They seemed to be as mad at me as they was at Serepta, and madder. But I wasn’t afraid of any on ’em, and when they all commenced talkin’ to once, a complainin’ of Serepta and her doin’s and her not doin’s, my principles enabled me to look at ’em through my specks with a scornful mean that would have spoke louder than words if they had understood anything of the language of means.
Finally they all got to talkin’ together, a complainin’. “Why didn’t she jine the ‘Cumberin’ Marthas?’ Why couldn’t she head the ‘Weepin’ Marys?’ Why don’t she take more interest in the female fellah’s of Cairo? Why don’t she show more enthusiasm about the heathens and gorillas?”
Just then I heerd the biggest little boy swear like a pirate, and kick the other one out of bed, and I spoke coldly, very coldly:
“She’ll have a span of gorillas of her own pretty soon if she haint allowed no time to take care on ’em, she wont have to go to Africa for ’em, either;” says I, “Serepta will show you some male fellahs that will need more help than any of your female ones, bime-by; she will give you a good job in the line of heathens to convert in a few years, if things go on as they are a goin’ on now.”
With that, Serepta burst right out, and wept and cried, and cried and wept. It affected me awfully, and I spoke right up, and says I:
“Heathens are first rate themes to foller, but there is different ways of follerin’ ’em;” says I, “some will set their eyes on a heathen in Africa, and foller him so blindly that there can be ten heathens a caperin’ right round ’em to home, and they won’t see none on ’em.” And then I felt so, that I allegoried some, right there on the spot. Says I:
“After a big snow-storm, it may seem noble and grand to go round sweepin’ off meetin’ housen and etcetery; but in my opinion, duty would call on a man first, to make a path to the well for his own family, and the barn, then shovel round freely, where duty called. What good does it do to go off in foreign pastures a cuttin’ down thistle tops, when you are a raisin’ a big crop of ’em to home for somebody else to be scratched by? What advantage to the world at large is it, if a woman converts one heathen way off in India, and at the same time by neglect, and inattention and carelessness, raises a crop of seven of ’em in her own house. My advise to such would be—and so would Josiah’s—work in the garden God set you over. Try by earnest care and prayer, untirin’ diligent culture and, if need be, an occasional rakin’ down, to keep your own heathen crop down to the lowest possible state, and then after you have done this, do all you can for other heathens promiscous.”
But they glared at Serepta more glarin’ than they had before, and says Miss Horn:—“She wont do nothin’; she is shiftless.” And then I spoke out in tremblin’ tones, I was so agitated:
“Serepta is my own niece on my father’s side, and I helped to bring her up on a bottle, and she didn’t nurse a cast-iron strength and a leather constitution out of it as some of you seem to think she did;” says I, “such is not the nature of cow’s milk, neither is it the nature of bottles.” Says I, “If she has got a tender, timid, lovin’ disposition, and one that is easily influenced, so much the more pity for her in this state, that Shackville has called her to be in. But as it is, she is willin’ to be killed, and you with probable religious intentions are willin’ to kill her.”
Oh how they glared at me; but I kep’ on as firm as Gibbralter: