HORACE AND JOSIAH.
When the news come to me that Horace Greely was dead I almost cried. The tears did just run down my face like rain-water, I don’t know when I have come nearer cryin’ than I did then. And my first thought was, they have tried awful hard to keep him out of the White House, but he has got into one whiter than any they have got in Washington, D. C. And then my very next thought was, Josiah Allen’s wife did you say anything to hurt that man’s feelin’s, when you was a tryin’ to influence him on your tower?
I believe if folks would only realize how every harsh word, and cold look they stab lovin’ hearts with, would just turn round like bayonets, and pierce their own heart in a time like this—they would be more careful how they handled ’em. But glad enough was I to think that I didn’t say a hard word to him, but had freed my mind, and told him jest how good I thought he was, and how much he had done for the Black African, and the Human Race, before it was too late. Glad enough was I that I didn’t wait till that noble heart was cold and lifeless, and couldn’t be pained by unkindness, or made gladder by sympathy, before I gin him mine.
But in the time of trouble, the love that had been his best reward for all the successes of his hard workin’ life, had gone from him. And I know jest how that great heart ached for that love and sympathy. I know jest how poor the praise of the world would have looked to him, if he couldn’t have seen it a shinin’ through them lovin’ eyes—and how hard it was for him to bear its blame alone. Tired out, defeated the world called him, but he only had to fold his hands, and shet his eyes up and he was crowned with success in that world where He, who was once rejected by a majority, crowned with thorns of earthly defeat waits now to give the crown of Eternal Repose to all true souls, all the weary warriors on life’s battle field who give their lives for the right. And it seemed so kinder beautiful too, to think that before she he loved so, hardly had time to feel strange in them a “many mansions,” he was with her agin, and they could keep house together all through Eternity.
Yet,—though as I say, I don’t know when I have come so near cryin’ as I did then—I said to myself as I wiped my eyes on my apron, I wouldn’t call him back from that happy rest he had earnt so well if I could.
But there are other things that are worrysome to me, and make me a sight of trouble. It was a day or 2 after this, and I was settin’ alone, for Josiah had gone to mill, and Thomas Jefferson and Maggy Snow and Tirzah Ann and Whitfield Minkley had gone a slay ridin’, (them two affairs is in a flourishin’ condition and it is very aggreeable to Josiah and me, though I make no matches, nor break none—or that is, I don’t make none, only by talkin’ in a encouragin’ manner, nor break none only with thoroughwert in a mild way).
I sot all alone, a cuttin’ carpet rags, and a musin’ sadly. Victory in jail! And though I felt that she richly deserved it, and I should liked to have shut her up myself in our suller way, for darin’ to slander Beecher, still to me who knows her sect so well, it seemed kinder hard that a woman should be where she couldn’t go a visatin’. And then to think the good talkin’ to, I give her when I was on my tower hadn’t ammounted to nothin’, seemin’ly. I wasn’t sorry I had labored with her—not a mite, I had did my duty anyway. And I knew jest as well as I know that my name was formally Smith, that when anybody is a workin’ in the Cause of Right, they hadn’t ought to be discouraged if they didn’t get their pay down, for you can’t sow your seeds and pick your posys the same day anyway. And I know that great idees was enough sight harder to get rooted and a growin’ than the Century plant, and that takes a hundred years for it to blow out.
I know all this, but human nater gets kinder tired a waitin’, and there seems no end to the snows that lay between us and that summer that all earnest souls are a workin’ for. And then I want my sect to do right,—I want ’em to be real respectable, and I felt that take Victory all together she wasn’t a orniment to it. I thought of my sect, and then I thought of Victory, and then I sithed. Beecher a bein’ lied about, Tilton ditto and the same, for you see I don’t nor won’t believe what Victory says against ’em, although they don’t come out and deny the truth of it, either of ’em, just to satisfy some folks who say that they ought to. Miss Anthony havin’ a hard tussle of it at Rochester.