke sunthin’ inside.
As I said, there wuzn’t nothin’ ugly about the boy. He’d be awful sorry, when he broke things, and flatted ’em all out a-fallin’ on ’em. All I blamed him for, wus in prowlin’ ’round so much. I thought then, and I think still, that seein’ he knew he had ’em, and wus liable to have ’em, he’d have done better to have kept still, and not tried to get ’round so much. But, his mother said he felt restless and oneasy. I couldn’t help likin’ the boy. And when he fell right into my bread, that wus a-risin’, and spilt the hull batch—and when he fell unto the parlor table, and broke the big parlor lamp, and everything else that wus on it—and when he fell onto a chicken-coop, and broke it down, and killed a hull brood of chickens—and more than fifty other things, jest about like ’em—why, I didn’t feel like scoldin’ him. I s’pose it wus my lofty principles that boyed me up; them and the thought that would come to me, another time; mebby Josiah Allen will heer to me, another time; mebby he will get sick of summer boarders, and takin’ of ’em in.
Says I, “Josiah Allen, if there was a heavy fine to pay for shettin’ up doors, you wouldn’t never lose a cent of your property in that way,” and says I clutchin’ my lap full of carpet rags with a firmer grip, for truly, they wus flutterin’ like banners in the cold breeze, “if you don’t want me to blow away, Josiah Allen, shet up that door.”
“Oh, shaw! Samantha, you won’t blow away, you are too hefty. It would take a Hurrycane, and a Simon, too, to tackle, and lift you.”
“Simon who?” says I, in cold axents, cauzed partly by my frigid emotions and partly by the chilly blast, and partly by his darin’ to say any man could take me up and carry me away.
“Oh! the Simons they had on the desert; I’ve hearn Thomas J. read about ’em. They’ll blow camels away, and everything.”
Says I, dreamily, “Who’d have thought, twenty yeers ago, to heard that man a-courtin’ me, and callin’ me a zephire, and a pink posy, and a angel, that he’d ever live to see the day he’d call me a camel.”
“I hain’t called you a camel. I only meant that you was hefty, and camels wus hefty. And it would take a Simon or two to lift you ’round, either on you.”
“Wall,” says I, in frigid tones, “what I want to know is, are you a-goin’ to shet that door?”
“Yes, I be, jist as quick as I can change my clothes. I don’t want to fodder in these new briches.”
I rose with dignity, or as much dignity as I could lay holt of half bent, tryin’ to keep ten or twelve quarts of carpet rags from spillin’ over the floor—and went and shet the door myself, which I might have known enough to done first place and saved time and breath. For shettin’ of in the doors is truly a accomplishment that Josiah Allen never will master. I have tuched him up in lots of things, sense we wus married, but in that branch of education he has been too much for me; I about gin up.
In the course of ten or fifteen moments, Josiah came out of the bed-room, lookin’ as peaceful and pleasant as you may please, with his hands in his pantaloons pockets searchin’ their remote depths, and says he, in a off-hand, careless way:
“I’ll be hanged, if there hain’t a letter for you, Samantha.”
“How many weeks have you carried it ’round, Josiah Allen?” says I. “It would scare me if you should give me a letter before you had carried it ’round in your pockets a month or so.”
“Oh! I guess I only got this two or three days ago. I meant to handed it to you the first thing when I got home. But I hain’t had on these old breeches sense that day I went to mill.”
“Three weeks ago, to-day,” says I, in almost frosty axents, as I opened my letter.
“Wall,” says Josiah, cheerfully, “I knew it wuzn’t long, anyway!”
I glanced my gray eye down my letter, and says I, in agitated tones:
“She that was Alzina Ann Allen is comin’ here a-visitin’. She wrote me three weeks ahead, so’s to have me prepared. And here she is liable to come in on us any minute, now, and ketch us all unprepared,” says I. “I wouldn’t have had it happen for a ten-cent bill, to had one of the relations, on your side, come and ketch me in such a condition. Then the curtains are all down in the spare room. I washed ’em yesterday, and they hain’t ironed. And the carpet in the settin’-room up to mend; and not a mite of fruit cake in the house, and she a-comin’ here to-day. I am mortified ’most to death, Josiah Allen. And if you’d give me that letter, I should have hired help, and got everything done. I should think your conscience would smart like a burn, if you have got a conscience, Josiah Allen.”
“Wall, less have a little sunthin’ to eat, Samantha, and I’ll help ’round.”
“Help! What’ll you do, Josiah Allen?”
“Oh! I’ll do the barn chores, and help all I can. I guess you’d better cook a little of that canned sammon, I got to Janesville.”
Says I, coldly, “I believe, Josiah Allen, if you wus on your way to the gallus, you make ’em stop and get vittles for you, meat vittels, if you could.”
I didn’t say nothin’ more, for, as the greatest poets has sung, “the least said, the soonest mended.” But I ’rose, and with outward calmness, put on the tea kettle and potatoes, and opened the can of salmon, and jist as I put that over the stove, with some sweet cream and butter, if you’ll believe it, that very minute, she that was Alzina Ann Allen drove right up to the door, and come in.
You could have knocked me down with a hen’s feather (as it were) my feelin’s wus such; but I concealed ’em as well as I could, and advanced to the door, and says I:
“How do you do, Miss Richerson?”—she is married to Jenothen Richerson, old Daniel Richerson’s oldest boy.
She is a tall, “spindlin’ lookin’” women, light complected, sandy-haired, and with big, light blue eyes. I hadn’t see her for nineteen yeers, but she seemed dredful tickled to see me, and says she:
“You look younger, Samantha, than you did the first time I ever seen you.”
“Oh, no!” says I, “that can’t be, Alzina Ann, for that is in the neighborhood of thirty years ago.”
Says she, “It is true as I live and breathe; you look younger and handsomer than I ever see you look.”
I didn’t believe it, but I thought it wouldn’t look well to dispute her any more, so I let it go; and mebby she thought she had convinced me that I did look younger than I did, when I was eighteen or twenty. But I only said, “That I didn’t feel so young anyway. I had spells of feelin’ mauzer.”
She took off her things, she was dressed up awful slick, and Josiah helped bring in her trunk. And I told her just how mortified I wus about Josiah’s forgettin’ her letter, and her ketchin’ me unprepared. But, good Lord! she told me that she never in her hull life see a house in the order mine wus, never, and she had seen thousands and thousands of different houses.
Says I, “I feel worked up, and almost mortified, about my settin’-room carpet bein’ up.”
But she held up both hands (they wus white as snow, and all covered with rings). And says she, “If there is one thing that I love to see, Samantha, more than another, it is to see a settin’-room carpet up, it gives such a sort of a free, noble look to a room.”
Says I, “The curtains are down in the spare bed-room, and I am almost entirely out of cookin’.”
Says she, “If I had my way, I never would have a curtain up to a window. The sky always looks so pure and innocent somehow. And cookin’,” says she, with a look of complete disgust on her face. “Why, I fairly despise cookin’; what’s the use of it?” says she, with a sweet smile.
“Why,” says I, reesonably, “if it wasn’t for cookin’ vittles and eatin’ ’em, guess we shouldn’t stand it a great while, none on us.”
I didn’t really like the way she went on. Never, never, through my hull life, was I praised up by anybody as I wus by her, durin’ the three days that she stayed with us. And one mornin’, when she had been goin’ on dretfully, that way, I took Josiah out one side, and told him; “I couldn’t bear to hear her go on so, and I believed there was sunthin’ wrong about it.”
“Oh, no,” says he. “She means every word she says,” says he. “She is one of the loveliest creeters this earth affords. She is most a angel. Oh!” says he, dreamily, “what a sound mind she has got.”
Says I, “I heard her tellin’ you this mornin’, that you wus one of the handsomest men she ever laid eyes on, and didn’t look a day over twenty-one.”
“Well,” says he, with the doggy firmness of his sect. “She thinks so,” and says he, in firm axents, “I am a good lookin’ feller, Samantha. A crackin’ good-lookin’ chap, but I never could make you own up to it.”
I didn’t say nothin’, but my grey eye wandered up, and lighted on his bald head. It rested there searchinly, and very coldly for a moment or two, and then says I, sternly; “Bald heads and beauty don’t go together worth a cent. But you wus always vain, Josiah Allen.”
Says he, “What if I wus?” and says he, “She thinks different from what you do about my looks. She has got a keen eye on her head for beauty. She is very smart, very. And what she says, she means.”
“Wall,” says I, “I am glad you are so happy in your mind. But, mark my words, you won’t always feel so neat about it, Josiah Allen, as you do now.”
Says he, in a cross, surly way; “I guess I know what I do know.”
I hain’t a yaller hair in the hull of my foretop, but I thought to myself, I’d love to see Josiah Allen’s eyes opened; for I knew as well as I knew my name was Josiah Allen’s wife, that that woman didn’t think Josiah wus so pretty and beautiful. But I didn’t see how I was goin’ to convince him, for he wouldn’t believe me when I told him, she wus a makin’ of it; and I knew she would stick to what she had said, and so there it wus. But I hold firm, and cooked good vittles, and done well by her.
That very afternoon we wus invited to tea, that wus Sylphina Allen’s, Miss Nathen Spooner’s, us and Alzina Ann Allen. Sylphina didn’t use to be the right sort of a girl. She wus a kind of helpless, improvenden thing, and threw herself away on a worthless, drunken feller, that she married for her first husband, though Nathen Spooner wus a dyin’ for her, even then. But when her drunken husband died, and she wus left with that boy of hers, about six years old, she up and jined the Methodist church. I didn’t use to associate with her at all, and Josiah didn’t want me to, though she wus a second cousin on his father’s side. But folks began to make much of her. So I and Josiah did everything for her we could, to help her do well, and be likely. And last fall, she wus married to Nathen Spooner, who hadn’t forgotten her in all this time.
They make a likely couple, and I shouldn’t wonder if they do well. Nathen Spooner is bashful; he looks as if he wanted to sink if any one speaks to him; but Sylphina is proud-spirited and holds him up.
They hain’t got a great deal to do with, and Sylphina bein’ kind o’ afraid of Alzina Ann, sent over and borrowed her mother-in-law’s white-handled knives, and, unbeknown to Alzina Ann, I carried her over some tea-spoons, and other things for her comfort, for if Sylphina means to do better, and try to git along, and be a provider, I want to encourage her all I can, so I carried her the spoons.
Wall, no sooner had we got seated over to Mrs. Spooner’ses, than Alzina Ann begun:
“How much!—how much that beautiful little boy looks like you, Mr. Spooner,” she cried, and she would look first at Nathen, and then at the child, with that enthusiastic look of her’s.
Sylphina’s face wus red as blood, for the child looked as like her first husband as two peas, and she knowed that Nathen almost hated the sight of the boy, and only had him in the house for her sake. And truly, if Nathen Spooner could have sunk down through the floor into the seller, right into the potato bin or pork barrel, it would have been one of the most blessed reliefs to him that he ever enjoyed. I could see that by his countenance.
If she had just said what she had to say, and then left off; but Alzina Ann never’ll do that; she had to enlarge in her idees, and she would ask Sylphina if she didn’t think her boy had the same noble, handsome look to him that Nathen had. And Sylphina would stammer, and look annoyed more’n ever, and get as red in the face as a red woollen shirt. And then Alzina Ann, looking at the child’s pug nose, and then at Nathen’s, which was a sort of Roman one, and the best feetur in his face, as Josiah says, would ask Nathen if folks hadn’t told him before how much his little boy resembled his pa. And Nathen would look this way and that, and kind o’ frown; and it did seem as if we couldn’t keep him out of the seller, to save our lives. And there it wuz.
Wall, when it came supper time, more wuz in store for him. Sylphina, bein’ so determined to do better, and start right in the married life, made a practice of makin’ Nathen ask a blessin’. But he, bein’ so uncommon bashful, it made it awful hard for him when they had company. He wuzn’t a professor, nor nothin’, and it come tough on him. He looked as if he would sink all the while Sylphina wus settin’ the table, for he knew what wus before him. He seemed to feel worse and worse all the time, and when she wus a-settin’ the chairs round the table, he looked so bad that I didn’t know but he would have to have help to get to the table. And he’d give the most pitiful and beseechin’ looks to Sylphina that ever wus, but she shook her head at him, and looked decided, and then he’d look as if he’d wilt right down again.
So when we got set down to the table, Sylphina gave him a real firm look and he give a kind of a low groan, and shet up his eyes, and Sylphina and me and Josiah put on a becomin’ look for the occasion, and shet up our’n, when, all of a sudden, Alzina Ann, she never asked a blessin’ in her own house, and forgot other folks did, leastways that Nathen did. Alzina Ann, I say, spoke out in a real loud, admirin’ tone, and says she:
“There! I will say it I never see such beautiful knives as them be, in my hull life. White-handled knives is suthin’ I always wanted to own, and always thought I would own. But never did I see any that wus so perfectly beautiful as these ’ere.”
And she held out her knife at arm’s length, and looked at it admirin’ly, and almost rapturously.
Nathen looked bad—dretful bad, but we didn’t none on us reply to her, and she seemed to sort o’ quiet down, and Sylphina gave Nathen another look, and he bent his head, and shet up his eyes agin, and she, and me and Josiah shet up our’n. And Nathen wus just a-beginnin’ agin, when Alzina Ann broke out afresh, and says:
“What wouldn’t I give, if I could own some knives like them? What a proud and happy woman it would make me.”
