She has had chances to my certain knowledge (widowers and such).
But if all the men in the world should come and stand in rows in front of her gate with gilded crowns in their hands all ready to crown her, and septers all ready for her to grasp holt of, and wield over the world, she would refuse every one of 'em.
She has had a disappointment, Submit has. And she looked at the world so long through tears, that the world got to lookin' sort o' dim like and shadowy to her, and the whole men race looked to her fur off and misty, as folks will when you look at 'em through a rain.
She couldn't marry one of them shadows of men, if she tried, and she hain't never tried. No, her heart always has been, and is now, fur away, a-travellin' through unknown regions, unknown, and yet more real to her than Jonesville or Zoar, a-follerin' the one man in the world who is a reality to her. Submit wuz engaged to a young Methodist minister by the name of Samuel Danker. I remember him well. A good lookin' young fellow at the time, with blue eyes and light hair, ruther long and curly, and kinder wavin' back from his forward, and a deep spiritual look in his eyes. In fact, his eyes looked right through the fashions and follys of the civilized world, into the depths of ignorance, rivers of ruin and despair, that wuz a-washin' over a human race, black jungles where naked sin and natural depravities crouched hungry for victims.
Samuel Danker felt that he had got to go into heathen lands as a missionary. He wuz engaged to Submit, and loved her dearly, and he urged her to go too.
But Submit had a invalid father on her hands, a bed rid grandfather, and three young brothers, too young to earn a thing, and they all on 'em together hadn't a cent of money to their names. They had twenty-five acres of middlin' poor land, and a old house.
Wall, Submit felt that she couldn't leave these helpless ones and go to more foreign heathen lands. So, with a achin' heart, she let Samuel Danker go from her, for he felt a call, loud, and she couldn't counsel him to shet up his ears, or put cotton into 'em. Submit Tewksbury had always loved and worked for the Methodist meetin' house (she jined it on probation when she wuz thirteen). But although she always had been extremely liberal in givin', and had made a practice of contributin' every cent she could spare to the meetin' house, it wuz spozed that Samuel Danker wuz the biggest offerin' she had ever give to it.
Fur it wuz known that he went to her the night before he sot sail, took supper with her, and told her she should decide the matter for him, whether he went or whether he staid.
It wuz spozed his love for Submit wuz so great that it made him waver when the time come that he must leave her to her lot of toil and sacrifice and loneliness.
But Submit loved the Methodist meetin' house to that extent, she leaned so hard on the arm of Duty, that she nerved up her courage anew, refused to accept the sacrifice of his renunciation, bid him go to his great work, and quit himself like a man—told him she would always love him, pray for him, be constant to him. And she felt that the Master they both wanted to serve would some day bring him back to her.