A HARROWIN’ SCENE.
She had got to the piano in some way, and there she set a poundin’ it, and yellin’. Oh how harrowin’ it was to the nerves, it made my heart almost ache to see her. There was a good many nicely dressed wimmen and men in the room and some of ’em was leanin’ over the poor girl’s shoulders, a lookin’ at her hands go, and some of them wimmen’s dresses was hangin’ down off their shoulders, so that I thought they must have been kinder strugglin’ with the maniac and got ’em all pulled down and torn open, and they looked most as crazy as she did.
The poor girl didn’t know a word she was sayin’ but she kep’ a mutterin’ over somethin’ to herself in a unknown tongue. There wasn’t no words to it. But poor thing, she didn’t sense it. Some of the time she would be a smilin’ to herself, and go on a mutterin’ kinder low, and then her worse fits seemed to come on in spasms, and she would go to poundin’ the piano and yellin’. And I see by the way her hands went that she had got another infirmity too. I see she had got Mr. Vitus’es dance. It was a sad sight indeed.
As I see the poor thing set there with her dress most off of her, jest a hangin’ on her shoulders, right there before so many men, I thought to myself, what if was my Tirzah Ann there in that condition. But one thing I know as long as Josiah Allen’s wife lived, she wouldn’t go a wanderin’ round half naked, to be a laughin’ stock to the community. I took it so right to myself, I kep’ a thinkin’ so, what if it was our Tirzah Ann, that there wasn’t hardly a dry eye in my head. And I turned to a bystanter, standin’ by my side, and says I to him in a voice almost choked down with emotion,
“Has the poor thing been so long? Can’t she get any help?”
Jest that minute she begun to screech and pound louder and more harrowin’ than ever, and I says in still more sorrowful accents, with my spectacles bent pityin’ly on her,
“It seems to come on by spasms, don’t it?”
She kinder held up in her screechin’ then, and went at her mutterin’ agin in that unknown tongue, and he heard me, and says he,
“Beautiful! hain’t it?”