That roasted us all up agin, and never did I see—unless it wus on a funeral occasion—a face look as Nathen’s face looked. Nobody could have blamed him if he had gin up, then, and not made another effert. But Sylphina, bein’ so awful determined to do jist right, and start right in the married life, she winked to Nathen agin, a real sharp and encouragin’ wink, and shet up her eyes, and Josiah and I done as she done, and shet up our’n.
And Nathen (feelin’ as if he must sink,) got all ready to begin agin. He had jest got his mouth opened, when says Alzina Ann, in that rapturous way of her’n:
“Do tell me, Sylphina, how much did you give for these knives, and where did you get ’em?”
Then it wus Sylphina’s turn to feel as if she must sink, for being so proud sperited, it wus like pullin’ out a sound tooth, to tell Alzina Ann they wus borrowed. But bein’ so set in tryin’ to do right, she would have up and told her. But I, feelin’ sorry for her, branched right off, and asked Nathen “if he lived out to vote Republican, or Democrat, or Greenback.” So we had no blessin’ asked after all, that day.
Sylphina sithed, and went to pourin’ out the tea. And Nathen brightened up and said, “if things turned out with him as he hoped they would that fall, he calculated to vote for old Peter Cooper.”
I could see from his mean, that Josiah was gettin’ kinder sick of Alzina Ann, and (though I hain’t got a jealous hair in hull of my back hair and foretop) I didn’t care a mite if he wuz. But, truly, werse wus to come.
After supper, Josiah and me wus a-settin’ in the spare-room, close to the winder, a-lookin’ through Sylphina’s album; when we heered Alzina Ann and Sylphina, out under the winder, a-lookin’ at Sylphina’s peary bed, and Alzina Ann was a talkin’, and says she:
“How pleasant it is here, to your house, Sylphina, perfectly beautiful! Seein’ we are both such friends to her, I feel free to tell you what a awful state I find Josiah Allen’s wife’s house in. Not a mite of a carpet in her settin’-room floor, and nothin’ gives a room such a awful look as that. She said it wus up to mend, but, between you and me, I don’t believe a word of it. I believe it wus up for some other purpose. And the curtains wus down in my room, and I had to sleep all the first night in that condition. I might jest as well have sat up, it looked so. And when she got ’em up the next mornin’, they wusn’t nothin’ but plain white muslin. I should think she could afford somethin’ a little more decent than that for her spare-room. And she hadn’t a mite of fruit cake in the house, only two kinds of common-lookin’ cake. She said Josiah forgot to give her my letter, and she didn’t get word I wus comin’ till the day I got there, but between you and me, I never believed that for a minute. I believe they got up that story between ’em, to excuse it off, things lookin’ so. If I wuzn’t such a friend of hern, and didn’t think such a sight of her, I wouldn’t mention it for the world. But I think everything of her, and everybody knows I do, so I feel free to talk about her. How humbly she has growed! Don’t you think so? And her mind seems to be a kind o’ runnin’ down. For how, under the sun, she can think so much of that simple old husband of hern, is a mystery to me, unless she is growin’ foolish. He wus always a poor, insignificent lookin’ creeter; but now, he is the humblest and meekest lookin’ creeter, I ever seen in human shape. And he looks as old as grandfather Richerson, every mite as old, and he is most 90. And he is vain as a peahen.”
I jest glanced round at Josiah, and then, intentively, looked away again. His countenance wus perfectly awful. Truly, the higher we are up the worse it hurts us to fall down. Bein’ lifted up on such a height of vanity and vain glory, and fallin’ down from it so sudden, it most broke his neck, (speakin’ in a poetical and figurative way.) I, myself, havin’ had doubts of her all along, didn’t feel nigh so worked up and curious; it mere sort o’ madded me, it kind o’ operated in that way on me. And so when she begun agin, to run Josiah and me down to the very lowest noch, called us all to naught, made out we wuzn’t hardly fit to live, and wus most fools. And then says agin:
“I wouldn’t say a word againt ’em for the world, if I wusn’t such a friend to ’em——”
Then I rose right up, and stood in the open winder, and it came up in front of me, some like a pulpit, and I s’pose my mean looked considerable like a preacher’s when they get carried away with the subject, and almost by the side of themselves.
Alzina Ann quitted the minute she sot her eyes on me, as much or more than any minister ever made a congregation quail, and says she, in trembling tones:
“You know I do think everything in the world of you. You know I shouldn’t have said a word againt you, if I wusn’t such a warm friend of yourn.”
“Friend!” says I, in awful axents. “Friend, Alzina Ann Richerson, you don’t know no more about that word than if you never see a dictionary. You don’t know the true meanin’ of that word, no more than an African babe knows about slidin’ down hill.”
Says I, “The Bible gives a pretty good idea of what it means; it speaks of a man layin’ down his life for his friend. Dearer to him than his own life. Do you s’pose such a friendship as that would be a mistrustin’ round, a-tryin’ to rake up every little fault they could lay holt of, and talk ’em over with everybody? Do you s’pose it would creep round under winders, and back-bite, and slander a Josiah?”
I entirely forgot, for the moment, that she had been a-talkin’ about me, for truly, abuse heaped upon my pardner seems ten times as hard to bear up under, as if it wus heaped upon me.
Josiah whispered to me, “That is right, Samantha! Give it to her!” and upheld by duty, and that dear man, I went on, and says I:
“My friends, those I love and who love me, are sacred to me. Their well-being and their interest is as dear to me as my own. I love to have others praise them, prize them as I do; and I should jist as soon think of goin’ ’round, tryin’ to rake and scrape sunthin’ to say against myself as against them.”
Agin I paused for breath, and agin Josiah whispered:
“That is right, Samantha; give it to her!”
Worshippin’ that man as I do, his words wus far more inspirin’ and stimulatin’ to me than root beer.
Agin I went on, and says I:
“Maybe it hain’t exactly accordin’ to Scripture; there is sunthin’ respectable in open enmity, in beginnin’ your remarks about anybody honestly, in this way. (Now, I detest and despise that man, and I am goin’ to try to relieve my mind by talkin’ about him, jist as bad as I can), and then proceed and tear him to pieces in a straightforward, manly way. I don’t s’pose such a course would be upheld by the ’postles. But, as I say, there is a element of boldness and courage in it, ammountin’ almost to grandeur, when compared to this kind of talk. ‘I think everything in the world of that man. I think he is jist as good as he can be, and he hain’t got a better friend in the world than I am.’ And then go on, and say everything you can to injure him. Why, a pirate runs up his skeleton and cross-bars, when he is goin’ to rob and pillage. I think, Alzina Ann, if I wus in your place, I would make a great effort, and try to be as noble and magnanimous as a pirate.”
Alzina Ann looked like a white holley hawk, that had been withered by an untimely frost. But Sylphina looked tickled (she hadn’t forgot her sufferens, and the sufferens of Nathen Spooner). And my Josiah looked proud and triumphant in mean. And he told me, in confidence, a-going home, “that he hadn’t seen me look so good to him, as I did when I stood there in the winder, not for upwards of thirteen years.” Says he:
“Samantha, you looked, you did, almost perfectly beautiful.”
That man worships the ground I walk on, and I do his’n.
Nancy Cypher is dead. Yes, Solomon has lost his wife with the typus. She was a likely wemen, had a swelled neck, but that wusn’t nothin’ aginst her, I never laid it up against her for a moment.
I told Thomas Jefferson, when he brought me the news, that I wished “he and I was as likely a wemen as she was,” for it came sudden onto me, and I wanted to praise her up. And, says I, still more warmly, “If the hull world was as likely a woman as she was, there wouldn’t be so much cuttin’ up and actin’, as there is now. And,” says I, “Thomas Jefferson, it stands us on hand to be prepared.”
But sometimes, I get almost discouraged with that boy. I can’t solemnize him down, and get him to take a realizin’ sense of things. His morals are as sound as brass. But he has, a good deal of the time, a light and triflin’ demeanor, and his mind don’t seem so sound and stabled as I could wish it to be.
I don’t s’pose anybody would believe me, but the very day after that boy told me of Nancy Cypher’s death, that boy began to poke his aunt Doodle about the relict.
I told him I never see nothin’, in my hull life, so wicked and awful, and I asked him, where he s’posed “he’d go to?”
He was fixin’ on a paper collar, to the lookin’-glass, and he says, in a kind of cherk, genteel way, and with a polite tone.
“I s’pose I shall go to the weddin’.”
You might jist as well exhort the winds to stop blowin’ when it is out on a regular spree, as to stop him when he gets to behavin’. But I guess he got the worst of it in this affair. I guess his aunt Doodle skeert him, she took on so, when he segested the idea of her marryin’ to another man.
She bust right out a cryin’, took her handkerchief out, and rubbed both her eyes with both hands, her elbows standin’ out most straight. She took on awful.
“Oh, Doodle! Doodle!” says she. “What if you had lived to hear your relict laughed at about marryin’ to another man. Oh! what agony it would have brought to your dear linements. Oh! I can’t bear it, I can’t. Oh! when I think of that dear man, how he worshipped the ground I walked on, and the neighbors said he did, they said he thought more of the ground, than he did of me; but he didn’t, he worshipped us both; and what his feelings be, if he had lived, to hear his widder laughed at about another man?”
She sobbed like an infant babe, and I came to the buttery door, I was a makin’ some cherry pies and fruit-cake, and I came to the door, with my nutmeg-grater in my hand, and winked at Thomas, not to say another word to hurt her feelin’s. I winked twice or three times at him, real, severe winks. And he took up one of his law books, and went to readin’, and I went back to my cake. But I kep’ one eye out at her, not knowin’ what trouble of mind might lead her into. She kep’ her handkerchief over her eyes and groaned badly for nearly nine minutes, I should judge. And then she spoke out from under it:
“Do you call Solomon Cypher good lookin’, Tommy?”
“Oh! from fair to middlin’,” says Thomas J.
And then she bust out again. “Oh! when I think what a linement Mr. Doodle had on him, how can I think of any other man? I can’t! I can’t!”
And she groaned out the loudest she had yet. And Thomas J., feelin’ sorry, I guess, for what he had done, got up, and said, “He guessed he’d go out to the barn, and help his father a spell.” Josiah was puttin’ some new stanchils on the stable.
Thomas J. hadn’t more’n got to the barn, and I had finished my cake, and had got my hands into the pie crust, a mixin’ it up, when there came a knock at the door, and my hands bein’ in the condition they was, the widder wipes up, and went to the door, and opened it. It was Solemen Cypher, came to borry my bembazine dress and crape veil for some of the mourners. I made a practice of lendin’ ’em. The veil was one I had mourned for father Allen in, and the dress was one I had mourned for grandmother Smith in. They was as good as new. I thought, seein’ the widder and he was some acquainted with each other, I wouldn’t go out till I had got my pies done.
And so I kep’ on a mixin’ up my crust, and pretty soon, I heard him say to her after she had set him a chair, and they had set down, and he had told his errant, says he,
“This is a dreadful blow to me, widder.”
“Yes,” says she, “I can feel to sympathize with you. I know well what feelin’s I felt, when I lost my Doodle.”
Not one word does she say about brother Timothy. But I hold firm, and so does Josiah. We do well by the widder.
“I believe you never wus acquainted with the corpse, was you, widder?” says Solemen.
“No,” says she. “But I have heard her well spoke of. Sister Samantha wus jest a sayin’ that she was a likely wemen.”
“She wus, widder! she wus. My heart-strings was completely wrapped round that wemen. Not a pair of pantaloons have I hired made, sense we wus married, nor a vest. I tell you it is hard to give her up. It is the hardest day’s work, I ever done in my life. Nobody but jest me knows what, for a wemen, she wus. She was healthy, savin’, hard workin’, pious, equinomical. And I never knew how dear she was to me—how I loved her, as I did my own soul, till I see I had got to give her up, and hired a girl at two dollars a week; and they waste more’n their necks are worth.”
And he sithed so loud, that it sounded considerable like a groan. Solemen takes her death hard. He sithed two or three times right along; and the widder sithed too. It was dretful affectin’ to hear ’em go on; and if I hadn’t been so busy, I don’t know but it would have drawed tears from me. But I was jest puttin’ in my sweetnin’ into my cherry pies, and I felt it my duty to be calm. So I composed myself, and kep’ on with my work, and heard ’em a talkin’ and a sympathizin’ with each other.
“Oh!” Solemen, in a mournful voice, “I can tell you, widder Doodle, there are tender memories in my heart for that wemen. When I think how good dispositioned she was, how she would get up and build fires in the winter, without saying a word, it seemed as if my heart must break.”
“I love to build fires,” says sister Doodle. “I always used to build the fire, when I was a livin’ with my Doodle.”
“Did you, widder? I wished you had known the corpse. I believe you would have loved each other like sisters.”
His tone sounded considerable chirker than it had sounded, and he went on. “I believe you look like her, widder. You look out of your eyes as she looked out of her’n; you put me in mind of her.”
The widder’s voice seemed something chirker, too, and, says she, “You must chirk up, Mr. Cypher, you must look forward to happier days.”
“I know it,” and he put on the tone he used to evenin’ meetin’s. “I know there is another spear, and I try to keep my mind on it; a happy spear, where hired girls are unknown, and partin’s are no more.”
“I hate hired girls,” says sister Doodle, almost warmly.
