And so we did. They had all of ’em visited us years ago, more or less on ’em out of every family. There was Zebulin Coffin’ses wife and four of his boys; Philander Spicer’ses wife and Philander—they all made us long visits; and Serepta Simmons—she that was Serepta Smith—made it her home with mother and me for years before she was married—we helped to bring her up on a bottle. And then there was Delila, Melankton Spicer’ses wife had visited us with Philander’ses folks when they was first married; she was Philander’s wife’s sister. We had promised to pay their visits back, and laid out to, but it hadn’t seemed to come right, somehow. But now, everything seemed to promise fair for a first-rate time for us and them. We would be journeyin’ onwards towards the Sentinal, and the cause of Right. Our clothes (now Josiah had got some new pantaloons and I a new dress) would look well, and almost foamin’. We had a beautiful top buggy, and take it altogether, it did truly seem almost as Josiah said, that we was havin’ our good things all on earth. But anon, or a very little after, a new question come up; what should we do with the Widder Doodle; she didn’t want to go, and she didn’t want to stay. And so, what should we do with her to do right?
I am sot on doin’ by the Widder as I would wish to be done by if I should come onto the town and have to be took in and done for; and so day and night this deep and wearin’ thought kep’ a hauntin’ me—though I tried to keep cool on the outside—“she don’t want to go, and she don’t want to stay; and so what shall I do with the Widder Doodle?”
THE WIDDER AND WIDOWER.
Solomon Cypher is a widower! Yes, he has lost his wife with the tyfus; she was a likely woman, had a swelled neck, but that wasn’t nothin’ ag’inst her; I never laid it up ag’inst her for a minute. I told Thomas J. when he brought me the news, that I wished he and I was as likely a woman as she was, and says I still more warmly, “if the hull world was as likely a woman as she was, there wouldn’t be so much cuttin’ up, and actin’ as there is now.” And says I, “Thomas J., it stands us in hand to be prepared.”
But somehow it is awful hard to git that boy to take a realizin’ sense of things; his morals are dretful sound, but a good deal of the time he is light and triflin’ in his demeanor and his talk; and his mind don’t seem to be so stabled as I could wish it to be.
Now I don’t s’pose there would anybody believe me, but the very next day but one after Nancy Cypher’ses death, that boy begun to laugh at his aunt Doodle about the relict. I told him I never see anything in my hull life so wicked and awful, and I asked him where he s’posed he’d go to.
He was fixin’ on a paper collar to the lookin’ glass, and he says in a kind of a chirk way, and in a fine polite tone: “I s’pose I shall go to the weddin’.”
Good land! you might jest as well exhort the wind to stop blowin’ when it is out on a regular spree, as to stop him when he gits to behavin’. But I guess he got the worst of it this time, I guess his aunt Doodle skairt him—she took on so when he sejested the idee of her marryin’ to another man.