“’Tain’t nothin’ to me; I don’t have the fallin’ fits nor the historicks.” He looked dretful mad, and spoke up as pert and impudent to my pardner as if it was Josiah’s business to tussle with them fits and things, instead of hisen.
I had thought I wouldn’t put in my note at all, but I hain’t one to stand by and see my pardner imposed upon. And then, too, I felt in the name of principle I ort to speak. I felt a feelin’ that mebby here was a chance for me to do good. And when he spoke out agin, more impudenter and hatefuler than before, “that it wasn’t nothin’ to him,” says I:
“It is sunthin’ to you.” And then I went on powerful and eloquent. I can tell you I talked deep and solemn to that man about what he took onto himself when he sot out in matrimony; about the responsibility of marriage, and bringin’ childern into the world; the responsibility to God and man of usherin’ eternal souls into this world for everlasting joy or misery; the terrible responsibility to these souls and to God, the righteous Judge; and the terrible responsibility to the world of lettin’ loose in it such mighty powers for good or evil,—a set of likely creeters, blessings and benefactors forever, or shacks and sources of uncounted misery, made so greatly by early care and culture; influences that will go on and on for all time, growing and widening out all the time, till no mind but the Eternal can reckon up or even imagine the awful consequences for good or evil of one human soul. “How dare anyone,” says I, “lightly and irreverantly even think on the subject,—much less tackle it.”
I talked beautiful on the subject, and deep, deeper than I had for some time. I felt fearfully eloquent, and acted so, and very noble. But Danks acted mad, mad as a hen. And he snapped out agin:
“Who made any calculations on fallin’ fits and such things? I didn’t.”
Why, that man almost took my head off, he snapped me up so. But I didn’t care; I knew I was a talkin’ on principle, and that reflection is a high rock to lean and rest the moral back against. That thought is a thick umberell to keep off the little hailstuns of impertinence and impudence that might otherwise hurt one’s self-respect and mortify it. I felt well and noble in my mind, and acted well, very. I kep’ right on cool and collected together.
And says I, “That is one great reason why any one ort to consider well on’t. They ort to know that this is one of them jobs that you can’t calculate on exactly how it is a comin’ out. You must take the chances. There is lots of undertakin’s jest so—jest as hard to tell how it is a comin’ out as some things in Nater. Now the greatest of minds can’t figger out exactly to a minute what time the butter will come—or how a marriage is a goin’ to turn out—or jest when it will stop rainin’, or begin—or when the old hen will lay.
“The world is a curious place, and in lots of undertakin’s you have to step out blindfold and ketch holt of the consequences, good or bad. The blinders will be took offen our eyes sometime, probable, but the time is not yet. And marriage, I take it, is one of the very reskiest undertakin’s you can undertake. It may lead you into a happiness as pure and lofty as a certain couple I could mention have enjoyed for the neighberhood of 20 years. It may, and then again it mayn’t. But there is one great comfort in this that there hain’t in some things, such as rain, and thunder storms, and etcetery. You needn’t enlist in this warfare if you hain’t a mind to—that is a sweet and consolin’ thought—if you feel scareful over it. But if you do enlist you must take the chances of war, you must take the resks. And if it wasn’t a resky piece of business to embark in, why did them old fathers put these words in the marriage service, ‘for richer, or for poorer.’ They knew what they was about, them old fathers did. They knew they couldn’t tell whether it would turn out rich as rich could be with blessings and bliss, or poor as poverty. Them old fathers knew that, and bein’ likely men and sound-moraled, they fixed that halter so that folks couldn’t squirm their necks out of it every time they got oneasy and worrysome.
“Historical fits, and etcetery,” says I, in reasonable tones, “might come under the head of ‘worse.’ But you can’t slip your head out; that vow holds you, for better or worse. You no need to have tackled that vow, but you did, and now you ort to stand up under it; that is law, and that is gospel too, which don’t always go together.”
“Well, what of it,” says Danks; “what if it duz? What are you goin’ to do about it?”