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Title: Tirzah Ann's summer trip, and other sketches

Author: Marietta Holley

Release date: August 2, 2024 [eBook #74177]
                Most recently updated: October 1, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The F. M. Lupton Publishing Company

Credits: hekula03 and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TIRZAH ANN'S SUMMER TRIP, AND OTHER SKETCHES ***
                        Tirzah Ann’s Summer Trip,
                          _AND OTHER SKETCHES_.

                         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’S SUMMER TRIP


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.




A PLEASURE EXERTION.


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.




HOW WE TOOK IN SUMMER BOARDERS.


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.




THE SUFFERENS OF NATHAN SPOONER.


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.




THE WIDDER DOODLE AS A COMFERTER.


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.”




THE WIDDER DOODLE’S COURTSHIP.


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?”




BETSEY BOBBIT: HER POEM.


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:

    I WISH I WAS A WIDDER,
    BY BETSEY BOBBIT.

    Oh, “Gimlet,” back again I float
      With broken wings, a weary bard;
    I cannot write as once I wrote,
      I have to work so very hard.
    So hard my lot, so tossed about,
    My muse is fairly tuckered out.

    My muse aforesaid, once hath flown,
      But now her back is broke, and breast;
    And yet she fain would crumple down
      On “Gimlet” pages she would rest;
    And sing plain words as there she’s sot
    Haply they’ll rhyme, and haply not

    I spake plain words in former days,
      No guile I showed, clear was my plan;
    My gole it matrimony was.
      My earthly aim it was a man.
    I gained my man. I won my gole.
    Alas, I feel not as I fole.

    Yes, ringing through my maiden thought
      This clear voice rose, “oh come up higher”
    To speak plain truth with cander fraught,
      To married be, was my desire.
    Now sweeter still this lot doth seem
    To be a widder is my theme.

    For toil hath claimed me for her own,
      In wedlock I have found no ease;
    I’ve cleaned and washed for neighbors round
      And took my pay in beans and pease;
    In boiling sap no rest I took
    Or husking corn in barn or stook.

    Or picking wool from house to house,
      White-washing, painting, papering,
    In stretching carpets, boiling souse,
      E’en picking hops it hath a sting
    For spiders there assembled be,
    Mosqueetoes, bugs, and et ceteree.

    I have to work, oh! very hard;
      Old Toil, I know your breadth, and length.
    I’m tired to death; and in one word
      I have to work beyond my strength,
    And mortal men are very tough
    To get along with—nasty, rough.

    Yes, tribulation’s doomed to her
      Who weds a man, without no doubt
    In peace a man is singuler
      His ways, they are past finding out,
    And oh! the wrath of mortal males
    To paint their ire, earth’s language fails.

    And thirteen children in our home
      Their buttons rend, their clothes they burst,
    Much bread and such do they consume,
      Of children they do seem the worst;
    And Simon and I do disagree,
    He’s prone to sin continualee.

    He horrors has, he oft doth kick,
      He prances, yells, he will not work,
    Sometimes I think he is too sick;
      Sometimes I think he tries to shirk,
    But ’tis hard for her in either case
    Who B Bobbit was in happier days.

    Happier? Away! Such things I spurn,
      I count it true from spring to fall
    ’Tis “better to be wed and groan
      Than never to be wed at all.”
    I’d work my hands down to the bone
    Rather than rest, a maiden lone.

    This truth I cannot, will not shirk,
      I feel it when I sorrow most,
    I’d rather break my back with work
      And haggard look as any ghost—
    Rather than lonely vigils keep
    I’d wed, and sigh, and groan, and weep.

    Yes, I can say, though tears fall quick,
      Can say while briny tear-drops start,
    I’d rather wed a crooked stick
      Than never wed no stick at all.
    Rather than laughed at be as of yore
    I’d rather laugh myself no more.

    I’d rather go half-clad and starved
      And mops and dish-cloths madly wave
    Than have the words B Bobbit carved
      On headstone rising o’er my grave
    Proud thought, now when that stun is risen,
    ’Twill bear two names, mine and hisen.

    Methinks ’twould colder make the stun
      If but one name, the name of she
    Should linger there alone, alone,
      How different when the name of he
    Does also deck the funeral urn
    Two wedded names, his name and hurn.

    And sweeter yet, oh! blessed lot
      Oh! state most dignified and blest
    To be a widder calmly sot
      And have both dignity and rest.
    Oh, Simon, strangely sweet ’twould be
    To be a widder unto thee.

    The warfare past, the horrors done,
      With maiden ease and pride of wife,
    The dignity of wedded one,
      The calm and peace of single life;
    Oh strangely sweet this lot doth seem,
    A female widder is my theme.

