And Josiah Allen! I s’pose I have buried that man as many times as he has got hairs on his head, (he is pretty bald) when he’d have a cold or anything. I’d wake up in the latter part of the night, when it was dark as Egyptian darkness, and I’d git to thinkin’ and worryin’, and before I knew it, there Josiah would be all laid out and the procession a meanderin’ off towards Jonesville buryin’ ground, and I a follerin’ him, a weepin’ widder. And there I’d lay and sweat about it; and I’ve gone so far as to see myself lay dead by the side of him, killed by the feelin’s I felt for that man; and there we’d lay, with one stun over us, a readin’:
“Here lays Josiah and Samantha;
Their warfare is accomplished.”
Oh! nobody knows the feelin’s I would feel there in the dead of night, with Josiah a snorin’ peacefully by my side. But jest as quick as the sun would rise up and build up his fire in the east, and Josiah would rise up and build up his fire in the stove, why them ghosts of fears and anxieties that haunted me, would, in the language of the poem Thomas J. was readin’ the other day:—Fold up their tents like an Arab man and silently go to stealin’ somewhere else. And I’d git up and git a splendid breakfast, and Josiah and I would enjoy ourselves first rate.
There is sunthin’ in the sunlight that these phantoms can’t stand; curious, but so it is. Their constitution seems to be like the Serious flower that blows out in the night. These serious ghosts—as you may say—are built jest right for livin’ in the dark; they eat darkness and gloom for a livin’, die off in the daytime, and then resurrect themselves when it comes dark, ready to tackle anybody again, and haunt ’em, and make ’em perfectly miserable for the time bein’. But truly, I am a episodin’; and to resoom and go on:
Tirzah Ann, as I said, come down a visitin’; she brought down a little pail of canned sweet corn, all fixed for the table. I thought that sweet corn would be the death of the Widder Doodle; it made her think so of Doodle.
“Oh!” says she, “when I think how I used to raise sweet corn in my garden, and how Mr. Doodle would set out on the back stoop and read to me them beautiful arguments ag’inst wimmen’s rights, when I was a hoein’ it; and how he would enjoy eatin’ it when I’d cook it, it seems as if I can’t stand it; and shant I never see that man?” says she, “shant I never see that dear linement again?”
And she out with her snuff handkerchief and covered her face with it. Whether she cried or not, I don’t know. I shant say she did, or didn’t; but she went through with the motions, that I know.
Tirzah Ann was all offen the hooks, yesterday, she felt down-hearted and nervous. She is dretful nervous lately; but I tell Josiah that I’ve seen other wimmen jest as nervous, and I have; and they got over it, and Tirzah Ann will. There was she that was Celestine Gowdey, she was so nervous—I’ve heerd her mother say—her husband was most afraid of his life; she would throw anything at him—the tea-pot, or anything—if he said a word to her she didn’t like; scalded him a number of times, real bad. But he, bein’ considerable of a family man—he had had three wives and fourteen or fifteen childern, before he married Celestine—didn’t mind it, knowin’ what wimmen was, and that she’d git over it and she did; and so will Tirzah Ann. It comes considerable hard on Whitfield now, but he will git over it and wont mind bein’ scolded at, if it rains, or if it don’t rain, or if the old cat has kittens.
After dinner the Widder Doodle went up stairs and laid down for a nap, as she makes a practice of doin’ every day; and glad enough was I to see her go. And after she had laid down and our ears had got rested off, and I had got the work all done up, and Tirzah Ann and me had sot down to our sewin’—she was doin’ some fine sewin’ and I laid to and helped her—as we sot there all alone by ourselves she began on me, and her face lengthened down a considerable number of inches longer than I had ever seen it as she went on: