And then she and Whitfield was dressed up all the time, and wanted to act natteral, and couldn’t—felt as if they must behave beautiful, and polite every minute. Why! I s’pose they got so sick of each other that they wished, both on ’em, that they had lived single, till they died of old age. And then on their way back they both had the blind headache, every step of the way, coughed their heads most off, and whooped—Tirzah Ann told me—as if they was two wild Injuns on a war path. Truly they had got enough of weddin’ towers to last through a long life.
Somehow Thomas Jefferson always felt different about such things. I’ve heerd him and Tirzah Ann—before she was married—argue about it, time and again. He said he couldn’t for his life see why folks felt as if they had got to go a caperin’ off somewhere, the minute they was married—and to tell the plain truth, I, myself, never could see the necessity, when they both feel as strange as strange can be, to think of goin’ off into a strange land to feel strange in.
It is curious enough and solemn enough to enter into a new life, untried, crowded full of possibilities for happiness or misery, if you face that future calmly and with bodily ease. It is a new life, not to be entered into highlariously, tired to death, and wild as two lunys, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, amidst the screechins of omnibus drivers and pop corn peddlers, but with calmness, meditation, and prayer. That is my idee; howsumever, everybody to their own.
And then another thing that made Tirzah Ann’s tower so awful tryin’; she had wore herself down almost to a skeleton and got irritable and nervous, a makin’ tattin, and embroideries; for she felt she couldn’t be married till she had got her nineteenth suit all trimmed off to the extreme of the fashion.
Thomas J. and Maggy (they think alike on most things) always felt different about that. I have heerd Maggy say that she never could understand why it was necessary for a girl to make up such a stupendus amount of clothin’ to marry one man in—a man she had seen every day from her youth up. She said that any civilized young woman who respected herself, would have enough clothin’ by her all the time to be comfortable and meet any other emergency of life; and she couldn’t understand why her marryin’ to a mild dispositioned young man, should render it imperative to disable several dressmakers, make mothers lunatics with fine sewin’, and work themselves down to a complete skeleton, makin’ up as many garments as if they was goin’ for life into a land where needles was unknown, and side thimbles was no more.
And to tell the truth I joined with her; I always thought that health and a good disposition would be more useful, and go further than tattin in the cares and emergencies of married life; and that girls would do better to spend some of their time a makin’ weddin’ garments for their souls, gettin’ ready the white robes of patience and gentleness, and long sufferins. They’ll need them, every rag on ’em if they are married any length of time. But everybody has their ways, and Tirzah Ann had hers, and truly she had the worst of it.
I finished washin’ my dishes, and then I brought out my linen dress and cape, and my common bunnet, so’s to have everything ready. Jest as I come out with ’em on my arm, Thomas J. come in, and says he:
“Wear your best shawl and bunnet this afternoon, won’t you mother?”
Says I, “Why, Thomas Jefferson?”
Says he, “I didn’t know but you would want to step into the Presbeteryun church this afternoon on your way down to Tirzah Ann’s. There is a couple a goin’ to be married there at two o’clock.”