Says I: “Elder Judas Wart, I won’t take you back to the old Jewish nations, round by Italy, Spain, and other roundabout ways, as I might do, and as some wimmen who are more talkative than I be probable would, and show you all the way the ruins of the nations ruined by this crime of polygimy. But I am a woman who says but little, but that little I mean, and I will merely hold up Turkey before you. And while I am holdin’ up that Turkey, I will merely mention the fact to you, that you and everybody else knows, and that Turkey knows it well, and if it should speak up and own the truth it would say that it was the effects of this system that made it so weak and impotent. Weaker as a nation than our old turkey-gobbler; fur weaker than a hen-turkey. (I make use of the gobbler as a poetical metafor, and would wish to be so understood.)
“Will not America and Josiahs heed these warnin’s?” says I, lookin’ right up at the ceilin’, in a rapped way. “Will they not listen to the voice of doom that rises from the ruins of other nations, glorious and proud and strong in the past, that has crumbled into ashes from the effects of this sin? Will they not,” I went on in a still more rapped, eloquent way, “will they not bend down their ears and hear the wail of warnin’ that seems to float along over the dust of the desert from old Babylon herself, warnin’ to this new, fresh, western world to escape this enervatin’, destroyin’ sin, and escape her doom? Will not America and Josiahs take warnin’[a]warnin’] by the fate of these nations? or will they go on in careless merriment and feastin’, unheedin’ those terrible words ‘mean! mean!’ writ up in the blue vault above, till it is too late; till the land is given to the enimy; till weakness, ruin, and decay take the septer from Columbia’s tremblin’, shakin’ grasp, and rain over this once strong, lovely land.”
I sithed, I almost wept—I was so fearfully agitated—and says I: “If this threat’nin’ doom that threatens our beloved land is to be averted, if this evil is to be stopped, when is there a better time than the present to stop it in, now,” says I, wipin’ my eyes on my apron, “now, while America has got me to help her?” And agin I sithed, and agin I almost shed tears, and wept.
He see my agitation, and took advantage of it. Says he: “You seem to be tender-hearted, Josiah Allen’s wife, and to have a great affection for the female sect, and yet you don’t seem to think of the hearts that would be wrung by the agony of seperation. Why,” says he, “if they should part with their companions, they would be unhappy.”
Says I, lookin’ out of the open window, fur away over the tree-tops, over the blue lake beyond—and beyond—
My spectacles seemed to look very fur off. They had a very deep and sort o’ soarin’ look to ’em, somewhat happy, and somewhat sorrowful and solemn. And says I:
“I don’t know as there has any law ever been made, in Heaven or on earth, that we had got to be happy. There is a law made that we should do right, should not do evil, but not that we must be happy. Why, some paths we have to foller lead right away from happiness.”[happiness.”] And says I, still lookin’ fur off, in that same sort of a solemn, deep way:
“That path always leads to something better, more beautiful, more divine.”
“What can be better than happiness?” says he, in a enquirin’ way.
“Blessedness!” says I. “The two hain’t to be compared no more than a flower growin’ out of earthly soil is to be compared to one springin’ up in the valleys of God. One is lit with earth’s sun, and the other is shinin’ with Heaven’s own light. One is mortal, the other immortal.”