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Samantha at Saratoga

by Marietta Holley · English · Gutenberg #3425 · 457,034 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Samantha at Saratoga

Author: Marietta Holley


        
Release date: September 1, 2002 [eBook #3425]
                Most recently updated: August 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3425

Credits: an anonymous volunteer


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA ***

[Illustration]




Samantha at Saratoga

by Marietta Holley

Marietta Holley (1836-1926) has been called America’s first female
humorist. She was an extremely popular author and a well-known suffragette.
Holley, who never married, published her first books as Josiah Allen’s
Wife, only adding her own name after her success was established. She lived in
an 18 room home she built in Jefferson County, New York and drove a
Pierce-Arrow. Her legacy of more than 20 books has mostly been forgotten today
but they are still very good reading.

I have no information about the illustrator.


          Josiah

          TO THE GREAT ARMY OF SUMMER TRAMPS

            THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

            BY THEIR COMRADE AND FELLOW WANDERER
            THE AUTHOR

            * * * * * * * * * * *

          Samantha


Contents

 PREFACE
 CHAPTER I. SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA
 CHAPTER II. ARDELIA TUTT AND HER MOTHER
 CHAPTER III. THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS
 CHAPTER IV. ARDELIA AND ABRAM GEE
 CHAPTER V. WE ARRIVE AT SARATOGA
 CHAPTER VI. SARATOGA BY DAYLIGHT
 CHAPTER VII. SEEING THE DIFFERENT SPRINGS
 CHAPTER VIII. JOSIAH AND SAMANTHA TAKE A LONG WALK
 CHAPTER IX. JOSIAH’S FLIRTATIONS
 CHAPTER X. MISS G. WASHINGTON FLAMM
 CHAPTER XI. VISIT TO THE INDIAN ENCAMPMENT
 CHAPTER XII. A DRIVE TO SARATOGA LAKE
 CHAPTER XIII. VISITS TO NOTABLE PLACES
 CHAPTER XIV. LAKE GEORGE AND MOUNT McGREGOR
 HAPTER XV. ADVENTURES AT VARIOUS SPRINGS
 CHAPTER XVI. AT A LAWN PARTY
 CHAPTER XVII. A TRIP TO SCHUYLERVILLE
 CHAPTER XVIII. THE SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETING
 CHAPTER XIX. ST. CHRISTINA’S HOME
 CHAPTER XX. AN ACCIDENT WITH RESULTS	




A SORT OF PREFACE.
WHICH IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO READ.


When Josiah read my dedication he said “it wuz a shame to dedicate a
book that it had took most a hull bottle of ink to write, to a lot of
creeters that he wouldn’t have in the back door yard.”

But I explained it to him, that I didn’t mean tramps with broken hats,
variegated pantaloons, ventilated shirt-sleeves, and barefooted. But I
meant tramps with diamond ear-rings, and cuff-buttons, and Saratoga
trunks, and big accounts at their bankers.

And he said, “Oh, shaw!”

But I went on nobly, onmindful of that shaw, as female pardners have to
be, if they accomplish all the talkin’ they want to.

And sez I, “It duz seem sort o’ pitiful, don’t it, to think how sort o’
homeless the Americans are a gettin’? How the posys that blow under the
winders of Home are left to waste their sweet breaths amongst the
weeds, while them that used to love ’em are a climbin’ mountain tops
after strange nosegays.”

The smoke that curled up from the chimbleys, a wreathin’ its way up to
the heavens—all dead and gone. The bright light that shone out of the
winder through the dark a tellin’ everybody that there wuz a Home, and
some one a waitin’ for somebody—all dark and lonesome.

Yes, the waiter and the waited for are all a rushin’ round somewhere,
on the cars, mebby, or a yot, a chasin’ Pleasure, that like as not
settled right down on the eves of the old house they left, and stayed
there.

I wonder if they will find her there when they go back again. Mebby
they will, and then agin, mebby they won’t. For Happiness haint one to
set round and lame herself a waitin’ for folks to make up their minds.

Sometimes she looks folks full in the face, sort o’ solemn like and
heart-searchin’, and gives ’em a fair chance what they will chuse. And
then if they chuse wrong, shee’ll turn her back to ’em, for always.
I’ve hearn of jest such cases.

But it duz seem sort o’ solemn to think—how the sweet restful felin’s
that clings like ivy round the old familier door steps—where old 4
fathers feet stopped, and stayed there, and baby feet touched and then
went away—I declare for’t, it almost brings tears, to think how that
sweet clingin’ vine of affection, and domestic repose, and content—how
soon that vine gets tore up nowadays.

It is a sort of a runnin’ vine anyway, and folks use it as sech, they
run with it. Jest as it puts its tendrils out to cling round some fence
post, or lilock bush, they pull it up, and start off with it. And then
its roots get dry, and it is some time before it will begin to put out
little shoots and clingin’ leaves agin round some petickular mountain
top, or bureau or human bein’. And then it is yanked up agin, poor
little runnin’ vine, and run with—and so on—and so on—and so on.

Why sometimes it makes me fairly heart-sick to think on’t. And I fairly
envy our old 4 fathers, who used to set down for several hundred years
in one spot. They used to get real rested, it must be they did.

Jacob now, settin’ right by that well of his’n for pretty nigh two
hundred years. How much store he must have set by it during the last
hundred years of ’em! How attached he must have been to it!

Good land! Where is there a well that one of our rich old American
patriarks will set down by for two years, leavin’ off the orts. There
haint none, there haint no such a well. Our patriarks haint fond of
well water, anyway.

And old Miss Abraham now, and Miss Isaac—what stay to home wimmen they
wuz, and equinomical!

What a good contented creeter Sarah Abraham wuz. How settled down, and
stiddy, stayin’ right to home for hundreds of years. Not gettin’
rampent for a wider spear, not a coaxin’ old Mr. Abraham nights to take
her to summer resorts, and winter hants of fashion.

No, old Mr. Abraham went to bed, and went to sleep for all of her.

And when they did once in a hundred years, or so, make up their minds
to move on a mile or so, how easy they traveled. Mr. Abraham didn’t
have to lug off ten or twelve wagon loads of furniture to the Safe
Deposit Company, and spend weeks and weeks a settlin’ his bisness, in
Western lands, and Northern mines, Southern railroads, and Eastern
wildcat stocks, to get ready to go. And Miss Abraham didn’t have to
have a dozen dress-makers in the house for a month or two, and
messenger boys, and dry goods clerks, and have to stand and be fitted
for basks and polenays, and back drapery, and front drapery, and tea
gowns, and dinner gowns, and drivin’ gowns, and mornin’ gowns, and
evenin’ gowns, and etectery, etcetery, etcetery.

No, all the preperations she had to make wuz to wrop her mantilly a
little closter round her, and all Mr. Abraham had to do wuz to gird up
his lions. That is what it sez. And I don’t believe it would take much
time to gird up a few lions, it don’t seem to me as if it would.

And when these few simple preperations had been made, they jest histed
up their tent and laid it acrost a camel, and moved on a mild or two,
walkin’ afoot.

Why jest imagine if Miss Abraham had to travel with eight or ten big
Saratoga trunks, how could they have been got up onto that camel? It
couldn’t lave been done. The camel would have died, and old Mr. Abraham
would also have expired a tryin’ to lift ’em up. No, it was all for the
best.

And jest think on’t, for all of these simple, stay to home ways, they
called themselves Pilgrims and Sojourners. Good land! What would they
have thought nowadays to see folks make nothin’ of settin’ off for
China, or Japan or Jerusalem before breakfast.

And what did they know of the hardships of civilization? Now to sposen
the case, sposen Miss Abraham had to live in New York winters, and go
to two or three big receptions every day, and to dinner parties, and
theatre parties, and operas and such like, evenin’s, and receive and
return about three thousand calls, and be on more ’n a dozen charitable
boards (hard boards they be too, some on ’em) and lots of other
projects and enterprizes—be on the go the hull winter, with a dress so
tight she couldn’t breathe instead of her good loose robes, and instead
of her good comfortable sandals have her feet upon high-heeled shoes
pinchin’ her corns almost unto distraction. And then to Washington to
go all through it agin, and more too, and Florida, and Cuba; and then
to the sea-shore and have it all over agin with sea bathin’ added.

And then to the mountains, and all over agin with climbin’ round added.
Then to Europe, with seas sickness, picture galleries, etc., added. And
so on home agin in the fall to begin it all over agin.

Why Miss Abraham would be so tuckered out before she went half through
with one season, that she would be a dead 4 mother.

And Mr. Abraham—why one half hour down at the stock exchange would have
been too much for that good old creeter. The yells and cries, and
distracted movements of the crowd of Luker Gatherers there, would have
skairt him to death. He never would have lived to follow Miss Abraham
round from pillow to post through summer and winter seasons—he wouldn’t
have lived to waltz, or toboggen, or suffer other civilized agonies.
No, he would have been a dead patriark. And better off so, I almost
think.

Not but what I realize that civilization has its advantages. Not but
what I know that if Mr. Abraham wanted Miss Abraham to part his hair
straight, or clean off his phylackrity when she happened to be out a
pickin’ up manny, he couldn’t stand on one side of his tent and
telephone to bring her back, but had to yell at her.

And I realize fully that if one of his herd got strayed off into
another county, they hadn’t no telegraf to head it off, but the old man
had to poke off through rain or sun, and hunt it up himself. And he
couldn’t set down cross-legged in front of his tent in the mornin’, and
read what happened on the other side of the world, the evenin’ before.

And I know that if he wanted to set down some news, they had to kill a
sheep, and spend several years a dressin’ off the hide into
parchment—and kill a goose, or chase it up till they wuz beat out, for
a goose-quill.

And then after about 20 years or so, they could put it down that Miss
Isaac had got a boy—the boy, probably bein’ a married man himself and a
father when the news of his birth wuz set down.

I realize this, and also the great fundimental fact that underlies all
philosophies, that you can’t set down and stand up at the same time—and
that no man, however pure and lofty his motives may be, can’t lean up
against a barn door, and walk off simultanious. And if he don’t walk
off, then the great question comes in, How will he get there? And he
feels lots of times that he must stand up so’s to bring his head up
above the mullien and burdock stalks, amongst which he is a settin’,
and get a wider view-a broader horizeon. And he feels lots of time,
that he must get there.

This is a sort of a curius world, and it makes me feel curius a good
deal of the time as we go through it. But we have to make allowances
for it, for the old world is on a tramp, too. It can’t seem to stop a
minute to oil up its old axeltrys—it moves on, and takes us with it. It
seems to be in a hurry.

Everything seems to be in a hurry here below. And some say Heaven is a
place of continual sailin’ round and goin’ up and up all the time. But
while risin’ up and soarin’ is a sweet thought to me, still sometimes I
love to think that Heaven is a place where I can set down, and set for
some time.

I told Josiah so (waked him up, for he wuz asleep), and he said he sot
more store on the golden streets, and the wavin’ palms, and the
procession of angels. (And then he went to sleep agin.)

But I don’t feel so. I’d love, as I say, to jest set down for quite a
spell, and set there, to be kinder settled down and to home with them
whose presence makes a home anywhere. I wouldn’t give a cent to sail
round unless I wuz made to know it wuz my duty to sail. Josiah wants
to.

But, as I say, everybody is in a hurry. Husbands can’t hardly find time
to keep up a acquaintance with their wives. Fathers don’t have no time
to get up a intimate acquaintance with their children. Mothers are in
such a hurry—babys are in such a hurry—that they can’t scarcely find
time to be born. And I declare for’t, it seems sometimes as if folks
don’t want to take time to die.

The old folks at home wait with faithful, tired old eyes for the letter
that don’t come, for the busy son or daughter hasn’t time to write
it—no, they are too busy a tearin’ up the running vine of affection and
home love, and a runnin’ with it.

Yes, the hull nation is in a hurry to get somewhere else, to go on, it
can’t wait. It is a trampin’ on over the Western slopes, a trampin’
over red men, and black men, and some white men a hurryin’ on to the
West—hurryin’ on to the sea. And what then?

Is there a tide of restfulness a layin’ before it? Some cool waters of
repose where it will bathe its tired forward, and its stun-bruised
feet, and set there for some time?

I don’t s’pose so. I don’t s’pose it is in its nater to. I s’pose it
will look off longingly onto the far off somewhere that lays over the
waters—beyend the sunset.

JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE.


NEW YORK, June, 1887.




Chapter I.
SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA.


The idee on’t come to me one day about sundown, or a little before
sundown. I wuz a settin’ in calm peace, and a big rockin’ chair covered
with a handsome copperplate, a readin’ what the Sammist sez about
“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” The words struck deep, and as I said,
it was jest that very minute that the idee struck me about goin’ to
Saratoga. Why I should have had the idee at jest that minute, I can’t
tell, nor Josiah can’t. We have talked about it sense.

But good land! such creeters as thoughts be never wuz, nor never will
be. They will creep in, and round, and over anything, and get inside of
your mind (entirely unbeknown to you) at any time. Curious, haint
it?—How you may try to hedge ’em out, and shet the doors and
everything. But they will creep up into your mind, climb up and draw up
their ladders, and there they will be, and stalk round independent as
if they owned your hull head; curious!

Well, there the idee wuz—I never knew nothin’ about it, nor how it got
there. But there it wuz, lookin’ me right in the face of my soul,
kinder pert and saucy, sayin’, “You’d better go to Saratoga next
summer; you and Josiah.”

But I argued with it. Sez I, “What should we go to Saratoga for? None
of the relations live there on my side, or on hison; why should we go?”

But still that idee kep’ a hantin me; “You’d better go to Saratoga next
summer, you and Josiah.” And it whispered, “Mebby it will help Josiah’s
corns.” (He is dretful troubled with corns.) And so the idee kep’ a
naggin’ me, it nagged me for three days and three nights before I
mentioned it to my Josiah. And when I did, he scorfed at the idee. He
said, “The idee of water curing them dumb corns—“

Sez I, “Josiah Allen, stranger things have been done;” sez I, “that
water is very strong. It does wonders.”

And he scorfed agin and sez, “Don’t you believe faith could cure em?”

Josiah in woodlot

Sez I, “If it wuz strong enough it could.”

But the thought kep a naggin’ me stiddy, and then—here is the curious
part of it—the thought nagged me, and I nagged Josiah, or not exactly
nagged; not a clear nag; I despise them, and always did. But I kinder
kep’ it before his mind from day to day, and from hour to hour. And the
idee would keep a tellin’ me things and I would keep a tellin’ ’em to
my companion. The idee would keep a sayin’ to me, “It is one of the
most beautiful places in our native land. The waters will help you, the
inspirin’ music, and elegance and gay enjoyment you will find there,
will sort a uplift you. You had better go there on a tower;” and agin
it sez, “Mebby it will help Josiah’s corns.”

And old Dr. Gale a happenin’ in at about that time, I asked him about
it (he doctored me when I wuz a baby, and I have helped ’em for years.
Good old creetur, he don’t get along as well as he ort to. Loontown is
a healthy place.) I told him about my strong desire to go to Saratoga,
and I asked him plain if he thought the water would help my pardner’s
corns. And he looked dreadful wise and he riz up and walked across the
floor 2 and fro several times, probably 3 times to, and the same number
of times fro, with his arms crossed back under the skirt of his coat
and his eyebrows knit in deep thought, before he answered me. Finely he
said, that modern science had not fully demonstrated yet the direct
bearing of water on corn. In some cases it might and probably did
stimulate ’em to greater luxuriance, and then again a great flow of
water might retard their growth.

Sez I, anxiously, “Then you’d advise me to go there with him?”

“Yes,” sez he, “on the hull, I advise you to go.”

Samantha and Dr. Gale

Them words I reported to Josiah, and sez I in anxious axents, “Dr. Gale
advises us to go.”

And Josiah sez, “I guess I shan’t mind what that old fool sez.”

Them wuz my pardner’s words, much as I hate to tell on ’em. But from
day to day I kep’ it stiddy before him, how dang’r’us it wuz to go
ag’inst a doctor’s advice. And from day to day he would scorf at the
plan. And I, ev’ry now and then, and mebby oftener, would get him a
extra good meal, and attack him on the subject immegatly afterwards.
But all in vain. And I see that when he had that immovible sotness onto
him, one extra meal wouldn’t soften or molify him. No, I see plain I
must make a more voyalent effort. And I made it. For three stiddy days
I put before that man the best vittles that these hands could make, or
this brain could plan.

And at the end of the 3d day I gently tackled him agin on the subject,
and his state wuz such, bland, serene, happified, that he consented
without a parlay. And so it wuz settled that the next summer we wuz to
go to Saratoga. And he began to count on it and make preparation in a
way that I hated to see.

Yes, from the very minute that our two minds wuz made up to go to
Saratoga Josiah Allen wuz set on havin’ sunthin new and uneek in the
way of dress and whiskers. I looked coldly on the idee of puttin’ a gay
stripe down the legs of the new pantaloons I made for him, and broke it
up, also a figured vest. I went through them two crisises and came out
triumphent.

Then he went and bought a new bright pink necktie with broad long ends
which he intended to have float out, down the front of his vest. And I
immegatly took it for the light-colored blocks in my silk log-cabin
bedquilt. Yes, I settled the matter of that pink neck-gear with a high
hand and a pair of shears. And Josiah sez now that he bought it for
that purpose, for the bedquilt, because he loves to see a dressy
quilt,—sez he always enjoys seein’ a cabin look sort o’ gay. But good
land! he didn’t. He intended and calculated to wear that neck-tie into
Saratoga,—a sight for men and angels, if I hadn’t broke it up.

But in the matter of whiskers, there I was powerless. He trimmed ’em
(unbeknow to me) all off the side of his face, them good honerable side
whiskers of hisen, that had stood by him for years in solemnity and
decency, and begun to cultivate a little patch on the end of his chin.
I argued with him, and talked well on the subject, eloquent, but it wuz
of no use, I might as well have argued with the wind in March.

He said, he wuz bound on goin’ into Saratoga with a fashionable
whisker, come what would.

And then I sithed, and he sez,—“ You have broke up my pantaloons, my
vest, and my neck-tie, you have ground me down onto plain broadcloth,
but in the matter of whiskers I am firm! Yes!” sez he “on these
whiskers I take my stand!”

And agin I sithed heavy, and I sez in a dretful impressive way, as I
looked on ’em, “Josiah Allen, remember you are a father and a
grandfather!”

And he sez firmly, “If I wuz a great-grandfather I would trim my
whiskers in jest this way, that is if I wuz a goin’ to set up to be
fashionable and a goin’ to Saratoga for my health.”

And I groaned kinder low to myself, and kep’ hopin’ that mebby they
wouldn’t grow very fast, or that some axident would happen to ’em, that
they would get afire or sunthin’. But they didn’t. And they grew from
day to day luxurient in length, but thin. And his watchful care kep’
’em from axident, and I wuz too high princepled to set fire to ’em when
he wuz asleep, though sometimes, on a moonlight night, I was tempted
to, sorely tempted.

But I didn’t, and they grew from day to day, till they wuz the
curiusest lookin’ patch o’ whiskers that I ever see. And when we sot
out for Saratoga, they wuz jest about as long as a shavin’ brush, and
looked some like one. There wuz no look of a class-leader, and a
perfesser about ’em, and I told him so. But he worshiped ’em, and
gloried in the idee of goin’ afar to show ’em off.

But the neighbors received the news that we wuz goin’ to a waterin’
place coldly, or with ill-concealed envy.

Uncle Jonas Bently told us he shouldn’t think we would want to go round
to waterin’ troughs at our age.

And I told him it wuzn’t a waterin’ trough, and if it wuz, I thought
our age wuz jest as good a one as any, to go to it.

He had the impression that Saratoga wuz a immense waterin’ trough where
the country all drove themselves summers to be watered. He is deef as a
Hemlock post, and I yelled up at him jest as loud as I dast for fear of
breakin’ open my own chest, that the water got into us, instid of our
gettin’ into the water, but I didn’t make him understand, for I hearn
afterwards of his sayin’ that, as nigh as he could make out we all got
into the waterin’ trough and wuz watered.

The school teacher, a young man, with long, small lims, and some
pimpley on the face, but well meanin’, he sez to me: “Saratoga is a
beautiful spah.”

Samantha and the school teacher

And I sez warmly, “It aint no such thing, it is a village, for I have
seen a peddler who went right through it, and watered his horses there,
and he sez it is a waterin’ place, and a village.”

“Yes,” sez he, “it is a beautiful village, a modest retiren city, and
at the same time it is the most noted spah on this continent.”

I wouldn’t contend with him for it wuz on the stoop of the meetin’
house, and I believe in bein’ reverent. But I knew it wuzn’t no
“spah,”—that had a dreadful flat sound to me. And any way I knew I
should face its realities soon and know all about it. Lots of wimen
said that for anybody who lived right on the side of a canal, and had
two good, cisterns on the place, and a well, they didn’t see why I
should feel in a sufferin’ condition for any more water; and if I did,
why didn’t I ketch rain water?

Such wuz some of the deep arguments they brung up aginst my embarkin’
on this enterprise, they talked about it sights and sights;—why, it
lasted the neighbors for a stiddy conversation, till along about the
middle of the winter. Then the Minister’s wife bought a new alpacky
dress—unbeknown to the church till it wuz made up—and that kind o’
drawed their minds off o’ me for a spell.

Aunt Polly Pixley wuz the only one who received the intelligence
gladly. And she thought she would go too. She had been kinder run down
and most bed rid for years. And she had a idee the water might help
her. And I encouraged Aunt Polly in the idee, for she wuz well off.
Yes, Mr. and Miss Pixley wuz very well off though they lived in a
little mite of a dark, low, lonesome house, with some tall Pollard
willows in front of the door in a row, and jest acrost the road from a
grave-yard.

Her husband had been close and wuzn’t willin’ to have any other luxury
or means of recreation in the house only a bass viol, that had been his
father’s—he used to play on that for hours and hours. I thought that
wuz one reason why Polly wuz so nervous. I said to Josiah that it would
have killed me outright to have that low grumblin’ a goin’ on from day
to day, and to look at them tall lonesome willows and grave stuns.

But, howsumever, Polly’s husband had died durin’ the summer, and Polly
parted with the bass viol the day after the funeral. She got out some
now, and wuz quite wrought up with the idee of goin’ to Saratoga.

But Sister Minkley; sister in the church and sister-in-law by reason of
Wbitefield, sez to me, that she should think I would think twice before
I danced and waltzed round waltzes.

And I sez, “I haint thought of doin’ it, I haint thought of dancin’
round or square or any other shape.”

Sez she, “You have got to, if you go to Saratoga.”

Sez I, “Not while life remains in this frame.”

And old Miss Bobbet came up that minute—it wuz in the store that we
were a talkin’—and sez she, “It seems to me, Josiah Allen’s wife, that
you are too old to wear low-necked dresses and short sleeves.”

“And I should think you’d take cold a goin’ bareheaded,” sez Miss Luman
Spink who wuz with her.

Sez I, lookin’ at ’em coldly, “Are you lunys or has softness begun on
your brains?”

