“Josiah Allen’s Wife.”
I never hearn a word from her, and I am afraid she died thinkin’ I had slighted her.
The next morning bright and early we went aboard the ship that wuz to take us home. It wuz a fair day; the fog dispersed and the sun shone out with promise and the waves talked to me of Home, Sweet Home.
It wuz a cold lowerin’ day when the good ship bore us into New York harbor. The gray clouds hung low some as if they wuz a sombry canopy ready to cover up sunthin’, a crime or a grief, or a tomb, or mebby all on ’em, and a few cold drops fell down from the sky ever and anon, some like tears, only chill and icy as death.
These thoughts come into my mind onbid as I looked on the heavy pall of dark clouds that hung low over our heads some like the dark drapery hangin’ over a bier.
But anon and bime bye these dark meditations died 446 away, for what wuz cloud or cold, or white icy shores? It wuz home that waited for us; Jonesville and my dear ones dwelt on that shore approachin’ us so fast. Bitter, icy winds would make the warm glowin’ hearth fire of home seem brighter. Love would make its own sunshine. Happiness would warm the chill of the cold November day.
Thomas J. and Maggie stood on the pier, both well and strong; Tommy sprung into their arms. They looked onto his round rosy face through tears of gratitude and thankfulness and embraced me with the same. And wuzn’t Thomas J. happy? Yes, indeed he wuz, when he held his boy in his arms and had holt of his ma’s hands, and his pa’s too. And Maggie, too, how warmly she embraced us with tears and smiles chasing each other over her pretty face. Tirzah Ann and Whitfield wuz in the city, but didn’t come to the minute, bein’ belated, as we learnt afterwards, by Tirzah Ann a waverin’ in a big department store between a pink and a blue shiffon front for a new dress.
But they appeared in a few minutes, Tirzah Ann with her arms full of bundles which dribbled onnoticed on the pier as she advanced and throwed her arms round her pa’s and ma’s neck. Love is home, and with our dear children’s arms about us and their warm smiles of delight and welcome and their loving words in our ear, we had got home.
The children wuz stayin’ at a fashionable boardin’ house, kept by Miss Eliphalet Snow, a distant relation of Maggie’s, who had lost her pardner and her property, but kep’ her pride and took boarders for company, so she said. And we wuz all goin’ to start for Jonesville together the next day. But as the baggage of our party wuz kinder mixed up, Josiah and I thought we would go with Miss Meechim’s party to the tarven and stay.
Robert Strong and our son, Thomas J., met like two ships of one line with one flag wavin’ over ’em, and bearing the same sealed orders from their Captain above. How congenial they wuz, they had been friends always, made so onbeknown 447 to them, they only had to discover each other, and then they wuz intimate to once, and dear.