“Oh Samantha, what would Uncle Zebulin say if he should hear us laugh! I don’t believe we shall ever get to be so good as he is in this world.”
“What has he done so awful good?” I would say.
“Why,” says Josiah, “Uncle Zebulin haint laughed in over forty years. You don’t have no idee what a good man he is.”
“That don’t raise him 7 cents in my estimation,” says I. “What else has he done so uncommon good?”
“Oh,” says Josiah. “I don’t know of anything in particular. But you never see so good a man as he is. He’s made a regular pattern of himself. He never smiles, and he would sooner cut off anybody’s head than to joke with ’em; and he is so quick to see if anybody else does wrong. He’ll make anybody feel so wicked, when they are with him; they’ll see so plain how much better he is than they be. He is so uncommon good, that I never could bear to stay there; I realized his goodness so much, and see my own wickedness so plain. A dretful good man, Uncle Zebulin is, dretful.”
I knew when we sot out for the Sentinal that we should go within a few miles of him; we had got to go right through Loon Town, where his letters was sent to. (Josiah had helped him to money to pay up a mortgage, and they had wrote back and forth about it.) I beset Josiah to stop and visit him, not that I had such a awful high opinion of him, but I wanted to go more out of curiosity, a sort of a circus feelin’; but Josiah hung back, and I says to him:
“Anybody would think Josiah Allen, that after praisin’ up a Uncle Zebulin day and night for goin’ on twenty years, a man would be willin’ to let his lawful pardner git a glimpse on him;” but Josiah hung back, and says he:
“He is so tarnal good, Samantha, you haint no idee how powerful uncomfortable and unsatisfactory he makes wickeder folks feel.” But I says cheerfully:
“If he is so dretful good as you say, he wont be likely to hurt us, and I don’t go for comfort, I go in a sort of a menagery way; and also,” I added with dignity, “as a P. A. and a P. I.”
“Well,” he kinder whimpered out, “mebby it is all for the best. We’ll go if you are so sot on it, but there don’t seem to be no need of our stayin’ any length of time.”