“Why,” sez they, “you are talking about goin’ to Saratoga, hain’t you?”

“Yes,” sez I.

“Well then you have got to wear ’em,” says Miss Bobbet. “They don’t let
anybody inside of the incorporation without they have got on a
low-necked dress and short sleeves.”

“And bare-headed,” sez Miss Spink; “if they have’ got a thing on their
heads they won’t let ’em in.”

Sez I, “I don’t believe it”

Sez Miss Bobbet, “It is so, for I hearn it, and hearn it straight.
James Robbets’s wife’s sister had a second cousin who lived neighbor to
a woman whose niece had been there, been right there on the spot. And
Celestine Bobbet, Uncle Ephraim’s Celestine, hearn it from James’es
wife when she wuz up there last spring, it come straight. They all have
to go in low necks.”

“And not a mite of anything on their heads,” says Miss Spink.

Sez I in sarcastical axents, “Do men have to go in low necks too?”

“No,” says Miss Bobbet. “But they have to have the tails of their coats
kinder pinted. Why,” sez she, “I hearn of a man that had got clear to
the incorporation and they wouldn’t let him in because his coat kinder
rounded off round the bottom, so he went out by the side of the road
and pinned up his coat tails, into a sort of a pinted shape, and good
land the incorporation let him right in, and never said a word.”

I contended that these things wuzn’t so, but I found it wuz the
prevailin’ opinion. For when I went to see the dressmaker about makin’
me a dress for the occasion, I see she felt just like the rest about
it. My dress wuz a good black alpacky. I thought I would have it begun
along in the edge of the winter, when she didn’t have so much to do,
and also to have it done on time. We laid out to start on the follerin’
July, and I felt that I wanted everything ready.

I bought the dress the 7th day of November early in the forenoon, the
next day after my pardner consented to go, and give 65 cents a yard for
it, double wedth. I thought I could get it done on time, dressmakers
are drove a good deal. But I felt that a dressmaker could commence a
dress in November and get it done the follerin’ July, without no great
strain bein’ put onto her; and I am fur from bein’ the one to put
strains onto wimmen, and hurry ’em beyend their strength. But I felt
Almily had time to make it on honor and with good buttonholes.

“Well,” she sez, the first thing after she had unrolled the alpacky,
and held it up to the light to see if it was firm—sez she:

“I s’pose you are goin’ to have it made with a long train, and low neck
and short sleeves, and the waist all girted down to a taper?”

I wuz agast at the idee, and to think Alminy should broach it to me,
and I give her a piece of my mind that must have lasted her for days
and days. It wuz a long piece, and firm as iron. But she is a woman who
likes to have the last word and carry out her own idees, and she
insisted that nobody was allowed in Saratoga—that they wuz outlawed,
and laughed at if they didn’t have trains and low necks, and little
mites of waists no bigger than pipe-stems.

Sez I, “Alminy Hagidone, do you s’pose that I, a woman of my age, and a
member of the meetin’ house, am a goin’ to wear a low-necked dress?”

“Why not?,” sez she, “it is all the fashion and wimmen as old agin as
you be wear ’em.”

Well, sez I, “It is a shame and a disgrace if they do, to say nothin’
of the wickedness of it. Who do you s’pose wants to see their old skin
and bones? It haint nothin’ pretty anyway. And as fer the waists bein’
all girted up and drawed in, that is nothin’ but crushed bones and
flesh and vitals, that is just crowdin’ down your insides into a state
o’ disease and deformity, torturin’ your heart down so’s the blood
can’t circulate, and your lungs so’s you can’t breathe, it is nothin’
but slow murder anyway, and if I ever take it into my head to kill
myself, Alminy Hagidone, I haint a goin’ to do it in a way of perfect
torture and torment to me, I’d ruther be drownded.”

She quailed, and I sez, “I am one that is goin’ to take good long
breaths to the very last.” She see I wuz like iron aginst the idee of
bein’ drawed in, and tapered, and she desisted. I s’pose I did look
skairful. But she seemed still to cling to the idee of low necks and
trains, and she sez sort a rebukingly:

“You ortn’t to go to Saratoga if you haint willin’ to do as the rest
do. I spose,” sez she dreamily, “the streets are full of wimmen a
walkin’ up and down with long trains a hangin’ down and sweepin’ the
streets, and ev’ry one on ’em with low necks and short sleeves, and all
on ’em a flirting with some man”

“Truly,” sez I, “if that is so, that is why the idee come to me. I am
_needed_ there. I have a high mission to perform about. But I don’t
believe it is so.”

“Then you won’t have it made with a long train?” sez she, a holdin’ up
a breadth of the alpacky in front of me, to measure the skirt.

“No mom!” sez I, and there wuz both dignity and deep resolve in that
“mom.” It wuz as firm and stern principled a “mom” as I ever see,
though I say it that shouldn’t. And I see it skairt her. She measured
off the breadths kinder trembly, and seemed so anxious to pacify me
that she got it a leetle shorter in the back than it wuz in the front.
And (for the same reason) it fairly clicked me in the neck it wuz so
high, and the sleeves wuz that long that I told Josiah Allen (in
confidence) I was tempted to knit some loops across the bottom of ’em
and wear ’em for mits.

But I didn’t, and I didn’t change the dress neither. Thinkses I, mebby
it will have a good moral effect on them other old wimmen there.
Thinkses I, when they see another woman melted and shortened and choked
fur principle’s sake, mebby they will pause in their wild careers.

Wall, this wuz in November, and I wuz to have the dress, if it wuz a
possible thing, by the middle of April, so’s to get it home in time to
sew some lace in the neck. And so havin’ everything settled about goin’
I wuz calm in my frame most all the time, and so wuz my pardner.

And right here, let me insert this one word of wisdom for the special
comfort of my sect and yet it is one that may well be laid to heart by
the more opposite one. If your pardner gets restless and oneasy and
middlin’ cross, as pardners will be anon, or even oftener—start them
off on a tower. A tower will in 9 cases out of 10 lift ’em out of their
oneasiness, their restlessness and their crossness.

_Why_ this is so I cannot tell, no more than I can explain other
mysteries of creation, but I know it is so. I know they will come home
more placider, more serener, and more settled-downer. Why I have known
a short tower to Slab City or Loontown act like a charm on my pardner,
when crossness wuz in his mean and snappishness wuz present with him. I
have known him to set off with the mean of a lion and come back with
the liniment of a lamb. Curious, haint it?

And jest the prospect of a tower ahead is a great help to a woman in
rulin’ and keepin’ a pardner straight and right in his liniments and
his acts. Somehow jest the thought of a tower sort a lifts him up in
mind, and happifys him, and makes him easier to quell, and pardners
_must_ be quelled at times, else there would be no livin’ with ’em.
This is known to all wimmen companions and and men too. Great great is
the mystery of pardners.

Josiah mad and happy




Chapter II.
ARDELLA TUTT AND HER MOTHER.


But to resoom and continue on. I was a settin’ one day, after it wuz
all decided, and plans laid on; I wuz a settin’ by the fire a mendin’
one of Josiah’s socks. I wuz a settin’ there, as soft and pliable in my
temper as the woosted I wuz a darnin’ ’em with, my Josiah at the same
time a peacefelly sawin’ wood in the wood-house, when I heard a rap at
the door and I riz up and opened it, and there stood two perfect
strangers, females. I, with a perfect dignity and grace (and with the
sock still in my left hand) asked ’em to set down, and consequently
they sot. Then ensued a slight pause durin’ which my two gray eyes
roamed over the females before me.

The oldest one wuz very sharp in her face and had a pair of small round
eyes that seemed when they were sot onto you to sort a bore into you
like two gimlets. Her nose was very sharp and defient, as if it wuz
constantly sayin’ to itself, “I am a nose to be looked up to, I am a
nose to be respected, and feared if necessary.” Her chin said the same
thing, and her lips which wuz very thin, and her elbow, which wuz very
sharp.

Her dress was a stiff sort of a shinin’ poplin, made tight acrost the
chest and elboes. And her hat had some stiff feathers in it that stood
up straight and sort a sharp lookin’. She had a long sharp breast-pin
sort a stabbed in through the front of her stiff standin’ collar, and
her knuckles sot out through her firm lisle thread gloves, her umberell
wuz long and wound up hard, to that extent I have never seen before nor
sense. She wuz, take it all in all, a hard sight, and skairful.

The other one wuzn’t no more like her in looks than a soft fat young
cabbage head is like the sharp bean pole that it grows up by the side
on, in the same garden. She wuz soft in her complexion, her lips, her
cheeks, her hands, and as I mistrusted at that first minute, and found
out afterwards, soft in her head too. Her dress wuz a loose-wove
parmetty, full in the waist and sort a drabbly round the bottom. Her
hat wuz drab-colored felt with some loose ribbon bows a hangin’ down on
it, and some soft ostridge tips. She had silk mits on and her hands wuz
fat and kinder moist-lookin’. Her eyes wuz very large and round, and
blue, and looked sort o’ dreamy and wanderin’ and there wuz a kind of a
wrapped smile on her face all the time. She had a roll of paper in her
hand and I didn’t dislike her looks a mite.

Finally the oldest female opened her lips, some as a steel trap would
open sudden and kinder sharp, and sez she: “I am Miss Deacon Tutt, of
Tuttville, and this is my second daughter Ardelia. Cordelia is my
oldest, and I have 4 younger than Ardelia.”

I bowed real polite and said, “I wuz glad to make the acquaintance of
the hull 7 on ’em.” I can be very genteel when I set out, almost
stylish.

“I s’pose,” says she, “I am talkin’ to Josiah Allen’s wife?”

I gin her to understand that that wuz my name and my station, and she
went on, and sez she: “I have hearn on you through my husband’s 2d
cousin, Cephas Tutt.”

“Cephas,” sez she, “bein’ wrote to by me on the subject of Ardelia, the
same letter containin’ seven poems of hern, and on bein’ asked to point
out the quickest way to make her name and fame known to the world at
large, wrote back that he havin’ always dealt in butter and lard,
wuzn’t up to the market price in poetry, and that you would be a good
one to go to for advice. And so,” sez she a pointin’ to a bag she
carried on her arm (a hard lookin’ bag made of crash with little
bullets and knobs of embroidery on it), “and so we took this bag full
of Ardelia’s poetry and come on the mornin’ train, Cephas’es letter
havin’ reached us at nine o’clock last night. I am a woman of
business.”

The bag would hold about 4 quarts and it wuz full. I looked at it and
sithed.

“I see,” sez she, “that you are sorry that we didn’t bring more poetry
with us. But we thought that this little batch would give you a idee of
what a mind she has, what a glorious, soarin’ genus wuz in front of
you, and we could bring more the next time we come.”

I sithed agin, three times, but Miss Tutt didn’t notice ’em a mite no
more’n they’d been giggles or titters. She wouldn’t have took no notice
of them. She wuz firm and decided doin’ her own errent, and not payin’
no attention to anything, nor anybody else.

“Ardelia, read the poem you have got under your arm to Miss Allen! The
bag wuz full of her longer ones,” sez she, “but I felt that I _must_
let you hear her poem on Spring. It is a gem. I felt it would be
wrongin’ you, not to give you that treat. Read it Ardelia.”

I see Ardelia wuz used to obeyin’ her ma. She opened the sheet to once,
and begun. It wuz as follows:

“ARDELIA TUTT ON SPRING.”

“Oh spring, sweet spring, thou comest in the spring;
Thou comest in the spring time of the year.
We fain would have thee come in Autumn; fling-
est thou so sad a shade, oh Spring, so dear?

“So dear the hopes thou draggest in thy rear,
So mournful, and so wan, and not so sweet;
So weird thou art, and oh, all! all! too dear
Art thou, alas! oh mournful spring; my ear—

“My ear that long did lay at gate of hope,
Prone at the gate while years glided by—
I fain would lift that ear, alas, why cope
With cruel wrong, it must lie there so heavy ’tis my eye—

“My eye, I fling o’er buried ruins long,
I flung it there, regardless of the loss;
That eye, I fain would gather in with song;
In vain! ’tis gone, I bow and own the cross.

“Dear ear, lone eye, sweet buried hopes, alas,
I give thee to the proud inexorable main;
Deep calls to deep, and it doth not reply,
But sayeth my heart, they will not be mine own again.”


Ardelia reads

Jest the minute Ardelia stopped readin’ Miss Tatt says proudly: “There!
haint that a remarkable poem,?”

Sez I, calmly, “Yes it is a remarkable one.”

“Did you ever hear anything like it?” says she, triumphly.

“No,” sez I honestly, “I never did.”

“Ardelia, read the poem on Little Ardelia Cordelia; give Miss Allen the
treat of hearin’ that beautiful thing.”

I sort a sithed low to myself; it wuz more of a groan than a common
sithe, but Miss Tutt didn’t heed it, she kep’ right on—

“I have always brought up my children to make other folks happy, all
they can, and in rehearsin’ this lovely and remarkable poem, Ardelia
will be not only makin’ you perfectly happy, givin’ you a rich
intellectual feast, that you can’t often have, way out here in the
country, fur from Tuttville; but she will also be attendin’ to the
business that brought us here. I have always fetched my children up to
combine joy and business; weld ’em together like brass and steel.
Ardelia, begin!”

So Ardelia commenced agin’. It wuz wrote on a big sheet of paper and a
runnin’ vine wuz a runnin’ all ’round the edge of the paper, made with
a pen, it was as follows:

“STANZAS ENTITLED
“SWEET LITTLE THING.

“Wrote on the death of Ardelia Cordelia, who died at the age of seven
days and seven hours.”

“Sweet little thing, that erst so soon did bloom,
And didest but fade, as falls the mystic flower!
Sweet little thing, we did but erst low croon
To thee a plaintive lay, and lo! for hour and hour—
Sweet little thing.

“For hours we sang to thee of high emprise, the songs of hope
Though aged but week (and seven hours) thou laughested in thy sleep;
We cling to that in peace, though mope
The dullard knave, and biddest us go and weep—
Sweet little thing.

“Thou laughested at high emprise, and yet, in sooth,
’Twere craven to say thou couldst not rise
To scale the mounts! to soar the cliffs! if worth
Were the test, twice worthy thou, in that the merit lies—
Sweet little thing.

“Thy words that might have shook the breathless world with might;
Alas! I catchested not on any earthly ground,
That voice that might have guided nations high aright,
Congealed within thy tiny windpipe ’twas, it did not steal around—
Sweet little thing.

“Sweet little thing, so soon thy wings unfurled
A wing, a feather lone low floated up the yard;
A world might weep, a world might stand appalled,
To hear it low rehearsed by tearful female bard—
Sweet little thing.”


Jest as soon as Ardelia stopped rehearsin’ the verses, Miss Tutt sez
agin to me:

“Haint that a most remarkable poem?”

And agin I sez calmly, and trutbfully, “Yes, it is a very remarkable
one!”

“And now,” sez Miss Tutt, plungin’ her hand in the bag, and drawin’ out
a sheet of paper, “to convince you that Ardelia has always had this
divine gift of poesy—that it is not, all the effect of culture and high
education—let me read to you a poem she wrote when she wuz only a mere
child,” and Miss Tutt read:

“LINES ON A CAT

“WRITTEN BY ARDELIA TUTT,


“At the age of fourteen years, two months and eight days.


“Oh Cat! Sweet Tabby cat of mine;
6 months of age has passed o’er thee,
And I would not resign, resign
The pleasure that I find in you.
Dear old cat!”


“Don’t you think,” sez Miss Tutt, “that this poem shows a fund of
passion, a reserve power of passion and constancy, remarkable in one so
young?”

“Yes,” sez I reasonably, “no doubt she liked the cat. And,” sez I,
wantin’ to say somethin’ pleasant and agreeable to her, “no doubt it
was a likely cat.”

“Oh the cat itself is of miner importance,” sez Miss Tutt. “We will
fling the cat to the winds. It’s of my daughter I would speak. I simply
handled the cat to show the rare precocious intellect. Oh! how it
gushed out in the last line in the unconquerable burst of repressed
passion—’Dear old cat!’ Shakespeare might have wrote that line, do you
not think so?”

“No doubt he might,” sez I, calmly, “but he didn’t.”

I see she looked mad and I hastened to say: “He wuzn’t aquainted with
the cat.”

She looked kinder mollyfied and continued:

“Ardelia dashes off things with a speed that would astonish a mere
common writer. Why she dashed off thirty-nine verses once while she wuz
waitin’ for the dish water to bile, and sent ’em right off to the
printer, without glancin’ at ’em agin.’

“I dare say so,” sez I, “I should judge so by the sound on ’em.”

“Out of envy and jealousy, the rankest envy, and the shearest jealousy,
them verses wuz sent back with the infamous request that she should use
’em for curl papers. But she sot right down and wrote forty-eight
verses on a ‘Cruel Request,’ wrote ’em inside of eighteen minutes. She
throws off things, Ardelia does, in half an hour, that it would take
other poets, weeks and weeks to write.”

At the printers

“I persume so,” sez I, “I dare persume to say, they _never_ could write
’em.”

“And now,” sez Miss Tutt, “the question is, will you put Ardelia on the
back of that horse that poets ride to glory on? Will you lift her onto
the back of that horse, and do it _at once?_ I require nothin’ hard of
you,” sez she, a borin’ me through and through with her eyes. “It must
be a joy to you, Josiah Allen’s wife, a rare joy, to be the means of
bringin’ this rare genius before the public. I ask nothin’ hard of you,
I only ask that you demand, _demand_ is the right word, not ask; that
would be grovelin’ trucklin’ folly, but _demand_ that the public that
has long ignored my daugther Ardelia’s claim to a seat amongst the
immortal poets, demand them, _compel_ them to pause, to listen, and
then seat her there, up, up on the highest, most perpendiciler pinnacle
of fame’s pillow. Will you do this?”

I sat in deep dejection and my rockin’ chair, and knew not what to
say—and Miss Tutt went on:

“We demand more than fame, deathless, immortal fame for ’em. We want
money, wealth for ’em, and want it at once! We want it for extra
household expenses, luxuries, clothing, jewelry, charity, etc. If we
enrich the world with this rare genius, the world must enrich us with
its richest emmolients. Will you see that we have it! Will you _at
once_ do as I asked you to? Will you seat her immegately where I want
her sot?

Sez I, considerin’, “I can’t get her up there alone, I haint strong
enough.” Sez I, sort a mekanikly, “I have got the rheumatez.”

“So you scoff me do you? I came to you to get bread, am I to get worse
than a stun—a scoff?”

“I haint gin you no scoff,” sez I, a spunkin’ up a little, “I haint
thought on it. I like Ardelia and wish her well, but I can’t do
merikles, I can’t compel the public to like things if they don’t.”

Sez Miss Tutt, “You are jealous of her, you hate her.”

“No, I don’t,” sez I, “I haint jealous of her, and I like her looks
first-rate. I love a pretty young girl,” sez I candidly, “jest as I
love a fresh posy with the dew still on it, a dainty rose-bud with the
sweet fragrance layin’ on its half-folded heart. I love ’em,” sez I, a
beginnin’ to eppisode a little unbeknown to me, “I love ’em jest as I
love the soft unbroken silence of the early spring mornin’, the sun all
palely tinted with rose and blue, and the earth alayin’ calm and
unwoke-up, fresh and fair. I love such a mornin’ and such a life, for
itself and for the unwritten prophecis in it. And when I see genius in
such a sweet, young life, why it makes me feel as it duz to see through
all the tender prophetic beauty of the mornin’ skies, a big white dove
a soarin’ up through the blue heavens.”

Sez Miss Tutt, “You see that in Ardelia, but you wont own it, you know
you do.”

“No!” sez I, “I would love to tell you that I see it in Ardelia; I
would honest, but I can’t look into them mornin’ skies and say I see a
white dove there, when I don’t see nothin’ more than a plump pullet, a
jumpin’ down from the fence or a pickin’ round calmly in the back
door-yard. Jest as likely the hen is, as the white dove, jest as
honerable, but you mustn’t confound the two together.”

“A _hen_,” sez Miss Tutt bitterly. “To confound my Ardelia with a
_hen!_ And I don’t think there wuz ever a more ironieler ‘hen’ than
that wuz, or a scornfuller one.”

“Why,” sez I reasonably. “Hens are necessary and useful in any
position, both walkin’ and settin’, and layin’. You can’t get’em in any
position hardly, but what they are useful and respectable, only jest
flyin’. Hens can’t fly. Their wings haint shaped for it. They look some
like a dove’s wings on the outside, the same feathers, the same way of
stretchin’ ’em out. But there is sunthin lackin’ in ’em, some
heaven-given capacity for soarin’ an for flight that the hens don’t
have. And it makes trouble, sights and sights of trouble when hens try
to fly, try to, and can’t!

“At the same time it is hard for a dove to settle down in a back yard
and stay there, hard and tegus. She can and duz sometimes, but never
till after her wings have been clipped in some way. Poor little dove! I
am always sorry for ’em to see ’em a walkin’ round there, a wantin’ to
fly—a not forgettin’ how it seemed to have their wings soarin’ up
through the clear sky, and the rush of the pure liquid windwaves a
sweepin’ aginst ’em, as they riz up, up, in freedom, and happiness, and
glory. Poor little creeters.

“Yes, but doves can, if you clip their wings, settle down and walk, but
hens CAN’T fly, not for any length of time they can’t. No amount of
stimulatin’ poultices applied to the ends of their tail feathers and
wings can ever make ’em fly. They can’t; it haint their nater. They can
make nests, and fill them with pretty downy chicks, they can be happy
and beautiful in life and mean; they can spend their lives in jest as
honerable and worthy a way as if they wuz a flyin’ round, and make a
good honerable appearance from day to day, _till_ they begin to flop
their wings, and fly—then their mean is not beautiful and inspirin’;
no, it is fur from it. It is tuff to see ’em, tuff to see the floppin’,
tuff to see their vain efforts to soar through the air, tuff to see ’em
fall percepitously down onto the ground agin. For they must come there
in the end; they are morally certain to.

“Now Ardelia is a sweet pretty lookin’ girl, she can set down in a
cushioned arm-chair by a happy fireside, with pretty baby faces a
clusterin’ around her and some man’s face like the sun a reflectin’
back the light of her happy heart. But she can’t sit up on the pinnacle
of fame’s pillow. I don’t believe she can ever get up there, I don’t.
Honestly speakin’, I don’t.”

“Envy!” sez Miss Tutt, “glarin’, shameless envy! You don’t want Ardelia
to rise! You don’t want her to mount that horse I spoke of; you don’t
want to own that you see genius in her. But you do, Josiah Allen’s
wife, you know you do—“

“No,” sez I, “I don’t see it. I see the sweetness of pretty girlhood,
the beauty and charm of openin’ life, but I don’t see nothin’ else, I
don’t, honest. I don’t believe she has got genius,” sez I, “seein’ you
put the question straight to me and depend a answer; seein’ her future
career depends on her choice now, I must tell you that I believe she
would succeed better in the millionary trade or the mantilly maker’s
than she will in tryin’ to mount the horse you speak on.

