HELPING CHURN.
“And then, when I would be a churnin’—we had a good deal of cream, and the butter come awful hard; sometimes it would take me most all day and lame my back for a week—and when I would be a churnin’, he would be so good to me to help me pass away the time. He would set in his rockin’ chair—I cushioned it a purpose for him—and he would set and read the Evenin’ Grippher to me; sometimes he would read it clear through before I would fetch the butter; beautiful arguments there would be in it ag’inst wimmen’s rights. I used to know the Editor was jest another such a man as my Mr. Doodle was, and I would wonder how any livin’ woman could stand out ag’inst such arguments, they proved right out so strong that votin’ would be too much for the weaker sect, and that men wouldn’t feel nigh so tender and reverential towards ’em, as they did now.
“We wasn’t very well off in them days, for Mr. Doodle was obliged to mortgage the farm I brought him when we was married, and it was all we could do to keep up the money due on the mortgage, and father wouldn’t help us much; he said we must work for a livin’, jest as he did; and the farm kinder run down, for Mr. Doodle said he couldn’t go out to work and leave me for a hull day, he worshiped me so; so we let out the place on shares, and I took in work a good deal. When I was a workin’, Mr. Doodle would set and look at me for hours and hours, with a sweet smile on his linement, and tell me how delicate and pretty I was and how much he thought of me, and how he would die and be skinned—have his hide took completely off of him—before he’d let me vote, or have any other hardship put on me. Oh! what a sight of comfort me and Mr. Doodle did take together; and when I think how he died, and was a corpse—and he was a corpse jest as quick as he was dead, Mr. Doodle was—oh how I do feel. I can’t never forget him, his linement is so stamped onto my memory. I never can forget his linement, never.”
And so she’ll go on from hour to hour, and from day to day, about Doodle and Wimmen’s Rights—Wimmen’s Rights and Doodle; drivin’ ahead of her a drove of particulars, far, far more numerous than was ever heerd of in Jonesville, or the world; and I—inwardly callin’ on the name of John Rogers—hear her go on, and don’t call Doodle all to nothin’, or argue with her on Wimmen’s Rights. My mean is calm and noble; I am nerved almost completely up by principle; and then, it is dretful wrenchin’ to the arm to hit hard blows ag’inst nothin’.
Truly, if anybody don’t know anything, you can’t git any sense out of ’em. You might jest as well go to reckonin’ up a hull row of orts, expectin’ to have ’em amount to sunthin’. Ort times ort is ort, and nothin’ else; and ort from ort leaves nothin’ every time, and nothin to carry; and you may add up ort after ort, all day, and you wont have nothin’ but a ort to fall back on. And so with the Widder Doodle, you may pump her mind till the day of pancakes, (as a profane poet observes,) and you wont git anything but a ort out of it,—speakin’ in a ’rithmatic way.
Not that she is to blame for it, come to look at it in a reasonable and scientific sense. All figgers in life can’t count up the same way. There’s them that count one,—made so; got a little common sense unbeknown to them. Then there’s some that double on that, and count two,—more sense, and can’t help it; and all the way up to nine; and then there is the orts—made orts entirely unbeknown to them; and so, why should figgers seven, or eight, or even nine, boast themselves over the orts.
Truly, we all have abundant reason to be humble, and feel a humiliatin’ feelin’. The biggest figgers in this life don’t count up any too high, don’t know any too much. And all the figgers put together, big and little mingled in with orts, all make up a curious sum that our heads haint strong enough to figger out straight. It is a sum that is bein’ worked out by a strong mind above our’n, and we can’t see the answer yet, none on us.
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