Says he, still follerin’ up his old theme, still tryin’ to head me off in some way:
“Wouldn’t you be sorry for these females, Josiah Allen’s wife?”
Says I firmly: “If they suffered from the wrenchin’ away of old ties, I should be sorry for ’em to that extent that there wouldn’t be a sithe left in my breast, nor a dry eye in my head. At the same time, if they made the sacrifice willin’ly, from a sense of duty, for the ransom of their people, for the deliverance of the land from peril, my very soul would kneel in reverence to them, and they should be honored by all as those who come out of great tribulations.
“But,” says I, in a slower, more thoughtful way, “there is different kinds of tribulations. And you can look at subjects with the sentimental eye of your specks, and then agin you can turn the other eye onto ’em. And in lookin’ through that other eye at ’em, you might possibly see that the married life of these plural wives is wretched—full of jealousies, divisions, and sizms.
“Woman’s love, when it has room to grow, is a tremendous thing to spread itself. But (still lookin’ through that common sense eye of our specks) we would say that the divine plant of love can’t grow so thrifty in one-twentieth part of a man’s heart as it could in a more expanded and roomy place. We would say (still lookin’ through that eye) that it was too cramped a spot—some like growin’ a oak in a bottle. You can make it sprout; but there can’t be so deep roots nor so strong a strength to it, and it wouldn’t take nigh so much of a pull to wrench it up by the roots.
“And so, to foller up the simely, as simelys ort to be follered, we would think that the first wife is the one who would suffer most; she who thought she was marryin’ a hull man, who dwelt for awhile in a hull heart, and whose affections, therefore, had naturally took deep root, and spread themselves. We would say (still lookin’ through that eye of the speck, and still follerin’ up simelys) that she is the one who would be most wrung with agony.”
“Wall,” says Elder Judas Wart, seemin’ly ketchin’ holt of the first argument that presented itself in front of his mind, for truly he didn’t seem to care how crooked his argument was, nor how wobblin’. Says he:
“Sufferin’ is a divine agent to draw souls heavenward.”
“Yes, heaven-sent sufferin’,” says I, “will draw our hearts up nearer to the heavenly home it come from. But when sufferin’ comes up from below, from another place, scented with brimstone, and loaded with iniquity, it will do its best to draw us down to it where it come from.”
“Pain sometimes teaches divine lessons,” says Elder Judas Wart. And I never see a mouth puckered and twisted down into a more hypocritical pucker than hisen was.