As I said, I was a washin’ up my dishes in the buttery, when all of a sudden in walked Elder Judas Wart. The door was open, it bein’ a pleasant mornin’, and he jest rapped at the side of the door, and walked in.
I guess he didn’t see Josiah, the lounge bein’ kinder behind the door; but he seemed dretful tickled to see me—tickleder fur than I was. Though, havin’ my mission in view, I used him well, and sot him a chair. But little did I think what was before me; little did I think what the awfulness of his first words to me would be. He hadn’t been in that house five minutes, for I know I had only jest hung up my dish-cloth (for knowin’ what a tussle of principle was ahead of me, and feelin’ as if I should need all my strength in the conflict, I left the heaviest of my dishes to wash at noon, for the first time in over fourteen months).
Wall, if you can believe it, jest as I got that dish-cloth hung up, that man, with no phraseoligies or excuses or anything, that man up and says:
RESCUING THE ELDER.
“I have heard, and I see for myself, that you are a very smart woman, and you could do wonders in the true church if you was married to some leadin’ man,—to me, for instance,” says he, bold as brass, “or was sealed to me,” says he, spittin’ hard onto the floor. But that man hadn’t hardly got that seal and that tobacco-juice out of his mouth, when Josiah Allen sprung up and leveled that broom-stick at him with a deadly aim. I sprung forward and threw the end of the broom-stick up jest in time to save the Elder’s life. I forced him to desist, I and the stitch; for truly the effort was too much for him. The stitch griped him awful, and he sunk back with a agonizin’ groan.
I wanted Josiah to stay his hand and the broom-stick for two reasons. One was, I didn’t want the Elder killed quite so quick—not till after I had had a chance to convert him. And another reason was, I thought of my deep agony and a Widder Bump, and thinkses I to myself, though the medicine is fearful to administer, as gaulin’ and bitter as wormwood and sicuta biled down in tar and vinegar, still I felt it was what my companion needed to show him the nefariousness and heniousness of Mormonism, in its true light.
I wouldn’t in his present weakness of mind and back, throw the Widder Bump in his face, as I might have done. Some pardners would have jest turned round on him, as he lay there on that lounge, and throwed that woman full and square in his face. But I didn’t. I see he was a sufferin’ enough without that. He was takin’ the matter to himself like a blister, as anybody has got to, in order to feel the smart. A blister don’t draw half so powerful, nor feel half so bad, when it is on somebody else’es back, as it does when it is on our’n. He was a meditatin’ how it would seem to his heart to lose the companion of his youth and middle age. He was a eatin’ of that sass which ganders think is quite good for geese to eat. He was seein’ now how it would relish to a gander. I pitied him from the bottom of my heart, his looks was such.
But Elder Judas Wart had no such feelin’s of pity and sympathy, and bein’ excited by Josiah’s ragin’ wrath, and maddened by the broom-stick, he spoke out, in a angry, sarcastical tone:
“Your husband felt different on this subject last spring. He seemed almost inclined at one time to take to himself another helpmate. There was a certain widder, there”—