“Josiah Allen, if Tirzah Ann is to be brought up to think that marriage is the chief aim of her life, Thomas J. shall be brought up to think that marriage is his chief aim.” Says I, “it looks just as flat in a woman, as it does in a man.”
Josiah didn’t make much of any answer to me, he is an easy man. But as that was the old lady’s last visit (she was took bed rid the next week, and haint walked a step sense), I haint had no more trouble on them grounds.
When Tirzah Ann gets old enough, if a good true man, a man for instance, such as I think Whitfield Minkley, our minister’s oldest boy is a goin’ to make, if such a man offers Tirzah Ann his love which is the greatest honor a man can do a woman, why Tirzah will, I presume, if she loves him well enough, marry him. I should give my consent, and so would Josiah. But to have all her mind sot onto that hope and expectatin’ till she begins to look wild, I have discouraged it in her.
I have told her that goodness, truth, honor, vertue and nobility come first as aims in life. Says I,
“Tirzah Ann, seek these things first, and then if a husband is added unto you, you may know it is the Lord’s will, and accept him like any other dispensation of Providence, and—” I continued as dreamy thoughts of Josiah floated through my mind, “make the best of him.”
I feel thankful to think they have both come up as well as they have. Tirzah Ann is more of a quiet turn, but Thomas J., though his morals are sound, is dreadful full of fun, I worry some about him for he haint made no professions, I never could get him forred onto the anxious seat. He told Elder Minkley last winter that “the seats were all made of the same kind of basswood, and he could be jest as anxious out by the door, as he could on one of the front seats.”
Says Elder Minkley, “My dear boy, I want you to find the Lord.”
“I haint never lost him,” says Thomas Jefferson.
It shocked Elder Minkley dreadfully—but it sot me to thinkin’. He was always an odd child, always askin’ the curiousest questions, and I brought him up to think that the Lord was with him all the time, and see what he was doin’, and mebby he was in the right of it, mebby he felt as if he hadn’t never lost Him. He was always the greatest case to be out in the woods and lots, findin’ everything—and sometimes I have almost thought the trash he thinks so much of, such as shells and pieces of rock and stun, and flowers and moss, are a kind of means of grace to him, and then agin I don’t know. If I really thought they was I don’t suppose I should have pitched ’em out of the winder so many times as I have, clutterin’ up the house so.
I worry about him awfully sometimes, and then agin I lay holt of the promises. Now last Saturday night to have heard him go on, about the Jonesville quire, you’d a thought he never had a sober, solemn thought in his head. They meet to practice Saturday nights, and he had been to hear ’em. I stood his light talk as long as I could, and finally I told him to stop it, for I would not hear him go on so.