Wall, Miss Mooney wouldn’t give anything because she thought Jane Smedley wuzn’t so sick as she thought she wuz; she said “she was spleeny.”
And I told Miss Mooney that when a woman was sick enough to die, I thought she ort to be called sick.
But Miss Mooney wouldn’t give up, and insisted to the very last that Miss Smedley wuz hypoey and spleeny—and thought she wuz sicker than she really wuz. And she held her head and her nose up in a very disagreeable and haughty way, and said as I left, that she never could bear to help spleeny people.
Wall, all that forenoon did I traipse through the street and not one cent did I get for the Smedleys, only Miss Gowdey said she would bring a cabbage and Miss Deacon Peedick and Miss Ingledue partly promised a squash apiece. And I mistrusted that they give ’em more to please me than anything else.
Wall, I wuz clean discouraged and beat out, and so I told Josiah. But he encouraged me some by sayin’:
“Wall, I could have told you jest how it would be,” and, “You would have done better, Samantha, to have been to home a cookin’ for your own famishin’ family.” And several more jest such inspirin’ remarks as men will give to the females of their families when they are engaged in charitable enterprises.
But I got a good, a very good dinner, and it made me feel some better, and then I haint one to give up to discouragements, anyway.
So I put on a little better dress for after noon, and my best bonnet and shawl, and set sail again after dinner.
And if I ever had a lesson in not givin’ up to discouragements in the first place I had it then. For whether it wuz on account of the more dressy look of my bonnet and shawl—or whether it wuz that folks felt cleverer in the afternoon—or whether it wuz that I had gone to the more discouragin’ places in the forenoon, and the better ones in the afternoon—or whether it wuz that I tackled on the subject in a better way than I had tackled ’em—whether it wuz for any of these reasons, or all of ’em or somethin’—anyway my luck turned at noon, 12 M., and all that afternoon I had one triumph after another—place after place did I collect pound or pounds as the case may be (or collected the promises of ’em, I mean). I did splendid, and wuz prospered perfectly amazing—and I went home feelin’ as happy and proud as a king or a zar.
And the next Tuesday evenin’ we had the pound party. They concluded to have it to our house. And Thomas Jefferson and Maggie, and Tirzah Ann and Whitefield came home early in the afternoon to help trim the parlor and setin’ room with evergreens and everlastin’ posies, and fern leaves.