“Why,” sez I, candidly, “some folks _can’t_ get up on that horse, their
legs haint strong enough. And if they do manage to get on, it throws
’em, and they lay under the heels for life. I don’t want to see Ardelia
there, I don’t want to see her maimed and lamed and stunted so early in
the mornin’ of life, by a kick from that animal, for she can’t ride
it,” sez I, “honestly she can’t.

“There is nothin’ so useless in life, and so sort a wearin’ as to be a
lookin’ for sunthin’ that haint there. And when you pretend it is there
when it haint, you are addin’ iniquity to uselessness; so if you’ll
take my advice, the advice of a wellwisher, you will stop lookin’, for
I tell you plain that it haint there.”

Sez Miss Tutt, “Josiah Allen’s wife, you have for reasens best known to
your conscience baulked my hopes of a speedy immortality. You have
willfully tried to break down my hopes of an immense, immediate income
to flow out of them poems for luxuries, jewelry, charity, etc. But I
can at least claim this at your hands, I _demand honesty_. Tell me
honestly what you yourself think of them poems.”

Sez I (gettin’ up sort a quick and goin’ into the buttery, and bringin’
out a little basket), “Here are some beautiful sweet apples, won’t you
have one?”

“_Apples_, at such a time as this;” sez Miss Tutt “When the slumberin’
world trembles before the advancin’ tread of a new poet—When the
heavens are listenin’ intently to ketch the whispers of an Ardelia’s
fate—Sweet apples! in such a time as this!” sez she. But she took two.

“I _demand the truth_,” sez she. “And you are a base, trucklin’ coward,
if you give it not.”

Sez I, tryin’ to carry off the subject and the apples into the buttery;
“Poetry ort to have pains took with it.”

“Jealousy!” sez Miss Tutt. “Jealousy might well whisper this. Envy,
rank envy might breathe the suspicion that Ardelia haint been took
pains with. But I can see through it,” sez she. “I can see through it.”

“Well,” sez I, wore out, “if they belonged to me, and if she wuz my
girl, I would throw the verses into the fire, and set her to a trade.”

She stood for a minute and bored me through and through with them eyes.
Why it seemed as if there wuz two holes clear through my very spirit,
and sole; she partly lifted that fearful lookin’ umberell as if to
pierce me through and through; it wuz a fearful seen.

At last she turned, and flung the apple she wuz a holdin’ onto the
floor at my feet—and sez she, “I scorn ’em, and you too.” And she
kinder stomped her feet and sez, “I fling off the dust I have gethered
here, at your feet.”

Now my floor wuz clean and looked like yeller glass, almost, it wuz so
shinin’ and spotless, and I resented the idee of her sayin’ that she
collected dust off from it. But I didn’t say nothin’ back. She had the
bag of poetry on her arm, and I didn’t feel like addin’ any more to her
troubles.

But Ardelia, after her mother had swept out ahead, turned round and
held out her hand, and smiled a sweet but ruther of a despondent and
sorrowful smile, and I kissed her warmly. I like Ardelia. And what I
said, I said for her good, and she knew it. I like Ardelia.

Well, Miss Tutt and Ardelia went from our house to Eben Pixley’s. They
are distant relatives of hern, and live about 3 quarters of a mile from
us. The Pixleys think everything of Ardelia but they can’t bear her
mother. There has been difficulties in the family.

But Ardelia stayed there mor’n two weeks right along. She haint very
happy to home I believe. And before she went back home it wuz arranged
that she should teach the winter’s school and board to Miss Pixley’s.
But Miss Pixley wuz took sick with the tyfus before she had been there
two weeks—and, for all the world, if the deestrict didn’t want us to
board her. Josiah hadn’t much to do, so he could carry her back and
forth in stormy weather, and it wuz her wish to come. And it wuz
Josiah’s wish too, for the pay wuz good, and the work light—for _him_.
And so I consented after a parlay.

But I didn’t regret it. She is a good little creeter and no more like
her mother than a feather bed is like a darnin’ needle. I like Ardelia:
so does Josiah.

The schoolroom




Chapter III.
THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS.


We have been havin’ a pound party here in Jonesville. There wuz a lot
of children left without any father or mother, nobody only an old
grandma to take care of ’em, and she wuz half bent with the rheumatiz,
and had a swelled neck, and lumbago and fits.

They lived in an old tumble-down house jest outside of Jonesville. The
father wuz, I couldn’t deny, a shiftless sort of a chap, good-natured,
always ready to obleege a neighbor, but he hadn’nt no faculty. And I
don’t know, come to think of it, as anybody is any more to blame if
they are born without a faculty, than if they are born with only one
eye. Faculty is one of the things that you can’t buy.

He loved to hunt. That is, he loved to hunt some kinds of things. He
never loved to hunt stiddy, hard work, and foller on the trail of it
till he evertook success and captured it. No, he druther hunt after
catamounts and painters, in woods where catamounts haint mounted, and
painters haint painted sence he wuz born.

He generally killed nothin’ bigger than red squirrels and chipmunks.
The biggest game he ever brought down wuz himself. He shot himself one
cold day in the fall of the year. He wuz gettin’ over a brush fence,
they s’posed the gun hit against somethin’ and went off, for they found
him a layin’ dead at the bottom of the fence.

I always s’posed that the shock of his death comin’ so awful sudden
unto her, killed his wife. She had been sick for a long spell, she had
consumption and dropsy, and so forth, and so forth, for a long time,
and after he wuz brought in dead, she didn’t live a week. She thought
her eyes of him, for no earthly reason as I could ever see. How
strange, how strange a dispensation of Providence it duz seem, that
some women love some men, and vicy versey and the same.

But she did jest about worship him, and she died whisperin’ his name,
and reachin’ out her hands as if she see him jest ahead of her. And I
told Josiah I didn’t know but she did. I shouldn’t wonder a mite if she
did see him, for there is only the veil of mystery between us and the
other world at any time, and she had got so nigh to it, that I s’pose
it got so thin that she could see through it.

Just as you can see through the blue haze that lays before our forest
in Injun summer. Come nigh up to it and you can see the silvery trunks
of the maples and the red sumac leaves, and the bright evergreens, and
the forms of the happy hunters a passin’ along under the glint of the
sunbeams and the soft shadows.

They died in Injun summer. I made a wreath myself of the bright-colored
leaves to lay on their coffins. Dead leaves, dead to all use and
purpose here, and yet with the bright mysterious glow upon them that
put me in mind of some immortal destiny and blossoming beyond our poor
dim vision. Jane Smedley wuz a good woman, and so wuz Jim, good but
shiftless.

But I made the same wreath for her and Jim, and the strange mellow
light lay on both of ’em, makin’ me think in spite of myself of some
happy sunrisin’ that haply may dawn on some future huntin’ ground,
where poor Jim Smedley even, may strike the trail of success and
happiness, hid now from the sight of Samantha, hid from Josiah.

Wall, they died within a week’s time of each other, and left nine
children, the oldest one of ’em not quite fifteen. She, the oldest one,
wuz a good girl, only she had the rickets so that when she walked, she
seemed to walk off all over the house backwards, and sideways, and
every way, but when she sot down, she wuz a good stiddy girl, and
faithful; she took after her mother, and her mother took after her
grandmother, so there wuz three takin’ after each other, one right
after the other.

Jane wuz a good, faithful, hard-workin’ creeter when she wuz well,
brought up her children good as she could, learnt ’em the catechism,
and took in all kinds of work to earn a little somethin’ towards
gettin’ a home for ’em; she and her mother both did, her mother lived
with ’em, and wuz a smart old woman, too, for one that wuz pretty nigh
ninety. And she wuzn’t worrysome much, only about one thing—she wanted
a home, wanted a home dretfully. Some wimmen are so; she had moved
round so much, from one poor old place to another, that she sort o’
hankered after bein’ settled down into a stiddy home.

Wall, there wuz eight children younger than Marvilla, that wuz the
oldest young girl’s name. Eight of ’em, countin’ each pair of twins as
two, as I s’pose they ort. The Town buried the father and mother, which
wuz likely and clever in it, but after that it wouldn’t give only jest
so much a week, which wuz very little, because it said, Town did, that
they could go to the poor-house, they could be supported easier there.

I don’t know as the Town could really be blamed for sayin’ it, and yet
it seemed kinder mean in it, the Town wuz so big, and the children,
most of ’em, wuz so little.

But any way, it wuz jest sot on it, and there wuz the end of it, for
you might jest as well dispute the wind as to dispute the Town when it
gets sot.

Wall, the old grandma said she would die in the streets before she
would go to the poor-house. She had come from a good family in the
first place,

They say she run away and left a good home and got married, and did
dretful poor in the married state. He waz shiftless and didn’t have
nothin’ and didn’t lay up any. And she didn’t keep any of her old
possessions only jest her pride. She kept that, or enough of it to say
that she would die on the road before she would go to the poor-house.
And once I see her cry she wanted a home so bad.

And lots of folks blamed her for it, blamed the old woman awfully. They
said pride wuz so wicked. Wimmen who would run like deers if company
came when they wuzn’t dressed up slick, they would say the minute they
got back into the room, all out of breath with hurryin’ into their best
clothes, they’d say a pantin’ “That old woman ought to be _made_ to go
to the poorhouse, to take the pride out of her, pride wuz so awfully,
dretfully wicked, and it wuz a shame that she wuz so ongrateful as to
want a home of her own.” And then they would set down and rest.

Wall, the family wuz in a sufferin’ state. The Town allowed ’em one
dollar a week. But how wuz ten human beings to live on a dollar a week.
The children worked every chance they got, but they couldn’t earn
enough to keep ’em in shoes, let alone other clothin’ and vittles. And
the old house wuz too cold for ’em to stay in durin’ the cold weather,
it wuz for Grandma Smedley, anyway, if the children could stand it she
couldn’t. And what wuz to be done. A cold winter wuz a cumin’ on, and
it wouldn’t delay a minute because Jim Smedley had got shot, and his
wife had follered him, into, let us hope, a happier huntin’ ground than
he had ever found in earthly forests.

Wall, I proposed to have a pound party for ’em. I said they might have
it to our house if they wanted it, but if they thought they wanted it
in a more central place (our house wuz quite a little to one side), why
we could have it to the schoolhouse.

I proposed to Josiah the first one. He wuz a settin’ by the fire
relapsed into silence. It wuz a cold night outside, but the red
curtains wuz down at our sitting-room winders, shettin’ out the cold
drizzlin’ storm of hail and snow that wuz a deseendin’ onto the earth.
The fire burned up warm and bright, and we sot there in our comfortable
home, with the teakettle singin’ on the stove, and the tea-table set
out cosy and cheerful, for Josiah had been away and I had waited supper
for him.

As I sot there waitin’ for the tea-kettle to bile (and when I say bile,
I mean bile, I don’t, mean simmer) the thought of the Smedleys would
come in. The warm red curtains would keep the storm out, but they
couldn’t keep the thought of the children, and the feeble old
grandmother out of the room. They come right in, through the curtains,
and the firelight, and everything, and sot right down by me and hanted
me.

And what curious creeters thoughts be, haint they? and oncertain, too.
You may make all your plans to get away from ’em. You may shet up your
doors and winders, and set with a veil on and an umbrell up - but good
land! how easy they jest ontackle the doors and windows, with no sounds
of ontacklin’ and come right in by you.

First you know there they be right by the side of you, under your
umbrell, under your veil, under your spectacles, a lookin’ right down
into your soul, and a hantin’ you.

And then agin, when you expect to be hanted by ’em, lay out to, why,
they’ll jest stand off somewhere else, and don’t come nigh you. Don’t
want to. Oncertain creeters, thoughts be, and curious, curious where
they come from, and how.

Why, I got to thinkin’ about it the other day, and I got lost, some
like children settin’ on a log over a creek a ridin’; there they be,
and there the log is, but they don’t seem to be there, they seem to be
a floatin’ down the water.

And there I wuz, a settin’ in my rockin’ chair, and I seemed to be a
floatin’ down deep water, very deep. A thinkin’ and a wonderin’. A
thinkin’ how all through the ages what secrets God had told to man when
the time had come, and the reverent soul below was ready to hear the
low words whispered to his soul, and a wonderin’ what strange
revelation God held now, ready to reveal when the soul below had fitted
itself to hear, and comprehend it.

Ah! such mysteries as He will reveal to us if we will listen. If we
wait for God’s voice. If we did not heed so much the confusing clamor
of the world’s voices about us. Emulation, envy, anger, strife,
jealousy; if we turned our heads away from these discords, and in the
silence which is God’s temple, listened, listened,—who knows the
secrets He would make known to us?

Secrets of the day, secrets of the night, the sunshine, the lightning,
the storm. The white glow of that wonderful light that is not like the
glow of the sun or of the moon, but yet lighteth the world. That
strange light that has a soul - that reads our thoughts, translates our
wishes, overleaps distance, carrying our whispered words after holding
our thoughts for ages, and then unfoldin’ ’em at will. What other
wondrous mysteries lie concealed, wrapped around by that soft pure
flame, mysteries that shall lie hidden until some inspired eye shall be
waiting, looking upward at the moment when God’s hand shall draw back
the shining veil for an instant, and let him read the glowing secret.

Secrets of language! shall some simple power, some symbol be revealed,
and the nations speak together?

Secrets of song! shall some serene, harmonious soul catch the note to
celestial melodies?

Secrets of sight! shall the eyes too dim now, see the faces of the
silent throngs that surround them, “the great cloud of witnesses”?

Secrets of the green pathways that lead up through the blue silent
fields of space - shall we float from star to star?

Secrets of holiness! shall earthly faces wear the pure light of the
immortals?

But oh! who shall be the happy soul that shall be listening when the
time has fully come and He shall reveal His great secret? The happy
soul listening so intently that it shall catch the low, clear whisper.

Listening, maybe, through the sweet twilight shadows for the wonderful
secret, while the silver shallop of the moon is becalmed over the high
northern mountains, as if a fleet of heavenly guests had floated down
through the clear ocean waves of the sky to listen too - to hear the
wonderful heavenly secret revealed to man - and a clear star looks out
over the glowing rose of the western heavens, looking down like God’s
eye, searching his soul, searching if it be worthy of the great trust.

Maybe it will be in the fresh dawning of the day, that the great secret
will grow bright and clear and luminous, as the dawning of the light.

Maybe it will be in the midst of the storm - a mighty voice borne along
by the breath of the wind and the thunder, clamoring and demanding the
hearer to listen.

Oh! if we were only good enough, only pure enough, what might not our
rapt vision discern?

But we know not where or when the time shall be fully come, but who,
who, shall be the happy soul that shall, at the time, be listening?

Oh! how deep, how strange the waters wuz, and how I floated away on
’em, and how I didn’t. For there I wuz a settin in my own rockin’ chair
and there opposite me sot my own Josiah a whittlin’, for the _World_
hadn’t come, and he wuz restless and ill at ease, and time hung heavy
on his hands.

There I sot the same Samantha - and the thought of the Smedleys, the
same old Smedleys, was a hantin’ of me, the same old hant, and I says
to my Josiah, says I: “Josiah, I can’t help thinkin’ about the
Smedleys,” says I. “What do you think about havin’ a pound party for
’em, and will you take holt, and do your part?”

“Good land, Samantha! Are you crazy? Crazy as a loon? What under the
sun do you want to pound the Smedleys for? I should think they had
trouble enough without poundin’ ’em. Why,” says he, “the old woman
couldn’t stand any poundin’ at all, without killin’ her right out and
out, and the childern haint over tough any of ’em. Why, what has got
into you? I never knew you to propose anything of that wicked kind
before. I sha’n’t have anything to do with it. If you want ’em pounded
you must get your own club and do your own poundin’.”

Says I, “I don’t mean poundin’ ’em with a club, but let folks buy a
pound of different things to eat and drink and carry it to ’em, and we
can try and raise a little money to get a warmer horse for ’em to stay
in the coldest of the weather.”

“Oh!” says he, with a relieved look. “That’s a different thing. I am
willin’ to do that. I don’t know about givin’ ’em any money towards
gettin’ ’em a home, but I’ll carry ’em a pound of crackers or a pound
of flour, and help it along all I can.”

Josiah is a clever creeter (though close), and he never made no more
objections towards havin’ it.

Wall, the next day I put on my shawl and hood (a new brown hood knit
out of zephyr worsted, very nice, a present from our daughter Maggie,
our son Thomas Jefferson’s wife), and sallied out to see what the
neighbor’s thought about it.

The first woman I called on wuz Miss Beazley, a new neighbor who had
just moved into the neighborhood. They are rich as they can be, and I
expected at least to get a pound of tea out of her.

She said it wuz a worthy object, and she would love to help it along,
but they had so many expenses of their own to grapple with, that she
didn’t see her way clear to promise to do anything. She said the girls
had got to have some new velvet suits, and some sealskin sacques this
winter, and they had got to new furnish the parlors, and send their
oldest boy to college, and the girls wanted to have some diamond
lockets, and ought to have ’em but she didn’t know whether they could
manage to get them or not, if they did, they had got to scrimp along
every way they could. And then they wuz goin’ to have company from a
distance, and had got to get another girl to wait on ’em. And though
she wished the poor well, she felt that she could not dare to promise a
cent to ’em. She wished the Smedley family well—dretful well—and hoped
I would get lots of things for ’em. But she didn’t really feel as if it
would be safe for her to promise’em a pound of anything, though mebby
she might, by a great effort, raise a pound of flour for ’em, or meal.

Says I dryly (dry as meal ever wuz in its dryest times), “I wouldn’t
give too much. Though,” says I, “A pound of flour would go a good ways
if it is used right.” And I thought to myself that she had better keep
it to make a paste to smooth over things.

Wall, I went from that to Miss Jacob Hess’es, and Miss Jacob Hess
wouldn’t give anything because the old lady wuz disagreeable, old
Grandma Smedley, and I said to Miss Jacob Hess that if the Lord didn’t
send His rain and dew onto anybody only the perfectly agreeable, I
guessed there would be pretty dry times. It wuz my opinion there would
be considerable of a drouth.

There wuz a woman there a visitin’ Miss Hess—she wuz a stranger to me
and I didn’t ask her for anything, but she spoke up of her own accord
and said she would give, and give liberal, only she wuz hampered. She
didn’t say why, or who, or when, but she only sez this that “she wuz
hampered,” and I don’t know to this day what her hamper wuz, or who
hampered her.

And then I went to Ebin Garven’ses, and Miss Ebin Garven wouldn’t help
any because she said “Joe Smedley had been right down lazy, and she
couldn’t call him anything else.”

“But,” says I, “Joe is dead, and why should his children starve because
their pa wasn’t over and above smart when he wuz alive?” But she
wouldn’t give.

Wall, Miss Whymper said she didn’t approve of the _manner_ of giving.
Her face wuz all drawed down into a curious sort of a long expression
that she called religus and I called somethin’ that begins with
“h-y-p-o”—and I don’t mean hypoey, either.

No, she couldn’t give, she said, because she always made a practise of
not lettin’ her right hand know what her left hand give.

And I said, for I wuz kinder took aback, and didn’t think, I said to
her, a glancin’ at her hands which wuz crossed in front of her, that I
didn’t see how she managed it, unless she give when her right hand was
asleep.

And she said she always gave secret.

And I said, “So I have always s’posed—very secret.”

I s’pose my tone was some sarcastic, for she says, “Don’t the Scripter
command us to do so?”

Says I firmly, “I don’t believe the Scripter means to have us stand
round talkin’ Bible, and let the Smedleys starve,” says I. “I s’pose it
means not to boast of our good deeds.”

Says she, “I believe in takin’ the Scripter literal, and if I can’t git
my stuff there entirely unbeknown to my right hand I sha’n’t give.”

“Wall,” says I, gettin’ up and movin’ towards the door, “you must do as
you’re a mind to with fear and tremblin’.”

I said it pretty impressive, for I thought I would let her see I could
quote Scripter as well as she could, if I sot out.

But good land! I knew it wuz a excuse. I knew she wouldn’t give nothin’
not if her right hand had the num palsy, and you could stick a pin into
it—no, she wouldn’t give, not if her right hand was cut off and throwed
away.

Wall, Miss Bombus, old Dr. Bombus’es widow, wouldn’t give—and for all
the world—I went right there from Miss Whymper’ses. Miss Bombus
wouldn’t give because I didn’t put the names in the Jonesville _Augur_
or _Gimlet_, for she said, “Let your good deeds so shine.”

“Why,” says I, “Miss Whymper wouldn’t give because she wanted to give
secreter, and you won’t give because you want to give publicker, and
you both quote Scripter, but it don’t seem to help the Smedleys much.”

She said that probably Miss Whymper was wrestin’ the Scripter to her
own destruction.”

“Wall,” says I, “while you and Miss Whymper are a wrestin’ the
Scripter, what will become of the Smedleys? It don’t seem right to let
them ‘freeze to death, and starve to death, while we are a debatin’ on
the ways of Providence.”

But she didn’t tell, and she wouldn’t give.

A woman wuz there a visitin’, Miss Bombus’es aunt, I think, and she
spoke up and said that she fully approved of her niece Bombus’es
decision. And she said, “As for herself, she never give to any subject
that she hadn’t thoroughly canvassed.”

Says I, “There they all are in that little hut, you can canvass them at
any time. Though,” says I, thoughtfully, “Marvilla might give you some
trouble.” And she asked why.

And I told her she had the rickets so she couldn’t stand still to be
canvassed, but she could probably follow her up and canvass her, if she
tried hard enough. And says I, “There is old Grandma Smedley, over
eighty, and five children under eight, you can canvass them easy.”

Says she, “The Bible says, ‘Search the Sperits.’”

And I was so wore out a seein’ how place after place, for three times a
runnin the Bible was lifted up and held as a shield before stingy
creeters, to ward off the criticism of the world and their own souls,
that I says to myself—loud enough so they could hear me, mebbe, “Why is
it that when anybody wants to do a mean, ungenerous act, they will try
to quote a verse of Scripter to uphold ’em, jest as a wolf will pull a
lock of pure white wool over his wolfish foretop, and try to look
innocent and sheepish.”

I don’t care if they did hear me, I wuz on the step mostly when I
thought it, pretty loud.

Wall, from Miss Bombus’es I went to Miss Petingill’s.

Miss Petingill is a awful high-headed creeter. She come to the door
herself and she said, I must excuse her for answerin’ the door herself.
(I never heard the door say anything and don’t believe she did, it was
jest one of her ways.) But she said I must excuse her as her girl wuz
busy at the time.

She never mistrusted that I knew her hired girl had left, and she wuz
doin’ her work herself. She had ketched off her apron I knew, as she
come through the hall, for I see it a layin’ behind the door, all
covered with flour. And after she had took me into the parlor, and we
had set down, she discovered some spots of flour on her dress, and she
said she “had been pastin’ some flowers into a scrap book to pass away
the time.” But I knew she had been bakin’ for she looked tired, tired
to death almost, and it wuz her bakin’ day. But she would sooner have
had her head took right off than to own up that she had been doin’
housework—why, they say that once when she wuz doin’ her work herself,
and was ketched lookin’ awful, by a strange minister, that she passed
herself off’ for a hired girl and said, “Miss Petingill wasn’t to home,
and when pressed hard she said she hadn’t “the least idee where Miss
Petingill wuz.”

