“Why,” says I, “that was the newraligy, the doctors said.”
“Doctors are liable to mistakes,” says she in the same firm but modest accents, “I have always thought it was the tizick. There are more folks that are tiziky than you think for, in this world. I am a master hand for knowin’ it when I see it.” She would then in an affectionate manner advise me to doctor for the tizick, and then she would gently depart.
There are 2 kinds of wimmen that go to see the sick. There’s them low voiced, still footed wimmen, that walks right in, and lays their hands on your hot foreheads so soothin’ like, that the pain gets ashamed of itself and sneaks off. I call ’em God’s angels. Spozen they haint got wings, I don’t care, I contend for it they are servin’ the Lord jest as much as if they was a standin’ up in a row, all feathered out, with a palm tree in one hand and a harp in the other.
So I told old Gowdey one cold winter day—(he is awful stingy, he has got a big wood lot—yet lets lots of poor families most freeze round him, in the winter time. He will pray for ’em by the hour, but it don’t seem to warm ’em up much)—he says to me,
“Oh! if I was only a angel! if I only had holt of the palm tree up yonder that is waitin’ for me.”
Says I, coolly, “if it is used right, I think good body maple goes a good ways toward makin’ a angel.”
As I say, I have had these angels in my room—some kinder slimmish ones, some, that would go nigh on to 2 hundred by the stellyards, I don’t care if they went 3 hundred quick, I should call ’em angels jest the same.
Then there is them wimmen that go to have a good time of it, they get kinder sick of stayin’ to home, and nothin’ happenin’. And so they take thier work, and flock in to visit the afflicted. I should think I had pretty near 25 a day of ’em, and each one started 25 different subjects. Wild, crazy subjects, most of ’em, such as fires, runaway matches, and whirlwinds; earthquakes, neighberhood fightin’, and butter that wouldn’t come; great tidal waves, railroad axidents, balky horses, and overskirts; man slaughter, politix, schism, and frizzled hair.
I believe it would have drawed more sweat from a able bodied man to have laid still and heard it, than to mow a five acre lot in dog days. And there my head was takin’ on, and achin’ as if it would come off all the time.
If I could have had one thing at a time, I could have stood it better. I shouldn’t have minded a earthquake so much, if I could have give my full attention to it, but I must have conflegrations at the same time on my mind, and hens that wouldn’t set, and drunken men, and crazy wimmin, and jumpin’ sheep, and female suffragin’ and calico cut biasin’, and the Rushen war, and politix. It did seem some of the time, that my head must split open, and I guess the doctor got scairt about me, for one mornin’ after he went away, Josiah came into the room, and I see that he looked awful sober and gloomy, but the minute he ketched my eye, he began to snicker and laugh. I didn’t say nothin’ at first, and shet my eyes, but when I opened ’em agin, there he was a standin’ lookin’ down on me with the same mournful, agonized expression onto his features; not a word did he speak, but when he see me a lookin’ at him, he bust out laughin’ agin, and then says I—