“Why, she acts fairly frisky and girlish sometimes. Way down in the lowest valleys, down by the most hidden brook-side, she will sit down to weave together the most lovely and coquetish bunches of fern and grasses, and scarlet and golden wild flowers, and deck herself up in ’em like a bride of 16. You never ketched her runnin’ in debt for a lot of stuff though—her principles are too firm. But she goes on makin’ beauty and gladness wherever she goes, and lookin’ handsome, and if it had been wicked the Lord wouldn’t have let her go on in it. He could have stopped her in a minute if He had wanted to. She does jest as He tells her to, and always did.
“And,” says I, with considerable of a stern look onto Kellup, “if Nater—if she who understands the unwritten language of God, that we can’t speak yet—if she, whose ways seem to us to be a revelation of that will of the Most High—if she can go on wreathing herself in beauty, I don’t think we should be afraid of gettin’ holt of all we can of it—of all lovely things. And I don’t think,” says I, givin’ a sort of a careless glance up into the lookin’-glass, “that there should be such a fuss made by the world at large about my head-dress.”
“But,” says Kellup, a groanin’ loud and violent, “it is the wickedness of it I look at. To follow the vile example of the rich. And oh! how wicked rich folks be. How hard-hearted, how unprincipled, and vile.” And agin he groaned, deep.
Says I, “Don’t groan so, Kellup,” for it was truly skairful to hear him.
Says he, “I will groan!” Says he, “The carryin’s on and extravagance of the rich is enough to make a dog groan.”
I see I couldn’t stop his groanin’, but I went on a talkin’ reasonable, in hopes I could quell him down.
Says I, “There is two sides to most everything, Kellup, and some have lots of sides. That is what makes the world such a confusin’ place to live in. If things and idees didn’t have but one side to ’em, we could grab holt of that side, hold it close, and be at rest.
“But they do. And you must look on both sides of things before you make a move. You mustn’t confine yourself to lookin’ on jest one side of a subject, for it hain’t reasonable.”
“I won’t try to look on both sides,” says he with a bitter look. “That is what makes folks onsettled and onstabled in their views, and liberal. But I won’t. I am firm and decided. I am satisfied to look on one side of a subject—on the good old orthodox side. You won’t ketch me a whifflin’ round and lookin’ on every side of a idee.”
“Wall,” says I, calmly, for to convince, and not to anger, is ever my theme and purpose. And knowin’ that to the multitude truth is most often palatable if presented in a parabolical form, and has been for centuries often imbibed by them in that way, entirely unbeknown to them. And knowin’ that the little scenes of daily life are as good to wrap round morals and cause ’em to be swallowed down unbeknowin’, as peach preserves are to roll round pills, I went on and says: