Whitfield Minkley had told me too that day that Miss Aster didn’t keep tavern herself, and there I had had all my trouble about her for nothin’, demeanin’ myself by offerin’ to wash dishes for—I know not who. And to think that Jonothan Beans’es ex-wife should have deceived me so, when I befriended her so much when she first went to grass. And then when I thought how all the good advice I had given Victory hadn’t done her no good, and how Mr. Greely had died, before the seeds I sowed in his bosom on the great question of Wimmen’s Rights had sprouted and brought forth fruit, when I see my tower had been in vain, say nothin’ of the money it cost, oh! how holler the world looked to me, it almost seemed as if it would break in and let me through, rockin’ chair and all.
As I sot there a mewsin’ over it, and a cuttin’ my rags, I almost made up my mind that I would have the dark stripe in my carpet black as a coal, the whole on it, a sort of mournin’ stripe. But better feelin’s got up inside of my mind, and I felt that I would put in my but’nut color rather than waste it.
Yet oh how holler and onstiddy everything looked to me; who could I trust, whose apron string could I cling to, without expectin’ it would break off short with me? For pretty nigh 2 minutes and a half I had the horrors almost as bad as Simon Slimpsey, (he has ’em now every day stiddy, Betsey is so hard on him), but oh how sweetly in that solemn time there came to me the thought of Josiah. Yes, on that worrysome time I can truly say that Josiah Allen was my theme, and I thought to myself, there may be handsomer men than he is, and men that weigh more by the steelyards, but there hain’t one to be found that has heftier morals, or more well seasoned principles than he has. Yes, Josiah Allen was my theme, I felt that I could trust my Josiah. I guess I had got mewsin’ agin on jails and wickedness, and so 4th, for all of a sudden the thought knocked aginst my heart,
“What if Josiah Allen should go to cuttin’ up, and behavin’?”
I wouldn’t let the thought in, I ordered it out. But it kep’ a hangin’ round,—
“What if your Josiah should go to cuttin’ up?”
I argued with it; says I to myself, I guess I know Josiah Allen, a likelier man never trod shoe leather. I know him like a book.
But then thinks’es I—what strange critters men and wimmin be. Now you may live with one for years, and think you know every crook and turn in that critter’s mind, jest like a book; when lo! and behold! all of a sudden a leaf will be turned over, that had been glued together by some circumstance or other, and there will be readin’ that you never set eyes on before. Sometimes it is in an unknown tongue—sometimes it is good readin’, and then again, it is bad. Oh how gloomy and depressted I was. But Josiah Allen’s wife haint one to give up to the horrers without a tussle, and though inwardly so tosted about, I rose up and with a brow of calm, I sot my basket of carpet rags behind the door, and quietly put on the tea-kettle, for it was about time for Josiah to come.
Then I looked round to see if there was anything I could do to make it look more pleasant than it did for Josiah Allen when he came home cold and tired from the Jonesville mill. It never was my way to stand stun still in the middle of the floor and smile at him from half to three-quarters of an hour. Yet it was always my idee that if a woman can’t make home the pleasantest spot in the world for her husband, she needn’t complain if he won’t stay there any more than he can help. I believe there wouldn’t be so many men a meanderin’ off nights into grog shops, and all sorts of wickedness, if they had a bright home and a cheerful companion to draw ’em back, (not but what men have to be corrected occasionally, I have to correct Josiah every little while.) But good land! It is all I can do to get Josiah Allen and Thomas Jefferson out of the house long enough to mop.