But them words, them buckwheat-cakes, was only a vail (as it were) that I threw over my feelin’s, tryin’ to hide ’em from my pardner. For oh! what a wild commotion was goin’ on inside of me between my principles and my affection. And of all the wars that ever devastated the world, that is the most fearful; though it may be like many others, a silent warfare. Yes, when love—such a love as my love for Josiah—and principles strong and hefty as my principles are, get to fightin’ with each other, and kickin’ back and forth, and ragin’, and as I may say, in a practical and figurative way, snortin’ and prancin’,—then ensues and follers on a time long to be remembered.
I was principled against takin’ in summer boarders. I had seen ’em took in, time and agin, and seen the effects of it, and I had said, and said calmly, that for people like us boarders was a moth. I had said, and felt, that when a woman does her own housework it was all she ort to do to take care of her own men folks, and her house, and housen stuff, and common run of visitors,—and hired girls I was immovably sot against from my birth.
A POETICAL SIMELY.
Home seemed to me to be a peaceful haven, jest large enough for two barks,—Josiah’s bark and my bark,—and when foreign schooners (to foller up my poetical simely), when foreign schooners and periogers sailed in, they generally proved to be ships of war, pirate fleets stealin’ happiness and ease, and runnin’ up the skeliton of our dead joys at their mast-heads. But I am a episodin’, and wanderin’ off into fields of poesy, and to resoom and go on:
It would be in vain and only harrow up the reader’s feelin’s to tell how the long struggle went on inside of my mind. But when I say that my pardner daily grew before my eyes crosser and more fearfully cross, and mauger and more awfully mauger, any female woman who has got a beloved companion, and a heart inside of her breast bones, knows how the conflict ended. I yielded and gin in, and the very day I gin my consent Josiah went and engaged ’em. He’d heard of ’em from old Mandagool. He had boarded ’em the summer before, and he said they wanted to get board again in Jonesville, though for some reason Mandagool didn’t seem to want to board ’em himself. I thought to myself that looked squally. I never liked old Mandagool,—not for a minute,—but I didn’t say a word. Neither did I say anything when he told me there was 4 childern in the family that was a comin’. No; I held firm. The job was undertook by me for the savin’ of my pardner. I had undertook it in a martyr way, and I wuzn’t goin’ to spile the job by murmerin’s and complainin’s.
But oh! how animated Josiah Allen was the day he come back from engagin’ of ’em. His appetite come back powerfully; he eat a immense dinner. His crossness had disappeared, his affectionate demeanor all returned; he would have acted as spoony as my big iron spoon if he had had so much as a crumb of encouragement from me. But I didn’t encourage him. There was a loftiness and majesty in my mean (caused by my principles) that almost awed him. I looked first-rate, and acted so. But oh, how highlarious Josiah Allen was! He was goin’ to make so much money by ’em. Says he, with a happy look:
JOSIAH’S IDEE.
“If a man loses money by one speck, he must launch out into another speck and get it back again.” Says he: “I have tried to make money easy, time and agin, and now I have hit the nail on the head; now I can make up my loss, and get independently rich. Why, besides the pure happiness we shall enjoy with ’em, the solid comfort, jest think of four dollars a week for the man and his wife, and two dollars a piece for the childern. Less see,” says he dreamily: