Oh, how surly and mad that man did look. His mean would have skairt some wimmen, but it didn’t me; mebby it would if I hadn’t been talkin’ on such high principle, but that boyed me up.
“Why,” says I, “as I have said more’n 40 times, folks ort to get it into their heads that it is a great and serious subject that ort to be considered and prayed over and meditated upon. They ort to realize that gettin’ married is a solemn thing; solemner, if anything, than it is not to, and that has always been considered a very solemn thing, very. But instead of lookin’ on it in this serious and becomin’ way, folks will caper and prance off into matrimony in jest as light and highlarious and triflin’ a way as if they was headin’ a row of fantasticks on the 4th of July. They don’t consider and filosifize on it that the fantasticks can take off their uniforms at night, and be themselves agin, but the matrimourners can’t. They can’t do it nohow; there they be, matrimourners. No matter how bad they feel, and how disappointed they be by the looks of the state they have got into, they can’t get out of it. They are matrimourners, and can’t help themselves.
“The state of wedlock has got a high, slippery wall round it, as high up as eternity, and as low down as the same. It is a wall that can’t be stepped acrost and climbed over. It is a wall that a man or a woman can’t sneak out and creep up on without fallin’ back—it is too slippery. It is a wall that can’t be broke down, and jumped over only on Bible grounds. And then when you do take that jump on Bible grounds, oh how fatiguein’ that leap is. How much happiness and ease of mind the matrimourner has to drop in the jump, drop forever. And how much trouble he has to carry with him, and disquietude of mind, and condemnation, and upbraidin’s, and gossip, and evil speaking, and hateful memories, and hauntin’ ones, and travel of soul and body. Oh, what a time that matrimourner duz have.”
“I thought,” says he, with that surly, mad look of hisen, “I thought you was one that preached up liberty, freedom, and etcetery.”
“So I be,” says I. “Hain’t I jest been a doin’ of it? Hain’t I jest said that no man or woman ort to be drove into the state of matrimony by anybody only jest their own selves? But after they lay holt, and drive themselves in, they ortn’t to complain. But, as I have said frequent, they’ll find after they have drove themselves in that it is the curiousest state that ever was made. None of our States of America will compare with it for curiosity,—and some of our’n are exceedingly curious, take ’em laws and all, to wit: Havin’ a man in congress to make laws that imprison a man for havin’ two wives, while he himself, proud and hauty, a settin’ up a makin’ that law, has four on ’em. Exceedingly curious that is, and to wit: Fixin’ penalties against crime and vice, and then sellin’ licenses to encourage and make it respectable. Oh! how curious, how curious some of our states be! But the state of matrimony is far curiouser. It is curiouser in the beginning—some like a conundrum. States have to be admitted into the Union; a union admits you into that state. And then, it is bounded on every side by divinest possibilities of happiness, or the most despairin’ ones, and no knowin’ which will break over the frontier, and capture you. Sweetest and most rapturous joys may cover its soil as thick as blossoms on a summer prairie, or angry passions and disappointments and cares may crunch ’em down under foot, and set fire to ’em. Peace and trust and tenderness may rain over that state, or anarky and sizm.”
“Yes, and fallin’ fits,” says Danks, with a bitter tone, “and historicks.”
“Yes,” says I calmly, “matrimourners ort to take all the blessings and enjoyments and comforts with a thankful heart, and they ort to have the courage and the nobility and the common sense to take all the evils, fallin’ fits, historicks, and etcetery, and etcetery, with a willin’ mind. You ort,” says I firmly, “you ort to have figured it all out. You ort to have figured out the hull sum, orts and all, and seen what was to carry, and got the right answer to it, before you drove yourself into that state.”
“How could I see to carry historicks? how could I figured ’em out?” says he bitterly.
But I kep’ right on: “You ort to have studied it out, whether you was strong enough to stand the climate, with its torrid weather and its frigid zones, its sweet summery winds and its blasts, its squalls and hurrycains. But as I have said 40 times, if I have once, after you have drove yourself into that state, you ort to hist up your moral umberell, and make the best on’t.”
Danks didn’t look convinced at all. He muttered sunthin’ agin about fits and other things, and how he hadn’t made no calculations on ’em; and I felt fairly out of patience, and went to allegorin’, as I might have known I should before I got through. (It is next to impossible for me to be so eloquent as I was then without allegorin’ some).