But I answered him calmly. “Fashion, or no fashion, I shant ride no phantom Josiah Allen. I shant go to the Sentinal on my lofty mission, a ridin’ a phantom. Though,” says I more mildly, “phantoms may be willin’ critters to go, and easy ridin’, but I don’t seem to have no drawin’ towards ’em. A top buggy is my theme.”
So I held firm, and finally Josiah bought one. It was a second-handed one, and fair lookin’, big and roomy. In shape it wasn’t the height of fashion, bein’ kind o’ bowin’ up at the back, and sort o’ spread out like in front; a curious shape. I never see none exactly like it, before nor sense. They said the man that built it, made up the pattern in his own head, and there hadn’t nobody ever follered it. He died a few weeks after he made it; Thomas Jefferson said he guessed it killed him, the shape was so curious that it skairt the man to death. But it wasn’t no such thing; he had the billerous colic.
Josiah was so perfectly delighted with it that he would go out to the barn and look at it for hours, and I was most afraid he was settin’ his heart too much on it; and I told Thomas Jefferson so, but he told me not to worry; says he, “it wouldn’t be a mite wicked for father to worship it.”
Says I, “Thomas Jefferson do you realize what you are a talkin’ about?” says I, “it scares me to hear you talk so wicked when I brought you up in such a Bible way.”
Says he, “There is where I got it, mother. I got it out of the Bible; you know it says you shall not worship anything that is in the shape of anything on earth, or in the heavens, or in the waters under the earth. And that is why it would be perfectly safe for father to worship the buggy.”
I see through it in a minute; though I never should have thought on it myself. What a mind that boy has got; he grows deep every day.
Josiah said he couldn’t leave the colt to home, as the old mare would be liable to turn right round in the road with us any time, and start back for home; but I told him that when anybody sot off on a tower as a martyr and a Promiscous Advisor, a few colts more or less wasn’t a goin’ to overthrow ’em and their principles. Says I, we will hitch the colt to the old mare, Josiah Allen, and march onwards nobly in the cause of Right.
But still there was a kind of a straggler of a thought hangin’ round the age of my mind, to worry me a very little; and I says to my Josiah dreamily:
“I wonder if they’ll be glad to see us. Anything but bringin’ trouble onto folks, because they are unfortunate enough to be born cousins to you, unbeknown to them.”
“But,” says Josiah, “we owe a visit to every one on ’em, and some on ’em two or three.”