So I was left in uncertainty (as it were) for I knew he wouldn’t sell it for less than the price he had sot it, and no knowin’ whether it would fetch it or not. But I felt in my heart a feelin’ that I should go off on that tower. And so I gradually but silently began makin’ preperations, I quietly and calmly took two breadths out of my brown alapaca dress and goared ’em and put a overskirt on to it, for I was determined not to go to New York village without a overskirt on to me. Not that I care about such triflin’ things myself, but I felt that I was representin’ a great cause, and I wasn’t goin’ to put our cause to open shame by not havin’ on a overskirt. Men sometimes say that great and strong minded wimmen are slack in the matter of dressin’ up, I was determined to show ’em that that weakness wasn’t mine. I wasn’t goin’ to be all tattered out, with ends and tag locks of bows and pleatin’s, and tow curls and frizzles, but I felt there was a megium course to pursue, and I was determined to hit against it.
Then agin I felt that the color of my dress suited the great cause. I wasn’t goin’ rigged out in pink muslin, or sky-blue cambric, or anything of that sort. A good solid sensible brown seemed to be jest the thing. Black would have seemed too much in the mournin’ line, as if we was despondent when we wasn’t. White book muslin would have looked as if my principles was too thin, and I was too light and triflin’, and didn’t realize the great issues dependent on to me. No; brown alapaca with a overskirt I felt was jest what the anxious nation required of me, as I stood face to face with the future President of the United States—with my spectacles calmly gazin’ into his’en, a influencin’ him in the cause of Right.
Another reason, I won’t deny, influenced me in tryin’ to get a good pattern for my overskirt so as to have it set good, (I got it of Miss Gowdey and made it a little bigger round the waist,) I thought more’n likely as not Horace’s and my picture would be took, and in the future would be hung up by the side of that good honest old Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
“Josiah Allen’s wife influencin’ Horace in the Great Cause of Wimmen’s Rights.”
And though I haint vain, I thought how poor it would be, and what a eye sore to the nation if my dress didn’t hang good. And how pleasin’ it would be both to America and Josiah, to see me dressed in a noble and becomin’ way. So I finished my overskirt, and silently done up my best petticoat, and in the same mysterious manner I put some tape trimmin’ on to the bottom of it.
And so the long and tegus days passed away from me. I felt that suspense was a wearin’ on me. Josiah see that it was. And on Saturday mornin’ I see him pensively leanin’ over the barn yard fence, mewsin’ as it was, and pretty soon he hitched up the old mare, and went to Jonesville, and when he came back he says to me, in sorrowful tones but some composed,
“Samantha, you can start to-morrow if you want to, I have sold the old critter.”
And then he added pensively. “I wish you would have a few griddle cakes for supper, with some maple molasses on to ’em.”
