We found some letters here from home. I had a letter from Tirzah Ann and one from Thomas Jefferson. His letter wuz full of gratitude to heaven and his ma for his dear little boy’s restored strength and health. He and Maggie wuz lookin’ and waitin’ with eager hearts and open arms to greet us, and the time wuz long to ’em I could see, though he didn’t say so.
Tirzah Ann’s letter contained strange news of our neighbor, Miss Deacon Sypher. Her devotion to her husband has been told by me more formally, it is worthy the pen of poet and historian. She lived and breathed in the Deacon, 253 marked all her clothes, M. D. S., Miss Deacon Sypher. Her hull atmosphere wuz Deacon, her goal wuz his happiness, her heaven his presence.
Well, a year ago she got hurt on the sidewalk to Jonesville, and the Deacon sued the village and got five hundred dollars for her broken leg. He took the money and went out to the Ohio on a pleasure trip, and to visit some old neighbors. It made talk, for folks said that when she worshipped him so he ort to stayed by her, but he hired she that wuz Betsy Bobbett to stay with her, and he went off on this pleasure trip and had a splendid good time, and with the rest of the money he bought a span of mules. Miss Sypher wuz deadly afraid of ’em. But the Deacon wanted ’em, and so they made her happily agonized, she wuz so afraid of their heels and their brays, and so highly tickled with the Deacon’s joy. Well, it turned out queer as a dog, but just after we started on our trip abroad Tirzah said that the Deacon fell and broke his leg in the same place and the same spot on the sidewalk; the Jonesvillians are slack, it wuzn’t mended proper. And Miss Sypher thought that she would git some money jest as he did. She didn’t think on’t for quite a spell, Tirzah writ. She wuz so bound up in the Deacon and never left his side night or day, nor took off her clothes only to wash ’em for two weeks, jest bent over his couch and drowged round waitin’ on him, for he wuz dretful notional and hard to git along with. But she loved to be jawed at, dearly, for she said it made her think he would git along, and when he would find fault with her and throw things, she smiled gladly, thinkin’ it wuz a good sign.
Well, when he got a little better so she could lay down herself and rest a little, the thought come to her that she would git some money for his broken leg jest as he had for hern. She thought that she would like to buy him a suit of very nice clothes and a gold chain, and build a mule barn for the mules, but the law wouldn’t give Miss Deacon Sypher a cent; the law said that if anything wuz gin it would go to 254 the Deacon’s next of kin, a brother who lived way off in the Michigan.
The Deacon owned her bones, but she didn’t own the Deacon’s!
And I wonnered at it as much as Tommy ever wonnered over anything why her broken limb, and all the emoluments from it, belonged to him, and his broken leg and the proprietary rights in it belonged to a man way out in the Michigan that he hadn’t seen for ten years and didn’t speke to (owin’ to trouble about property), and after Miss Deacon Sypher had worshipped him and waited on him for thirty years like a happy surf.
Well, so it wuz. I said it seemed queer, but Arvilly said that it wuzn’t queer at all. She sez: “One of my letters from home to-day had a worse case in it than that.” Sez she, “You remember Willie Henzy, Deacon Henzy’s grandchild, in Brooklyn. You know how he got run over and killed by a trolley car.”
“Yes,” sez I, “sweet little creeter; Sister Henzy told me about it with the tears runnin’ down her cheeks. They all worshipped that child, he wuz jest as pretty and bright as he could be, and he wuz the only boy amongst all the grandchildren; it is a blow Deacon Henzy will never git over. And his ma went into one faintin’ fit after another when he wuz brought home, and will never be a well woman agin, and his pa’s hair in three months grew gray as a rat; it ’most killed all on ’em.”
“Well,” sez Arvilly, “what verdict do you think that fool brought in?”
“What fool?” sez I.