He had a house and lot all paid for, with no incumbrances only a mortgage of 150 dollars and a lame mother. But he laid out to clear off the mortgage this year, and I wuz told that mother Gee wuz a goin’ to live with her daughter Susan, who had jest come into a big property—as much as 700 dollars worth of land, besides cows, 2 heads of cow, and one head of a calf.
I knew Mother Gee and she wuz goin’ to stay with Abram till he got married and then she wuz goin’ to live with Susan. And I s’pose it is so. She is a likely old woman with a milk leg.
Wall, Abram paid Ardelia lots of attention, sech as walkin’ home with her from protracted meetin’s nights, and lookin’ at her durin’ the meetin’s more protracted than the meetin’s wuz fur. And 3 times he sent her a plate of riz biscuit sweetened, sweetened too sweet almost, he went too fur in this and I see it.
Yes, he done his part as well as his condition would let him, paralyzed by his feelin’s—but she acted kinder offish, and I see that sonthin’ wuz in the way. I mistrusted at first, it might be Abram’s incumbrance, but durin’ a conversation I had with her, I see I wuz in the wrong on’t. And I could see plain, though some couldn’t, that she liked Abram as she did her eyes. Somebody run him down a little one day before me and she sprouted right up and took his part voyalent. I could see her feelin’s towards him though she wouldn’t own up to ’em. But one day she came out plain to me and lamented his condition in life. Somebody had attact her that day before me about marryin’ of him—and she owned up to me, that she had laid out to marry somebody to elevate her. Some one with a grand pure mission in life.
And I spoke right up and sez, “Why bread is jest as pure and innocent as anything can be, you won’t find anything wicked about good yeast bread, nor,” sez I, cordially, “in milk risin’, if it is made proper.”
But she said she preferred a occupation that wuz risin’, and noble, and that made a man necessary and helpful to the masses.
And I sez agin—“Good land! the masses have got to eat. And I guess you starve the masses a spell and they’ll think that good bread is as necessary and helpful to ’em as anything can be. And as fer its bein’ a risin’ occupation, why,” sez I, “it is stiddy risen’—risin’ in the mornin,’ and risin’ at night, and all night, both hop and milk emptin’s. Why,” sez I, “I never see a occupation so risin’ as his’n is, both milk and hop.” But she wouldn’t seem to give in and encourage him much only by spells.
And then Abram didn’t take the right way with her. I see he wuz a goin’ just the wrong way to win a woman’s love. For his love, his great honest love for her made him abject, he groveled at her feet, loved to grovel.
I told him, for he confided in me from the first on’t and bewailed her coldness to me, I told him to sprout up and act as if he had some will of his own and some independent life of his own. Sez I, “Any woman that sees a man a layin’ around under her feet will be tempted to step on him,” sez I. “I don’t see how she can help it, if she calcerlates to get round any, and walk.” Sez I, “Sprout up and be somebody. She is a good little creeter, but no better than you are, Abram; be a man.”
