AN IDEAL FAMILY.
I don’t think I had been more eloquent in over five weeks, than I was in talkin’ upon that theme. I was very eloquent and lengthy, probable from ¼ to ½ an hour. I talked beautiful on it. A minister would have said so if he had heard me, and he would have been likely to thought highly of it, and my gestures, for the waves that I waved outwards with my right hand was impressive, and very graceful. I held the sock in my right hand, as I waved it out; it was a good color, and it floated out some like a banner. I felt well, and acted well, and I knew it. And I thought at the time that Josiah knew it, and was proud of me, and felt more affectionate to me than his common run of feelin’s towards me wuz, for most the minute I got through episodin’, he broke out, and says he:
“Don’t you think you are a workin’ too hard, Samantha? Don’t you think it would be easier for you if you had some woman here a livin’ to help you? And,” says he, dreamily, “she might be a fryin’ the nutcakes while you was a brilin’ the beef-steak, and cookin’ other provisions.”
I was exceedingly affected by his tender feelin’s towards me, (as I supposed,) and says I, in affectionate axents:
“No, I can get along, Josiah.”
But oh! if I had known! If I had known what thoughts was a runnin’ through his mind, how different my axent would have been. My axent would have been so cold it would have froze him stiffer’n a mushrat, jest one axent would, it would have had that deadly icyness to it. Blind bein’ that I was, a speakin’ tender and soft to him, and knittin’ on his heel, (a double stitch, too, to make it firmer,) and he a settin’ of his own accord up on top of that volcano that was ready to bust right out, and burn up all my happiness, and swaller down and engulf my Josiah. What feelin’s I felt as I thought it all over afterwards.
Wall, I sot there a knittin’ on his heel, and occasionally makin’ eloquent and flowery speeches, and he, from time to time, a speakin out sudden and sort o’ promiscous, a praisin’ up the Widder Bump, and sort o’ mixin’ her up with religion, and seals, and revelations, and things, and anon, when I would take him to do about it, a whistlin’, and whittlin’ shingles into curious and foolish shapes, curiouser than I ever remembered to see him whittle, and whistlin’ more sort o’ vacant and excentrick whistles than I ever remembered hearin’ him whistle—dretful loud whistles, some of ’em, and then dwindlin’ down sudden and unexpected into low and dwindlin’ ones. And I a wonderin’ at it, and thinkin’ things was a goin’ on strange and curious. And then anon, or about that time, or anyway, as soon as I would have time to meditate on men’s curious and foolish demeanors at times—why I would give up that it was one of their ways, and he would get over it, knowin’ that they mostly did get over ’em.
And so the long, tejus evenin’ waned away. And Josiah locked the doors, and wound up the clock, and greased his boots, and went to bed. But oh! little did I know all the while he was a windin’ and a greasin’, and I a knittin’, and the carpet seemed to lay smooth and straight under us, all the time a earthquake was a rumblin’, and, to use a poetical and figurative expression, a snortin’ down under us, unbeknown to me.
Wall, that night my pardner, Josiah Allen, at two different times, once about midnight, and once about the time the roosters crowed—at two separate times, which I am ready to testify and make oath to, he spoke right out in his sleep, and says: