Says the man behind us, “I am a little younger than you be, Mr. Allen; if you will hold my horse I will go after the colt with pleasure.”
Josiah was glad enough, and so he got into the feller’s wagon; but before he started off, the man, says he:
“You can look at that machine in front of you while I am gone. I tell you frankly, that there haint another machine equal to it in America; it requires no strength at all; infants can run it for days at a time; or idiots; if anybody knows enough to set and whistle, they can run this machine; and it’s especially adapted to the blind—blind people can run it jest as well as them that can see. A blind woman last year, in one day, made 43 dollars a makin’ leather aprons; stitched them all round the age two rows. She made two dozen of ’em, and then she made four dozen gauze veils the same day, without changin’ the needle. That is one of the beauties of the machine, its goin’ from leather to lace, and back again, without changin’ the needle. It is so tryin’ for wimmen, every time they want to go from leather, to gauze and book muslin, to have to change the needle; but you can see for yourself that it haint got its equal in North America.”
He heerd the colt whinner, and Josiah stood up in the wagon, and looked after it. So he started off down the cross road.
And we sot there, feelin’ considerable like a procession; Josiah holdin’ the stranger’s horse, and I the old mare; and as we sot there, up driv another slick lookin’ chap, and I bein’ ahead, he spoke to me, and says he:
“Can you direct me, mom, to Josiah Allen’s house?”
“It is about a mile from here,” and I added in a friendly tone, “Josiah is my husband.”
“Is he?” says he, in a genteel tone.
“Yes,” says I, “we have been to Jonesville, and our colt run down that cross road, and-—”
“I see,” says he interruptin’ of me, “I see how it is.” And then he went on in a lower tone, “If you think of buyin’ a sewin’ machine, don’t git one of that feller in the wagon behind you—I know him well; he is one of the most worthless shacks in the country, as you can plainly see by the looks of his countenance. If I ever see a face in which knave and villain is wrote down, it is on hisen. Any one with half an eye can see that he would cheat his grandmother out of her snuff handkerchief, if he got a chance.”