And then it is so lady-like in its appearance; has got such good manners, such composure, such almost cool dignity; it is jest as much at its ease before a minister as before a tin peddler, uses ’em both well, but not put out by ’em a mite; cool, and collected together all the time, jest like a little queen. And it don’t seem to be a mite deceitful; it don’t try to cover up its thoughts and idees, it is jest like lookin’ through these clay bodies of ourn and seein’ a soul, to look at that babe.
I am one that loves reason and philosophy. I have acted well about it; some grandmothers will act so foolish. I can’t bear to see foolishness in grandparents, and Josiah can’t neither. Now when it was half a day old, Sister Minkley thought it looked like Whitfield; I, myself, thought it looked more like a monkey. I didn’t say so, I wouldn’t for the world. I looked at it jest as I do at a little hard green bud that appears first on a rose bush; there haint no beauty to speak of in it; it is hard lookin’ and it is green lookin,’ and curious. But you set a awful sight of store by that little hard lookin’ thing, for you know the possibilities of handsomeness that are folded up in it,—the dainty rosiness, the freshness, the sweetness. And so with the baby; when I thought of the possibilities of beauty wrapped up in it—the smiles, the pinky dimpled cheeks, the curly gold hair, the innocent baby laugh, the pretty broken talk, the angelical purity, and the confidin’ confidence—why, when I thought of all this, there wasn’t a dry eye in my head, and my heart sung for joy (though it don’t understand a single note).
When the baby was four days old, Josiah thought it knew him; when it was a week old he thought it was a tryin’ to talk to him, and said it laughed jest as quick as he went near the cradle.
Says I, “Josiah Allen, it is wind!”
“Wind!” he hollered, “mebby you think it is wind that makes you know me, and set considerable store by me.” He almost took my head off, and I see by his mean that it wouldn’t do to say any more.
But when it was two weeks old, I think, myself, that the baby knew us—Josiah and me; it looked up to us somehow different from what it did to its Grandpa and Grandma Minkley, though it used them well. We are there to see the baby almost every day and we take a sight of comfort with it, for we see and realize jest what a child it is, and bein’ foundered on firm reason and solid truth, we are not afraid to express our opinions to anybody freely, without money and without price. But as I remarked more formally, we don’t act foolish about it at all.
“Its name is Samantha Jo, after me, and Josiah. You know they call girls Jo and Josie a sight lately; its name is agreeable to Josiah and me, very. Josiah is goin’ to give it a cow for the Samantha, and I am goin’ to give it a set of silver spoons for the Jo. If it had been a boy, we was a layin’ out to call it Josiah Sam,—Sam for Samantha.”
There is a dark veil that drops down between us and future events; you can’t lift up that curtain, or tear it offen its hooks, for it is as high up as Eternity, and solid down to the ground, as solid can be. You can’t peek round it, or tear a hole in it; tea-grounds haint a goin’ to help you; planchettes and cards can’t hist it up a mite; you have got to set down before the curtain that hides the future from you, and wait patiently till it is rolled up by the hand that put it there; but I am a episodin.’
UNDER THE MAPLES.