‘Hired’ girl

Jest think on ’t once—and there she wuz herself. The idee!

Wall, the minute I sot down before I begun my business or anything,
Miss Petingill took me to do about puttin’ in Miss Bibbins President of
our Missionary Society for the Relief of Indignent Heathens.

The Bibbins’es are good, very good, but poor.

Says Miss Petingill: “It seems to me as if there might be some other
woman put in, that would have had more influence on the Church.”

Says I, “Haint Miss Bibbins a good Christian sister, and a great
worker?”

“Why yes, she wuz good, good in her place. But,” she said, “the
Petingills hadn’t never associated with the Bibbins’es.”

And I asked her if she s’posed that would make any difference with the
heathen; if the heathen would be apt to think less of Miss Bibbins
because she hadn’t associated with the Petingills?

And she said, she didn’t s’pose “the heathens would ever know it; it
might make some difference to ’em if they did,” she thought, “for it
couldn’t be denied,” she said, “that Miss Bibbins did not move in the
first circles of Jonesville.”

It had been my doin’s a puttin’ Miss Bibbins in and I took it right to
home, she meant to have me, and I asked her if she thought the Lord
would condemn Miss Bibbins on the last day, because she hadn’t moved in
the first circles of Jonesville?

And Miss Petingill tosted her head a little, but had to own up, that
she thought “He wouldn’t.”

“Wall, then,” sez I, “do you s’pose the Lord has any objections to her
working for Him now?”

“Why no, I don’t know as the _Lord_ would object.”

“Wall,” sez I, “we call this work the Lord’s work, and if He is
satisfied with Miss Bibbins, we ort to be.”

But she kinder nestled round, and I see she wuzn’t satisfied, but I
couldn’t stop to argue, and I tackled her then and there about the
Smedleys. I asked her to give a pound, or pounds, as she felt disposed.

But she answered me firmly that she could’t give one cent to the
Smedleys, she wuz principled against it.

And I asked her, “Why?”

And she said, because the old lady wuz proud and wanted a home, and she
thought that pride wuz so wicked, that it ort to be put down.

Wall, Miss Huff, Miss Cephas Huff, wouldn’t give anything because one
of the little Smedleys had lied to her. She wouldn’t encourage lyin’.

And I told her I didn’t believe she would be half so apt to reform him
on an empty stomach, as after he wuz fed up. But she wouldn’t yield.

Wall, Miss Daggett said she would give, and give abundant, only she
didn’t consider it a worthy object.

But it wuzn’t nothin’ only a excuse, for the object has never been
found yet that she thought wuz a worthy one. Why, she wouldn’t give a
cent towards painting the Methodist steeple, and if that haint a high
and worthy object, I don’t know what is. Why, our steeple is over
seventy feet from the ground. But she wouldn’t help us a mite—not a
single cent.

Take such folks as them and the object never suits ’em. They won’t come
right out and tell the truth that they are too stingy and mean to give
away a cent, but they will always put the excuse onto the object—the
object don’t suit ’em.

Why, I do believe it is the livin’ truth that if the angel Gabriel wuz
the object, if he wuz in need and we wuz gittin’ up a pound party for
him—she would find fault with Gabriel, and wouldn’t give him a ounce of
provisions.

Yes, I believe it—I believe they would tost their heads and say, they
always had had their thoughts about anybody that tooted so loud—it
might be all right but it didn’t _look_ well, and would be apt to make
talk. Or they would say that he wuz shiftless and extravagant a loafin’
round in the clouds, when he might go to work—or that he might raise
the money himself by selling the feathers offen his wings for down
pillers—or some of the rest of the Gabriel family might help him—or
something, or other—anyway they would propose some way of gittin’ out
of givin’ a cent to Gabriel. I believe it as much as I believe I live
and breathe; and so does Josiah.

Wall, Miss Mooney wouldn’t give anything because she thought Jane
Smedley wuzn’t so sick as she thought she wuz; she said “she was
spleeny.”

And I told Miss Mooney that when a woman was sick enough to die, I
thought she ort to be called sick.

But Miss Mooney wouldn’t give up, and insisted to the very last that
Miss Smedley wuz hypoey and spleeny—and thought she wuz sicker than she
really wuz. And she held her head and her nose up in a very
disagreeable and haughty way, and said as I left, that she never could
bear to help spleeny people.

Wall, all that forenoon did I traipse through the street and not one
cent did I get for the Smedleys, only Miss Gowdey said she would bring
a cabbage and Miss Deacon Peedick and Miss Ingledue partly promised a
squash apiece. And I mistrusted that they give ’em more to please me
than anything else.

Wall, I wuz clean discouraged and beat out, and so I told Josiah. But
he encouraged me some by sayin’:

“Wall, I could have told you jest how it would be,” and, “You would
have done better, Samantha, to have been to home a cookin’ for your own
famishin’ family.” And several more jest such inspirin’ remarks as men
will give to the females of their families when they are engaged in
charitable enterprises.

But I got a good, a very good dinner, and it made me feel some better,
and then I haint one to give up to discouragements, anyway.

So I put on a little better dress for after noon, and my best bonnet
and shawl, and set sail again after dinner.

And if I ever had a lesson in not givin’ up to discouragements in the
first place I had it then. For whether it wuz on account of the more
dressy look of my bonnet and shawl—or whether it wuz that folks felt
cleverer in the afternoon—or whether it wuz that I had gone to the more
discouragin’ places in the forenoon, and the better ones in the
afternoon—or whether it wuz that I tackled on the subject in a better
way than I had tackled ’em—whether it wuz for any of these reasons, or
all of ’em or somethin’—anyway my luck turned at noon, 12 M., and all
that afternoon I had one triumph after another—place after place did I
collect pound or pounds as the case may be (or collected the promises
of ’em, I mean). I did _splendid_, and wuz prospered perfectly
amazing—and I went home feelin’ as happy and proud as a king or a zar.

And the next Tuesday evenin’ we had the pound party. They concluded to
have it to our house. And Thomas Jefferson and Maggie, and Tirzah Ann
and Whitefield came home early in the afternoon to help trim the parlor
and setin’ room with evergreens and everlastin’ posies, and fern
leaves.

They made the room look perfectly beautiful. And they each of ’em, the
two childern and their companions, brought home a motto framed in nice
plush and gilt frames, which they put up on each side of the settin’
room, and left them there as a present to their pa and me. They think a
sight of us, the childern do—and visey versey, and the same.

One of ’em wuz worked in gold letters on a red back-ground “Bear Ye One
Another’s Burdens.” And the other wuz “Feed my Lambs.”

They think a sight on us, the childern do—they knew them mottoes would
highly tickle their pa and me. And they did seem to kinder invigorate
up all the folks that come to the party.

And they wuz seemingly legions. Why, they come, and they kept a comin’.
And it did seem as if every one of ’em had tried to see who could bring
the most. Why, they brought enough to keep the Smedleys comfortable all
winter long. It wuz a sight to see ’em.

The Pound Party

It wuz a curious sight, too, to set and watch what some of the folks
said and done as they brought their pounds in.

I had to be to the table all the time a’most, for I wuz appointed a
committee, or a board—I s’pose it would be more proper to call myself a
board, more business like. Wall, I wuz the board appointed to lay the
things on—to see that they wuz all took care of, and put where they
couldn’t get eat up, or any other casuality happen to ’em.

And I declare if some of the queerest lookin’ creeters didn’t come up
to the table and talk to me. There wuz lots of ’em there that I didn’t
know, folks that come from Zoar, Jim Smedley’s old neighborhood.

There wuz a long table stretched acrost one end of the settin’ room,
and I stood behind it some as if I wuz a dry goods merchant or grocery,
and some like a preacher.

And the women would come up to me and talk. There wuz one woman who got
real talkative to me before the evenin’ wuz out. She said her home wuz
over two miles beyond Zoar.

She had a young babe with her, a dark complexioned babe, with a little
round black head, that looked some like a cannon ball. She said she had
shingled the child that day about eight o’clock in the forenoon; she
talked real confidential to me.

She said the babe had sights of hair, and she told her husband that day
that if he would shingle the babe she would come to the party and if he
wouldn’t shingle it she wouldn’t come. It seemed they had had a
altercation on the subject; she wanted it shingled and he didn’t. But
it seemed that ruther than stay away from the party—he consented, and
shingled it. So they come.

They brought a eight pound loaf of maple sugar and two dozen eggs. They
did well. Then there wuz another woman who would walk her little girl
into the bedroom every few minutes, and wet her hair, and comb it over,
and curl it on her fingers. The child had a little blue flannel dress
on, with a long plain waist, and a long skirt gethered on full all
round. Her hair lay jest as smooth and slick as glass all the time, but
five times did she walk her off, and go through with that performance.
She brought ten yards of factory cloth, and a good woollen petticoat
for the old grandma. She did first-rate.

And then there wuz another woman who stayed by the table most all the
evenin’. She would gently but firmly ask everybody who brought
anything, what the price of the article wuz—and then she would tackle
the different women who come up to the table for patterns. I do believe
she got the pattern of every bask waist there wuz there, and every
mantilly.

And Abram Gee brought twenty-five loaves of bread—of different sizes,
but all on ’em good. And he looked at Ardelia Tutt every minute of the
time. And Ardelia brought a lot of verses,—“Stanzas on a Grandmother.”
I didn’t think they would do Grandma Smedley much good, and then on the
other hand I didn’t s’pose they would hurt her any.

But we had a splendid good time after the things wuz all brought in—of
course, bein’ a board the fore part of the evenin’ I naturally had a
harder time than I did the latter part, after I had got over it.

The children, Thomas J., and Tirzah Ann, and Ardelia Tutt, and Abram
Gee, and some of the rest of the young folks sung and played some
beautiful pieces, and they had four tablows, which wuz perfectly
beautiful.

And then we passed good nice light biscuit and butter, and hot coffee,
and pop corn and apples. And it did seem, and all the neighbors said
so, that it wuz the very best party they had ever attended to.

And before they went away they made a motion some of the responsable
men did—some made the motions and some seconded ’em—that they would
adjourn till jest one year from that night, when if the Smedleys was
still alive and in need—we would have jest such a party ag’in.

And at the last on’t Elder Minkley made a prayer—a very thankful and
good prayer, but short. And then they went home.

Wall, the next mornin’ we started to carry the things to the Smedleys.
It wuz very early, for Josiah had got to go clear to Loontown on
business, and I wuz goin’ to stay with the childern till he got back.

It wuz a very cold mornin’. We hadn’t heard from the Smedleys for two
or three days, because we wanted to surprise ’em, so we didn’t want to
give ’em a hint beforehand of what we wuz a doin’. So, as I say, it wuz
a number of days sense we had heard from ’em, and the weather wuz cold.

When we got to the door it seemed to be dretful still there inside. And
there wuz some white frost on the latch jest as if a icy, white hand
had onlatched the door, and had laid on it last.

We rapped, but nobody answered. And then we opened the door and went
in, and there they all lay asleep. The children waked up. But old
Grandma didn’t.

Nobody answered

There wuzn’t any fire in the room, and you could see by the freezing
coldness of the air that there hadn’t been any for a day or two.

Grandma Smedley had took the poor old coverin’s all off from herself,
and put ’em round the youngest baby, little Jim. And he lay there all
huddled up tight to his Grandma, with his red cheek close to her white
one, for he loved her.

Josiah cried and wept, and wept and cried onto his bandana—but I
didn’t.

The tears run down my face some, to see the childern feel so bad when
Grandma couldn’t speak to ’em.

But I knew that the childern would be took care of now, I knew the
Jonesvillians would be all rousted up and sorry enough for ’em, and
would be willin’ to do anything now, when it wuz some too late.

And I felt that I couldn’t cry nor weep (and told Josiah so), the tears
jest dripped down my face in a stream, but I wouldn’t weep—for as I
said to myself:

While the Jonesvillians had been a disputin’ back and forth, and
wrestin’ Scripter, and the meanin’ of Providence in regard to helpin’
Grandma Smedley and gittin’ her a comfortable place to stay in, and
somethin’ to eat, the Lord himself had took the case in hand and had
gin her a home and the bread that satisfies.”

Samantha and Josiah at home




Chapter IV.
ARDELIA AND ABRAM GEE.


Wall, I don’t s’pose there had been a teacher in our deestrict for
years and years that gin’ better satisfaction than Ardelia Tutt. Good
soft little creeter, the scholars any one of ’em felt above hurtin’ on
her or plagin’ her any way. She sort a made ’em feel they had to take
care on her, she wuz so sort a helpless actin’, and good natured, and
yet her learnin’ wuz good, fust-rate.

Yes, Ardelia was thought a sight on in Jonesville by scholars and
parents and some that wuzn’t parents. One young chap in perticiler,
Abram Gee by name, who had just started a baker’s shop in Jonesville,
he fell so deep in love with her from the very start that I pitied him
from about the bottom of my heart. It wuz at our house that he fell.

The young folks of our meetin’-house had a sort of a evenin’ meetin’
there to see about raisin’ some money for the help of the
steeple—repairin’ of it. Abram is a member, and so is Ardelia, and I
see the hull thing. I see him totter and I see him fall. And prostrate
he wuz, from that first night. Never was there a feller that fell in
love deeper, or lay more helpless. And Ardelia liked him, that wuz
plain to see; at fust as I watched and see him totter, I thought she
wuz a sort o’ wobblin’ too, and when he fell deep, deep in love, I
looked to see her a follerin’ on. But Ardelia, as soft as she wuz, had
an element of strength. She wuz ambitious. She liked Abram, but she had
read novels a good deal, and she had for years been lookin’ for a
prince to come a ridin’ up to their dooryard in disguise with a crown
on under his hat, and woo her to be his bride.

The Prince

And so she braced herself against the sweet influence of love and it
wuz tuff—I could see for myself that it wuz, when she had laid out to
set on a throne by the side of a prince, he a holdin’ his father’s
scepter in his hand—to descend from that elevation and wed a husband
who wuz a moulder of bread, with a rollin’ pin in his hand. It wuz tuff
for Ardelia; I could see right through her mind (it wuzn’t a great
distance to see), and I could see jest how a conflict wuz a goin’ on
between love and ambition.

But Abram had my best wishes, for he wuz a boy I had always liked. The
Gees had lived neighbor to us for years. He wuz a good creeter and his
bread wuz delicious (milk emptin’s). He wuz a sort of a hard, sound
lookin’ chap, and she, bein’ so oncommon soft, the contrast kinder sot
each other off and made ’em look well together.

He had a house and lot all paid for, with no incumbrances only a
mortgage of 150 dollars and a lame mother. But he laid out to clear off
the mortgage this year, and I wuz told that mother Gee wuz a goin’ to
live with her daughter Susan, who had jest come into a big property—as
much as 700 dollars worth of land, besides cows, 2 heads of cow, and
one head of a calf.

I knew Mother Gee and she wuz goin’ to stay with Abram till he got
married and then she wuz goin’ to live with Susan. And I s’pose it is
so. She is a likely old woman with a milk leg.

Wall, Abram paid Ardelia lots of attention, sech as walkin’ home with
her from protracted meetin’s nights, and lookin’ at her durin’ the
meetin’s more protracted than the meetin’s wuz fur. And 3 times he sent
her a plate of riz biscuit sweetened, sweetened too sweet almost, he
went too fur in this and I see it.

Yes, he done his part as well as his condition would let him, paralyzed
by his feelin’s—but she acted kinder offish, and I see that sonthin’
wuz in the way. I mistrusted at first, it might be Abram’s incumbrance,
but durin’ a conversation I had with her, I see I wuz in the wrong
on’t. And I could see plain, though some couldn’t, that she liked Abram
as she did her eyes. Somebody run him down a little one day before me
and she sprouted right up and took his part voyalent. I could see her
feelin’s towards him though she wouldn’t own up to ’em. But one day she
came out plain to me and lamented his condition in life. Somebody had
attact her that day before me about marryin’ of him—and she owned up to
me, that she had laid out to marry somebody to elevate her. Some one
with a grand pure mission in life.

And I spoke right up and sez, “Why bread is jest as pure and innocent
as anything can be, you won’t find anything wicked about good yeast
bread, nor,” sez I, cordially, “in milk risin’, if it is made proper.”

But she said she preferred a occupation that wuz risin’, and noble, and
that made a man necessary and helpful to the masses.

And I sez agin—“Good land! the masses have got to eat. And I guess you
starve the masses a spell and they’ll think that good bread is as
necessary and helpful to ’em as anything can be. And as fer its bein’ a
risin’ occupation, why,” sez I, “it is stiddy risen’—risin’ in the
mornin,’ and risin’ at night, and all night, both hop and milk
emptin’s. Why,” sez I, “I never see a occupation so risin’ as his’n is,
both milk and hop.” But she wouldn’t seem to give in and encourage him
much only by spells.

And then Abram didn’t take the right way with her. I see he wuz a goin’
just the wrong way to win a woman’s love. For his love, his great
honest love for her made him abject, he groveled at her feet, loved to
grovel.

I told him, for he confided in me from the first on’t and bewailed her
coldness to me, I told him to sprout up and act as if he had some will
of his own and some independent life of his own. Sez I, “Any woman that
sees a man a layin’ around under her feet will be tempted to step on
him,” sez I. “I don’t see how she can help it, if she calcerlates to
get round any, and walk.” Sez I, “Sprout up and be somebody. She is a
good little creeter, but no better than you are, Abram; be a man.”

Abram

And he would try to be. I could see him try. But one of her soft little
glances, specially if it wuz kind and tender to him, es it wuz a good
deal of the time, why it would just overthrow him ag’in. He would
collapse and become nothin’ ag’in, before her. Why I have hearn him
sing that old him, a lookin’ right at Ardelia stiddy:

“Oh to be nothin’, nothin’!”


And thinks I to myself, “if this keeps on, you are in a fairway to git
your wish.”

He wuz a good singer, a beartone, and she a secent. They loved to sing
together. They needed some air, but then they got along without it; and
it sounded quite well, though rather low and deep.

Wall, it run along for weeks and weeks, he with his hopes a risin’ up
sometimes like his yeast and then bein’ pounded down ag’in like his
bread, under the hard knuckles of a woman’s capricious cruelty. For I
must say that she did, for sech a soft littte creeter, have cold and
cruel ways to Abram. (But I s’pose it wuz when she got to thinkin’
about the Prince, or some other genteel lover.)

But her real feelin’s would break out once in a while, and lift him up
to the 3d heaven of happiness and then he’d have to totter and fall
down ag’in. Abram Gee had a hard time on’t. I pitied him from nearly
the bottom of my heart. But I still kep’ a thinkin’ it would turn out
well in the end. For it wuz jest about this time that I happened to
find this poetry in a book where she had, I s’posed, left it. And I
read ’em, almost entirely unbeknown to myself.

It wuz wrote in a dreatful blind way but I recognized it at once. I
looked right through it, and see what she wuz a writin’ about though
many wouldn’t, it wuz wrote in sech a deep style.

“STANZAS ON BREAD;
“ or
“ A LAY OF A BROKEN HEART.


“Oh Bread, dear Bread, that seemest to us so cold,
Oft’times concealed thee within, may be a sting!
Sweet buried hopes may in thy crust be rolled;
A sad, burnt crust of deepest suffering.

“There are some griefs the female soul don’t tell,
And she may weep, and she may wretched be;
Though she may like the name of Abram well
And she may not like dislike the name of G-,

“Oh Fel Ambition, how thou lurest us on,
How by thy high, bold torch we’re stridin’ led:
Thou lurest us up, cold mountain top upon,
And seated by us there, thou scoffest at bread.

“Thou lookest down, Ambition, on the ovens brim;
Thou brookest not a word of him save with contumalee:
And yet, wert thou afar, how sweet to set by him
And cut low slices of sweet joy with G—,

“Oh! Fel Ambition, wert but thou away,
Could we thy hauntin’ form no more, nor see;
How sweet ’twould be to linger on with A—,
How sweet ’twould be to dwell for aye with G—.”


Wall, as I say, she gin good satisfaction in the deestrict and I
declare for it, I got to likin’ her dretful well before the winter wuz
over. Softer she wuz, and had to be, than any fuz that was ever on any
cotton flannel fur or near. And more verses she wrote than wuz good for
her, or for anybody else,—Why she would write “Lines on the Tongs,” or
“Stanzas on the Salt Suller,” if she couldn’t do any better; it beats
all! And then she would read ’em to me to get my idees on ’em. Why I
had to call on every martyr in the hull string of martyrs sometimes to
keep myself from tellin’ her my full mind about ’em unbeknown to me.
For, if I had, it would have skairt the soft little creeter out of what
little wit she had.

So I kep’ middlin’ still, and see it go on. For she wuz a good little
soul, affectionate and kinder helpful. A good creeter now to find your
speks. Why she found ’em for me times out of number, and I got real
attached to her and visey versey. And when she came a visitin’ me in
the spring (at my request), and I happened to mention that Josiah and
me laid out to go to Saratoga for the summer, what did the soft little
creeter want to do but to go too. Her father was well off and wuz able
to send her, and she had relatives there on her own side, some of the
Pixleys, so her board wouldn’t cost nothin’. So it didn’t look nothin’
unreasonable, though whether I could get her there and back without her
mashin’ all down on my hands, like a over ripe peach, she wuz that
soft, wuz a question that hanted me, and so I told Josiah.

But Josiah kinder likes young girls (nothin’ light; a calm
meetin’-house affection), it is kinder nater that he should, and he
sez: “Better let her go, she won’t make much trouble.”

“No,” sez I, “not to you, but if you had to set for hours and hours and
hear her verses read to you on every subject—on heaven, and earth, and
the seas, and see her a measurin’ of it with a stick to get the lines
the right length; if you had to go through all this, mebby you would
meditate on the subject before you took it for a summer’s job.”

“ Wall,” sez he, “mebby she won’t write so much when she gets started;
she will be kinder jogged round and stirred up in body and mebby her
feelins’ will kinder rest. I shouldn’t wonder a mite if they did,” sez
he. “And then she can take a good many steps for you, and I love to see
you favored,” sez he.

He wanted her to go, I see that, and I see that it wuz natur that he
should, and so I consented in my mind—after a parlay.

She found his specks a sight and his hat. Nothin’ seemed to please her
better than to be gropin’ round after things to please somebody; her
disposition wuz such. So it wuz settled that she should accompany and
go with us. And the mornin’ we started she met us at the Jonesville
Depot in good sperits and a barege delaine dress, cream color, and a
hat of the same.

At the depot

I hadn’t seen her for some weeks, and she seemed softly tickled to see
Josiah and me, and asked a good many questions about Jonesville, kinder
turnin’ the conversation gradually round onto bread, as I could see. So
I branched right out, knowin’ what she wanted of me, and told her
plain, that “Abram Gee wuz a lookin’ kinder mauger. But doin’ his duty
_stiddy_,” sez I, lookin’ keenly at her, “a doin’ his duty by
everybody, and beloved by everybody, him and his bread too.”

