“That is right, Samantha! give it to her!”
Worshipin’ that man as I do, his words was far more inspirin’ and stimulatin’ to me than root beer. Agin I went on, and says I:
“Maybe it hain’t exactly accordin’ to Scripture, but there is somethin’ respectable in open enmity—in beginnin’ your remarks about anybody honestly, in this way: ‘Now I detest and despise that man, and I am goin’ to try to relieve my mind by talkin’ about him jest as bad as I can;’ and then proceed and tear him to pieces in a straightforward, manly way. I don’t s’pose such a course would be upheld by the ’postles. But there is a element of boldness and courage in it amountin’ almost to grandeur, when compared to this kind of talk: ‘I think everything in the world of that man. I think he is jest as good as he can be, and he hain’t got a better friend in the world than I am;’ and then go on, and say all you can to injure him.
“Why, a pirate runs up his skeleton and cross-bars when he is goin’ to rob and pillage. I think, Alzina Ann, if I was in your place I would make a great effort, and try and be as noble and magnanimous as a pirate.”
Alzina Ann looked like a white hollyhawk that had been withered by a untimely frost. But Cassandra looked tickled (she hadn’t forgot her sufferin’s, and the sufferin’s of Nathan Spooner). And my Josiah looked proud and triumphant in mean. And he told me in confidence, a goin’ home (and I wouldn’t wish it spoke of agin, for folks might think it was foolish in me to tell such little admirin’ speeches that a companion will make in moments of harmony and confidence). But he said that he hadn’t seen me look so good to him as I did when I stood there in the winder, not for much as thirteen years. Says he:
“Samantha, you looked almost perfectly beautiful.”
That man worships the ground I walk on, and I do hisen.
THE LORDS OF CREATION.
Josiah Allen is awful tickled to think he is a man. He has said so to me, time and agin. And I don’t wonder a mite at it. Men are first-rate creeters, and considerable good-lookin’. I have always said so. And they have such glorious chances to be noble and grand, and to work for the true and the right, that I don’t wonder a mite that Josiah feels just as he duz feel.