“Well,” says I out of all manner of patience with him, “why didn’t you say so in the first on’t, and not go to hintin’ and insinuatin’.”
He tried to turn it off in a laugh, but his face turned red as blood, and well it might; tryin’ to break down a likely man’s character and gettin’ found out in the mean caper. Josiah took out a dollar bill and handed it to him, and he handed back sunthin’ which was tickets as Josiah s’posed; but when he handed me one soon afterwards or thereabouts, I see they was two fifty cent bills. Josiah was dumbfounded and so was I; but I spoke right out and says I, “That mean creeter is tryin’ to make us trouble, or else he is tryin’ to hush it up, and bribe us not to tell of his low lived conduct.” Says I firmly, “Less go right back and give him back his money and command him to give us a lawful ticket, and tell him we haint to be bought or sold; that our principles are elevated and we are on a tower.”
GOOD LAND! GOOD LAND! AND GOOD LAND!
So we went back again; and oh the sufferin’s of that season; if our agony was great when we was bore along by the crowd, what was our sufferin’s when we was stemmin’ our way ag’inst it. Two or three times my companion would have sunk beneath his burdens, but boyed up by my principle I held him up (as it were) and at last almost completely exhausted and wore out, and our faces covered with prespiration we stood before him again. He looked mad and cross, but tried to turn it off in a laugh when Josiah told him our business, and handed him back the money. He said it was all right and told us to give the money to a man near the turn stile and go in. I see he was in earnest, so I told Josiah we would go back and try it, and we did, and found it was jest as he said, but there was a great mystery to it; we handed out fifty cents a piece to a man, and he dropped it down through a little slit in a counter; and a gate that looked some like my new fashioned clothes bars, sort o’ turned round with us and let us in one at a time; and the minute I was inside I see my gloomy forebodin’s had been in vain—they hadn’t put off the Sentinal for me! That was my first glad thought; but my very next thought was, Good land! and Good land! and Good land! Them was my very first words, and they didn’t express my feelin’s a half or even a quarter. Why, comin’ right out of that contracted and crushin’ crowd, it seemed as if the place we found ourselves in was as roomy and spacious as the desert of Sarah, s’posen she, the desert, was fixed off into a perfect garden of beauty, free for anybody to wander round and git lost in.
And the majestic Main Buildin’ that nearly loomed up in front of us! Why! if old Ocian herself, had turned into glass, and wood-work, and cast-iron, and shinin’ ruffs, and towers, and flags, and statutes, and everything, and made a glitterin’ palace of herself, it couldn’t, (as it were) have looked any more grand and imposin’ and roomy; and if every sand by the seashore had jumped up and put on a bunnet or hat as the case may be, there couldn’t have been a bigger crowd (seeminly) than there was a passin’ into it, and a passin’ by, and a paradin’ round Josiah and me.
Under these strange and almost apaulin’ circumstances, is it any wonder that I stood stun still, and said, out of the very depths of my heart, the only words I could think of, that would any where nigh express my feelins, and they was “Good land!”
But as my senses begun to come back to me, my next thought was, as I looked round on every side of me, “Truly did my Josiah say, that I could see enough with one eye;” and jest then a band commenced playin’ the “Star Spangled Banner.” And hearin’ that soul stirrin’ music, and seein’ that very banner a wavin’ and floatin’ out, as if all the blue sky and rainbows sense Noah’s rainbow was cut up into its glorious stripes, with the hull stars of heaven a shinin’ on ’em,—why, as my faculties come back to me, a seein’ what I see—and hearin’ what I heerd, I thought of my 4 fathers, them 4 old fathers, whose weak hands had first unfurled that banner to the angry breeze, and thinks’es I, I would be willin’ to change places with them 4 old men right here on the spot, to let ’em see in the bright sunshine of 1876, what they done in the cloudy darkness of 1776.
I felt these feelin’s for I persume most a minute. But nobody—however strong principle may soar up in ’em—can be willin’ to die off when it haint a goin’ to be any particular benefit to anybody; they can’t feel so for any length of time, especially in such a strange and almost curious time as this was; souls may soar, but heart clings to heart—I thought of Josiah and without sayin’ a word to him, or askin’ his consent, I jest reached out my arm and locked arms with him for the first time in goin’ on thirteen years—not sense we had went to grandfather Smith’s funeral, and walked in the procession.
He begun to nestle round and wiggle his arm to make me leggo, but I hung on tight and never minded his worrysome actions, and finally he come out plain and says he:
“What is the use of lockin’ arms Samantha, it will make talk.”