A bystander sez, “Look agin, mom!”
I did and I wuzn’t more’n two fingers high, and wide as our barn door. 252
I most shrieked and sez to myself, “It has come onto me at last, grief and such doin’s as I’ve seen here, has made me crazy as a loon.” And I started away almost on a run.
All of a sudden the floor under me which looked solid as my kitchen floor begun to move back and forth with me and sideways and back, to and fro, fro and to, and I goin’ with it, one foot goin’ one way, and the other foot goin’ somewhere else; but by a hurculaneum effort I kep’ my equilebrium upright, and made out to git on solid floorin’. But a high-headed female in a hobble skirt, the hobbles hamperin her, fell prostrate. I felt so shook up and wobblin’ myself, I thought a little Scripter would stiddy me, and I sez, “Sinners stand on slippery places.”
“I see they do!” she snapped out, lookin’ at me; “but I can’t!”
I sez to myself as I turned away, “I’ll bet she meant me.” But bein’ tuckered out, I sot down on a reliable-lookin’ stool, the high-headed woman takin’ another one by my side—there wuz a hull row of folks settin’ on ’em—when, all of a sudden, I d’no how it wuz done or why, but them stools all sunk right down to the floor bearin’ us with ’em onwillin’ly. 253
I scrambled to my feet quick as I could, and as I riz up I see right in front on me the gigantick, shameless female Bildad had as good as told me Josiah had been flirtin’ with. I knowed her to once, the gaudy, flashin’ lookin’ creeter, bigger than three wimmen ort to be; she wuz ten feet high if she wuz a inch. As she come up to me with mincin’ steps, I sez to her in skathin’ axents:
“What have you done with my innocent pardner? Where is Josiah Allen? Open your guilty breast and confess.” And now I’m tellin’ the livin’ truth, as she towered up in front on me, her breast did open and a man’s face looked out on me. My brain tottled, but righted itself with relief, for it wuz not Josiah; it wuz probable some other woman’s husband. But I sez to myself, let every woman take care of her own husband if she can; it hain’t my funeral.
And I hurried off till I come out into a kinder open place with some good stiddy chairs to set down on, and some green willers hangin’ down their verdant boughs over some posy beds. Nothin’ made up about ’em. Oh how good it looked to me to see sunthin’ that God had made, and man hadn’t dickered with and manufactured to seem different from what it wuz. Thinks I, if I should take hold of one of these feathery green willer sprays it wouldn’t turn into a serpent or try to trip me up, or wobble me down. They looked beautiful to me, and beyond ’em I could see the Ocean, another and fur greater reality, real as life, or death, or taxes, or anything else we can’t escape from.