    I would not hurt a hair of he,
      Yet did he from earth’s toils escape
    I could most reconciled be
      Could sweetly mourn e’en without crape
    Could say without a pang of pain
    That Simon’s loss was Betsey’s gain.

    I’ve told the plain tale of my woes,
      With no deceit or language vain,
    Have told whereon my hopes are rose
      Have sung my mournful song of pain.
    And now e’en I will end my tale
    I’ve sung my song, I’ve wailed my wail.

“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!




DEACON SLIMPSEY’S MOURNFUL FOREBODINGS.


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.

    Not for strong minded wimmen
    Do I now tune my liar;
    Oh not for them would I kin-
    dle up the sacred fire;
    Oh modest bashful female
    For you I tune my lay;
    Although strong-minded wimmin sneer
    We’ll conquer in the fray.
      CHORUS—Press onward, do not fear, sisters,
      Press onward, do not fear,
      Remember womens spear, sisters,
      Remember womens spear.

    Twould cause some fun if poor Miss Wade,
    Should say of her boy Harry,
    “I shall not give him any trade,
    But bring him up to marry;”
    Twould cause some fun of course, dear maids,
    If Mrs. Wade’ses Harry,
    Should lose his end and aim in life,
    And find no chance to marry.
      CHORUS—Press onward, do not fear, sisters, etc.

    Yes, wedlock is our only hope,
    All o’er this mighty nation;
    Men are brought up to other trades,
    But this is our vocation.
    Oh not for sense or love ask we,
    We ask not to be courted;—
    Our watch-word is to married be,
    That we may be supported.
      CHORUS—Press onward, do not fear, sisters, etc.

    Say not you’r strong, and love to work,
    Are healthier than your brother,
    Who for a blacksmith is designed,
    Such feelings you must smother;
    Your restless hands fold up or gripe
    Your waist unto a span,
    And spend your strength in looking out
    To hail the coming man.
      CHORUS—Press onward, do not fear, sisters, etc.

    Oh do not be discouraged, when
    You find your hopes brought down;
    And find sad and unwilling men,
    Heed not their gloomy frown;
    Heed not their wild despaier
    We will not give no quarter;
    In battle all is fair
    We’ll win, for we had orter.
      CHORUS—Press onward, do not fear, sisters,
      Press onward, do not fear,
      Remember womens spear, sisters,
      Remember womens spear.

“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.




BORROWING THE MAGAZINE.


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:

    ‘I never tamed a dear gazelle,
    But ’twas the first to run away.’

“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:

    STANZAS ON DUTY.
    BY BETSEY BOBBET.

    Unless they do their duty see,
      Oh! who would spread their sail
    On matrimony’s cruel sea,
      And face its angry gale?
    Oh! Betsey Bobbet I’ll remain,
    Unless I see my duty plain.

    Shall horses calmly brook a halter,
      Who over fenceless pastures stray?
    Shall females be dragged to the altar
      And down their freedom lay?
    No! no! B. Bobbet I’ll remain,
    Unless I see my duty plain.

    Beware! beware! oh, rabid lover,
      Who pines for intellect and beauty;
    My heart is ice to all your over-
      tures, unless I see my duty.
    For Betsey Bobbet I’ll remain,
    Unless I see my duty plain.

    Come not with keys of rank and splendor,
      My heart’s cold portals to unlock;
    ’Tis vain to search for feelin’s tender—
      Too late you’ll find you’ve struck a rock.
    For Betsey Bobbet I’ll remain,
    Unless I see my duty plain.

    ’Tis vain for you to pine and languish;
      I cannot soothe your bosom’s pain.
    In vain are all your groans: your blandish-
      ments, I warn you, are in vain;
    For Betsey Bobbet I’ll remain,
    Unless I see my duty plain.

    I cannot stanch your bosom’s bleedin’,
      Sometimes I am a yieldin’ one,
    Sometimes I’m turned by tears and pleadin’;
      But here you’ll find that I am stun.
    Ah, yes! B. Bobbet I’ll remain,
    Unless I see my duty plain.

    You needn’t lay no underhanded
      Plots to ketch me—men, desist,
    Or in the dust you will be landed,
      For to the last I will resist;
    For Betsey Bobbet I’ll remain,
    Unless I see my duty plain.

    Fond men, their ain’t no use in kickin’
      Against the pricks; you’ll only tear
    Your feet, for I am bound on stickin’
      To what I’ve said. Beware! beware!
    For Betsey Bobbet I’ll remain,
    Unless I see my duty plain.

“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.




MELANKTON SPICER’SES WIFE.


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.




HOW THE BAMBERSES BORROWED JOSIAH.


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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