“Do you, widder? Do you hate ’em?” says he, in almost glad tones, and then says he, in real convinced axents, “You do look like her, I know you do; I can see it plainer and plainer every minute. Oh! what a wemen she was! So afraid of infringin’ on men. She new her place so well. I couldn’t have made that wemen think she was my equal; not if I had knocked her down. How many times she had said to me that no wemen was strong enough to go to the poles, and she had rather dig potatoes any time, than to vote. She was as good as a man at that. Many a time, when I would get backward with my fall’s work, she would go out on the lot, and dig as fast as I could.”
“I love to dig potatoes,” says sister Doodle, “and no money would have me to vote.”
“You do look like her, widder. If my own father disputed me on it, I’d stand my ground. You look like her, you make me think on her.”
“Well, then, you must think on me all you can; don’t be delicate about it at all. I’d love to think I could chirk you up, and be a comfort to you, in that way, or any other.”
“You do chirk me up, widder. I feel better than I did feel, when I came here to-day.”
“Well, then, you must come and be chirked up, oftener.”
“I will, widder.”
“Come Sunday night, or any time.”
“I will, widder, I will.”
I must say, that, as I heard her go on, I couldn’t help askin’ myself this mathematical question, and doin’ in my mind, this little sum in figures:
“Samantha, ort from ort, leaves how many? And how many to carry?”
And though I answered myself, calmly and firmly, “ort,” still I realized that figures wus made to differ from each other in value and glory, from figure one, clear up to figure nine, and “orts,” unbeknown to them. And if sister Doodle wouldn’t never be killed for knowin’ too much, still she was a clever critter, and what little sense she had run to goodness, and that is more than could be said of some folks’ essense; some runs to meanness every mite of it.
I was jest a thinkin’ this over, as I finished up my last pie; and I washed my hands at the sink, and went and carried ’em out, and put ’em into the oven. And, as I did so, I said, “Good-mornin’, Mr. Cypher,” in jest as friendly and sympathizin’ a way as them words wus ever said. I then went and done up the dress and veil ready for him and laid them on the table. And, thinkin’ that I must say sumthin’ to comfort him up, I says to him, in consolin’ axents, “That she was a likely wemen, and I dared presume to say, was better off than she was here.”
But though my words wus said with such a good motive, he didn’t seem to like ’em, and he spoke right up, and says he:
“I don’t know about that, I don’t know about her bein’ better off. It was only a year ago, last winter, that I bought her a new calico dress, and carried it home to her unexpected. And on her last sickness, she took it into her head that she could eat some chicken, and, though we had half a barrel of pork in the house, I went right out that same day and killed a hen. I done well by her, and I don’t know about her bein’ better off, I don’t know about it.”
I heerd my pies a sizzlin’ over in the oven, and I hastened to their relief. And while I wus a turnin’ ’em round, Solemen took the bundle offer the table and started off. The widder, that clever criter, went to the door with him. She said sumthin’ to him, I couldn’t really hear what it wus, as I wus turnin’ my last pie, as she said it, but I heard his last words, as he went down the stept. They wus:
“I feel better, widder, I feel better than I did feel.”
It was about six weeks after Nancy Cyphers’es death. It was a lovely September mernin’, in the fall of the year when I waked up, and opened my eyes at about 5 o’clock, A. M., in the forenoon. The bedroom bein’ on the back of the house, and secure from intruders, we wusn’t never particular to lower and put down the curtains. And I could see a levely picture between the fold of snowy white cotten cloth, edged with a deep, beautiful net and fringe of my own makin’, that wus tied gracefully back on each side of the winder with a cord and tassel (also of my own makin’).
It was a picture handsomer than any of ’em, framed by Thomas J., that hung up in our parlor. Close by the winder, and right in front of it, was a rose-bush and a wax bull, full of bright scarlet, and snow-white berries. And over ’em flamed out a maple, dressed up in more colors than Joseph’s coat, and each color perfectly beautiful. The birds wus a-singin’ to the branches, sweet, and strong, and earnest, and though I couldn’t understand a word they said, still it was a very happyfyin’ song to me. Through some of the maple branches I could see the blue sky a-shinin’ down; but lower down, through the boughs of the rose and wax bulls, I could see the east, a-lookin’ handsomer than I ever remembered seein’ the east look. It seemed as if it had fairly outdone itself, a-tryin’ to make a levely and beautiful startin’ place for the sun, to set out from on his daily tower. The sun seemed to enjoy it dretfully, havin’ such a levely home to set out from. It seemed to look so extremely attractive to him, that I knew, unless somethin’ uncommon happened, he would be punctual to be back there to the very minute, the next mornin’. And thinks’es I to myself, (for moral eppisodin’ has become almost a 2d or 3d nater to me), if home was always made so bright and attractive there would be other sons and heads of families that would be more punctual and delighted to get back to their startin’ places and homes at the exact minute. But I probably didn’t eppisode on this theme more’n a moment or a moment and a ½, though it is as noble and elevatin’ a theme as ever was eppisoded on, for another thought came to me, almost overpowerin’ly, as I see the sun a settin’ out so grand, and noble, and happy on his tower. The thought that come to me wus this; I wished that I too could set on a short tower. I had staid to home for quite a spell. And though home is the best spot in the hull world for a stiddy diet, still the appetite calls fur spices, and different sorts of food. Human nater, and especially wemen human nater likes a change and variety. And it does come kinder natural to a wemen to want to go a-visutin’, now and then, and sometimes oftner. I had been a-wonderin’ it over in my mind for a number of days, though as yet I had not tackled Josiah upon the subject, not knowin’ how he would take it, but knowin’ well that men do not feel as wimmen do about visatin’.
The county fair wus to be held the next week, at Dover town, sixteen miles from Janesville. And I had two aunts there, Sophrenia Cypher, she that was Sophrenia Burpy, my mother’s own sister, and married to Solomon Cypher’s only brother, and then she that wus, and now is, Samantha Ann Burpy, my mother’s youngest sister. A maiden lady, livin’ on a independent property of her own, with a hired girl, and sound and excellent principles. I wus named after her, and set a sight of store by her. She hain’t an old maid from necessity, far from it, she had chances. I hadn’t visited them for over five years, and never wus to a county fair in my life; and as I lay there on my goose-feather pillow, a seein’ the sun set out and travel gloriously on his tower, I thought to myself how sweet it would be if I and my Josiah could go and do likewise. Could go to Dover town, visit our aunts and attend to the fair. But studyin’ as deep as I had studied on the subject of men’s dispositions, I felt that I must be as wise as a serpent, and harmless as a dove. And so I gently and almost tenderly punched my companion with my elbow, and seys, in awful, affectionate axents:
“Josiah!”
“What is the matter?” says he, a wakin’ up sudden. “What are you goarin me with your elbow for?”
His tone and his demeaner would have strick dismay to the heart of a weaker wemen, but I kep’ right on, and said to him, in still more tender and affectionate axents:
“Josiah, you seem to me to be a runnin’ down, I am alarmed about you, Josiah Allen.”
“Oh, shaw!” says he, and it was as fractious and worrysome a “shaw,” as I ever heard shawed in my hull life.
But I continued on and continued, knowin’ that perseverance was requisit’ and necessary.
Says I, “You cannot conceal it from your pardner, Josiah; you are not in one-half so good order as you wus in.”
“Wall! what of it? What if I hain’t?” he snapped out awful snappish.
Says I, in still more tender tones, “You need a change, Josiah; you ort to go off on a short tower, you and your pardner, Samantha.”
“A tower!”
Oh! never, never did I, durin’ my life, ever see a tower snapped out as that tower wus. He acted scornful, and overbearin’, and almost haughty about the idee. And some wimmen would have been completely skirt out by his mean, it wus so cold, and threatenin’, and offish. Not so Samantha. No! though his demeaner wus such that I almost despaired of success, still I felt that I would do all that wemen could do, and then if I must give it up, I could have a clear conscience. So inspired, and held up by this resolve, I laid to, and got a breakfast, that exceeded anything that had been seen for months in Jenesville, in the line of breakfes’ses. It affected the widder Doodle dreadfully; she shed tears, she said it was “so beautiful, and reminded her so of Doodle.”
And it was perfectly delicious, and I could see as Josiah partook of it, that his mean wus a gradually mellerin’ down, and growin’ softer, and more yieldin’ and sweet. And finally when he had got about half through his meal, and he could see that as good as the vittles had been precedin’, better was to come, then I tackled him, and then I got the victory. He consented.
The widder Doodle seemed more’n willin’ to stay and keep house for us, and suffice it to say, that the next afternoon saw us a settin’ out on our tower. Aunt Samantha Ann was perfectly delighted to see us, and we spent the most of the time with her, though we made aunt Sophrenia a good, honorable visit; she, too, was glad to see us, very. We staid to Dover town just a week to a day, attended to the fair, which was very interestin’ and aggreable, both to myself and to Josiah.
The last day of the fair, we laid out to attend only half a day, and start for home about noon, so as to reach home in good season. We had told widder Doodle we would be there certainly that day before nightfall.
It was, probably, about half-past ten A. M., in the forenoon. I was a standin’ in the Hall devoted to picters, and flowers, and piller cases, and tatten and embroidery, and so forth, and I wus just examinin’ a lamp mat, which was perfectly beautiful, when a good lookin’ wemen came up to me, and says she, a lookin’ up above my head:
“Have you seen the phantom leave?” or sunthin to that effect.
And I says to her, firmly but kindly:
“There hain’t been no phantom here appearin’ to me, and how could I see it leave?”
And thinkin’ she wus in the dark on this matter, and it was my duty to enlighten her, says I:
“Somebody has been a-trying to impose on you, mam. There ’haint no such things as ghosts or phantoms.”
She said sunthin’ about “their bein’ a case,” or sunthin’; she talked dretful low, and the noise around was fearful, so I couldn’t heer her over and above well. But from what I did heer, I see she was on the wrong track, and says I firmly:
“I defy you, mam, to bring forward a case of ghost, or phantom, that will bear the daylight,” says I, “they are made up of fear, and fancy, and moonshine.”
She took up her parasol, and pinted right up to a glass case, and says she:
“I ment them phantom leaves there, up in that case.”
“Oh!” says I, in a relieved tone. “I thought you ment a ghost!”
They looked handsome, some like the frost-work on our windows in the winter.
Wall, it probably wusn’t a ½ an hour after that, my pride had a fall. Truly, when we are a-standin’ up the straightest, tottlin’ may come on to us, and sudden crumplin’ of the knees. There I had been a-boastin’, in my proud, philosophical spirit, that there wus no such things as phantoms, and lo, and behold! within 31 moments time, I thought I see a ghost appearin’ to me. I was skeert, and awe-struck. The way on’t wus, I stood there not thinkin’ of no trouble, when all of a sudden, I heerd these words;
“Oh, Doodle! Doodle! If you was alive, I shouldn’t be in this predickerment.”
If I had some hen’s feathers by me, I should have burnt a few, to keep me from given up, and fainting away. And then these words came to me:
“Oh, Doodle! Doodle! You never would have stood by, and seen your relict smashed to pieces before your linement.”
And as I heerd these words, I seen her appearin’ to me. I see the Widder Doodle emergin’ from the crushin’ crowd, and advancin’ onto me like a phantom.
Says I, in a low voice, “Be you a ghost, or be you a phantom? or are you a forerunner, Widder?” Says I, “You be a forerunner, I know you be.”
For even as I looked, I see behind her the form of Solomon Cypher, advancin’ slowly, and appearin’ to me. I felt strange, and feerfully curious.
But within ½ to ⅔ of a moment, my senses came back, for on givin’ her a closer look, I see that no respectable ghost, that thought anything of itself, would be ketched out in company, a-lookin’ so like fungation. I felt better, and says I:
“Widder Doodle, how under the sun did you come here to Dover town?”
Says she, “Samantha, I am married; I am on my tower.”
I thought again, almost wildly, of burnt feathers, but I controlled myself, pretty well, and says:
“Who to?”
“Solemen Cypher,” says she. “We are goin’ to his brother’s on our tower.”
As she said this, it all came back to me—Solemen’s talk the day he came to borry my cloze for the mourners: her visits to his housekeeper sense; and his strange and foolish errents to our house from day to day. Why, he had made such strange and mysterious errents to our house since his wife died, that I had told Josiah “I believed Solemen Cypher wus a-loosin’ his faculties,” and I shouldn’t have been a mite surprised to have had him beset us to lend him a meetin’ house, or try to get the loan of an Egyptian mummy. Now I see through them strange and mysterious errents of his’n. But I didn’t speak my thoughts; I only said, almost mechanically:
“Widder Doodle, what under the sun hus put it into your head to marry?”
“Wall,” she said, she “had kinder got into the habit of marryin’, and it seemed some like 2nd nater to her, and she thought Solemen had some of Mr. Doodle’s liniment, and she thought she’d kinder marry to him, and——”
She tried to excuse it off, but she didn’t give any firm reason that carried conviction to my soul. But I says to myself, in reasonable axents:
“Samantha, can you—can you ever obtain anything to carry from an ort?”
I see, on lookin’ closer at her, what made her look so oncommon curius. She had tried to dress sort o’ bridy, and at the same time was a-mournin’ for Doodle. (She never will get that man out of her head, I don’t believe.)
She said she “didn’t want to hurt Solemen’s feelin’s. She put on the white bobbinet lace to please Cypher. But,” says she, “though Solemen don’t mistrust it, my black bead collar and jest half of my weddin’ dress means Doodle.”
