LIVIN’ ON GOSPEL.
Says I, “Josiah Allen you try to live on clear gospel a spell, and see if your stommack wouldn’t feel kinder empty.” Says I, “The bible says the ‘Laborer is worthy of his hire.’” Says I, “folks are willin’ to pay their doctors and lawyers, and druggers, and their tin-peddlers, and every body else only ministers, and if any body has a slave’s life, it is a good conscientious minister.” Says I, “Brother Wesley Minkley works like a dog.”
“I don’t deny it,” says Josiah, “but why don’t he live like the ’postle Paul?”
Says I, “the ’postle Paul didn’t have to buy 40 or 50 yards of merymac callico and factory cloth every year. He didn’t have to buy cradles and cribs, and soothin’ syrup, for he didn’t have any babys to be cribbed and soothed. He didn’t have to buy bunnets, and gographys, and prunella gaters, and back combs, and hair pins, and etcetery, etcetery. He didn’t have a wife and seven daughters and one son, as Brother Wesley Minkley has got.” Says I, almost warmly, “Every other man, only jest ministers, has a hope of layin’ up a little somethin’ for their children, but they don’t think of doin’ that, all they expect is to keep ’em alive and covered up,” and says I, “The congregation they almost slave themselves to death for, begrech that, and will jaw too if they hain’t covered up, and dressed up slick. Sister Minkley wants her girls to look as well as the rest of the girls in the Church.” Says I, “The ’postle Paul wasn’t a mother, Josiah, not that I have anything against him,” says I more mildly.
The conversation was interupted here by Shakespeare Bobbet comin’ after Betsey, they had company. Betsey returned with him, but her last words to me was, in a low awful voice,
“Will you stand by me Josiah Allen’s wife?” I sithed, and told her in a kind of a bland way, “I would see about it.”
The donatin and fare occured Wednesday night, and Josiah and me went early, Thomas J. and Tirzah Ann bein’ off to school. And I carried as much and as good as anybody there, though I say it that shouldn’t. I carried as good vittles too as there was and I didn’t scrimp in quantity neither.
We was a layin’ out to carry ’em half a barrel of pork, and I made a big jar of butter and sold it, and got the money for it, five dollars, and I atted Josiah to sell the pork and get the money for that. Says I, “Brother Minkley and his wife have both come to years of understandin’, and it stands to reason that they both know what they want better than we do, and money will buy anything.”
Josiah kinder hung back, but I carried the day. And so we carried 15 dollars in a envelop, and told sister Minkley to open it after we got home. I didn’t want ’em to thank us for it—it makes me feel just as mean as pusley. But some folks carried the litlest things. There was a family of 7 hearty men and women, and all they carried was a book mark out of perforated paper, and a plate of cookeys. There was 7 book marks, for I counted ’em, and 14 pair of slips for the minister’s only boy, who is home from school. And this same young man, Whitfield Minkley, had 24 neck ties. Of course there was some other things, a few sassige or so, a little flour, and some dried blackberrys.