She turned her head away and kinder sithed, and I guess it wuz as much
as a quarter of a hour after that, that I see her take out a pencil and
a piece of paper out of her portmonny, and a little stick, and she went
to makin’ some verses, a measurin’ ’em careful as she wrote ’em, and
when she handed ’em to me they wuz named

“A LAY ON A CAR;
“ or
“THE LESSON OF A LOCOMOTIVE.”


“Oh cars that bearest us on; oh cars that run
If backward thou didst go, we should not near
The place we started for at break of sun;
The place we love, with love devout, sincere.

“Oh! snortin’ Engine, didst thou not so snort
Thou wouldst not start, and lo! we see—
Our sorrows’ hidden griefs, they do not come for nort
They start the Locomotive, Life, with screechin’ agony

“Oh passengers that wail, and dread the screech,
Wail not; but lift eyes o’er the chimney top
As they bend over the Locomotive; beach
Thy hopes on fairer shores, a sweeter crop.”


After I had read it and handed it back to her, she sez, “Don’t you
think I improve on the melody and rhythm of my poetry? I take this
little stick with me now wherever I go, and measure my lines by it.
They are jest of a length, I am very particular; you know you advised
me to be.”

“Yes,” sez I mechaniklly, “but I didn’t mean jest that.” Sez I, “the
poetry I wuz a thinkin’ on, is measured by the soul, the enraptured
throb of heart and brain; it don’t need takin’ a stick to it.
Howsumever,” sez I, for I see she looked sort a disapinted,
“howsumever, if you have measured ’em, they are probable about the same
length: it is a good sound stick, I haint no doubt;” and I kinder
sithed.

And she sez, “What do you think of the first verse? Haint that verse as
true as fate, or sadness, or anything else you know of?”

“Oh yes,” sez I candidly, “yes; if the cars run backwards we shouldn’t
go on; that is true as anything can be. But if I wuz in your place,
Ardelia,” sez I, “I wouldn’t write any more to-day. It is a kind of
muggy damp day. It is a awfully bad day for poetry to-day. And,” sez I,
to get her mind offen it, “Have you seen anything of my companion’s
specks?”

And that took her mind offen poetry and she went a huntin’ for ’em, on
the seat and under the seat. She hunted truly high and low and at last
she found ’em on my pardner’s foretop, the last place any of us thought
of lookin’. And she never said another word about poetry, or any other
trouble, nor I nuther.

Cupid




Chapter V.
WE ARRIVE AT SARATOGA.


We arrived at Saratoga jest as sunset with a middlin’ gorgeous dress on
wuz a walkin’ down the west and a biddin’ us and the earth good-bye.
There wuz every color you could think on almost, in her gown and some
stars a shinin’ through the floatin’ drapery and a half moon restin’ up
on her cloudy foretop like a beautiful orniment.

(I s’pose mebby it is proper to describe sunset in this way on goin’ to
such a dressy place, though it haint my style to do so, I don’t love to
describe sunset as a female and don’t, much of the time, but I love to
see things correspond.)

Wall, we descended from the cars and went to the boardin’ place
provided for us beforehand by the look out of friends. It wuz a good
place, there haint no doubt of that, good folks; good fare and clean.

Ardelia parted away from us at the depo. She wuz a goin’ to board to a
smaller boardin’ house kep’ by a second cousin of her father’s
brother’s wife’s aunt. It wuz her father’s request that she should get
her board there on account of its bein’ in the family. He loved “to see
relations hang together;” so he said, and “get their boards of each
other.” But I thought then, and I think now, that it wuz because they
asked less for the board. Deacon Tutt is close. But howsumever Ardelia
went there, and my companion and me arrove at the abode where we wuz to
abide, with no eppisode only the triflin’ one of the driver bein’
dretful mistook as to the price he asked to take us there.

I thought, and Josiah thought, that 50 cents wuz the outlay of
expendatur he required to carry us where we would be; it wuz but a
short distance. But no! He said that 5 dollars wuz what he said, that
is, if we heard anything about a 5. But he thought we wuz deef, and
dident hear him. He thought he spoke plain, and said 4 dollars for the
trip.

And on that price he sot down immovible. They arged, and Josiah Allen
even went so far as to use language that grated on my nerve, it wuz so
voyalent and vergin’ on the profane. But there the man sot, right onto
that price, and he had to me the appeerance of one who wuz goin’ to sot
there on it all night. And so rather than to spend the night out doors,
in conversation with him, he a settin’ on that price, and Josiah a
shakin’ his fist at it, and a jawin’ at it, I told Josiah that he had
better pay it. And finally he did, with groanin’s that could hardly be
uttered.

They argued

Wall, after supper (a good supper and enough on’t), Josiah proposed
that we should take a short walk, we two alone, for Ardelia wuz afar
from us, most to the other end of the village, either asleep or a
writin’ poetry, I didn’t know which, but I knew it wuz one or the other
of ’em. And I wuz tired enough myself to lay my head down and repose in
the arms of sleep, and told my companion so, but he said:

“Oh shaw! Let old Morpheus wait for us till we get back, there’ll be
time enough to rest then.”

Josiah felt so neat, that he wuz fairly beginnin’ to talk high learnt,
and classical. But I didn’t say nothin’ to break it up, and tied on my
bonnet with calmness (and a double bow knot) and we sallied out.

Soon, or mebby a little after, for we didn’t walk fast on account of my
deep tucker, we stood in front of what seemed to be one hull side of a
long street, all full of orniments and open work, and pillows, and
flowers, and carvin’s, and scallops, and down between every scollop
hung a big basket full of posys, of every beautiful color under the
heavens. And over all, and way back as fur as we could see, wuz
innumerable lights of every color, gorgeousness a shinin’ down on
gorgeousness, glory above, a shinin’ down on glory below. And sweet
strains of music wuz a floatin, out from somewhere, a shinin’
somewhere, renderin’ the seen fur more beautiful to all 4 of our
wraptured ears.

And Josiah sez, as we stood there nearly rooted to the place by our
motions, and a picket fence, sez he dreamily,

“I almost feel as if we had made a mistake, and that this is the land
of Beuler.” And he murmured to himself some words of the old him:

“Oh Beuler land! Sweet Beuler land!”


And I whispered back to him and sez—“Hush they don’t have brass bands
in Beulah land.”

And he sez, “How do you know what they have in Beuler?”

“Wall,” sez I, “’taint likely they do.”

But I don’t know as I felt like blamin’ him, for it did seem to me to
be the most beautiful place that I ever sot my eyes on. And it did seem
fairly as if them long glitterin’ chains and links of colored lights, a
stretchin’ fur back into the distance sort a begoned for us to enter
into a land of perfect beauty and Pure Delight.

And then them glitterin’ chains of light would jine onto other golden,
and crimson, and orange, and pink, and blue, and amber links of glory
and hang there all drippin’ with radiance, and way back as fur as we
could see. And away down under the shinin’ lanes the white statues
stood, beautiful snow-white females, a lookin’ as if they enjoyed it
all. And the lake mirrowed back all of the beauty.

Right out onto the lake stood a fairy-like structure all glowin’ with
big drops of light and every glitterin’ drop reflected down in the
water and the fountain a sprayin’ up on each side. Why it sprayed up
floods of diamonds, and rubys, and sapphires, and topazzes, and
turkeys, and pearls, and opals, and sparklin’ ’em right back into the
water agin.

And right while we stood there, neerly rooted to the spot and gazin’
through extacy and 2 pickets, the band gin a loud burst of melody and
then stopped, and after a minute of silence, we hearn a voice
angel-sweet a risin’ up, up, like a lark, a tender-hearted,
golden-throated lark.

High, high above all the throngs of human folks who wuz cheerin’ her
down below - up above the sea of glitterin’ light - up above the
bendin’ trees that clasped their hands together in silent applaudin’
above her, up, up, into the clear heavens, rose that glorious voice a
singin’ some song about love, love that wuz deathless, eternal.

Why it seemed as if the very clouds wuz full of shadowy faces a bendin’
down to hear it, and the new moon, shaped just like a boat, had glided
down, down the sky to listen.

If the man of the moon was there he wuz a layin’ in the bottom of the
boat, he wuzn’t in sight. But if he heard that music I’ll bet he would
say he wuzn’t in the practice of hearin’ any better. And Josiah stood
stun still till she had got done, and then he sort a sithed out:

“Oh, it seems as if it must be Beuler land! Do you s’pose, Samantha,
Beuler land is any more beautiful?”

And I sez, “I haint a thinkin’ about Beulah.” I sez it pretty middlin’
tart, partly to hide my own feelin’s, which wuz perfectly rousted up,
and partly from principle, and sez I, “Don’t for mercy’s sake call it
Beuler.”

Josiah always will call it so. I’ve got a 4th cousin, Beulah Smith (my
own age and unmarried up to date), and he always did and would call her
Beuler. Truly in some things a pardner’s influence and encouragement
fails to accomplish the ends aimed at.

Wall, it wuz after some words that I drew Josiah away from that seen of
enchantment - or he me, I don’t exactly know which way it wuz - and we
wended onwards in our walk.

The hull broad streets wuz full of folks, full as they could be, all on
’em perfect strangers to us and who knew what motives or weapons they
wuz a carryin’ with ’em; but we knew we wuz safe, Josiah and me did,
for way up over all our heads, stood a big straight soldier, a
volunteer volunteerin, to see to the hull crew on ’em below, a seein’
that they behaved themselves. His age wuz seventy-seven as near as I
could make out but he didn’t look more’n half that. He had kep’ his age
remarkable.

The soldier

Wall, it wuz, if I remember right, jest about now that we see a
glitterin’ high up over our heads some writen in flame. I never see
such brilliant writin, before nor don’t know as I ever shall ag’in.

And Josiah stopped stun still, and stood a lookin’ perfectly
dumfoundered at it. And finally he sez, “I’d give a dollar bill if I
could write like that.”

I see he wuz deeply rousted up for 2 cents is as high as he usually
goes in betted. I see he felt deep and I didn’t blame him. Why,” sez
he, “jest imagine, Samantha, a hull letter wrote like that! how I’d
love to send one back to Uncle Nate Gowdey.

“How Uncle Nate’s eyes would open, and he wouldn’t want no spectacles
nor nothin’ to read it with, would he? I wonder if I could do it,” sez
he, a beginnin’ to be all rousted up.

But I sez, “Be calm,” for so deep is my mind that I grasped the
difficuties of the undertaken’ at once. “How could yon send it, Josiah
Allen? Where would you get a envelop? How could you get it into the
mail bag?” Sez I, “When anybody would send a letter wrote like that,
they would want to write it on sheets of lightnin’, and fold it up in
the envelopin’ clouds of the skies, and it should be received by a
kneelin’ and reverent soul. Who is Uncle Nate that he should get it? He
has not a reverent Soul and he has also rheumatiz in his legs.”

And then I thought, so quick and active is my mind when it gets to
startin’ off on a tower, I thought of what I had hearn a few days
before, of how the secret had been learnt by somebody who lived right
there in the village, of floatin’ letters up at sea from one ship to
another, sigualin’ out in letters of flame -

“Help! I’m a sinkin’!” or “Danger ahead! Look out!”

And I thought what it must be to stand on a dusky night on a lone deck
and see up on the broad, dark; lonesome sky above, a sudden message, a
flash of vivid lightnin’, takin’ to itself the form of language. And I
wondered to myself if in the future we should use the great pages of
the night-sky to write messages from one city to another, or from sea
to land, of danger and warnin’; and then I thought to myself, if souls
clog-bound to earth are able to accomplish so much, who knows but the
freed soul goin’ outward and onward from height to height of wisdom may
yet be able to signal down from the Safe Land messages of help and
warnin’ to the souls it loved below.

The souls a sailin’ and a driftin’ through the dark night of despair -
a dashin’ along through fog and mist and darkness aginst rocks. What it
would be to one kneelin’ in the lonesome night watches by a grave, if
the dark sky could grow luminous and he could read, - “Do not despair!
I am alive! I love you!”

Or, in the hour of the blackest temptation and dread, when the earth is
hollow and the sky a black vault, and the only way of happiness on
God’s earth seems down the dangerous, beautiful way, God-forbidden,
what would it be to have the empty vault lit up with “Danger ahead! We
will help you! be patient a little longer!”

Oh how fur my thoughts wuz a travellin’, and at what a good jog, but
not one trace did my companion see on my forward of these thoughts that
wuz a passin’ through my foretop: and at that very minute, we came up
nigh enough to see that right back of the glitterin’ language overhead,
went a long line of big, glowin’ stars of glory way up over our heads,
and leadin’ down a gentle declivity and Josiah sez, “Let’s foller on,
and see what it will lead us to, Samantha.”

“Wall,” sez I, “light is pretty generally, safe to foller, Josiah
Allen.” And so we meandered along, keepin’ our 2 heads as nigh as we
could under that long glitterin’ chain of golden drops that wuz high
overhead. And on, and on, we follered it dilligently; till for the
land’s sake! if it didn’t lead us to another one of them openwork
buildin’s, fixed off beautiful, and we could see inside 2 big wells
like, with acres of floor seemin’ly on each side of ’em, and crowds of
folks a walkin’ about and settin’ at little tables and most all of ’em
a drinkin’.

The water they drinked we could see wuz a bubblin’ up and a runnin’
over all the time, in big round crystal globes. And up, up on a slender
pole way up over one of the wells hung another one of them crystal
bowls, a bubblin’ over with the water and sparklin’.

And ag’in Josiah asked me if I thought Beuler land could compare with
it?

And I told him ag’in kinder sharp, That I wuzn’t a thinkin’ about
Beuler, I didn’t know any sech a place or name. I wish he would call
things right.

Wall, he wuz so dead tired by this time, that we sot sail homewards;
that is, my feet wuz tired, and my bones, but my mind seemed more
rousted up than common.

Josiah




Chapter VI.
SARATOGA BY DAYLIGHT.


Wall, the next mornin’ Josiah and me sallied out middlin’ early to
explore still further the beauties and grandness of Saratoga. I had on
a black straw bonnet, a green vail, and a umbrell. I also have my black
alpacky, that good moral dress.

My dress bein’ such a high mission one choked me. It wuz so high in the
neck it held my chin up in a most uncomfortable position, but sort a
grand and lofty lookin’. My sleeves wuz so long that more’n half the
time my hand wuz covered up by ’em and I wuz too honerable to wear ’em
for mits; no, in the name of principle I wore ’em for sleeves, good
long sleeves, a pattern to other grandmas that I might meet.

I felt that when they see me and see what I wuz a doin’ and endurin’
fur the cause of female dressin’ they would pause in their wild career,
and cover up their necks and pull their sleeves down.

Wall, it haint to be expected that I could walk along carryin’ such
hefty emotions as I wuz a carryin’, and havin’ my neck held high and
stiddy both by principle and alpacky, and see to every step I wuz a
takin’. And, first I knew, right while I was enjoyin’ the loftiest of
these emotions, I ketched my foot in sunthin’, and most fell down.
Instinctively (such is the power of love) I put out my hand and
clutched at the arm of my pardner. But he too wuz nearly fallin’ at the
same time. It wuz a narrow chance that we wuz a runnin’ from having our
prostrate forms a layin’ there outstretched on the highway.

Instinctively I sez, “Good land!” and Josiah sez—wall, it is fur from
me to tell what he said, but it ended up with these words, “Dumb them
dumb sidewalks anyway;” and sez he, “I should think it would pay to
have a little less gilt paint and spangles and orniments overhead and a
few more solid bricks unless they want more funerals here, dumb ’em!”

Sez I,”Be calm! who be you a talkin’ about? who do you want to bring
down your fearful curses on, Josiah Allen?”

“Why, onto the dumb bricks,” sez he.

He wuz agitated and I said no more. But four times in that first walk,
did I descend almost precipitously into declivities amongst the bricks,
risin’ simultaneously on similar elevations.

It wuz a fearful ordeel and I felt it so, but upheld by principle and
Josiah, I moved onwards, through what seemed to be 5 great throngs and
masses of people, 3 on the ground and 2 hinted up above us on tall
pillows.

Them immense places overhead long as the streets, wuz kinder scalloped
out and trimmed off handsum with railin’s, etc. And on it—oh! what a
vast congregation of heads of all sorts and sizes and colors. And oh!
what a immense display of parasols; why no parasol store in the land
could begin with what I see there.

I can truly say that I thought I knew somethin’ about parasols;, havin’
owned 3 different ones in the course of my life, and havin’ one covered
over. I thought I knew somethin’ of their nater and habits, which is a
good deal, so I had always s’posed, like a umbrell’s. But good land! I
gin up that I knew them not, nor never had.

Why anybody could learn more on ’em through one jerney down that
street, than from a hull lifetime in Jonesville. Truly travel is very
upliftin’ and openin’ and spreadin’ out to the mind, both in parasols
and human nater.

Wall, them 2 masses over our heads wuz 2, then the one in which we wuz
a strugglin’ and the one opposite to it made 4. For anybody with any
pretence to learnin’ knows that twice 2 is 4. And then in the middle of
the broad street was a bigger mass of chariots and horsemen, and carts
and carriages, and great buggies and little ones, and big loads of
barrels, and big loads of ladies, and then a load of wood, and then a
load of hay, and then a pair of young folks pretty as a picture. And
then came some high big coaches as big as our spare bedroom, and as
high as the roof on our horse barn, with six horses hitched to e’m, all
runnin’ over on top with men; and wimmen, and children, and parasols,
and giggles, and ha ha’s. And a man wuz up behind a soundin’ out on a
trumpet, a dretful sort of a high, sweet note, not dwindlin’ down to
the end as some music duz, but kinder crinklin’ round and endin’ up in
the air every time.

Josiah wuz dretful took with it and he told me in confidence that he
laid out when he got home to buy a trumpet and blow out jest them
strains every time he went into Jonesville or out of it. He said it
would sound so sort a warlike and impressive.

I expostulated aginst the idee. But sez he, “You’ll enjoy it when you
get used to it.”

“Never!” sez I.

“Yes you will,” sez he, “and while I live I lay out that you shall have
advantages, and shall enjoy things new and uneek.”

“Yes,” sez I feelin’ly, “I expect to, Josiah Allen, as long as I live
with you.” And I sithed. But I had little time to enjoy even sithin’,
for oh! the crowd that wuz a pressin’ onto us and surroundin’ us on
every side, some on ’em curius and strange lookin’, some on ’em
beautiful and grand. Pretty young girls lookin’ sweet enough to kiss,
and right behind ’em a Chinese man with a long dress, and wooden shoes,
and his hair in a long braid behind, and his eyes sot in sideways. And
then would come on a hull lot of wimmen in dresses ev’ry color of the
rainbow, and some men. Then a few childern, lookin’ sweet as roses,
with their mothers a pushin’ the little carts ahead on ’em. And if
you’ll believe it, I don’t s’pose you will, but it is true, that lots
of black ma’s had childern jest as white as snow, and pretty as
rosebuds, took after their fathers I s’pose. But I don’t believe in a
mixin’ of the races. And when I see ’em a kissin’ the pretty babys, I
begun to muse a very little on the feelin’s of the indignent South, at
havin’ a colered girl set in the same car with ’em, or on a bench in
the same school room.

Black Ma’s

I mewsed on how they held the white forms clost to their black breasts
at birth, and in the hour of death—the black lips pressed to the white
cheeks and lips, in both cases. And all the way between life and death
they mingle clost as they can, some in some cases like the hill of
knowledge. Then the contact is too clost, when they sot out to climb up
by ’em. Truly there are deep conundrums and strange ones, all along
through life; though the white man may be, and is, cleer up out of his
way, on the sunshiny brow of the hill, and the black man at the foot,
way down amongst the shadows and darkness of the low grounds. They
don’t come very nigh each other. But the arms that have felt the clasp
and the lips that have felt the kisses of that very same black climber
all through life, moves ’em and shouts ’em to “go down,” to “go back,”

“The contact is getting too clost, danger is ahead.” Curious, haint it?
Jest as if any danger is so dangerous as ignorance and brutality.
Curious, haint it? But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom.

Wall, right after the babies we’d meet a Catholic priest with a calm
and fur away look on his face, a lookin’ at the crowd as if he wuz in
it, but not of it. And then a burgler, mebby, anyway a mean lookin’
creeter, ragged and humble. And then 2 or 3 men foreign lookin’,
jabberin’ in a tongue I know nothin’ of, nor Josiah either. And then
some more childern, and wimmen, and dogs, and parasols, and men, and
babies, and Injuns, and Frenchmen, and old young wimmen, and young old
ones, and handsome ones, and hombly ones, and parasols, and some sweet
young girls ag’in, and some black men, and some white men, and some
more wimmen, and parasols, and silk, and velvet, and lace, and puckers,
and raffles, and gethers, and gores, and flowers, and feathers, and
fringes, and frizzles, and then some men, some Southerners from the
South, some Westerners from the West, some Easterners from the East,
and some Cubebs from Cuba, and some Chinamen from China.

Oh! what a seen! What a seen! back and forth, passin’ and repassin’, to
and fro, parasols, and dogs, and wimmen, and men, and babies, and
parasols, to and fro, to and fro. Why, if I stood there long so crazed
would I have become at the seen, that I should have felt that Josiah
wuz a To and I wuz a Fro, or I wuz a parasol and he wuz a dog.

And to prevent that fearful catastrophe, I sez, “If we ever get beyond
this side of the village that seems all run together, if we ever do get
beyond it, which seems doubtful, le’s go and sit down, in some quiet
spot, and try to collect our scattered minds.” Sez I, “I feel curius,
Josiah Allen!” and sez I, “How do you feel?”

His answer I will not translate; it was neither Biblical nor even
moral. And I sez agin, “Hain’t it strange that they have the village
all run together with no streets turnin’ off of it.” Sez I, “It makes
me feel queer, Josiah Allen, and I am a goin’ to enquire into it.” So
we wended our way some further on amongst the dense crowd I have spoken
of, only more crowded and more denser, and anon, if not oftener,
Josiah’s head would be scooped in by passin’ parasols, and then in low,
deep tones, Josiah would use words that I wouldn’t repeat for a dollar
bill, till at last I asked a by bystander a standin’ by, and sez I, “Is
this village all built together—don’t you have no streets a turnin’ off
of it?”

“Yes,” sez he, “you’ll find a street jest as soon as you get by this
hotel.”

I stopped right in my tracts; I wuz dumbfoundered. Sez I, “Do you mean
to say that this hull side of the street that we have been a traversin’
anon, or long before anon,—do you say that this is all one buildin’?”

“Yes mom,” sez he.

Sez I, in faint axents, “When shall we get to the end on it?”

Sez he, “You have come jest about half way.”

Josiah gin a deep groan and turned him round in his tracts and sez,
“Le’s go back this minute.”