It was a black and white lawn, with big, even checks. The skirt was gathered in full all round, and it was made plain waist. It sot pretty well, only it drawed in acrost the chest. (She made it herself and cut it too narrer.) She had a shawl with a palm-leaf border, that she had when she married Doodle; and a Leghorn bonnet that she wore on the same occasion. It came over her face considerable, and had a bunch of artifishel flowers on each side of her face. Her veil was made out of an old white lace cape of her’n, but the edgin’ round it was new—four cents a yard, for she told me so. And she had a pair of new white gloves, No. 7, purchased with a view to their shrinkin’ in the future, and a white cotton handkerchief. But she told me (in strict confidence,) that she had got a black pocket to her dress, and she had on a new pair of black elastic garters. Says she, “I cannot forget Doodle. I never can forget that dear man.” I knew she couldn’t.
Solemen seemed to use her pretty middlin’ well, only I could see that he felt above her feerfully. He acted dretful domineerin’, and seemed to feel very, very haughty toward wimmin. He looked down on us awfully as a race, and said we should both probably get hurt before we left the ground.
He and Josiah went out to look at some cattle for a few moments, and the widder, bein’ very talkative, told me all about her courtships. I says to her:
“Widder, I believe you mean well, but how under the sun could you marry a man six weeks after his wife died?”
“Wall,” says she, “Solemen said that the corpse wouldn’t be no deader than it was then, if he waited three or four months, as some men did.”
“And,” says she, “he asked me to have him in a dretful handsome way,” says she. “‘The Children of the Abbey,’ or ‘Thadeus of Warsaw,’ nor none of ’em, couldn’t have done it up in any more romantic and foamin’ way.” Says she, “The way on’t wus, I had been to see his housekeeper, and he was bringin’ me home, and I wus a praisin’ up his wagon and horses—a new double wagon with a spring seat,—and all of a suddent he spoke out, in a real ardent and lover like tone:
“‘Widder Doodle! if you will be my bride, the wagon is your’n, and the mares,’ says he. ‘Widder, I throw myself onto your feet, and I throw the wagon, and the mares, and with them I throw eighty-five acres of good land, fourteen cows, five calves, four three-year-olds and a yearlin’; a dwellin’-house, a new horse-barn, and myself. I throw ’em all onto your feet, and there we lay on ’em.’
“He waited for me to answer. And it flustrated me so, that I says, ‘O, Doodle! Doodle! if you wus alive you would tell me what to do to do right!’
“And that,” she said, “seemed to mad him; his forehead all wrinkled up, and he looked as black and hard as a stove-pipe. And he yelled out that he ‘didn’t want to hear nothin’ about no Doodle, and he wouldn’t, nuther.’
“And I took out my handkerchief and cried on it, and he said he’d ‘overlook Doodle for once.’ And then he said agin, in a kind of a solemn and warnin’ way:
“‘Widder, I am a layin’ on your feet, and my property is there, my land, my live stock, my housen and my housen stuff, and I, are all a layin’ on your feet. Make up your mind and make it up at once, for if you don’t consent, I have got other views ahead on me, which must be seen to instantly and at once. Time is hastenin’, and the world is full of willin’ wimmen. Widder, what do you say?”
“And then,” says she, “I kinder consented and he said we’d be married the first of the week, and he turn off the hired girl and I could come right there and do the housework, and tend to the milk of fourteen cows, and be almost perfectly happy. He thought as he was hurried with his fall’s work, we’d better be married Sunday, so’s not to break into the week’s work; so we wuz,” says she, “we wuz married last Sunday, and we kep’ it still from you, so’s to surprise you.”
“Truly you have,” says I. But I didn’t have no time to add or multiply any more words, for my Josiah came jest then and we started off homewards.
After we had well got started, Josiah spoke up, and begun to grumble and find fault about their marriage so soon after Nancy Cypher’ses decease. He took on for as much as a mile, or a mile and a-half. Says he, “If Solomon Cypher didn’t have no decency, nor know nothin’, I should have thought the widder would have told him better.”
But I looked him calmly in the face and says I, “Josiah, when you are doin’ a sum in arithmetic, how much do you usually get to carry from an ort?” And then I came out still more plainer, and says I, “Ort from ort leaves how many, Josiah Allen?”
“Ort,” says he. “But what under the sun are you a-prancin’ off into ’rithmetic for?”
“Wall,” says I, calmly, “When you obtain anything to carry from an ort, then I will obtain sense from the widder, I mean the bride. But who would think of blaming the ort?”
Josiah came in, t’other day, from the postoffice; and he says, says he, throwin’ down the “Weekly Gimlet:”
“Here’s old Betsey Bobbit been a makin’ a fool of herself agin. Just read this stuff that she calls a pome.”
I took the newspaper, and sot down by the winder, to get more light, for my eyes ain’t as good as when I was a gal, and this is what I read:
“Wall, I call it foolish stuff,” I said, when I had finished. “Though, if I was to measure ’em with a yardstick, the lines might come out pretty nigh an equal length, and so I s’pose it would be called poetry.”
At any rate, I have made a practice, ever since, of callin’ it so; for I am one that despises envy and jealousy amongst sister authoresses. No, you never ketch me at it; I would sooner help ’em up the ladder than upset ’em, and it is ever my practice so to do. But truth must be spoke if subjects are brung up. Uronious views must be condemned by Warriors of the Right, whether ladders be upset, or stand firm, poetesses also.
I felt that this poetry attacked a tender subject, a subject dearer to me than all the world besides, the subject of Josiah. Josiah is a man.
And I say it, and I say it plain that men hain’t no such creeters as he tries to make out they be. Men are first-rate creeters in lots of things, and as good as wimmen any day of the week.
Of course, I agree with Betsy that husbands are tryin’ in lots of things; they need a firm hand to the hellum to guide ’em along through the tempestuous wave of married life, and get along with ’em. They are lots of trouble, and then I think they pay after all. Why, I wouldn’t swap my Josiah for the best house and lot in Janesville, or the crown of the Widder Albert. I love Josiah Allen. And I don’t know but the very trouble he has caused me makes me cling closer to him; you know the harder a horse’s head beats and thrashes against burdock burs, the tighter the burdocks will cling to its mane. Josiah makes me sights of trouble, but I cling to him closely.
I admit that men are curious creeters and tegus creeters, a good deal of the time. But then agin, so be wimmen, just as tegus, and I don’t know but teguser! I believe my soul, if I had got to be born again, I had almost as lives be born a man as a woman.
No, I don’t think one sect ort to boast much over the other one. They are both about equally foolish and disagreeable, and both have their goodness and nobilities. And both ort to have their rights. Now I haint one to set up and say men hadn’t ort to vote, that they don’t know enough, and hain’t good enough, and so forth, and so on. No, you don’t ketch me at it. I am one that stands up for justice and reason.
Now, the other day a wild-eyed woman with short hair, who goes round lecturin’ on wimmen’s rights, came to see me, a tryin’ to inviggle me into a plot to keep men from votin’. Says she, “The time is drawin’ near, when wimmen are a goin’ to vote, without no doubt.”
“Amen!” says I, “I can say amen to that with my hull heart and soul.”
“And then,” says she, “when we get the staff in our own hands less we wimmen all put in together and try to keep men from votin’.”
“Never!” says I. “Never! will you get me into such a scrape as that.” Says I, “men have jest exactly as good a right to vote as wimmen have. They are condemned, and protected, and controlled by the same laws that wimmen are, and so of course are equally interested in makin’ ’em. You needn’t try to inviggle me into no plot to keep men from votin’, for justice is ever my theme, and also Josiah.”
Says she, bitterly, “I’d love to make these miserable sneaks try it once and see how they would like it, to have to spend their property and be hauled round, and hung by laws they hadn’t no hand in makin’.”
But I still say with marble firmness, “men has jest as good a right to vote as wimmen have. And you needn’t try to inviggle me into no such plans, for I won’t be inviggled.”
And so she stopped invigglin, and went off.
And then agin in Betsy’s poetry (though as a neighbor, and a female authoress, I never would speak a word against it, and what I say, I say as a Warrior, and would wish to be so took) I would say in kindness that Betsy sot out in married life expectin’ too much. Now, she didn’t marry in the right way, and so she ought to have expected tougher times than the usual run of married females ort to expect, more than the ordinary tribulations of matrimony.
And it won’t do to expect too much in this world anyway. If you can only bring your lives down to it, it is a sight better to expect nothing, and then you won’t be disappointed if you get it, as you most probably will. And if you get something, it will be a joyful surprise to you. But there are few indeed who has ever sot down on this calm hite of filosify.
Folks expect too much. As many, and many times as their hopes has proved to be uronious, they think, well now, if I only had that certain thing, or was in that certain place, I should be happy. But they haint. They find when they reach that certain gole and have climbed up and sot down on it, they’ll find that somebody has got onto the gole before ’em, and is there a settin’ on it. No matter how spry anybody may be, they’ll find that Sorrow can climb faster than they can, and can set down on goles quicker.
It haint no matter how easy a seat anybody sets down in, they’ll find that they’ll have to hunch along, and let Disappointment set down with ’em, and Anxiety, and Weariness, and et ceteree, et ceteree.
Now, the scholar, or the literatoor, or writer, thinks if he can only stand up on that certain hite of scientific discovery, or Akkropolis of literatoor, he will be happy; for he will know all that he cares about, and will have all the fame he wants to. But when he gets up there, he’ll see plain, for the higher he riz above the mists of ignorance that floats ’round the lower lands, the clearer his vision, and he will see another peek right ahead of him steeper and loftier and icier than the last, and so on ad infinitum, ad infinity. And if it is literatoor, he’ll see somebody that’s got higher, or thinks he has, or he’ll find some critick that says he hasn’t done much, and Shakespeare did better.
Just as it was with old Mrs. Peedick, our present Mrs. Peedick’s mother-in-law, she said, she told me with her own lips, that she knew she should be happy when she got a glass butter-dish, but she said she wasn’t; she told me with her own lips, that jest as quick as she got that she wanted a sugar-bowl, for the Druffels had sugar-bowls, and why shouldn’t she?
The lover thinks, when he can once claim his sweetheart, call her his own, he will be blessed and content; but he hain’t. No matter how well he loves her, no matter how fond she is of him, and how blessed they are in each other’s love, the haunting fear must always rack his soul, the horrible fear be there, of seeing her slip away from him altogether. That in place of her warm, beating heart, whose every throb is full of love for him, will be only her vacant place, and instead of the tender sweetness of her voice, the everlasting silence of Eternity.
The little ones that cling to our knees, that pray beside us at bed-time, and the patter of whose feet is such music to us—they go, too, and we no more feel their kisses, or hear their tiny voices. Every day, every hour, we are losing something, that we called our own.
You see we don’t own much of anything in this world. It’s curious, but so it is. And what we call our own, don’t belong to us; not at all. That is one of the things that makes this such an extremely curious world to live in. Yes, we are situated extremely curious, as much so as the robins and swallows who build their nests on the swaying forest boughs.
We smile at the robin, with our wise, amused pity, who builds her tiny nest, with such laborious care, high up, out on the waving tree-top, only to be blown away by the chilly autumn winds. But are not our homes, the sweetest homes of our tenderest love, built upon just as insecure foundations, hanging over more mysterious depths? Rocked to and fro, swept to their ruin by a breath of the Unknown? Our dreams, and hopes, and ambitions, what are they all but the sticks and straws that we weave about our frail nests, only to be blown away forever?
And when our December comes, are not we too swept away, poor voyagers, over pathless wastes? Yet He, who has provided a balmy South, as a refuge for the summer birds, to which they fly, intuitively, with blind hope and trust—has not He prepared likewise a shelter for us, one where we may fulfil our deathless longings, meet the “loved and lost,” and realize our soul’s dearest dreams? Yes, over the lonely way, over the untried fields of the future, ay, even over the Unknown Sea, which they call Death, even over that, He will guide us safely, to a haven, a home, immortal, “not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens”.
But I am eppisodin!
Thomas Jefferson went to the school-house to meetin’ last night, and he broke out to the breakfast-table:
“Betsey Bobbet spoke in meetin’ last night, father.” He addressed the words to his father, for he knows I won’t uphold no kind of light talking about serious things.
“She said she knew she was religious, because she felt she loved the bretheren.” Then they both laughed in an idiotic manner. But I said, in a tone of cool dignity, as I passed him his 3d cup of coffee, “She meant it in a Scriptural sense, no doubt.”
“I guess you’d think she meant it in a earthly sense, if you had seen her hang on to old Slimpsey last night; she’ll marry that old man yet, if he don’t look out.”
“Oh, shaw!” says I, coolly. “She’s payin’ attention to the editor of the Gimlet.”
“She’ll never get him,” says he. “She means to be on the safe side, and get one or the other of ’em; how steady she has been to meetin’ sence Deacon Slimpsey moved into the place.”
“You shall not make light of her religeen, Thomas Jefferson,” says I, in a severe voice.
“I won’t, mother. I shouldn’t feel right to, for it is light enough now; it don’t all consist in talkin’ in meetin’, mother. I don’t believe in folks’es usin’ up all their religeen Sunday nights, and then goin’ without any all the rest of the week; it looks as shiftless in ’em as a 3-year-old hat on a female.”
Says I, in a tone of deep rebuke, “Instead of tendin’ other folks’s motes, Thomas Jefferson, you had better take care of your own beams; you’ll have plenty work enough to last you one spell.”
“And if you are through with your breakfast,” says his father, “you had better go and give the cows something to eat.”
“Can’t they come here, father?” says he, leanin’ kinder lazy over the table.
