“Yes Ulysses, you shall have a piece, you shall, Josiah Allen’s wife will see to it, you shall have a piece.”
And then I leaned down and whispered a few words into Betsey Bobbett’s left ear, and she turned quicker’n a flash, and gathered up her poetry and rushed into the forward car.
As she disapeared, Skyler’ses face changed from that gloomy sinister frown, and agin he put on that smile that was upwards of 40 years old, but was still so sweet and fresh that I knew it was good for another 40 years—and the General grasped me by the hand sayin’ in agitated tones,
“There was upwards of 50 of ’em, and she would read ’em.” Says I soothingly, “I wouldn’t think of it Ulysses, it is all over now. I was glad to show the gratitude the nation owes to you. I was glad of the chance to befriend you.”
“Angel!” says he almost warmly. But I interupted him by sayin’ in a tone of dignity. “I honor and respect you deeply Ulysses—but in the two names of Julia and Josiah, I must forbid your callin’ me angel, or any other pet name.”
I knew it was only his deep gratitude to me for rescuin’ him from his peril that made him say it, for he and Julia think the world of each other. And the good solid principles, colored and morally struck in with tan bark in his early life, the muddy waters of political life haint been able to wash out, nor the gilt tinsel of fashionable life to cover up and destroy. I knew that even there in Washington Avenue, among all the big men there, he loved his wife, jest as much as if it was the fashion to love ’em. I knew all this, but still I felt that I must speak as I did, for principle with J. Allen’s wife—as I have remarked more formally—is all in all.
I then turned and followed Betsey, not knowin’ but what she would be a comin’ back. What I whispered in her left ear was this, that her back hair was comin’ down, and she bein’ so bald, I knew it would fetch her down like a arrow in her breast.
They left at the next Station House, and Betsey and me proceeded onwards to New York village with no farther coincidences.