I too thought of the quiet haven from whence we had set out, with a
deep longin’, but sech is the force and strength of my mind that I
grasped holt of the situation and held it there tight. If we wuz half
way across it wouldn’t be no further to go on than it would to go back.
Such wuz my intellect that I see it to once, but Josiah’s mind couldn’t
grasp it, and with words murmured in my ears which I will never repeat
to a livin’ soul he wended on by my side through the same old
crowd—parasols, and wimmen, and dogs, and babies, and men, and
parasols, and Injuns, and Spanards, and Creoles, and pretty girls, and
old wimmen, and puckers, and gethers, and bracelets, and diamonds, and
lace, and parasols. Several times, if not more, wuz Josiah Allen
scooped in by a parasol held by a female, and I felt he wuz liable to
be torn from me. His weight is but small. 3 times his hat fell off in
the operation and wuz reskued with difficulty, and he spoke words I
blush to recall as havin’ passed my pardner’s lips.

Wall, in the fullness of time, or a little after, for truly I wuz not
in a condition to sense things much, we arrove at a street and we
gladly turned our 2 frames into it, and wended our way on it, goin’ at
a pretty good jog. The crowd a growin’ less and less and we kep a
goin’, and kep a goin’, till Josiah sez in weary axents:

“Where be you a goin’, Samantha? Haint you never goin’ to stop? I am
fairly tuckered out.”

And I sez in faint axents, “I would fain reach a land where parasols
and puckers are not and dogs and diamonds are no more.”

I wuz middlin’ incoherent from my agitation. But I meant well. I wuz
truly in hopes I would reach some quiet place where Josiah and me could
set down alone. Where I could look in quiet and repose upon that dear
bald head, and recooperate my strength.

We went by beautiful places, grand houses of different colors but every
one on ’em good lookin’ ones, a settin’ back amongst their green trees,
with shady grass-covered yards, and fountains and flower beds in front
of ’em, and more grand handsome houses, and more big beautiful yards,
green velvet grass and beautiful flowers and fountains, and birds and
beauty on every side on us.

And though I felt and knew that in them big carriages that was a
passin’ 2 and fro all the time, though I felt that parasols, and
puckers, and laces, and dogs, and diamonds, wuz a bein’ borne past me
all the time, yet sech is the force of my mind that I could withdraw my
specks from ’em, and look at the beautiful works of nater (assisted by
man) that wuz about me on every hand.

Finally my long search wuz rewarded, we came to a big open gateway that
seemed to lead into a large, quiet delightful forest. And in that
lovely, lonesome place, Josiah and me sot down to recooperate our 2
energies.

Josiah looked good to me. Men are nice creeters, but you don’t want to
see too meny of ’em to once, likeways with wimmen. Josiah looked to me
at that moment some like a calico dress that you have picked out of a
dense quantity of patterns of calico at a store, it looks better to you
when you get it away from the rest. Josiah Allen looked good to me.

But anon, after I had bathed my distracted eyes (as you may say) in the
liniment of my pardner, I began to take in the rare beauty of the seen
laid out before me and we arose and wended our way onwards peaceful and
serene, as 2 childern led on by their mother.

Dear Mother Nature! how dost thou rest and soothe thy distracted
childern when too hardly used by the grindin’, oppressive hands of
fashion,and the weerisome elements of a too civilized life. Maybe thou
art a heathen mother, oneducated and ignorant in all but the wisdom of
love, but thy bosom is soft and restful, and thy arms lovin’ and
tender. And, heathen if thou art, we love thee first and at last. We
are glad to slip out of all the vain and gilded supports that have held
us weerily up, and lay down our tired heads on thy kindly and
unquestionin’ bosom and rest.

As we rose from the soft turf, on which we had been a restin’, and
meandered on through that beautiful park, (so tenderly had nature used
him,) not one trace of the wild commotion that had almost rent Josiah
Allen’s breast, could be seen save one expirin’ threeoh of agony. As we
started out ag’in, he looked down onto my faithful umberell, that had
stiddied me on so many towers of principle, and sez he, in low
concentrated axents of skern and bitterness, “If that wuz a dumb
parasol, Samantha, I would crush it to the earth and grind it to
atoms.”

Truly he could not forget how his bald head had been gethered in like a
ripe sheaf, by 7 females, during that very walk, hombly ones too, so it
had happened. But I sez nothin’ in reply to this expirin’ note of the
crysis he had passed through, knowin’ this was not the time for silver
speech but for golden silence, and so we meandered onwards.

And it wuz anon that we see in the distance a fair white female a
standin’ kinder still in the edge of the woods, and Josiah spoke in a
seemin’ly careless way, and sez he, “She don’t seem to have many
clothes on, Samantha.”

Sez I, “Hush, Josiah! she has probably overslept herself, and come out
in a hurry, mebby to look for some herbs or sunthin’. I persoom one of
her childern are sick, and she sprung right up out of bed, and come out
to get some weather-wort, or catnip, or sunthin’.”

And as I spoke I drawed Josiah down a side path away from her. But he
stopped stun still and sez he, “Mebby I ought to go and help her
Samantha.”

Sez I, “Josiah Allen, sense I lived with you, I don’t think I have been
shamder of you;” sez I, “it would mortify her to death if she should
_mistrust_ you had seen her in that condition.”

“Wall,” sez he, still a hangin’ back, “if the child is very sick, and I
can be any help to her, it is my duty to go.”

His eye had been on her nearly every moment of the time, in spite of my
almost voyalent protests, and sez he, kinder excited like, “She is
standin’ stun still, as if she is skarit; mebby there is a snake in
front of her or sunthin’, or mebby she is took paralysed, I’d better go
and see.”

Sez I, in low, deep axents, “You stay where you be, Josiah Allen, and I
will go forward, bein’ 2 females together, it is what it is right to do
and if we need your help I will holler.”

Woman in the woods

And finally he consented after a parlay.

Wall, as I got up to her I see she wuzn’t a live, meat woman, but a
statute and so I hastened back to my Josiah and told him there wuzn’t
no need of his help and he wuz in the right on’t—she wuz stun still.”

He said he guessed we’d better go that way. And I sez, “No, Josiah, I
want to go round by the other road.”

Wall, we got back to our abode perfectly tuckered out, but perfectly
happy. And we concluded that after dinner we would set out and see the
different springs and partake of ’em. Had it not been for our almost
frenzied haste to get away from parasols and dogs and destraction into
a place of rest we should have beheld them sooner. And our afternoon’s
adventures I will relate in another epistol.

crowed street




Chapter VII.
SEEING THE DIFFERENT SPRINGS.


Taking a walk

Immegeatly after dinner (a good one) Josiah Allen, Ardelia Tutt and me
sot out to view and look at the different springs and to partake of the
same. We hadn’t drinked a drop of it as yet. Ardelia had come over to
go with us. She had on a kind of a yellowish drab dress and a hat made
of the same, with some drab and blue bows of ribbon and some pink
holly-hawks in it, and she had some mits on (her hands prespired
dretfully, and she sweat easy). As I have said, she is a good lookin’
girl but soft. And most any dress she puts on kinder falls into the
same looks. It may be quite a hard lookin’ dress before she puts it on,
but before she has wore it half a hour it will kinder crease down into
the softest lookin, thing you ever see. And so with her bonnets, and
mantillys, and everything.

The down onto a goslin’s breast never looked softer than every rag she
had on this very afternoon, and no tender goslin’ itself wuz ever
softer than she wuz on the inside on’t. But that didn’t hinder my
likin’ her.

Wall, anon, or a little before, we came to that long, long buildin’,
beautiful and dretful ornimental, but I could see plain by daylight
what I had mistrusted before, that it wuzn’t built for warmth. It must
be dretful cold in the winter, and I don’t see how the wimmen folks of
the home could stand it, unless they hang up bed quilts and blankets
round the side, and then, I should think they would freeze. They
couldn’t keep their house plants over winter any way - and I see they
had sights of ’em - unless they kep’ ’em down suller.

But howsumever, that is none of my lookout. If they want to be so
fashionable, as to try to live out doors and in the house too, that is
none of my business. And of course it looked dretful ornimental and
pretty. But I will say this, it haint bein’ mejum. I should rather live
either out doors, or in the house, one of the 2. But I am a eppisodin’.
And to resoom.

Josiah Allen paid the money demanded of him and we went in and advanced
onwards to where a boy wuz a pullin’ up the water and handin’ of it
round.

It looked dretful bubblin’ and sparklin’. Why sunthin’ seemed to be a
sparklin’ up all the time in the water and I thought to myself mebby it
wuz water thoughts, mebby it wanted to tell sunthin’, mebby it has all
through these years been a tryin’ to bubble up and sparkle out in
wisdom but haint found any one yet who could understand its liquid
language. Who knows now?

I took my glass and looked close - sparkle, sparkle, up came the tiny
thought sparks! But I wuzn’t wise enough to read the glitterin’
language. No I wuzn’t deep enough. It would take a deep mind, mebby
thousands of feet deep, to understand the great glowin’ secret that it
has been a tryin’ to reveal and couldn’t. Mebby it has been a tryin’ to
tell of big diamond mines that it has passed through - great cliffs and
crags of gold sot deep with the crystalized dew of diamonds.

But no, I didn’t believe that wuz it. That wouldn’t help the world,
only to make it happier, and these seemed to me to be dretful
inspirin’, upliftin’ thoughts. No, mebby it is a tryin’ to tell a cold
world about a way to heat it. Mebby it has been a runnin’ over and is
sparklin’ with bright thoughts about how deep underneath the earth lay
a big fireplace, that all the cold beggars of mortality could set round
and warm _their_ frozen fingers by,—a tryin’ to tell how the heat of
that fire that escapes now up the chimbleys of volcanoes, and sometimes
in sudden drafts blows out sideways into earthquakes, etc., could be
utilized by conveyin’ it up on top of the ground, and have it carried
into the houses like Croton water. Who knows now? Mebby that is it!

Oh! I felt that it would be a happy hour for Samantha when she could
bile her potatoes by the heat of that large noble fire-place. And more
than that, far more wuz the thought that heat might become, in the
future, as cheap as cold. That the little cold hands that freeze every
winter in the big cities, could be stretched out before the big
generous warmth of that noble fire-place. And who built that fire in
the first place? Who laid the first sticks on the handirons, and put
the match to it? Who wuz it that did it, and how did he look, and when
wuz he born, and why, and where?

These, and many other thoughts of similar size and shape, filled my
brane almost full enough to lift up the bunnet, that reposed gracefully
on my foretop, as I stood and held the sparklin’ glass in my hands.

Sparkle! sparkle! sparkle! what wuz it, it wuz a tryin’ to say to me
and couldn’t? Good land! I couldn’t tell, and Josiah couldn’t, I knew
instinctively he couldn’t, though I didn’t ask him.

No, I turned and looked at that beloved man, for truly I had for the
time bein’ been by the side of myself, and I see that he wuz a drinkin’
lavishly of the noble water. I see that he wuz a drinkin’ more than wuz
for his good, his linement showed it, and sez I, for he wuz a liftin’
another tumbler full onto his lips, sez I, “Pause, Josiah Allen, and
don’t imbibe too much.”

Taking the water

“Why,” he whispered, “you can drink all you are a mind to for 5 cents.
I am bound for once, Samantha Allen, to get the worth of my money.”

And he drinked the tumbler full down at one swoller almost, and turned
to the weary boy for another. He looked bad, and eager, and sez I, “How
many have you drinked?”

Sez he, in a eager, animated whisper, “9.” And he whispered in the same
axents, “5 times 9 is 45 ; if it had been to a fair, or Fourth of July,
or anything, it would have cost me 45 cents, and if it had been to a
church social - lemme see - 9 times 10 is 90. It would have cost me a
dollar bill! And here I am a havin’ it all for 5 cents. Why,” sez he,
“I never see the beat on’t in my life.”

And ag’in he drinked a tumbler full down, and motioned to the
frightened boy for another.

But I took him by the vest and whispered to him, sez I, “Josiah Allen,
do you want to die, because you can die cheap? Why,” sez I, “it will
kill you to drink so much.”

“But think of the cheapness on’t Samantha! The chance I have of getting
the worth of my money.”

But I whispered back to him in anxus axents and told him, that I
guessed if funeral expenses wuz added to that 5 cents it wouldn’t come
so cheap, and sez I, “you wont live through many more glasses, and
you’ll see you wont. Why,” sez I, “you are a drowndin’ out your
insides.”

He wuz fairly a gettin’ white round the mouth, and I finally got him to
withdraw, though he looked back longingly at the tumblers and murmured
even after I had got him to the door, that it wuz a dumb pity when
anybody got a chance to get the worth of their money, which wuzn’t
often, to think they couldn’t take advantage on it.

And I sez back to him in low deep axents, “There is such a thing as
bein’ too graspin’, Josiah Allen.” Sez I, “The children of Israel used
to want to lay up more manny than they wanted or needed, and it spilte
on their hands.” And sez I, “you see if it haint jest so with you; you
have been in too great haste to enrich yourself, and you’ll be sorry
for it, you see if you haint.”

And he was. Though he uttered language I wouldn’t wish to repeat, about
the children of Israel and about me for bringin’ of ’em up. But the man
wuz dethly sick. Why he had drinked 11 tumblers full, and I trembled to
think what would have follered on, and ensued, if I hadn’t interfered.
As it wuz, he wuz confined to our abode for the rest of the day.

But I wouldn’t have Josiah Allen blamed more than is due for this
little incedent, for it only illustrates a pervailin’ trait in men’s
nater, and sometimes wimmen’s - a too great desire to amass sudden
riches, and when opportunity offers, burden themselves with useless and
wearysome and oft-times painful gear.

They don’t need it but seeing they have a chance to get it cheap, “dog
cheap “ as the poet observes, why they weight themselves down with it,
and then groan under the burden of unnecessary and wearin’ wealth. This
is a deep subject, deep as the well from which my companion drinked,
and nearly drinked himself into a untimely grave.

Men heap up more riches than they can enjoy and then groan and rithe
under the taxes, the charity given, the envy, the noteriety, the glare,
and the glitter, the crowd of fortune-hunters and greedy hangers-on,
and the care and anxiety. They orniment the high front of their houses
with the paint, the gildin’, the fashion, and the show of enormous
wealth, and while the crowd of fashion-seekers and fortune-hunters pour
in and out of the lofty doorway they set out on the back stoop a
groanin’ and a sithin’ at the cares and sleepless anxietes of their big
wealth, and then they git up and go down street and try their best to
heap up more treasure to groan over.

And wimmen now, when wuz there ever a woman who could resist a good
bargain? Her upper beauro draws may be a runnin’ over with laces and
ribbons, but let her see a great bargain sold for nothin’ almost, and
where is the female woman that can resist addin’ to that already too
filled up beauro draw.

A baby, be he a male, or be he a female child, when he has got a appel
in both hands, will try to lay holt of another, if you hold it out to
him. It is human nater. Josiah must not be considered as one alone in
layin’ up more riches than he needed. He suffered, and I also, for sech
is the divine law of love, that if one member of the family suffers,
the other members suffer also, specially when the sufferin’ member is
impatient and voyalent is his distress, and talks loud and angry at
them who truly are not to blame.

Now I didn’t make the springs nor I wuzn’t to blame for their bein’
discovered in the first place. But Josiah laid it to me. And though I
tried to make him know that it wuz a Injun that discovered ’em first,
he wouldn’t gin in and seemed to think they wouldn’t have been there if
it hadn’t been for me.

I hated to hear him go on so. And in the cause of Duty, I brung up Sir
William Johnson and others. But he lay there on the lounge, and kep’
his face turned resolute towards the wall, in a dretful oncomfertable
position (sech wuz his temper of mind), and said, he never had heard of
them, nor the springs nuther, and shouldn’t if it hadn’t been for me.

Why, sez I, “A Injun brought Sir William Johnson here on his back.”

“Wall,” sez he, cross as a bear, “that is the way you’ll have to take
me back, if you go on in this way much longer.”

“In what way, Josiah?” sez I.

“Why a findin’ springs and draggin’ a man off to ’em, and makin’ him
drink.”

“Why, Josiah Allen,” sez I, “I told you not to drink - don’t you
remember?”

“No! I don’t remember nuthin’, nor don’t want to. I want to go to
sleep!” sez he, snappish as anything, so I went out and let him think
if he wanted to, that I made the Springs, and the Minerals, and the
Gysers, and the Spoutin’ Rock, and everything. Good land! I knew I
didn’t; but I had to rest under the unkind insinnuation. Such is some
of the trials of pardners.

But Josiah waked up real clever. And I brung him up some delicate warm
toast and some fragrant tea, and his smile on me wuz dretful
good-natured, almost warm. And I forgot all his former petulence and
basked in the rays of love and happiness that beamed on me out of the
blue sky of my companion’s eyes. The clear blue sky that held two
stars, to which my heart turned.

Such is some of the joys of pardners with which the world don’t meddle
with, nor can’t destroy.

But to resoom. Ardelia sot down awhile in our room before she went back
to her boardin’ house. I see she wuz a writin’ for she had a long lead
pencil in her right hand and occasionally she would lean her forrerd
down upon it, in deep thought, and before she went, she slipped the
verses into my hand:

“STANZAS ON A MINERAL SPRING.


“Oh! waters that doth bubble up and spout
Oh, didst thou bubble down insted of up,
Thou couldest not with all thy minerals get out
We could not then arise and drink thee in a cup.

“Oh! human waves that float and seeth and tear
Oh wiltest thou not too a learn to bubble up
Instead of down, a lesson deep to bear,
Oh Soul, can here be learned, one smooth, or rough.

“A lesson deep of powerful min-er-als
That act with power the constitution on,[1]
And still that softly bubbles up, and tells
To souls unborn, how sweetly they have ron.

“Oh water that doth mount on slender tip,
And spoutest up some 30 feet, through pole;
Oh Hope, learn thou a lesson from the water’s lip,
Spout out, spout out, in peace from hollow soul.”


 [1] As in the case of Mr. Allen, poor dear man.


Sez I, a lookin’ over my specks at Ardelia after I had finished readin’
the verses: “What does ‘ron’ mean? I never heerd of that word before,
nor knew there wuz sech a one.”

Sez she, “I meant ran, but I s’pose it is a poetical license to say
‘ron,’ don’t you think so?”

“Oh, yes,” sez I, “I s’pose so, I don’t know much about licenses, nor
don’t want to, they are suthin’ I never believed in. But,” sez I, for I
see she looked red and overcasted by my remarks, “I don’t s’pose it
will make any difference in a 100 years whether you say ran or ron.”

But sez I, “Ardelia, it is a hot day, and I wouldn’t write any more if
I wuz in your place. If you should heat your bra-, the upper part of
your head, you might not get over it for some time.”

“But,” sez she, “you have told me sometimes to stop on account of cold
weather.”

“Wall,” sez I, “most any kind of weather is hard on some kinds of
poetry.” Sez I, “Poetry is sunthin’ that takes particular kinds of
folks and weather to be successful.” Sez I, “It is sunthin’ that can’t
be tampered with with impunity by Christians or world’s people. It is a
kind of a resky thing to do, and I wouldn’t write any more to-day,
Ardelia.”

And she heard to me and after a settin’ a while with us, she went back
to Mr. Pixley’s.

Samantha tastes the water




Chapter VIII.
JOSIAH AND SAMANTHA TAKE A LONG WALK.


Wall, we hadn’t been to Saratoga long before Aunt Polly Pixley came
over to see us, for Aunt Polly had been as good as her word and had
come to Saratoga, to her 2d cousins, the Mr. Pixley’ses, where Ardelia
wuz a stopping. Ardelia herself is a distant relation to Aunt Polly,
quite distant, about 40 or 50 miles distant when they are both to home.

Wall, the change in Aunt Polly is wonderful, perfectly wonderful. She
don’t look like the same woman.

She took her knittin’ work and come in the forenoon, for a all day’s
visit, jest as she wuz used to in the country, good old soul - and I
took her right to my room and done well by her, and we talked
considerable about other wimmen, not runnin’ talk, but good plain talk.

She thinks a sight of the Saratoga water, and well she may, if that is
what has brung her up, for she wuz always sick in Jonesville, kinder
bedrid. And when she sot out for Saratoga she had to have a piller to
put on the seat behind her to sort a prop her up (hen’s feather).

And now, she told me she got up early every mornin’ and walked down to
the spring for a drink of the water - walked afoot. And she sez, “It is
astonishin’ how much good that water is a doin’ me; for,” sez she,
“when I am to home I don’t stir out of the house from one day’s end to
the other; and here,” sez she, “I set out doors all day a’most, a
listenin’ to the music in the park mornin’ and evenin’ I hear every
strain on’t.”

Aunt Polly is the greatest one for music I ever see, or hearn on. And I
sez to her, “Don’t you believe that one great thing that is helpin’
you, is bein’ where you are kep’ gay and cheerful, - by music and good
company; and bein’ out so much in the sunshine and pure air.” (Better
air than Saratoga has got never wuz made; that is my opinion and
Josiah’s too.) And sez I, “I lay a good deal to that air.”

“No,” she said, “it wuz the water.”

Sez I, “The water is good, I don’t make no doubts on’t.” But I
continued calmly - for though I never dispute, I do most always
maintain my opinion - and I sez again calmly, “There has been a great
change in you for the better, sense you come here, Miss Pixley. But
some on’t I lay to your bein’ where things are so much more cheerful
and happyfyin’. You say you haint heerd a strain of music except a base
viol for over 14 years before you come here. And though base viols if
played right may be melodious, yet Sam Pixley’s base viol wuz a old
one, and sort a cracked and grumbly in tone, and he wuzn’t much of a
player anyway, and to me, base viols always sounded kinder base
anyway.”

And sez I, “Don’t you believe a gettin’ out of your little low dark
rooms, shaded by Pollard willers and grave stuns, and gettin’ out onto
a place where you can heer sweet music from mornin’ till night, a
liftin’ you up and makin’ you happier - don’t you believe that has
sunthin’ to do with your feelin’ so much better - that and the pure
sweet air of the mountains comin’ down and bein’ softened and enriched
by the breath of the valley, and the minerals, makin’ a balmy
atmosphere most full of balm - I lay a good deal to that.”

“Oh no,” sez she, “it is the water.”

“Yes,” sez I, in a very polite way, - I will be polite, “the water is
good, first rate.”

But at that very minute, word come to her that she had company, and she
sot sail homewards immegetly, and to once.

And now I don’t care anything for the last word, some wimmen do, but I
don’t. But I sez to her, as I watched her a goin’ down the stairway,
steppin’ out like a girl almost, sez I, “How well you do seem, Aunt
Polly; and I lay a good deal on’t to that air.”

Now who would have thought she would speak out from the bottom of the
stairway and say, “No, it is the water?”

Wall, the water is good, there haint no doubt, and anyway, through the
water and the air, and bein’ took out of her home cares, and old
surroundin’s onto a brght happy place, the change in Polly Pixley is
sunthin’ to be wondered at.

Yes, the water is good. And it is dretful smart, knowin’ water too.
Why, wouldn’t anybody think that when it all comes from the same place,
or pretty nigh the same place anyway, that they would get kinder
flustrated and mixed up once in a while?