Says I, “That is pretty talk to your father, Thomas J. How do you suppose your days will be long in the land if you don’t honor your father and mother?”
“I do honor you, mother. I never see such long, wet, tedious days as they have been ever sence I have been home from school, and I lay it to honorin’ you and father so.”
Says I, “I won’t hear another light word this mornin’, Thomas Jefferson—not one.” He read earnestness in my tone; and he rose with alackrity and went to the barn, and his farther soon drew on his boots and followed him, and with a pensive brow I turned out my dish water. I hadn’t got my dishes more than half done, when, with no warnin’ of no kind, the door burst open, and in tottered Deacon Slimpsey, pale as a piece of white cotton shirt. I wildly wrung out my dish-cloth, and offered him a chair, sayin’, in a agitated tone, “What is the matter, Deacon Slimpsey?”
“Am I pursued?” says he, in a voice of low frenzy, as he sank into a wooden-bottomed chair. I cast one or two eagle glances out of the window, both ways, and replied in a voice of choked-down emotion:
“There haint nobody in sight. Has your life been attacked by burglers and incendiarys? Speak, Deacon Slimpsey, speak!”
He struggled nobly for calmness, but in vain. And then he put his hand wildly to his brow and murmured, in low and hollow accents:
“Betsey Bobbet!”
I see he was overcome by as many as seven different emotions of different anguishes, and I give him pretty near a minute to recover himself; and then, says I, as I sadly resumed my dish-cloth, “What of her, Deacon Slimpsey?”
“She’ll be the death on me,” says he, “and that haint the worst on it. My soul is jeopardied on account of her. Oh!” says he, groanin’ in an anguish, “Can you believe it, Miss Allen, that I, a deacon in an autherdox church, could be tempted to swear? Behold that wretch! I confess it, as I came through your gate, just now, I said to myself, ‘By Jupiter, I can’t stand it so much longer’; and only last night I wished I was a ghost; for I thought if I were an apperition, I could have escaped from her view. Oh!” says he, groanin’ agin, “I have got so low as to wish I was a ghost!” He paused, and in a deep and brooding silence I finished my dishes, and hung up my dish-pan. “She was rushing out of Deacon Gowdey’s, as I came by, just now, to talk to me. She don’t give me no peace—last night she would walk tight to my side all the way home, and she looked hungry at the gate as I went through, and fastened it on the inside.” Agin he paused overcome by his emotions, and I looked pityin’ly on him. He was a small boned man of about seventy summers and winters. Age, who had ploughed the wrinkles into his face, had turned the furrows deep. The cruel fingers of time, or some other female, had plucked nearly every hair from his head, and the ruthless hand of fate had also seen fit to deprive him of his eye-winkers, not one solitary winker bein’ left for a shade tree (as it were) to protect the pale pupils below, and they bein’ a light watery blue, and the lids bein’ inflamed, they looked sad indeed. Owing to afflictive providences, he was dressed up more than men generally be, for his neck bein’ badly swelled, he wore a string of yellow amber beads, and in behalf of his sore eyes he wore ear-rings. But truly outside splender and glitter won’t satisfy the mind, or bring happiness; I looked upon his mournful face, and my heart melted inside of me, almost as soft as it could, almost as soft as butter in the month of August, and I said to him in a soothin’ and encouragin’ tone:
“Mebby she’ll marry the editor of the Gimlet. She is payin’ attention to him.”
“No, she won’t,” says he, in a solemn and affectin’ tone that brought tears to my eyes, as I sat peelin’ my onions for dinner. “No, she won’t. I shall be the one, I feel it. I was always the victim; I was always down-trodden. When I was a baby, my mother had two twins both of ’em a little older than me, and they almost tore me to pieces before I got into trowsers. Mebby it would have been better for me if they had,” said he in a musin’ and mournful tone—and then heavin’ a deep sigh, he resumed; “When I went to school and we played leap-frog if there was a frog to be squashed down under all the rest, I was that frog; it has always been so, if ever there was a victim wanted, I was the victim, and Betsey Bobbet will get round me yet, and see if she don’t; women are awful perseverin’ in such things.”
“Cheer up, Deacon Slimpsey, you haint obleeged to marry her—it is a free country; folks haint obleeged to marry unless they are a mind to; it don’t take a brass band to make that legal.” I quoted these words in a light and joyous tone, hopin’ to rouse him from his despondancy—but in vain, for he only repeated in a gloomy tone:
“She’ll get around me yet, Miss Allen, I feel it,” and as the shade deepened on his eyebrow, he said, “Have you seen her verses in the last week’s Gimlet?”
“No,” says I, “I haint.”
In a silent and hopeless way he took the paper out of his pocket, and handed it to me and I read as follows:
A SONG
Composed not for the strong-minded females, who madly and indecently insist on rights, but for the retiring and delicate-minded of the sect who modestly murmur “we wont have no rights—we scorn ’em;” will some modest and bashful sister set it to music, that we may timidly, but loudly warble it, and oblige hers till death in this glorious cause.
Betsey Bobbet.
“Wall,” says I in an encouragin’ tone, as I handed him the paper agin—“that haint much different from the piece she had in the Gimlet a spell ago, that was about womens spear.”
“It is that spear that is goin’ to destroy me,” says he, mournfully.
“Don’t give up so, Deacon Slimpsey. I hate to see you lookin’ so gloomy and deprested.”
“It is the awful determination these lines breathe forth that appauls me,” says he. “I have seen it in another.
“Betsey Bobbet reminds me dreadfully of another. And I don’t want to marry agin, Miss Allen. I don’t want to,” says he, lookin’ me pitifully in the face, “I didn’t want to marry the first time; I wanted to be a bachelder. I think they have the easiest time of it by half. Now there is a friend of mine that never was married, he is jest my age, or that is, he is only half an hour younger, and that haint enough difference to make any account of, is it Miss Allen?” says he in a pensive and enquirin’ tone.
“No,” says I in a reasonable accent. “No, Deacon Slimpsey, it haint.”
“Wall, that man has always been a bachelder, and you ought to see what a head of hair he has got, sound at the roots now, not a lock missing. I wanted to be one, and meant to be, but jest as I got my plans all laid, she, my late wife, come and kept house for me, and married me. I lived with her for twenty 5 years, and when she left me,” he murmured with a contented look, “I was reconciled to it. I was reconciled before it took place. I don’t want to say anything against nobody that haint here, but I lost some hair by my late wife,” says he, putting his hand to his bald head in an abstracted way. “I lost a good deal of hair by her, and I haint much left as you can see,” says he in a melancholy tone. “I don’t want to be married agin. I did want to save a lock or two, for my children to keep as a relict of me.” And again he paused overcome by his feelin’s. I knew not what to say to comfort him, and I poured onto him a few comforting adjectives, sich as,
“Mebby you are borrowin’ trouble without a cause, Deacon. With life there is hope, Deacon Slimpsey. It is always the darkest before daylight.” But in vain. He only sighed mournfully.
“She’ll get round me yet, Miss Allen—mark my words, and when the time comes you will think of what I told you.” His face was most black with gloomy apprehensions, as he repeated again—“You see if she don’t get round me,” and a tear began to flow; I turned away with instinctive delicacy, and set my pan of onions in the sink, but when I glanced at him again it was still flowing, and I said to him in a tone of two-thirds pity and one comfort. “Chirk up, Deacon Slimpsey, be a man.”
“That is the trouble,” says he, “if I wasnt a man she would give me some peace,” and he wept into his red silk handkerchief (with a yellow border) bitterly.
Josiah had been to Jonesville, to the post-office and got the last number of my magazine, and I was just lookin’ at the pictures, which are always as pretty a pink, when happenin’ to cast my eyes out of the window, I saw Miss Gowdey and her little boy comin’ up the road.
Now, some children I am attached to, and some I ain’t; and, when I ain’t, I don’t want to touch ’em with a 40-foot pole. Or—I don’t know—sometimes I would like to touch ’em with one. I have seen children that was so sweet-looking and innocent, that it seemed as if they wouldn’t want much fixin’-over to make angels of ’em; but Johnny Gowdey would want an awful sight done to him, to make an angel of him. Thomas Jefferson says he had as leave have a young tornado let loose on the farm as to have him come here a-visitin’—and his mother always brings him.
Wal, as I said, I see ’em comin’ up the road; and, jest as I expected, they came up to the door and knocked. I got up and opened the door, and set ’em some chairs, and sez I: “Lay off your things, won’t you?”
Sez she: “I can’t stop long.” But she sot about half an hour; and, jest before she went, she took up the magazine, the Christmas number it was, that lay on the stand, and sez she: “I should be dreadful glad to borrer this for a day or 2.”
“I hain’t read a word in it,” sez I, “fer I jest got it.”
“Should you be likely to read any in it to-night?” sez she. I told her I didn’t know as I should. “Wall,” sez she, “if you’ll let me take it, I’ll send it home by to-morrow noon at the outside, and I’ll try not to let you come after it, as you have your other ones.”
“I suppose you can take it,” sez I, in a cold tone; “but I wish you would be careful of it, for I want to get ’em bound.”
She said she would lay it right on to the parlor-table, and, when she read in it, she would hold a paper around it. Sez I: “You needn’t do that,” and I must confess, from that very minute I had my mind. I always mistrust folks that are 2 good; there is a mejum course that I rather see folks pursue. I always love to see folks begin as they can hold out, and folks that are 2 good hardly ever hold out. When I see such folks, I always think of the poor sick woman that lay sufferin’ in total darkness for a week, vainly urgin’ her husband to buy some candles, till finally he went, one night, when she was asleep, and bought 12 candles, and lit ’em all and sot ’em in a row in front of her bed. She, dreamin’ of conflegrations, widly started up to see what was the matter, and sunk back, sayin’ in low and faint axents: “Daddy, when you are good, you are 2 good.”
When Miss Gowdey said she would keep it on the parlor table, I had my doubts, and when she said she would hold a paper round it when she read it, I thought more’n as likely as not the book was lost; but I didn’t say nothin’, I kep’ in, and done up the book and handed it to her. She took a large clean handkercher out of her pocket, and folded it round it and started up to go.
If you will believe it, it run along as much as 2 or 3 weeks and no book sent home; and one night, when Josiah and I was a-settin’ there alone—the children was out to one of the neighbors’—I jest broke out, and sez I:
“It is a shameful piece of business, and I won’t stan’ it.”
“What is the matter?” sez Josiah, layin’ down his new paper.
“Miss Gowdey is the matter! My magazine is the matter,” sez I. “There she has kep’ it ’most 3 weeks, and she knew I hadn’t read a word in it,” sez I. “It is a burnin’ shame.”
“Wal, what made you let it go?” sez he. “Deacon Gowdey is worth 3 times as much as I be. Why don’t they take their own magazines? What made you let ’em have it?”
The next day, after I done up my mornin’s work, I went down to Deacon Gowdey’s; I wanted to know about my magazine. There wasn’t anybody in the settin’-room, when I went in, but Johnny; he was settin’ on the floor, playin’ with some pictures.
Sez I: “Where is your ma, Johnny?”
Sez he: “She’s in the kitchen, huskin’ some beans fer dinner; but see what I’ve got, Aunt Allen,” and he come up in front of me, with the picture of a woman cut out of a book. As he come up close to me, and held it up in front of me by the head, I knew it in a minute; it come out of my magazine—it was the very handsomest figger in the fashion plate. For a minute, I was speechless; but these thoughts raged tumultuously through my brain: “If the child is father to the man, as I heard Thomas Jefferson readin’ about, here is a parent that I would like to have the care of fer a short time.” At this crisis in my thoughts, he spoke up agin:
“I am goin’ to cut her petticoats down into pantaloons, and paint some whiskers on her face and make a pirate of her.”
Then the feelin’s I had long curbed broke forth, and I said to him in awful tones: “You will be a pirate yourself, young man, if you keep on—a bloody pirate on the high seas,” sez I. “What do you mean by tearin’ folks’es books to pieces in this way?”
Just at this minute, Miss Gowdey came in, and heerd my last words. She jest said: “How d’ye do?” to me, and then she went at Johnny:
“You awful child, you! How dare you touch that book? How dare you unlock the parlor-door, and climb up on the best table, and take the clean paper off of it, or handle it? How dare you, John Wesley?”
“You give it to me yourself, ma; you know you did, last night, when the minister was here. You said, if I wouldn’t tease fer any more honey, you’d lem’me take it. And can’t I have some honey now? Say, ma, can’t you gim’me some?”
“I’ll give you honey that you won’t like,” sez she: “takin’ the advantage of your ma, and tearin’ folks’es books to pieces in this way—books that you know your ma is so careful of.” And she took him by the collar of his little gray roundabout, and led him into the kitchen, and, by the screamin’ that I heerd from there shortly, I thought he didn’t like his honey. She come back into the room in a few minutes and sez she; “I am so mortified, I don’t know what to do; I never did see such a child. He see me settin’ down shellin’ beans, and he took the advantage of me and got the book. That’s jest the way with him: if I don’t keep my eyes on him every minute, he’ll get the advantage of me. I am mortified ’most to death,” sez she, gatherin’ up the pieces and puttin’ ’em into the book. As she handed it to me, the leaves kinder fell apart, and I see, on one of the patterns, a grease-spot as big as one of my hands. She see it and broke out ag’n: “I declare, I am so mortified; I was goin’ to take that all out with some powder I have got. My Sophrenie wanted to take a pattern off, the night before she went away, and she hadn’t any thin paper, and so she greased a piece of writin’-paper and laid on to it and took it off. But I was going to take it all out, every speck of it. I will give you some of the powder to take home with you.”
