Thursday mornin’ found me to the depott in good season. Betsey also was on time. I didn’t feel haughty nor at all proud, but still I felt that I was a independent householder startin’ to New York village on a tower at my own expense. I see that all the car folks felt friendly towards me for thier was a pleasant smile on their faces every time they looked at me and Betsey.
I wasn’t trimmed off so much as Betsey, but I looked well. I had on that good calico dress, a large black silk mantilly, a good shirred silk bunnet large enough to shade my face some, my bran new cotton gloves, my veil and my umbrell.
Betsey, I always thought put on too much to look well, howsomever everybody to their own mind. She had on a pale blue parmetta dress, with flounces and puckers onto it, a overskirt and a greek bender of the same, trimmed with checkered delain, out on a biasin’, a close fittin’ bask of the delain, which was pink and yellow plaid and which was pinked out on the edge with a machine. She had on a white bobbinet lace hat, jest big enough to cover her bump of self-esteem, trimmed with red and yellow roses and long ends of otter colored ribbon and white lace, then she had long cornelian ear rings, a string of beads round her neck, and a locket and a big blue breast pin and a cornelian cross. A pair of new white cotton gloves, trimmed with two rows of broad white cotton edgin’ five cents a yard—for I seen her buy it—and two horsehair bracelets. And with her new teeth and her long bran new tow curls, and waterfalls and frizzles all full of otter colored rosettes, I tell you she looked gay.
She says to me as she met my keen gaze.
“I don’t know but what you think I am foolish Josiah Allen’s wife, in enrobing myself in my best a coming on the road. But these are my sentiments. I knew we should get theah before night, and I should proceed at once to Ebinezah’s, and if anything should be a happening, if it should be the house of mourning, I thought it would be so comforting to Ebinezah, to see me looking beautiful and cheerful. Yon know theah is everything in first impressions. I mean of course,” she added hastily, “that I am that sorry for poor lonely widdowers and especially Ebinezah, that if I could be a comfort to them, I would be willing to sacrifice a tablespoonful of my heart’s best blood, much moah this blue parmetta dress. These are my sentiments Josiah Allen’s wife.”
Says I coldly, “I should know they was yours Betsey, I should know they was yours, if I should meet ’em in my porridge dish.”
But the time drew near for the cars to bear me away from Josiah, and I began to feel bad.
I don’t believe in husbands and wives partin’ away from each other, one livin’ in Europe, and one in New York village, one in Wall street, and the other on a Long Branch, one in Boston, and the other in North America. As the poet truly observes,
“When the cat is away the mice’s will go to playin’.”
As for me, I want my husband Josiah where I can lay my hand on him any time, day or night, I know then what he is about. Though so far as jealousy is concerned, Bunker Hill monument, and Plymouth Rock would be jest as likely to go to flirtin’ and cuttin’ up, as either of us. We have almost cast iron confidence in each other. But still it is a sweet and satisfyin’ thought to know jest where your consort is, and what he is about, from hour to hour.