But they don’t. These hundreds and thousands of years, and I don’t know
how much longer, they have kep’ themselves separate from each other,
livin’ nigh neighbors there down under the ground, but never
neighborin’ with each other, or intermarryin’ in each other’s families.
No, they have kep’ themselves apart, livin’ exclosive down below and
bubblin’ up exclosive.

They know how to make each other keep their proper distance, and I
s’pose through all the centuries to come they will bubble up, right
side by side, entirely different from each other.

Curius, hain’t it? Dretful smart, knowin’ waters they be, fairly
sparklin’ and flashin’ with light and brightness, and intelligence.
They are for the healin’ and refreshin’ of ,the nations, and the
nations are all here this summer, a bein’ healed by ’em. But still I
lay a good deal to that air.

Amongst the things that Aunt Polly told me about wimmen that day, wuz
this, that Ardelia Tutt had got a new Bo, Bial Flamburg, by name.

She said Mr. Flamburg had asked Ardelia’s 3d cousin to introduce him to
her, and from that time his attentions to her had been unremittent,
voyalent, and close. She said that to all human appearance he wuz in
love with her from his hat band down to his boots and she didn’t know
what the result would be, though she felt that the situation wuz
dangerus, and more’n probable Abram Gee had more trouble ahead on him.
(Aunt Polly jest worships Abram Gee, jest as everybody duz that gets to
know him well.) And I too, felt that the situation wuz dubersome. For
Ardelia I knew wuz one of the soft little wimmen that has _got_ to have
men a trailin’ round after ’em; and her bein’ so uncommon tender
hearted, and Mr. Flamburg so deep in love, I feared the result.

Wall, I wuz jest a thinkin’ of this that day after dinner when Josiah
proposed a walk, so we sot out. He proposed we should walk through the
park, so we did. The air wuz heavenly sweet and that park is one of the
most restful and beautiful places this side of Heaven, or so it seemed
to us that pleasant afternoon. The music was very soft and sweet that
day, sweet with a undertone of sadness, some like a great sorrowful
soul in a beautiful body.

The balmy south wind whispered through the branches of the bendin’
trees on the hill where we sot. The light was a shinin’ and a siftin’
down through the green leaves, in a soft golden haze, and the music
seemed to go right up into them shadowy, shinin’ pathways of golden
misty light, a climbin’ up on them shadowy steps of mist and gold, and
amber, up, up into the soft depths of the blue overhead - up to the
abode of melody and love.

Down the hill in the beautiful little valley, all amongst the fountains
and windin’ walks and white statutes, and green, green, grass, little
children wuz a playin’. Sweet little toddlers, jest able to walk about,
and bolder spirits, though small, a trudgin’ about with little canes,
and jumpin’ round, and havin’ a good time.

Little boys and little girls (beautiful creeters, the hull on ’em), for
if their faces, every one on ’em, wuzn’t jest perfect! They all had the
beauty of childhood and happiness. And crowds of older folks wuz there.
And some happy young couples, youths and maidens, wuz a settin’ round,
and a wanderin’ off by themselves, and amongst them we see the form of
Ardelia, and a young man by her side.

She wuz a leanin’ on the stun railin’ that fences in the trout pond.
She wuz evidently a lookin’ down pensively at the shinin’ dartin’
figures of the trout, a movin’ round down in the cool waters.

I wuzn’t nigh enough to ’em to see really how her companion looked, but
even at that distance I recognized a certain air and atmosphere a
surroundin’ Ardelia that I knew meant poetry.

And Josiah recognized it too, and he sez to me, “We may as well go
round the hill and out to the road that way,” sez he, (a pointin’ to
the way furthest from Ardelia) “and we may as well be a goin’.”

That man abhors poetry.

Wall, we wandered down into the high way and havin’ most the hull
afternoon before us, we kinder sauntered round amongst the stores that
wuz pretty nigh to where we wuz. There is some likely good lookin’
stores kep’ by the natives, as they call the stiddy dwellers in
Saratoga. Good lookin’ respectable stores full of comfort and
consolation, for the outer or inner man or woman. (I speak it in a
mortal sense).

But with the hundred thousand summer dwellers, who flock here with the
summer birds, and go out before the swallers go south, there comes lots
of summer stores, and summer shops, and picture studios, etc., etc.
Like big summer bird’s-nests, all full and a runnin’ over with summer
wealth, to be blowed down by the autumn winds. These shops are full of
everything elegant and beautiful and useful. The most gorgeous vases
and plaks and chiner ware of every description and color, and books,
and jewelry, and rugs, and fans, and parasols, and embroideries, and
laces, and etc., etc., etc.

And one shop seemed to be jest full of drops of light, light and
sunshine, crystalized in golden, clear, tinted amber. There wuz a young
female statute a standin’ up in the winder of that store with her hands
outstretched and jest a drippin’ with the great glowin’ amber drops.
Some wuz a hangin’ over her wings for she was a young flyin’ female.
And I thought to myself it must be she would fly better with all that
golden light a drippin’ about her.

Josiah liked her looks first rate. And he liked the looks of some of
the pictures extremely. There wuz lots of places all full of pictures.
A big collection of water colors, though as Josiah said and well said,
How they could get so many colors out of water wuz a mystery to him.

But my choice out of all the pictures I see, wuz a little one called
“The Sands of Dee.” It wuz “Mary a callin’ the cattle home.” The cruel
treacherus water wuz a risin’ about her round bare ankles as she stood
there amongst the rushes with her little milk-bucket on her arm.

Her pretty innocent face wuz a lookin’ off into the shadows, and the
last ray of sunset was a fallin’ on her. Maybe it wuz the pity on’t
that struck so hard as I looked at it, to know that the “cruel,
crawli’n foam” wuz so soon to creep over the sweet young face and round
limbs. And there seemed to be a shadow of the comin’ fate, a sweepin’
in on the gray mist behind her.

I stood for some time, and I don’t know but longer, a lookin’ at it, my
Josiah a standin’ placidly behind me, a lookin’ over my shoulder and
enjoyin’ of it too, till the price wuz mentioned. But at that fearful
moment, my pardner seized me by the arm, and walked me so voyalently
out of that store and down the walk that I did not find and recover
myself till we stood at the entrance to Philey street.

At the art gallery

And I wuz so out of breath, by his powerful speed, that she didn’t look
nateral to me, I hardly recognized Philey. But Josiah hurried me down
Philey and wanted to get my mind offen Mary Dee I knew, for he says as
we come under a sign hangin’ down over the road, “Horse Exchange,” sez
he, “What do you say, Samantha, do you spose I could change off the old
mair, for a camel or sunthin’? How would you like a camel to ride?”

I looked at him in speechless witherin’ silence, and he went on
hurridly, “It would make a great show in Jonesville, wouldn’t it, to
see us comin’ to meetin’ on a camel, or to see us ridin’ in a cutter
drawed by one. I guess I’ll see about it, some other time.”

And he went on hurridly, and almost incoherently as we see another
sign, over the road - oh! how vollubly he did talk - “Quick, Livery.”

“I hate to see folks so dumb conceeted! Now I don’t spose that man has
got any hosses much faster than the old mair.”

“‘Wing’s!’ Shaw! I don’t believe no such thing - a livery on wings. I
don’t believe a word on’t. And you wouldn’t ketch me on one on ’em, if
they had!”

“‘Yet Sing!’” sez he, a lookin’ accost the street into a laundry house.
“What do I care if you do sing? ’Taint of much account if you do any
way. _I_ sing sometimes, I _yet_ sing,” says he.

“_Sing_,” sez I in neerly witherin’ tone. “I’d love to hear you sing, I
haint yet and I’ve lived with you agoin’ on 30 years.”

“Wall, if you haint heerd me, it is because you are deef,” sez he.

But that is jest the way he kep’ on, a hurryin’ me along, and a talkin’
fast to try to get the price of that picture out of my head. Anon, and
sometimes oftener, we would come to the word in big letters on signs,
or on the fence, or the sides of barns, “Pray.” And sometimes it would
read, “Pray for my wife!” And Josiah every time he came to the words
would stop and reflect on ’em.

“‘Pray!’ What business is it of yourn, whether I pray or not? ‘Pray for
my wife!’ That haint none of your business.”

Sez he, a shakin’ his fist at the fence, “’Taint likely I should have a
wife without prayin’ for her. She needs it bad enough,” sez he once, as
he stood lookin’ at it.

I gin him a strange look, and he sez, “You wouldn’t like it, would you,
if I didn’t pray for you?”

“No,” sez I, “and truly as you say, the woman who is your wife needs
prayer, she needs help, morn half the time she duz.”

He looked kinder dissatisfied at the way I turned it, but he sez,
“‘Plumbin’ done here!’”

“I’d love to know where they are goin’ to plum. I don’t see no sign of
plum trees, nor no stick to knock ’em off with.” And agin he sez, “You
would make a great ‘fuss, Samantha, if I should say what is painted up
right there on that cross piece. You would say I wuz a swearin’.”

Sez I coldly, (or as cold as I could with my blood heated by the
voyalence and rapidity of the walk he had been a leadin’ me,) “There is
a Van in front of it. Van Dam haint swearin’.”

“You would say it wuz if _I_ used it,” sez he reproachfully. “If I
should fall down on the ice, or stub my toe, and trip up on the meetin’
house steps, and I should happen to mention the name of that street
about the same time, you would say I wuz a swearin’.”

I did not reply to him; I wouldn’t. And ag’in he hurried me on’ards by
some good lookin’ bildin’s, and trees, and tavrens, and cottages, and
etc., etc., and we come to Caroline street, and Jane, and Matilda, and
lots of wimmen’s names.

And Josiah sez, “I’ll bet the man that named them streets wuz love
sick!”

But he wuzn’t no such thing. It was a father that owned the land, and
laid out the streets, and named ’em for his daughters. Good old
creeter! I wuzn’t goin’ to have him run at this late day, and run down
his own streets too.

But ag’in Josiah hurried me on’ards. And bimeby we found ourselves a
standin’ in front of a kind of a lonesome lookin’ house, big and
square, with tall pillows in front. It wuz a standin’ back as if it wuz
a kinder a drawin’ back from company, in a square yard all dark and
shady with tall trees. And it all looked kinder dusky, and solemn like.
And a bystander a standin’ by told us that it wuz “ha’nted.”

The haunted house

Josiah pawed at it, and shawed at the idee of a gost.

But I sez, “There! that is the only thing Saratoga lacked to make her
perfectly interestin’, and that is a gost!”

But agin Josiah pawed at the idee, and sez, “There never wuz such a
thing as a gost! and never will be.” And sez he, “what an extraordenary
idiot anybody must be to believe in any sech thing.” And ag’in he
looked very skernful and high-headed, and once ag’in he shawed.

And I kep’ pretty middlin’ calm and serene and asked the bystander,
when the gost ha’nted, and where?

And he said, it opened doors and blowed out lights mostly, and trampled
up stairs.

“Openin’, and blowin’, and tramplin’,” sez I dreamily.

“Yes,” sez the man, “that’s what it duz.”

And agin Josiah shawed loud. And agin I kep’ calm, and sez I, “I’d give
a cent to see it.” And sez I, “Do you suppose it would blow out and
trample if we should go in?”

But Josiah grasped holt of my arm and sez, “’Taint safe! my dear
Samantha! don’t le’s go near the house.”

“Why? “ sez I coldly, “you say there haint no sech thing as a gost,
what are you afraid on?”

His teeth wuz fairly chatterin’. “Oh! there might be spiders there, or
mice, it haint best to go.”

I turned silently round and started on, for my companion’s looks was
pitiful in the extreme. But I merely observed this, as we wended
onwards, “I have always noticed this, Josiah Allen, that them that shaw
the most at sech things, are the ones whose teeth chatter when they
come a nigh ’em, showin’ plain that the shawers are really the ones
that believe in ’em.”

“My teeth chattered,” sez he, “because my gooms ache.”

“Well,” sez I, “the leest said the soonest mended.” And we went on fast
ag’in by big houses and little, and boardin’ houses, and boardin’
houses, and boardin’ houses, and tavrens, and tavrens, and he kept me a
walkin’ till my feet wuz most blistered.

I see what his aim wuz; I had recognized it all the hull time.

But as we went up the stairway into our room, perfectly tuckered out,
both on us, I sez to him, in weary axents, “That picture wuz cheap
enough, for the money, wuzn’t it?”

He groaned aloud. And sech is my love for that man, that the minute I
heard that groan I immegetly added, “Though I hadn’t no idee of buyin’
it, Josiah.”

Immegetly he smiled warmly, and wuz very affectionate in his demeener
to me for as much as two hours and a half. Sech is the might of human
love.

His hurryin’ me over them swelterin’ and blisterin’ streets, and
showin’ me all the beauty and glory of the world, and his conversation
had no effect, skercely on my mind. But what them hours of frenzied
effert could not accomplish, that one still, small groan did. I love
that man. I almost worship him, and he me, vise versey, and the same.

We found that Ardelia Tutt had been to see us in our absence. She had
been into our room I see, for she had dropped one of her mits there.
And the chambermaid said she had been in and waited for us quite a
spell - the young man a waitin’ below on the piazza, so I s’posed.

I expect Ardelia wanted to show him off to us and I myself wuz quite
anxus to see him, feelin’ worried and oncomfertable about Abram Gee and
wantin’ to see if this young chap wuz anywhere nigh as good as Abram.

Well about a hour after we came back, Josiah missed his glasses he
reads with. And we looked all over the house for ’em, and under the
bed, and on the ceilin’, and through our trunks and bandboxes, and all
our pockets, and in the Bible, and Josiah’s boots, and everywhere. And
finely, after givin’ ’em up as lost, the idee come to us that they
might possibly have ketched on the fringe of Ardelia’s shawl, and so
rode home with her on it.

So we sent one of the office-boys home with her mit and asked her if
she had seen Josiah’s glasses. And word come back by the boy that she
hadn’t seen ’em, and she sent word to me to look on my pardner’s head
for ’em, and sure enough there we found ’em, right on his foretop, to
both of our surprises.

She sent also by the boy a poem she had wrote that afternoon, and sent
word how sorry she wuz I wuzn’t to home to see Mr. Flamburg. But I see
him only a day or two after that, and I didn’t like his looks a mite.

But he said, and stuck to it, that his father owned a large bank, that
he wuz a banker, and a doin’ a heavy business.

Wall, that raised him dretfully in Ardelia’s eyes; she owned up to me
that it did. She owned to me that she lead always thought she would
love to be a Banker’s Bride. She thought it sounded rich. She said,
“banker sounded so different from baker.”

I sez to her coolly, that “it wuz only a difference of one letter, and
I never wuz much of a one to put the letter N above any of the others,
or to be haughty on havin’ it added to, or diminished from my name.”

But she kep’ on a goin’ with him. She told me it wuz real romanticle
the way he got aquanted with her. He see her onbeknown to her one day,
when she wuz a writin’ a poem on one of the benches in the park.

“A Poem on a Bench!”

She wuz a settin’ on the bench, and a writin’ about it, she was a
writin’ on the bench in two different ways. Curius, haint it?

But to resoom. He immegetly fell in love with her. And he got a feller
who wuz a boardin’ to his boardin’ place to interduce him to Ardelia’s
relative, Mr. Pixley, and Mr. Pixley interduced him to Ardelia. He told
Ardelia’s relatives the same story - That his father wuz a banker, that
he owned a bank and wuz doin’ a heavy business.

Wall, I watched that young chap, and watched him close, and I see there
wuz one thing about him that could be depended on, he wuz truthful.

He seemed almost morbid on the subject, and would dispute himself half
a hour, to get a thing or a story he wuz tellin’ jest exactly right.
But he drinked; that I know for I know the symptoms. Coffee can’t blind
the eyes of her that waz once Smith, nor peppermint cast a mist before
’em. My nose could have took its oath, if noses wuz ever put onto a bar
of Justice - my nose would have gin its firm testimony that Bial
Flamburg drinked.

And there wuz that sort of a air about him, that I can’t describe
exactly - a sort of a half offish, half familier and wholly
disagreeable mean, that can be onderstood but not described. No, you
can’t picture that liniment, but you can be affected by it. Wall, Bial
had it.

And I kep’ on a not likin’ him, and kep’ stiddy onwards a likin’ Abram
Gee. I couldn’t help it, nor did’nt want to. And I looked out constant
to ketch him in some big story that would break him right down in
Ardelia’s eyes, for I knew if she had been brought up on any one
commandment more’n another, it wuz the one ag’inst lyin’. She hated
lyin’.

She had been brought up on the hull of the commandments but on that one
in particeler; she wuz brung up sharp but good. But not one lie could I
ketch him in. And he stuck to it, that his father wuz a banker and
doin’ a heavy business.

Wall, it kep’ on, she a goin’ with him through ambition, for I see
plain, by signs I knoo, that she didn’t love him half as well as she
did Abram. And I felt bad, dretful bad, to set still and see Ambition
ondoin’ of her. For oft and oft she would speak to me of Bial’s
father’s bank and the heft of the business he wuz a doin’.

And I finally got so worked up in my mind that I gin a sly hint to
Abram Gee, that if he ever wanted to get Ardelia Tutt, he had better
make a summer trip to Saratoga. I never told Ardelia what I had done,
but trusted to a overrulin’ destiny, that seems to enrap babys, and
lunatiks, and soft little wimmen, when their heads get kinder turned by
a man, and to Abram’s honest face when she should compare it with Bial
Flamburg’s, and to Abram’s pure, sweet breath with that mixture of
stale cigars, tobacco, beer, and peppermint.

But Abram wrote back to me that his mother wuz a lyin’ at the p’int of
death with a fever - that his sister Susan wuz sick a bed with the same
fever and couldn’t come a nigh her and he couldn’t leave what might be
his mother’s death-bed. And he sez, if Ardelia had forgot him in so
short a time, mebby it wuz the best thing he could do, to try and
forget her. Anyway, he wouldn’t leave his dying mother for anything or
anybody.

That wuz Abram Gee all over, a doin’ his duty every time by bread and
humanity. But he added a postscript and it wuz wrote in a agitated hand
- that jest as soon as his mother got so he could leave her, he should
come to Saratoga.

The verses that Ardelia sent over to me wuz as follers:

“A LAY ON A FEMALE TROUT IN CENTRAL PARK.
“BY ARDELIA TUTT.

“Oh trout, sweet female trout, oh fain would I
In hottest day, perspirin’ dretfelee
Desend, and dressed most cool like thee, would lie
As deep in water, some two feet, or three
Or even four.

“Who would not dress like thee on summer day?
How cool thy robes—lo! not one boddice waist
Or corset stay, to make thee taper small.
Thou taperest without them, and not then with haste,
Or Bandaline.

“Thou crimpest not, or bangest up thy hair;
Thou hast no hair to bang, sweet trout so dear,
Thou dost not dance round dances, nor repair
Unto the thronged piazzas, nor appear,
Sweet modest trout.

“In long and haughty trains thou never dost appear
And switch them up and down the corredere and hall
With diamond jewels hanging to thy ear;
Thou hast not ears to hang them on, no! not at all.
No, not one ear.

“Thou walkest not in high heeled shoes, thou cannest not
For reesons it were vain to now relate.
Ah no! But let us cast one eye adown thy grot
And see thee sweet and patient wear thy fate,
And wear it well.

“At Garden parties, Race Course, Music Hall,
We ne’er have set our weary eyes thy form upon;
Thou dost not ramble in the crowded maul,
Thou hast no legs sweet trout to ramble on;
Ah! no! dear one.

“And so thou seemest well content to saunter not,
Or waltz about in garments fine and gay;
Oh. Mortal Man! a lesson learn of Trout
If thou no legs hast got, why seek to waltz away,
Or promenade?

“And, beautius female, learn thou of dear trout
So move and swim in thine own native way;
Seek not high stations, titles great, and flout
Not thou at fate, but gently swim away
On native waves.

“Cool blooded hold thy heart, like female trout;
Melt not at sweet, false words, that melt and seeth and burn;
She melteth not, oh no! she cooly turns about
And nibbles on, so thou, and follow on
Sweet female one.”





Chapter IX.
JOSIAH’S FLIRTATIONS.


They say there is a sight of flirtin’ done at Saratoga. I didn’t hear
so much about it as Josiah did, naturally there are things that are
talked of more amongst men than women. Night after night he would come
home and tell me how fashionable it wuz, and pretty soon I could see
that he kinder wanted to follow the fashion.

I told him from the first on’t that he’d better let it entirely alone.
Says I, “Josiah Allen, you wouldn’t never carry it through successful
if you should undertake it—and then think of the wickedness on’t.”

But he seemed sot. He said “it wuz more fashionable amongst married men
and wimmen, than the more single ones,” he said “it wuz dretful
fashionable amongst pardners.”

“Wall,” says I, “I shall have, nothin’ to do with it, and I advise you,
if you know when you are well off, to let it entirely alone.”

“Of course,” says he, fiercely, “_You_ needn’t have nothin’ to do with
it. It is nothin’ you would want to foller up. And I would ruther see
you sunk into the ground, or be sunk myself, than to see you goin’ into
it. Why,” says he, savagely, “I would tear a man lim from lim, if I see
him a tryin’ to flirt with you.” (Josiah Allen worships me.) “But,”
says he, more placider like, “men _have_ to do things sometimes, that
they know is too hard for their pardners to do—men sometimes feel
called upon to do things that their pardners don’t care about—that they
haint strong enough to tackle. Wimmen are fragile creeters anyway.”

No flirting

“Oh, the fallacy of them arguments—and the weakness of ’em.

But I didn’t say nothin’ only to reiterate my utterance, that “if he
went into it, he would have to foller it up alone, that he musn’t
expect any help from me.”

“Oh no!” says he. “Oh! certainly not.”

His tone wuz very genteel, but there seemed to be sumthin’ strange in
it. And I looked at him pityin’ly over my specks. The hull idea on it
wuz extremely distasteful to me, this talk about flirtin’, and etc., at
our ages, and with our stations in the Jonesville meetin’ house, and
with our grandchildren.

But I see from day to day that he wuz a hankerin’ after it, and I
almost made up my mind that I should have to let him make a trial,
knowin’ that experience wuz the best teacher, and knowin’ that his
morals wuz sound, and he wuz devoted to me, and only went into the
enterprize because he thought it wuz fashionable.

There wuz a young English girl a boardin’ to the same place we did. She
dressed some like a young man, carried a cane, etc. But she wuz one of
the upper 10, and wuz as pretty as a picture, and I see Josiah had
kinder sot his eyes on her as bein’ a good one to try his experiment
with. He thought she wuz beautiful. But good land! I didn’t care. I
liked her myself. But I could see, though he couldn’t see it, that she
wuz one of the girls who would flirt with the town pump, or the meetin’
house steeple, if she couldn’t get nobody else to flirt with. She wuz
born so, but I suppose ontirely unbeknown to her when she wuz born.

Wall, Josiah Allen would set and look at her by the hour—dretful
admirin’. But good land! I didn’t care. I loved to look at her myself.
And then too I had this feelin’ that his morals wuz sound. But after
awhile, I could see, and couldn’t help seein’, that he wuz a tryin’ in
his feeble way to flirt with her. And I told him kindly, but firmly,
“that it wuz somethin’ that I hated to see a goin’ on.”