“I don’t care about any powder,” sez I, calmly; and I jest held on to my tongue with all the strength I had; and, with that, I up and started home’ards.
I never got over the ground and sensed it any less than I did then. When I am mad, I tell you I always step pretty lively. Josiah was jest startin’ fer Jonesville, when I got home. I jest walked right through the kitchen and went straight to the buro-draw in my bed-room, and took out 2 shillin’s and sez I: “Go to the book-store and get me the last number of that magazine.”
“Why, where is your’n?” sez he.
“There is where it is!” sez I, showin’ him the danglin’ leaves. “There is where it is!” sez I, displayin’ the mutylated picture. “There is where it is!” sez I, p’intin’ out the grease-spot.
“Wal,” sez he, “I wish you would button up my shirtsleeves.”
“You take it pretty cool,” sez I, as I threw off my shawl and complied with his request.
“I knew just how it would be when you let her have it. You might ha’ known better than to let it go.” He spoke with aggravatin’ coolness.
“Wal, you might ha’ known better than to let old Peedick have your horse-rake, and tear it all to bits,” sez I, aggravatin’ in turn.
“Throw that old rake in my face agin, will you?” sez he.
“How do you expect, Josiah Allen, that I am goin’ to button your shirt-sleeves, if you don’t stand still,” sez I.
“Wal, then, don’t be so aggravatin’; you keep bringin’ up that old rake every time I say anything,” sez he.
Josiah is a pretty even-tempered man, but he had a dreadful habit when we was first married, if any of my plans come out unfortunit, of sayin’, “I told you so,” “I knew jest how it would be,” “You might ha’ known better.” I am breakin’ him of it, fer I will not stand it. But, before I had time to pursue my remarks any further, there came a knock at the door. I went and opened it, and there stood Betsey Bobbet. I see in a minute somethin’ was the matter of her; she looked as if she had been cryin’, but I didn’t say anything about it till Josiah had started off.
Now, I always notice, Mr. Editor, that when one thing happens, ’most always something more like it happens right away; good-luck generally comes in batches and swarms, likewise sorrers; when company gets to comin’, they will come in droves, and when I break a dish, I am pretty certain to break more. Havin’ noticed this fer years, what follers didn’t surprise me so much. Betsey looked so cast down, that, to kinder take her mind off, I told her what a tower I had had with Miss Gowdey about my magazine.
“Truly, this is a coinsidance,” sez she; “that is jest my trouble.” And she took out of her pocket a magazine which was worse off than mine, fer, whereas mine was cut clean with shears, hers seemed to be chawed up.
“See,” sez she. “It looks nice now, don’t it? Look at that cover; only a few days ago, there was a lady on it, with a guitar in her hand. Who could make out a lady now, with her head cut off, and her hands chawed to bits? And, as fer the guitar, where is it?” sez she, wildly.
“It ain’t there,” sez I, in a tone of sympathy; her story struck a vibratin’ cord in my sole.
“And look there,” sez she, turnin’ over the mangled leaves and holdin’ up the tattered remains of the most danglin’ one. “Look there! If it was any other leaf but the one my poetry was on, I wouldn’t care so much; but there it is, tore right into the middle, and the baby has chawed up half the page. I hope it will lay on its stomach like a flatiron,” sez she, vindictively.
“The baby ain’t to blame; it is his mother,” sez I.
“I hope she’ll have to walk the house with him every night for a week, barefoot, on the cold floor! I should be glad of it. Mebby she’d feed him on borrered magazines agin. It does seem to me,” sez she, relapsin’ into her usual manner, “that fate is cruel to me; it seems to me that I am marked out for one of her victims that she aims her fatal arrers at, in the novels of the poet:
“This is the first piece of poetry I ever had printed in a magazine. I thought I was happy when I had my first poetry printed in the Gimlet. But my feelin’s wasn’t any more to be compared to what they are now—than a small-sized cook stove to a roarin’ volcano. To have a piece of poetry printed in a magazine was a pinakel I always thought would make me happy to set on; and, when I got up there, I was happy—I was too happy,” sez she, claspin’ her hands together. “Fate loves a shinin’ mark; he aimed another arrer at me and it has struck me here,” sez she, layin’ her bony hand upon the left breast of her brown alpaka bask.
“I was jest as careful of this book as if it was so much gold,” she continued. “I have refused to lend it to as much as two dozen persons; but Miss Briggs, she that was Celestine Peedick, wanted to take it. She said a cousin of hers, a young man, was comin’ there a-visitin’, and she wanted him to read it; he was a great case fer poetry, and was real romantick and wanted to get a romantick wife. And she urged me so to let her have it, I consented. And now look at it,” sez she; “and he didn’t come, and Celestine had a letter from him that he was married and couldn’t come.” She looked as if she would burst out cryin’ agin; and so, to kinder get her mind off her trouble—not that I care a straw for poetry—I spoke up and sez I:
“What is the poetry? I suppose you can read it out of the fragments.”
“Yes,” sez she, in a plaintive axent, “I could rehearse it without anything to look at.” When anybody has had considerable trouble, they don’t mind so much havin’ a little more.
So sez I: “Rehearse it.” And she rehearsed, as follows:
“You see I have come out in my right name,” sez she, as she concluded. “When a person gets famous, there ain’t no use in concealin’ their name any longer; it looks affected.”
“You be a nateral,” says I to myself; “a nateral fool.” But I didn’t speak it audible—outwardly, I was calm; fer there was still a gloomy shadder broodin’ over her eyebrow, and I didn’t want to bruise her lacerated feelin’s any further. Pretty soon she spoke up ag’in.
“What do you think of the poetry?” sez she.
That was a tryin’ time fer me. As a general thing, I don’t mince matters. I won’t; but now, fer reasons named, I didn’t come right out, as I should on more festive occasions. I kinder turned it off by sayin’ in a mild, yet impressive tone: “Betsey, I believe you want to do your duty; and I believe you will, if it is ever made known to you by anybody’s askin’ you.”
Sez she: “Josiah Allen’s wife, duty has always been my aim.”
Any further remarks was cut short by old Mr. Bobbet’s goin’ past, and Betsey’s hollerin’ to him to ride home with him. And she went in such a hurry, she left her magazine behind.
When Josiah got home, which was ’most night, he threw a magazine into my lap, as I sot knittin’, and sez he: “I’ll bet forty-five cents against nothin’ that you’ll lend it to some woman in less than a fortnit.” I looked at him with my most collected and stiddy gaze, and sez I; “Josiah Allen, do you consider me any of a lunytick?” He didn’t say nothin’, and agin I inquired firmly, with my eyes bent on his: “Josiah Allen, do you see any marks of luny in my glance?”
Sez he: “You are in your right mind; no trouble about that.”
“Wal, then,” sez I, “know all men”—there wasn’t any other man or woman around but Josiah, but I began jest as solemn as if I was writin’ my will—“know all men, that I, Josiah Allen’s wife, have stood it jest as long as I will, and, as fer havin’ my books ravaged to pieces, as they’ve been, I won’t. I, who set such a store by my magazines and was jest as careful to keep ’em whole and clean as I was of my Sunday bonnet, now, after all my pains, have got a lot of books on my hands so dirty that, to discern the readin’, the strongest spectacles are powerless in spots; and I have had to trapze all over the neighborhood to get their mangled remains together, to mourn over, rememberin’ what they was. Thank fortune, when I borrer anything, I know enough to take care of it. But my books!” sez I, as the memory of my wrongs flooded my sole. “My books! Old men have burnt ’em by holdin of ’em too near the light, old women have peppered ’em with Scotch snuff, young men have sowed ’em with tobacco and watered ’em with tobacco-juice, young women have greased ’em for patterns, children have stuck the leaves together with molasses and pried ’em open with their tongues; they have been cut with shears, gnawed by babies and worried by pups; they have been blackened with candle-snuff and whitened with taller; and I have had to spend money for new ones, to pay for their ravagin’ my other ones to pieces. And now,” sez I, layin’ my hand on the magazine in as impressive a manner as if I was takin’ my oath on it, “now, anybody that gets my magazines will get ’em over my prostrate form. If they want my magazine, they must subscribe for it.”
“Wal,” sez Josiah, who was standing with his back to the fire, warmin’ him, “I wish you’d get me a little somethin’ to eat; I should think it was about supper-time.”
I rose and walked with an even and majestic step into my bed-room, put the magazine into the under buro-draw, locked the draw and hung the key over my bed, and then, with a resolute face, I calmly turned and hung on the tea-kettle.
When Josiah and me was to Ebenezer Spicer’s a-visitin’, Ebenezer told us he did wish that we would stop and see his brother Lank, seein’ we had to pass right by his house. Melankton Spicer, Ebenezer’s twin brother, married Ebenezer’s wife’s sister, makin’ ’em double and twisted relations, as you may say.
And we told him that seein’ it was right on our way, we would stop a few minutes. I told him I guessed we wouldn’t stay long, for I wuzn’t much acquainted with ’em, though they had visited me years ago, and I had seen her to Mother Smith’s once or twice.
Ebenezer told us mebbe we hadn’t better stay long, for they had hard work to get along. He said Delilah Ann wasn’t a mite like his wife, Malinda, only in one way—they both despised a mejum course and follored their own way blindly and to the end of the chain. But their chains was fur different. For whereas, Malinda, havin’ a husband that was well off, would scrub and work every minute, with no need on’t; Delilah Ann, havin’ married a poor man that needed help, wouldn’t work a mite. Hadn’t been no help to him at all since they was married, only in talkin’ on appearances, and havin’ seven girls. And they bein’ growed up, and their ma not allowin’ ’em to do a spec of work, only to dress up to ketch a bo. Lank had to work from mornin’ till night in the store where he was a clerk, and then set up half of the night to copy papers for a lawyer, to try to pay their milliner’s bills and the hired girls. But he couldn’t; he was in debt to everybody. And he didn’t get no rest to home, for the girls and their mother was teazin’ him every minute for gold bracelets, and diamond rings and silk dresses. He said they lived poor and their morals was all run down, Lank not havin’ been able to get enough ahead to buy a Bible. He hadn’t nothin’ but the Pokraphy and a part of the Old Testament, that had fell to him from his father. Fell so fur, that all the old prophets had got tore to pieces, except Malachi, and he was battered awfully.
Ebenezer said that Lank told him that he had hard work to bring up children right and nothin’ but Pokraphy to go by. He said Lank told him when he got his last month’s wages, he did mean to get enough ahead to buy a Bible and a sack of flour; but when he got his pay, his wife said she was sufferin’ for a new gauze head-dress and the seven girls had got to have some bebinet neckties and new ear-rings. He said Delila Ann said, after they had got these necessarys, then, if there was anything left they would get a sack of flour and a Bible. But there wasn’t and so they had to get along with the Pokraphy, and the second sort of flour. And he said that workin’ so hard and farin’ so hard, Lank was most used up.
He said he wasn’t more’n two or three minutes older than he was, but he looked as if he was seventy-nine years of age. And he was afraid he wouldn’t stand it more’n several months longer, if things went on so.
I felt bad when Ebenezer was a-tellin’ us this. I felt sorry for Lank, as sorry as could be. And I was awful indignant at Delila. These wus my first two thoughts, and then it wusn’t probably more’n half a moment before I thought to myself, mebbe here is a chance for me to shoot another shot at old Emer, and win another victory in that cause of right. I felt a feeling that I could advise Delila Ann for her good. And so I spoke up, mildly, but with a firm and noble mean, on me, that we would stop there for an hour or two.
This conversation took place the evenin’ previous to our departure from Ebenezer’ses, but I did not forget it. And when we arrived at the village where Lank lived, it being after ten o’clock, Josiah said he guessed he would go right down to the store where he worked, so’s to see him and I might go in and call on Delila Ann. A small white-headed boy, with two breeches held up by one gallus, told me where they lived, the same boy offerin’ to hitch my horse fer me.
It had been a number of years since I had seen Delila Ann and I didn’t s’pose I should know her, Ebenezer said she had changed so. He said she had that sort of anxious, haggard, dissatisfied, kinder sheepish, kinder bold look, that folks always get by puttin’ on aperiences. I’ve hearn and I believe it is as wearin’ a job as you can get into, to foller from year to year. And Delila Ann havin’ been puttin’ ’em on (the aperiences) for upwards of twenty years, was wore down, as Ebenezer said, to skin and bone.
The hull house and furniture had the look it always wears when anybody is engaged in the aperience business. A sort of gaudy and flashy cut, dreadful thin and hazy look. The front door had it bad. The knob was broke off; the latch was gone; two of the panels was ready to fall out, besides a place to the bottom big enough for a cat to crawl under. It rode back on one hinge and that was as shaky as shaky could be. There didn’t seem to be anything whole and secure about the door, except the key-hole. But they had a bran new bell on it and a new brass plate, bearin’ Lank’s name in bold, noble letters, which, I s’pose, was a comfort to the family and lifted ’em above the small afflictions of the snow and rain that entered at will, and when it was a mind to.
The white-haired boy, with the solitary and lonesome gallus, says to me, as he stood waitin’ for the ten-cent bill I wuz a-gettin’ for him out of my pork-money: “That door needs mendin’ bad.”
