After supper Josiah and me was a settin’ in the spare room close to the window, a lookin’ through Cassandra’s album, when we heard Alzina Ann and Cassandra out under the window a-lookin’ at the posy beds, when Alzina Ann says:
“You must excuse my lookin’ at you so much, Cassandra, but you are so lovely and fair-lookin’ that I can’t keep my eyes offen you. And what a noble-appearin’ husband you have got—perfectly splendid! And how pleasant it is here to your house—perfectly beautiful! Seein’ we are such friends to her, I feel free to tell you what a awful state I find Josiah Allen’s wife’s house in. Not a mite of a carpet on her settin’-room floor, and nothin’ gives a room such a awful look as that. She said it was up to mend, but, between you and me, I don’t believe a word of it. I believe it was up for some other purpose, somethin’ she didn’t want to tell.
“And the curtains was down in my room, and I had to sleep all the first night in that condition. I might jest as well set up, for I could not sleep, it looked so. And when she got ’em up the next mornin’, they wuzn’t nothin’ but plain, white muslin. I should think she could afford something a little more decent than that for her spare room. And she hadn’t a mite of fruit cake in the house, only two kinds of common-lookin’ cake. She said Josiah forgot to give her my letter, and she didn’t get word I was comin’ till about ten minutes before I got there; but, between you and me, I never believed that for a minute. I believe they got up that story between ’em to excuse it off, things lookin’ so. If I wuzn’t such a friend of hern, and didn’t think such a sight of her, I wouldn’t mention it for the world. But I think everything of her, and everybody knows I do, so I feel free to talk about her.
“How humbly she has growed! Don’t you think so? And her mind seems to be kind o’ runnin’ down. For how under the sun she can think so much of that simple old husband of hern is a mystery to me, unless she is growin’ foolish. If it was your husband, Cassandra, nobody would wonder at it, such a splendid, noble-appearin’ gentleman as he is. But Josiah Allen was always a poor, insignificant-lookin’ creeter; and now he is the humbliest, and foolishest, and meachin’est-lookin’ creeter I ever see in human shape. And he looks as old as Grandfather Rickerson, every mite as old, and he is most ninety. And he is vain as a peahen.”
I jest glanced round at Josiah, and then instinctively I looked away agin. His countenance was perfectly awful. Truly, the higher we are up the worse it hurts us to fall down. Bein’ lifted up on such a height of vanity and vain-glory, and fallin’ down from it so sudden, it most broke his neck (speakin’ in a poetical and figurative way). I, myself, havin’ had doubts of her all the time, didn’t feel nigh so worked up and curious, it more sort o’ madded me, it kind o’ operated in that way on me. And so, when she begun agin to run Josiah and me down to the lowest notch, called us all to naught, made out we wuzn’t hardly fit to live, and was most fools, and then says agin:
“I wouldn’t say a word aginst ’em for the world if I wuzn’t such a friend to ’em—”
FACE TO FACE.
FACE TO FACE.
Then I riz right up, and stood in the open window; and it come up in front of me some like a pulpit, and I s’pose my mean looked considerable like a preacher’s when they get carried away with the subject, and almost by the side of themselves.