Josiah admires

But he says, “Well, dumb it all, Samantha, if anybody goes to a
fashionable place, they ort to try to be fashionable. ’Taint nothin’ I
_want_ to do, and you ort to know it.”

And I says in pityin’ axents but firm, “If you don’t want to, Josiah, I
wouldn’t, fashion or no fashion.”

But I see I couldn’t convince him, and there happened to be a skercity
of men jest then—and he kep’ it up, and it kep’ me on the _key veav_,
as Maggie says, when she is on the tenter hooks of suspense.

I felt bad to see it go on, not that I wuz jealous, no, my foretop lay
smooth from day to day, not a jealous hair in it, not one—but I felt
sorry for my companion. I see that while the endurin’ of it wuz hard
and tejus for him (for truly he was not a addep at the business; it
come tuff, feerful tuff on him), the endin’ wuz sure to be harder. And
I tried to convince him, from a sense of duty, that she wuz makin’ fun
of him—he had told me lots of the pretty things she had said to him—and
out of principle I told him that she didn’t mean one word of ’em. But I
couldn’t convince him, and as is the way of pardners, after I had sot
the reasen and the sense before him, and he wouldn’t hear to me, why
then I had to set down and bear it. Such is some of the trials of
pardners?

Wall, it kep’ agoin’ on, and a goin’ on, and I kep’ a hatin’ to see it,
for if anybody has _got_ to flirt, which I am far from approvin’ of,
but if I have _got_ to see it a goin’ on, I would fain see it well
done, and Josiah’s efforts to flirt wuz like an effort of our old mair
to play a tune on the melodian, no grace in it, no system, nor comfort
to him, nor me.

I s’pose the girl got some fun out of it; I hope she did, for if she
didn’t it wuz a wearisome job all round.

Wall, a week or so rolled on, and it wuz still in progress. And one day
an old friend of ours, Miss Ezra Balch, from the east part of
Jonesville, come to see me. She come to Saratoga for the rheumatiz, and
wuz gettin’ well fast, and Ezra was gettin’ entirely cured of biles,
for which he had come, carbunkles.

Wall, she invited Josiah and me to take a ride with ’em, and we both
accepted of it, and at the appointed time I wuz ready to the minute,
down on the piazza, with my brown cotton gloves on, and my mantilly
hung gracefully over my arm. But at the last minute, Josiah Allen said
“he couldn’t go.”

I says “Why can’t you go?”

“Oh,” he says, kinder drawin’ up his collar, and smoothin’ down his
vest, “Oh, I have got another engagement.”

He looked real high-headed, and I says to him:

“Josiah Allen didn’t you promise Druzilla Balch that you would go with
her and Ezra to-day?”

“Wall yes,” says he, “but I can’t.”

“Why not?” says I.

“Wall, Samantha, though they are well meanin’, good people, they haint
what you may call fashionable, they haint the upper 10.”

Says I, “Josiah Allen you have fell over 15 cents in my estimation,
sense we have begun talkin’, you won’t go with ’em because they haint
fashionable. They are good, honest Christian Methodists, and have stood
by you and me many a time, in times of trouble, and now,” says I, “you
turn against ’em because they haint fashionable.” Says I, “Josiah Allen
where do you think you’ll go to?”

“Oh, probable down through Congress Park, and we may walk up as fur as
the Indian Encampment. I feel kinder mauger to-day, and my corns ache
feerful.” (His boots wuz that small that they wuz sights to behold,
sights!) “We probably shan’t walk fur,” says he.

I see how ’twuze in a minute. That English girl had asked him to walk
with her, and my pardner had broken a solemn engagement with Ezra and
Druzilla Balch to go a walkin’ with her. I see how ’twuz, but I sot in
silence and one of the big rockin’ chairs, and didn’t say nothin’.

Finally he says, with a sort of a anxious look onto his foreward:

“You don’t feel bad, do you Samantha? You haint jealous, are you?”

“Jealous!” says I, a lookin’ him calmly over from head to feet—it wuz a
witherin’ look, and yet pitiful, that took in the hull body and soul,
and weighed ’em in the balances of common sense, and pity, and justice.
It wuz a look that seemed to envelop him all to one time, and took him
all in, his bald head, his vest, and his boots, and his mind (what he
had), and his efforts to be fashionable, and his trials and
tribulations at it, and—and everything. I give him that one long look,
and then I says:

“Jealous? No, I haint jealous.”

Then silence rained again about us, and Josiah spoke out (his
conscience was a troublin’ him), and he says:

“You know in fashionable life, Samantha, you have to do things which
seem unkind, and Ezra, though a good, worthy man, can’t understand
these things as I do.”

Says I: “Josiah Allen, you’ll see the day that you’ll be sorry for your
treatment of Druzilla Balch, and Ezra.”

“Oh wall,” says he, pullin’ up his collar, “I’m bound to be
fashionable. While I can go with the upper 10, it is my duty and my
privilege to go with ’em, and not mingle in the lower classes like the
Balches.”

Says I firmly, “You look out, or some of them 10 will be the death of
you, and you may see the day that you will be glad to leave ’em, the
hull 10 of em, and go back to Druzilla and Ezra Balch.”

But what more words might have passed between us, wuz cut short by the
arrival of Ezra and Druzilla in a good big carriage, with Miss Balch on
the back seat, and Ezra acrost from her, and a man up in front a
drivin’. It wuz a good lookin’ sight, and I hastened down the steps,
Josiah disappearin’ inside jest as quick as he ketched sight of their
heads.

They asked me anxiously “where Josiah wuz and why he didn’t come?” And
I told ’em, “that Josiah had told me that mornin’ that he felt manger,
and he had some corns that wuz a achin’.”

So much wuz truth, and I told it, and then moved off the subject, and
they seein’ my looks, didn’t pursue it any further. They proposed to go
back to their boardin’ place, and take in Deacon Balch, Ezra’s brother
from Chicago, who wuz stayin’ there a few days to recooperate his
energies, and get help for tizick. So they did. He wuz a widowed man.
Yes, he was the widower of Cornelia Balch who I used to know well, a
good lookin’ and a good actin’ man. And he seemed to like my appeerance
pretty well, though I am fur from bein’ the one that ort to say it.

And as we rolled on over the broad beautiful road towards Saratoga
Lake, I begun to feel better in my mind.

The Deacon wuz edifyin’ in conversation, and he thought, and said,
“that my mind was the heftiest one that he had ever met, and he had met
hundreds and hundreds of ’em.” He meant it, you could see that, he
meant every word he said. And it wuz kind of comfortin’ to hear the
Deacon say so, for I respected the Deacon, and I _knew_ he meant just
what he said.

He said, and believed, though it haint so, but the Deacon believed it,
“that I looked younger than I did the day I wuz married.”

I told him “I didn’t feel so young.”

“Wall,” he said, “then my looks deceived me, for I looked as young, if
not younger.”

Deacon Balch is a good, kind, Christian man.

His conversation was very edifyin’, and he looked kinder good, and
warm-hearted at me out of his eyes, which wuz blue, some the color of
my Josiah’s. But alas! I felt that though some comforted and edified by
his talk, still, my heart was not there, not there in that double buggy
with 2 seats, but wuz afur off with my pardner. I felt that Josiah
Allen wuz a carryin’ my heart with him wherever he wuz a goin’.
Curious, haint it? Now you may set and smile, and talk, and seem to be
enjoyin’ yourself first-rate, with agreeable personages all around you,
and you do enjoy yourself with that part of your nater. But with it
all, down deep under the laughs, and the bright words, the comfort you
get out of the answerin’ laughs, the gay talk, under it all is the
steady consciousness that the real self is fur away, the heart, the
soul is fur away, held by some creeter whether he be high, or whether
he be low, it don’t matter—there your heart is, a goin’ towards
happiness, or a travellin’ towards pain as the case may be—curious,
haint it?

Wall, Ezra and Druzilla wanted to go to the Sulphur Springs way beyend
Saratoga Lake, and as the Deacon wuz agreeable, and I also, we sot out
for it, though, as we all said, it wuz goin’ to be a pretty long and
tegus journey for a hot day. But we went along the broad, beautiful
highway, by the high, handsome gates of the Racing Park, down, down, by
handsome houses and shady woods, and fields of bright-colored wild
flowers on each side of the road, down to the beautiful lake, acrost it
over the long bridge, and then into the long, cool shadows of the
bendin’ trees that bend over the road on each side, while through the
green boughs, jest at our side we could ketch a sight of the blue,
peaceful waters, a lyin’ calm and beautiful jest by the side of us—on,
on, through the long, sheltered pathway, out into the sunshine for a
spell, with peaceful fields a layin’ about us, and peaceful cattle a
wanderin’ over ’em, and then into the shade agin, till at last we see a
beautiful mountin’, with its head held kinder high, crowned with ferns
and hemlocks, and its feet washed by the cool water of the beautiful
lake.

The shadows of this mountin’, tree crowned, lay on the smooth, placid
wave, and a white sail boat wuz a comin’ round the side on’t, and
floatin’ over the green, crystal branches, and golden shadows. It wuz a
fair seen, seen for a moment, and then away we went into the green
shadows of the woods again, round a corner, and here we wuz, at the
Sulphur Springs.

It wuz a quiet peaceful spot. The house looked pleasant, and so did the
Landlord, and Landlady, and we dismounted and walked through a long
clean hall, and went out onto a back piazza and sot down. And I thought
as I sot there, that I would be glad enough to set there, for some
time. Everything looked so quiet and serene. The paths leadin’ up the
hills in different directions, out into the green woods, looked quiet;
the pretty, grassy backyard leadin’ down to the water side looked green
and peaceable, and around all, and beyond all, wuz the glory of the
waters. They lay stretched out beautiful and in heavenly calm, and the
sun, which wuz low in the West, made a gold path acrost ’em, where it
seemed as if one could walk over only a little ways, into Perfect
Repose. The Lake somehow looked like a glowin’ pavement, it didn’t look
like water, but it seemed like broad fields of azure and palest
lavender, and pinky grey, and pearly white, and every soft and delicate
color that water could be crystalized into. And over all lay the
glowin’, tender sunset skies—it wuz a fair seen. And even as I looked
on in a almost rapped way, the sun come out from behind a soft cloud,
and lay on the water like a pillow of fire jest as I dream that pillow
did, that went ahead of my old 4 fathers.

The rest on ’em seemed to be more intent on the lemonade with 2 straws
in ’em. I didn’t make no fuss. They are nice, clean folks, I make no
doubt. I wouldn’t make no fuss and tell on the hired man—women of the
house have enough to worry ’em anyway. But he had dropped some straws
into our tumblers, every one on ’em, I dare presume to say they had
been a fillin’ straw ticks. I jest took mine out in a quiet way, and
throwed ’em to one side. The rest on ’em, I see, and it wuz real good
in ’em, drinked through ’em, as we used to at school. It wuz real good
in Druzilla, and Ezra, and also in the Deacon. It kinder ondeared the
hull on ’em to me. I hope this won’t be told of, it orto be kep—for he
wuz a goodnatured lookin’ hired man, black, but not to blame for
that—and good land! what is a straw?—anyway they wuz clean.

There wuz some tents sot up there in the back yard, lookin’ some as I
s’pose our old 4 fathers tents did, in the pleasant summer times of
old. And I asked a bystander a standin’ by, whose tents they wuz, and
he said they wuz Free Thinkers havin’ a convention.

And I says, “How free?”

And he said “they wuz great cases to doubt everything, they doubted
whether they wuz or not, and if they wuz or when, and if so, why?”

And he says, “won’t you stay to-night over and attend the meetin’?”

And I says, “What are they goin’ to teach tonight?”

And he says, “The Whyness of the What”

I says, “I guess that is too deep a subject for me to tackle,” and says
I, “Don’t they believe anything easier than that?”

And he says, “They don’t believe anything. That is their belief—to
believe nothin’.”

“Nothin’!” says I.

“Yes,” says he, “Nothin’.” And, says he, “to-morrer they are goin’ to
prove beyond any question, that there haint any God, nor anything, and
never wuz anything.”

“Be they?” sez I.

“Yes,” says he, “and won’t you come and be convinced?”

I looked off onto the peaceful waters, onto the hills that lay as the
mountains did about Jerusalem, onto the pillow of fire that seemed to
hold in it the flames of that light that had lighted the old world onto
the mornin’ of the new day,—and one star had come out, and stood
tremblin’ over the brow of the mountain and I thought of that star that
had riz so long time ago, and had guided the three wise men, guided ’em
jest alike from their three different homes, entirely unbeknown to each
other, guidin’ ’em to the cradle where lay the infant Redeemer of the
world, so long foretold by bard and prophet. I looked out onto the
heavenly glory of the day, and then inside into my heart, that held a
faith jest as bright and undyin’ as the light of that star—and I says,
“No, I guess I won’t go and be convinced.”

Wall, we riz up to go most immediately afterwerds, and the Deacon (he
is very smart) observed:

“How highly tickled and even highlarious the man seemed in talkin’
about there not bein’ any future.” And he says, “It wuz a good deal
like a man laughin’ and clappin’ his hands to see his house burn down”

And I sez, “it wuz far wurse, for his home wouldn’t stand more’n a 100
years or so, and this home he wuz a tryin’ to destroy, wuz one that
would last through eternity.” “But,” says I, “it hain’t built by hands,
and I guess their hands hain’t strong enough to tear it down, nor high
enough to set fire to it.”

And the Deacon says, “Jest so, Miss Allen, you spoke truthfully, and
eloquent.” (The Deacon is very smart.)

When we got into the buggy to start, the Deacon says, “I would like to
resoom the conversation with you, Josiah Allen’s wife, a goin’ back.”

And Druzilla spoke right out and says, “I will set on the front seat by
Ezra.” I says, “Oh no, Druzilla, I can hear the Deacon from where I sot
before.”

But the Deacon says, Talkin’ loud towards night always offected his
voice onpleasantly, mebby Druzilla and he had better change seats.

Again I demurred. And then Druzilla said she must set by Ezra, she
wanted to tell him sumthin’ in confidence.

And so it wuz arraigned, for I felt that I wuz not the one to come
between pardners, no indeed. The road laid peacefuller and beautifuller
than ever, or so it seemed under the sunset glory that sort o’ hung
round it. Jest about half way through the woods we met the English
girl, a stridin’ along alone, each step more’n 3 feet long, or so it
seemed to me. There wuz a look of health, and happy determination on
her forwerd as she strided rapidly by.

I would have fain questioned her concernin’ my pardner, as she strode
by, but before I could call out, or begon to her she wuz far in the
rearwerd, and goin’ in a full pressure and in a knot of several miles
an hour.

Wall, from that minute I felt strange and curious. And though Druzilla
and Ezra was agreeable and the Deacon edifyin’, I didn’t seem to feel
edified, and the most warm-hearted looks didn’t seem to warm my heart
none, it wuz oppressed with gloomy forebodings of, Where wuz my
pardner? They had laid out to set out together. Had they sot? This
question was a goverin’ me, and the follerin’ one: If they had sot out
together, where wuz my pardner, Josiah Allen, now? As I thought these
feerful thoughts, instinctively I turned around to see if I could see a
trace of his companion in the distance. Yes, I could ketch a faint
glimpse of her as she wuz mountin’ a diclivity, and stood for an
instant in sight, but long before even, she disopeered agin, for her
gait wuz tremendous, and at a rate of a good many knots she wuz a
goin’, that I knew. And the fearful thought would rise, Josiah Allen
could not go more than half a knot, if he could that. He wuz a slow
predestinatur any way, and then his corns was feerful, and never could
be told—and his boots had in ’em the elements of feerful sufferin’. It
wuz all he could do when he had ’em on to hobble down to the spring,
and post-office. Where? where wuz he? And she a goin’ at the rate of so
many knots.

Oh! the agony of them several minutes, while these thoughts wuz
rampagin through my destracted brain.

Oh! if pardners only knew the agony they bring onto their devoted
companions, by their onguarded and thoughtless acts, and attentions to
other females, gin without proper reseerch and precautions, it would
draw their liniments down into expressions of shame and remorse. Josiah
wouldn’t have gone with her if he had known the number of knots she wuz
a goin’, no, not one step—then why couldn’t he have found out the
number of them knots—why couldn’t he? Why can’t pardners look ahead and
see to where their gay attentions, their flirtations that they call
mild and innercent, will lead ’em to? Why can’t they realize that it
haint only themselves they are injurin’, but them that are bound to ’em
by the most sacred ties that folks can be twisted up in? Why can’t they
realize that a end must come to it, and it may be a fearful and a
shameful one, and if it is a happiness that stops, it will leave in the
heart when happiness gets out, a emptiness, a holler place, where like
as not onhappiness will get in, and mebby stay there for some time,
gaulin’ and heart-breakin’ to the opposite pardner to see it go on?

If it is indifference, or fashion, or anything of that sort, why it
don’t pay none of the time, it don’t seem to me it duz, and the end
will be emptier and hollerer then the beginnin’.

In the case of my pardner it wuz fashion, nothing but the butterfly of
fashion he wuz after, to act in a high-toned, fashionable manner, like
other fashionable men. And jest see the end on’t why he had brought
sufferin’ of the deepest dye onto his companion, and _what_, _what_ hed
he brought onto himself—onto his feet?

Oh! the agony of them several moments while them thoughts was a rackin’
at me. The moments swelled out into a half hour, it must have been a
long half hour, before I see far ahead, for the eyes of love is keen -
a form a settin’ on the grass by the wayside, that I re_cog_nized as
the form of my pardner. As we drew nearer we all re_cog_nized the
figure—but Josiah Allen didn’t seem to notice us. His boots was off,
and his stockin’s, and even in that first look I could see the agony
that was a rendin’ them toes almost to burstin’. Oh, how sorry I felt
for them toes! He was a restin’ in a most dejected and melancholy
manner on his hand, as if it wuz more than sufferin’ that ailed him—he
looked a sufferer from remorse, and regret, and also had the air of one
whom mortification has stricken.

He never seemed to sense a thing that wuz passin’ by him, till the
driver pulled up his horses clost by him, and then he looked up and see
us. And far be it from me to describe the way he looked in his lowly
place on the grass. There wuz a good stun by him on which he might have
sot, but no, he seemed to feel too mean to get up onto that stun;
grass, lowly, unassumin’ grass, wuz what seemed to suit him best, and
on it he sot with one of his feet stretched out in front of him.

Oh! the pitifulness of that look he gin us, oh! the meakinness of it.
And even, when his eye fell on the Deacon a settin’ by my side, oh! the
wild gleam of hatred, and sullen anger that glowed within his orb, and
revenge! He looked at the Deacon, and then at his boots, and I see the
wild thought wuz a enterin’ his sole, to throw that boot at him. But I
says out of that buggy the very first thing the words I have so oft
spoke to him in hours of danger:

“Joisiah, be calm!”

His eye fell onto the peaceful grass agin, and he says: “Who hain’t a
bein’ calm? I should say I wuz calm enough, if that is what you want.”

But, oh, the sullenness of that love.

Says Ezra, good man—he see right through it all in a minute, and so did
Druzilla and the Deacon—says Ezra, “Get up on the seat with the driver,
Josiah Allen, and drive back with us.”

“No,” says Josiah, “I have no occasion, I am a settin’ here,” (looking
round in perfect agony) “I am a settin’ here to admire the scenery.”

Then I leaned over the side of the buggy, and says I, “Josiah Allen, do
you get in and ride, it will kill you to walk back; put on your boots
if you can, and ride, seein’ Ezra is so perlite as to ask you.”

“Yes, I see he is very perlite, I see you have set amongst very perlite
folks, Samantha,” says he, a glarin’ at Deacon Balch as if he would
rend him from lim to lim, “But as I said, I have no occasion to ride, I
took off my boots and stockin’s merely—merely to pass away time. You
know at fashionable resorts,” says he, “it is sometimes hard for men to
pass away time.”

Says I in low, deep accents, “Do put on your stockin’s, and your boots,
if you can get ’em on, which I doubt, but put your stockin’s on this
minute, and get in, and ride.”

“Yes,” says Ezra, “hurry up and get in, Josiah Allen, it must be
dretful oncomfortabe a settin’ down there in the grass.”

“Oh, no!” says Josiah, and he kinder whistled a few bars of no tune
that wuz ever heard on, or ever will be heard on agin, so wild and
meloncholy it wuz—“I sot down here kind o’ careless. I thought seein’ I
hadn’t much on hand to do at this time o’ year, I thought I would like
to look at my feet—we hain’t got a very big lookin’ glass in our room.”

Oh, how incoherent and over-crazed he was a becomin’! Who ever heard of
seein’ anybody’s feet in a lookin’ glass—of dependin’ on a lookin’
glass for a sight on ’em? Oh, how I pitied that man! and I bent down
and says to him in soothin’ axents: “Josiah Allen, to please your
pardner you put on your stockin’s and get into this buggy. Take your
boots in your hand, Josiah, I know you can’t get ’em on, you have
walked too far for them corns. Corns that are trampled on, Josiah
Allen, rise up and rends you, or me, or anybody else who owns ’em or
tramples on ’em. It hain’t your fault, nobody blames you. Now get right
in.”

“Yes, do,” says the Deacon.

Oh! the look that Josiah Allen gin him. I see the voyolence of that
look, that rested first on the Deacon, and then on that, boot.

And agin I says, “Josiah Allen.” And agin the thought of his own
feerful acts, and my warnin’s came over him, and again mortification
seemed to envelop him like a mantilly, the tabs goin’ down and coverin’
his lims—and agin he didn’t throw that boot. Agin Deacon Balch escaped
oninjured, saved by my voice, and Josiah’s inward conscience, inside of
him.

Wall, suffice it to say, that after a long parley, Josiah Allen wuz a
settin’ on the high seat with the driver, a holdin’ his boots in his
hand, for truly no power on earth could have placed them boots on
Josiah Allen’s feet in the condition they then wuz.

And so he rode on howewards, occasionally a lookin’ down on the Deacon
with looks that I hope the recordin’ angel didn’t photograph, so dire,
and so revengeful, and jealous, and—and everything, they wuz. And ever,
after ketchin’ the look in my eye, the look in his’n would change to a
heart-rendin’ one of remorse, and sorrow, and shame for what he had
done. And the Deacon, wantin’ to be dretful perlite to him, would ask
him questions, and I could see the side of Josiah’s face, all glarin’
like a hyena at the sound of his voice, and then he would turn round
and ossume a perlite genteel look as he answered him, and then he glare
at me in a mad way every time I spoke to the Deacon, and then his mad
look would change, even to one of shame and meakinness. And he in his
stockin’ feet, and a pertendin’ that he didn’t put his boots on,
because it wuzn’t wuth while to put ’em on agin so near bed-time. And
he that sot out that afternoon a feelin’ so haughty, and lookin’ down
on Ezra and Druzilla, and bein’ brung back by ’em, in that
condition—and bein’ goured all the time by thoughts of the ig

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