I gave him his bill, and he started off and I was just a-musin’ over his last words, and thinkin’ dreamily, that Lank’s best way would be to take the key-hole and get a new door made to it, when the hired girl came to the door. I could see, that by livin’ in a house devoted to the aperiences, she, too, had ketched the same look. She had the same sort of thin, hazy look onto her, besides bein’ in poor order as to flesh, real bony and haggard. Her face was done up in an old green baize veil, for the toothache.
I told her who I was and she seemed to be kinder frustrated and said she’d go in and tell the family. Left me right there a-standin’ on my feet; and I, not knowin’ how long she would be gone, thought I would set down, for it always tires me to stand any length of time on my feet.
There was an elegant, imposin’ lookin’ chair set there, by the side of a noble lookin’ table. But to my surprise, and almost mortification, when I went to set down, I set right down through it the first thing. I ketched, almost wildly, at the massive table to try to save myself, and that gave way and split on my hands, as you may say, and fell right over onto me. And then, I see it was made of rough, shackly boards, but upholstered with a gorgeous red and yellow cotton spread, like the chair. They both looked noble.
I gathered myself up and righted up the table as well as I could, murmuring almost mechanically to myself:
“Put not your trust in princes, nor turkey red calico, Josiah Allen’s wife. Set yourself not down upon them blindly, lest you be wearied and faint in your mind and lame in your body.”
I was just a-rehearsin’ this to myself, when the hired girl came back, and says I:
“I am glad you have come, for I don’t know but I should have brought the hull house down in ruins onto me, if you hadn’t come jest as you did.”
And then she up and told me that that chair and table wasn’t made for use, but jest for looks. She said they wanted a table and a reception chair in the hall, and not bein’ able to buy a sound one, they had made ’em out of boards they had by ’em.
“Well,” says I, mildly, “I went right down through the chair, the first thing; it skint me.” I got along through the hall first-rate after this, only I most fell twice. For the floor being carpeted with wall-paper, varnished to be oil cloth aperiently, and the water and snow comin’ in so free at the front door, it had soaked it all up in spots, and bein’ tore up in places, and the varnish makin’ it kinder stiff, it was as bad as a man-trap to ketch folks’ feet in and throw ’em.
Jest before we got to the parlor door, I see that, in the agitation of body and mind I had experienced since I came in, I had dropped one of my cuff buttons, nice, black ones, that I had purchased jest before we started, at an outlay of thirty-seven and a half cents. And the hired girl said she would go back and look for it.
And while she was a-lookin’, the plasterin’ bein’ off considerable, and the partition jest papered over, I heard ’em a-sayin’, and they seemed to be a-cryin’ as they said it:
“What did she want to come here for? I should think she would know enough to stay away!”
“To think we have got to be tormented by seein’ her!” says another voice.
“I hate to have her come as bad as you do, children,” says another voice that I knew was Delila’s. “But we must try to bear up under it. She won’t probably stay more than two or three hours.”
“I thay, I hope she won’t sthay two minith,” says a lispin’ voice.
“We won’t let her stay,” says a little fine voice.
I declare for’t, if it hadn’t been for my principles and my vow, I would have turned right round in my tracks. But I remembered that it wusn’t the most pious folks that needed the most preachin’, and if ever premiscues advisin’ seemed to be called for, it was now. And jest as I was a-rememberin’ this, the hired girl came back.
The minute she opened that parlor door, I see that I had got into the house of mournin’. The room, which resembled the hall and front door, as if they was three twins, seemed to be full of baraze delaine and bebinet lace, and thin ribbon, all bathed in tears and sobs. When I took a closer look, I see there was eight or nine wimmen under the gauzes, and frizzles, and folderols and et cetery. Some of ’em had dime novels in their hands and one of ’em held a white pup.
The moment I entered, every one of ’em jumped up and kissed me, and throwed their arms right round me. Some of the time I had as many as six or seven arms at a time round me in different places. And every one was a-tellin’ me in awful, warm tones, how too glad, how highly tickled they was to see me. They never was so carried away with enjoyment before in their hull lives, they said.
And says four of ’em, speakin’ up, tenderly, bendin’ their eight eyes, beseechingly, upon my specks, “You will stay a week with us, won’t you?”
“One week!” says the little fine voice. “That hain’t nothin’; you must stay a month.”
“We won’t let you off a day sooner,” says six warm voices, awful warm.
“Sthay all thummer, do,” says the lispin’ voice.
“Yes, do!” says the hull eight.
And then Delila Ann throwed both her arms round my neck; and says she, “Oh, if you could only stay with us always, how happy, happy, we should be.”
And then she laid her head right down on my shoulder, and began to sob, and weep, and cry. I was a’most sickened to the death by their behavior and actin’, but the voice of sorrow always appeals to my heart. And I see in half a minute what the matter was—Lank had gin out, had killed himself a-workin’. And though I knew she was jest as much to blame as if she was made of arsenic, and Lank had swallowed her, still, pity and sympathy makes the handsomest, shinyest kind of varnish to cover up folks’ faults with, and Delila Ann shone with it from head to foot, as she lay there on my neck, wettin’ my best collar with her tears, and almost tearin’ the lace offen it with her deep windy sithes. I pitied Delila Ann from pretty near the bottom of my heart. I forgot, for the time bein’, her actin’ and behavin’. I felt bad, and says I:
“Then he is gone, Delila Ann, I feel to sympathize with you, though I never seen him. I am sorry for you as I can be sorry.”
“Yes!” says she, pretty near choked up with emotion; “He is gone; we have lost him. You don’t know how we loved him. It seems as if our hearts will break.”
I sithed; I thought of my Josiah; and I says, in tremblin’ tones: “When love is lost out of a heart that has held it, oh, what a soreness there must be in that heart; what an emptiness; what a lonesomeness. But,” says I, tryin’ to comfort her, “He who made our hearts, knows all about ’em. His love can fill all the deep lonesome places in ’em, and hearts that he dwells in will never break. He keeps ’em; they are safe with an eternal safety.”
But all the while I was pourin’ these religious consolations onto her, this thought kept a-governin’ me, “What if it was my Josiah?” And while I held Delila Ann up with my left arm (for she seemed dreadful withy, and I expected nothin’ less than she would crumple right down on my hands), I held my white cotton handkerchief in my right hand and cried onto it for pretty nigh half a minute. I felt bad. Dretful. I thought of Josiah; and I well knew that, though the world held many a man that weighed more by the steelyards, and was far more hefty in mind, still, life without him would be like a lamp without a wick, or the world without a sun.
All the seven girls was a sobbin’, and a number of ’em sithed out, “Oh, it does seem as if our hearts must break right in two.”
Then I spoke up in tremblin’ tones: “If you are willin’, Delila Ann, it would be a melancholy satisfaction to me to see the corpse.”
The seven girls led the way, sobbin’ as if their hearts would break right in two, and I followed on, kinder holdin’ up Delila Ann, expectin’ every minute she would faint away on my hands. We was a mournful lookin’ procession. They led the way into the next room, and led me up to a sofy, upholstered with gorgeous pillar cotton, and there, on a cushion, lay a dead pup.
I was too dumbfounded to speak for nearly half a moment.
“Oh!” says Delila Ann, bendin’ over him and liftin’ up some of the long white hair on his neck; “It seems as if I could give him up better if we could only have washed his lovely hair white. It got stained by the medicine we gave him in his last sickness, and we could not wash the sweet hair white again.”
“No! blessed angel, we couldn’t,” cried four of ’em, bendin’ down and kissin’ of him.
“Oh, what feelin’ I felt as I stood there a-lookin’ on ’em. To think I had been a-sympathizin’ and a-comfortin’ and a-pumpin’ the very depths of my soul to pour religious consolation onto ’em, and a-bewailin’ myself and sheddin’ my own tears over a whiffet pup. As I thought this over, my dumbfoundness began to go offen me, and my meun begun to look different and awful. I thrust my white cotton handkerchief back into my pocket again, with the right hand, and drew my left arm, haughtily away from Delila Ann, not carin’ whether she crumpled down and fainted away or not. I s’pose my meun apauled ’em, for Delila Ann says to me, in tremblin’ tones:
“All genteel wimmen dote on dogs.” And she added, in still more tremblin’ tones, as she see me meun keep a growin’ awfuller and awfuller every minute. “Nothin’ gives a woman such a genteel air as to lead ’em round with a ribbon.” And, she added, still a-keepin’ her eye on my meun: “I always know a woman is genteel, the minute I see her a-leadin’ ’em round, and I never have been mistaken once. And the more genteel a woman is, the more poodle dogs they have to dote on.”
I didn’t say a word to Delila Ann, nor the hull set on ’em. But my emotion riz up so that I spoke up loud to myself, unbeknown to me. I episoded to myself, almost mechanically, in a low, deep voice:
“Father’s bein’ killed with labor, and a world layin’ in wickedness, and wimmens dotin’ on dogs. Hundreds of thousands of houseless and homeless children—little fair souls bein’ blackened by vice and ignorance, with a black that can’t never be rubbed off this side of heaven, and immortal wimmen spending their hull energies in keepin’ a pup’s hair white. Little tender feet bein’ led down into the mire and clay, that might be guided up to heaven’s door, and wimmen utterly refusin’ to notice ’em, so rampant and set on leadin’ round a pup by a string. Good land!” says I; “it makes me angry to think on’t.”
And I pulled out my white linen handkerchief and wiped my ferwerd almost wildly.
I s’pose my warm emotions had melted down my icy meun a very little, for Delila spoke up in a chokin’ voice, and says she:
“If you was one of the genteel kind, you would feel different about it, I mistrust,” says she, a-tryin’ to scorn me. “I mistrust that you haint genteel.”
Says I, “That don’t scorn me a mite.” Says I, “I hate that word, and always did.” Says I, still more warmly, “There are two words in the English language that I feel cold and almost haughty toward, and they are: Affinity, such as married folks hunt after; and Genteel. I wish,” says I, almost eloquent, “I wish those words would join hands and elope the country. I’d love to see their backs as they set out, and bid ’em a glad farewell.”
She see she hadn’t skeert me. They didn’t say a word. And then the thought of my mission governed me to that extent, that I rose up my voice to a high, noble key, and went on, wavin’ my right hand in as eloquent a wave as I had by me, and I keep awful eloquent waves a purpose to use on occasions like these.
Says I: “I am a woman that has got a vow on me; I am a Premiscues Adviser in the cause of Right, and I can’t shirk out when duty is a-pokin’ me in the side. I must speak my mind, though I hate to like a dog. And I say unto you, Delila Ann, and the hull eight of you, premiscues, that if you would take off some of your bebinet lace, empty your laps of pups and dime novels, and go to work and lift some of the burden from the breakin’ back of Melankton Spicer, you would rise from twenty-five to fifty cents to my estimation, and I don’t know but more.”
“Oh!” says Delila Ann; “I want my girls to marry. It hain’t genteel for wimmen to work; they won’t never ketch a bo if they work.”
“Well,” says I, very coldly, “I had rather keep a clear conscience, and a single bedstead, than twenty husbands and the knowledge that I was a father killer. But,” says I, in reasonable tones, for I wanted to convince ’em: “it haint necessary to read dime novels and lead round pups, in order to marry; if it was, I should be a single woman to-day.”
“Oh, I love to read dime novelth,” says the lispin’ one: “I love to be thad and weep; it theemeth tho thweet, tho thingularly thweet.”
Says I, “Instead of sheddin’ your tears over imaginary sorrows, there is a tragedy bein’ lived before your eyes, day after day, that you ort to weep over. A father killin’ himself for his children, bearin’ burdens enough to break down a leather man, and they a-leadin’ round whiffet pups by a string.”
“Whiffet pup!” says Delila Ann, almost angrily; “they are poodles.”
“Well,” says I, calmly; “whiffet poodle pups, it makes no particular difference to me, if it suits you any better.”
Says she, “I paid seven dollars fer ’em, and they pay their way in comfortin’ the girls when they feel sad. Of course, my girls have their dark hours and get low-spirited, when they bore their pa for things he won’t buy for ’em. When they all want a gold butterfly to wear in their hair, are fairly sufferin’ for ’em and then pa won’t get ’em, in such dark hours, they find the dear dogs such a comfort to ’em.
“Why don’t they go to work and earn their own butterflies, if they have got to have ’em?” says I, very coldly.
“Because they won’t never marry if they work,” says Delila Ann.
Says I, “It haint no such thing. Any man worth marryin’ would think as much again of a girl who had independence and common sense enough to earn her living, when her father was a poor man. Good land! how simple it is to try to deceive folks! Gauze veils, and bobinet lace, and cotton velvet cloaks haint a-goin’ to cover up the feet of poverty, if we be poor. Not a mite of disgrace in it. Poverty is the dark mine, where diamonds are found lots of times; by their glittering so bright against the blackness. The darkness of poverty can’t put out the light of a pure diamond. It will shine anywhere, as bright in the dark dirt as on a queen’s finger, for its light comes from within. And rare pearls are formed frequent, by the grindin’ touch of poverty, tears of pain, and privation, and patience crystalized into great white drops of light that will shine forever. Honest hard-working poverty is respectable as anything can be respectable, and should be honored, if for no other reason, for the sake of Him, who, eighteen hundred years ago, made it illustrious forever. But poverty tryin’ to hide itself behind the aperiences; poverty concealin’ itself under a sham gentility, pretentious, deceitful poverty, trying to cover an empty stomach with a tinsel breastpin, is a sight sad enough to make angels weep and sinners too. Let your girls learn some honest trade, Delila Ann.”
