KITTY’S KISS.
And she’ll laugh, and kiss me, and coax me not to be cross about it, till she makes most as big a fool of me as she does of Kellup, and I tell her so.
But I stand firm, and try to make her feel a realizin’ sense how it looks to have a hearse standin’ round promiscous every few days, hitched to our front gate. It is a solemn thing to me. And would be to anybody who looked at things serious and solemn. Most every subject has several sides to it, and some has more’n 20. And folks ort to tutor themselves to hold a subject right up in their hands, and look on every side of it. But Kitty don’t try to. The humorous side of things is the side she meditates on. And she thinks that Kellup’s travelin’ round after her on that hearse has a funny side to it. But I can’t see it. It is a solemn thing to me to see it drive up to our gate any time o’ day, and be hitched there, while he comes in and tries to court her. Why, it looks fairly wicked to me, and I tell her so. And then she’ll giggle and laugh, and make a perfect fool of Kellup. Or, that is, improve on the job; for truly Nater helped her powerful at his birth. Nater did a good job in that line—in the fool line. Though you couldn’t make him think he was most a fool, or leanin’ heavy that way, not if you should drive the fact into his head with a hammer. It is one of the hardest things in the world to make folks believe. They’ll own up to bein’ a fool twice as quick.
But as I say, it worries me most to death. And there is only jest one thing that keeps me from comin’ right out and puttin’ a stop to it, and tellin’ Kellup she is a foolin’ of him. I have meditated on it powerful. And sometimes I have thought that he needs such a affliction. Sometimes I have thought that, bein’ so overbearin’, and haughty, and big-feelin’, that such a takin’ down is what he needs to lift him up (morally).
But though that principle holds up my spirit, it is a hard trial to my spirit, and to the eye of my spectacles. And I’ll say to Josiah, every time I see him drive up, and groan loud as I say it: “I should think he’d know better than to go a courtin’ with a hearse.”
But he says: “Keep still; it don’t hurt you any, does it?”
That man enjoys it. He has wicked streaks, and I tell him so. And says I:
“Josiah Allen, you don’t seem to know what solemnity is, or what wickedness is.”
And he says: “I know what a dumb fool is.”