“Oh, my! I wouldn’t let ’em lose their chance of bein’ married for nothin’ in the world.”
“Good land!” says I, “is marryin’ the only theme that anybody can lay holt of?” Says I, “it seems to me it would be the best way to lay holt of duty now, and then, if a bo come, lay holt on him. If they ketch a bo with such a hook as they are a-fishing with now, what kind of a bo will it be? Nobody but a fool would lay holt of a hook baited with dime novels and pups. Learn your girls to be industrious, and to respect themselves. They can’t now, Delila Ann, I know they can’t. No woman can feel honorable and reverential toward themselves, when they are foldin’ their useless hands over their empty souls, waitin’ for some man, no matter who, to marry ’em and support ’em. When in the agony of suspense and fear, they have narrowed down to this one theme, all their hopes and prayers, ‘Good Lord; anybody!’
“But when a woman lays holt of life in a noble, earnest way, when she is dutiful, and cheerful, and industrious, God-fearin’, and self-respectin’, though the world sinks, there is a rock under her feet that won’t let her down far enough to hurt her any. If love comes to her to brighten her pathway, so much the better. She will be ready to receive him royally, and keep him when she gets him. Some folks don’t know how to use love worth a cent. But no matter whether she be single or double, I am not afraid of her future.”
“Oh, my!” says Delila Ann, again, “I wouldn’t have my girls miss of marryin’ for nothin.’ Nothin’ in the world looks so lonesome as a woman that haint married.”
Says I, reasonably, “They do have a sort of a one-sided look, I’ll admit, and sort o’ curious at certain times, such as processions and et cetery. But,” I added, almost coldly, for I was about wore out with ’em; “in my opinion, there haint no lonesomeness to be compared to the lonesomeness of the empty-headed and aimless, and no amount of husbands can make up to any woman for the loss of her self-respect. That is my idea, howsumever, everybody to their own mind.”
Whether I did her any good or not, I know not, for my companion arrived almost at that moment, and we departed onto our tower. But whether marks are hit or not, it is sort a-comfortin’ and happyfyin’ to think that there is a pile of arrows somewhere, to bear witness that you have took aim, and fired nobly in the cause of right.
When we bought our farm there wus a house on it, jist acrost the road from our’n; it wus middlin’ small, and dretful kinder run down and shakey, and I had entirely gin up the idee of enybody’s livin’ there.
But all of a sudden, Josiah started up, and said he was goin’ to fix up that house, and rent it. “He believed he could make piles of money out of it, a-rentin’ it, and he wanted some neighbors.”
Says I, “Josiah Allen, you’d better let well enough alone. You’d better let the whole house stay as it is,” says I, “There is werse neighbors than them that is stayin’ in the old house now.”
“What do you mean, Samantha?” And his eyes showed the whites all round ’em, he was that surprised.
But I says, “There are werse neighbors, and more troublesome creeters in this world, Josiah Allen, than peace, and quiet, and repose.”
“Oh, shaw!” says he. “Why can’t you talk common sense, if you have got any.” And he went on in a firm, obstinate way. “I am determined to fix up the house, and rent it. Wimmens never can see into business. They havn’t got the brains for it. You hain’t to blame for it, Samantha; but you haven’t got the head to see how profitable I am goin’ to make it. And then, our nearest neighbors now live well on to a quarter of a mile away. How neat it will be to have neighbors, right here, by us all the time, day and night.” And he added, dreamily, “I love to neighbor, Samantha, I love to neighbor, dearly.”
But I held firm and told him, “He’d better let well enough alone.” But he wus sot as sot could be, and went on a-fixin’ the house, and it cost him nearer a hundred dollars than it did anything else, besides lamin’ himself, and blisterin’ his hands to work on it himself, and fillin’ his eyes with plaster, and gettin’ creaks in his back a-liftin’ ’round and repairin’.
But he felt neat through it all. It seemed as if the more money he laid out, and the werse he got hurt, the more his mind soared up a-thinkin’ how much money he wus goin’ to make a-rentin’ it, and what a beautiful time he wus a-goin’ to have a-neighborin’.
Wall, jist as soon as the house wus done, he sot out to find some one to occupy it, for that man couldn’t seem to wait a minute. I told him to keep cool. Says I, “You’ll make money by it, if you do.” But no; he couldn’t wait till somebody came to him, and kept inquirin’ ’round; and one day he came home from Janesville tickled most to death, seemingly. He’d rented the house to a Mr. Bamber; the bargain wus all made.
Says I, coldly, “Is it the Bamberses that used to live in Loon Town?”
“Yes,” says he. “And they are splendid folks, Samantha; and I have made a splendid bargain; they are goin’ to give me fifty dollars a year for the house and garden. What do you think now? I never should have known they wus a-lookin’ for a house, if I hadn’t been a-enquirin’ round. What do you think, now, about my keepin’ cool?”
Says I, mildly, but firmly, “My mind hain’t changed from what it wus more formally.”
“Wall, what do you think, now, about my lettin’ the old house run down, when I can make fifty dollars a year, clean gain, besides more’n three times that in solid comfort, a-neighborin’.”
Says I, firm as a rock, “My mind hain’t changed, Josiah Allen, so much as the width of a horse-hair.”
Says he, “I always said, and knew, that wimmin hadn’t got no heads. But it is aggravatin’, it is awful aggravatin’, when enybody has made such a bargain as I have, to not have enybody’s wife appreciate it. And I should think it wus about time to have supper, if you are goin’ have any to-night.”
I calmly rose, and put on the tea-kettle, and never disputed a word with him about whether I had a head, or not. Good Lord: I knew I had one, and what was the use of arguin’ about it? I never said a word, but I kept a-thinkin’ I had heard of the Bamberses before. It had come right straight to me: Miss Ebenezer Scwelz, she that was Nably Spink’s nephew’s wife’s stepmother, Miss Bumper, lived neighbors to ’em, and she had told me, Nably had, that them Bamberses wus shiftless creeters.
But the bargain wus all made, and there wuzn’t no use in saying anything, and I knew if I should tell Josiah what I had heard, he’d only go to arguin’ agin that I hadn’t no head. So I didn’t say nothin’, and the very next day they moved in. They had been stayin’ a spell to her folks’es, a little way beyond Janesville. They said the house they had been livin’ in at Loon Town was so uncomfortable, they couldn’t stay in it a day longer. But we heard afterward, Miss Scwelz heard right from Miss Bumpers’es own lips, that they wus smoked out, the man that owned the house had to smoke ’em out to get rid of ’em.
Wall, as I said, they come—Mr. Bamber and his wife, and his wife’s sister (she wus Irish), and the children. And, oh! How neat Josiah Allen did feel. He wus over there before they had hardly got sot down, and offered to do anything under the sun for ’em and offered ’em everything we had in the house. I, myself, kep’ cool and cullected together. Though I treated ’em in a liberal way, and in the course of two or three days, I made ’em a friendly call, and acted well toward ’em.
But instead of runnin’ over there the next day, and two or three times a day, I made a practice of stayin’ to home considerable; and Josiah took me to do for it. But I told him that “I treated them jist exactly as I wanted them to treat me.” Says I, “a megum course is the best course to pursue in nearly every course of life, neighborin’ especially,” says I. “I begin as I can hold out. I lay out to be kind and friendly to ’em, but I don’t intend to make it my home with ’em, nor do I want them to make it their home with me.” Says I, “once in two or three days is enough, and enough, Josiah Allen, is as good as a feast.”
“Wall,” says he, “if I ever enjoyed anything in this world, I enjoy neighberin’ with them folks,” says he. “They think the world of me. It beats all how they wership me. The childern talk to me so they don’t want me out of their sight hardly a minute. Bamber and his wife says they think it is in my looks. You know I am pretty-lookin’, Samantha. They say the baby will cry after me so quick. It beats all, what friends we have got to be, I and the Bamberses, and it is aggravatin’, Samantha, to think you don’t seem to feel toward ’em that strong friendship that I feel.”
Says I, “Friendship, Josiah Allen, is a great word.” Says I, “True friendship is the most beautiful thing on earth; it is love without passion, tenderness without alloy. And,” says I, soarin’ up into the realm of allegory, where, on the feathery wings of pure eloquence, I fly frequent, “Intimacy hain’t friendship.” Says I, “Two men may sleep together, year after year, on the same feather bed, and wake up in the mornin’, and shake hands with each other, perfect strangers, made so unbeknown to them. And feather beds, nor pillers, nor nothin’ can’t bring ’em no nigher to each other. And they can keep it up from year to year, and lock arms and prominade together through the day, and not be no nigher to each other. They can keep their bodies side by side, but their souls, who can tackle ’em together, unless nature tackled ’em, unbeknown to them? Nobody.
“And then agin two persons may meet, comin’ from each side of the world; and they will look right through each other’s eyes, down into their souls, and see each other’s image there; born so, born friends, entirely unbeknown to them. Thousands of miles apart, and all the insperations of heaven and earth; all the influence of life, education, joy and sorrow, has been fitting them for each other (unbeknown to them); twin souls, and they not knowin’ of it.”
“Speakin’ of twin——” says Josiah.
But I wus soarin’ too high to light down that minute; so I kep’ on, though his interruption wus a-lowerin’ me down gradual.
Says I, “Be good and kind to everybody, and Mr. Bambers’es folks, as you have opportunity; but before you make bosom friends of ’em, wait and see if your soul speaks.” Says I, firmly, “Mine don’t in the case of the Bamberses.”
“Speakin’ of twin,” says Josiah, agin, “Did you ever see so beautiful a twin as Mr. Bambers’es twin is? What a pity they lost the mate to it! Their ma says it is perfectly wonderful the way that babe takes to me. I held it all the while she was ironin’ this forenoon. And the two boys foller me ’round all day, tight to my heels, instead of their father. Bamber says they think I am the prettiest man they ever see.”
Before I had time to say a word back, Bamber’s wife’s sister opened the door and come in unexpected, and said, “that Mrs. Bamber wanted to borrow the loan of ten pounds of side pork, some flour, the dish-kettle, and my tooth-brush.”
I let ’em all go, for I wus determined to use ’em well, but I told Josiah, after she went off with ’em, “that I did hate to lend my tooth-brush, the worst kind.”
And Josiah ’most snapped my head off, and muttered about my not bein’ neighborly, and that I did not feel a mite about neighberin’, as he did.
And I made a vow, then and there, (inside of my mind), that I wouldn’t say a word to Josiah Allen on the subject, not if they borrowed us out of house and home. Thinkses I, I can stand it as long as he can; if they spile our things, he has got to pay for new ones; if they waste our property, he has got to lose it; if they spile our comfort he’s got to stand it as well as I have; and knowin’ the doggy obstinacy of his sect, I considered this great truth that the stiller I kep’, and the less I said about ’em, the quicker he’d get sick of ’em; so I held firm. And never let on to Josiah but what it wus solid comfort to me to have ’em there, all the time, a’most; and not havin’ a minute I could call my own, and havin’ ’em borrow everything under the sun that ever wus borrowed; garden-sass of all kinds, and the lookin’-glass, groceries, vittles, cookin’ utensils, stove pipe, a feather bed, bolsters, bed-clothes, and the New Testament.
They even borrowed Josiah’s clothes. Why, Bamber wore Josiah’s best pantaloons more than Josiah did. He got so, he didn’t act as if he could ster out without Josiah’s best pantaloons. He’d keep a-tellin’ that he wus goin’ to get a new pair, but didn’t get ’em, and would hang onto Josiah’s. And Josiah had to stay to home a number of times, jist on that account. And then he’d borrowed Josiah’s galluses. Josiah had got kinder run out of galluses, and hadn’t got but one pair of sound ones. And Josiah would have to pin his pantaloons onto his vests, and the pins would loose out, and it wus all Josiah could do to keep his clothes on. It made it awful bad for him. I know, one day, when I had a lot of company, I had to wink him out of the room a number of times, to fix himself, so he would look decent. But all through it, I kep’ still and never said a word. I see we wus loosin’ property fast, and had lost every mite of comfort we had enjoyed, for there wus some on ’em there every minute of the time, a’most, and some of the time two or three of ’em. Why, Mrs. Bamber used to come over and eat breakfast with us lots of times. She’d say she felt so manger that she couldn’t eat nothin’ to home, and she thought mebby my vittles would go to the place. And besides losin’ our property and comfort, I’ll be hanged if I didn’t think, sometimes, that I should lose my pardner by ’em, they worked him so. But I held firm. Thinkses I, to myself, it must be that Josiah will get sick of neighborin’, after awhile, and start ’em off. For the sufferin’s that man endured could never be told or sung.
Why before they had been there a month, as I told Miss Scwelz, she was to our house a-visitin’, and Josiah was in the buttery a-churnin’, and I knew he wouldn’t hear, says I, “They have borrowed everything I have got, unless it is Josiah.” And if you’ll believe it, before I had got the words out of my mouth, Mr. Bamber’ses sister opened the door, and walked in and asked me “If I could spare Mr. Allen to help stretch a carpet.” And I whispered to Miss Scwelz, and says I, “if they hain’t borrowed the last thing now, if they hain’t borrowed Josiah.” But I told the girl “to take him in welcome.” (I was very polite to ’em, and meant to be, but cool).
So I tuk holt and done the churnin’ myself, and let him go.
But I must stop now for I see Josiah a-comin’ across the field to supper, and curius to tell, he’s always hungry for supper. Boys and husbands allus is hungry. Another time I’ll tell what came of borrowin’ Josiah.
[THE END.]
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