Samantha at Saratoga

by Marietta Holley

I expostulated aginst the idee. But sez he, “You’ll enjoy it when you get used to it.”

“Never!” sez I.

“Yes you will,” sez he, “and while I live I lay out that you shall have advantages, and shall enjoy things new and uneek.”

“Yes,” sez I feelin’ly, “I expect to, Josiah Allen, as long as I live with you.” And I sithed. But I had little time to enjoy even sithin’, for oh! the crowd that wuz a pressin’ onto us and surroundin’ us on every side, some on ’em curius and strange lookin’, some on ’em beautiful and grand. Pretty young girls lookin’ sweet enough to kiss, and right behind ’em a Chinese man with a long dress, and wooden shoes, and his hair in a long braid behind, and his eyes sot in sideways. And then would come on a hull lot of wimmen in dresses ev’ry color of the rainbow, and some men. Then a few childern, lookin’ sweet as roses, with their mothers a pushin’ the little carts ahead on ’em. And if you’ll believe it, I don’t s’pose you will, but it is true, that lots of black ma’s had childern jest as white as snow, and pretty as rosebuds, took after their fathers I s’pose. But I don’t believe in a mixin’ of the races. And when I see ’em a kissin’ the pretty babys, I begun to muse a very little on the feelin’s of the indignent South, at havin’ a colered girl set in the same car with ’em, or on a bench in the same school room.

I mewsed on how they held the white forms clost to their black breasts at birth, and in the hour of death—the black lips pressed to the white cheeks and lips, in both cases. And all the way between life and death they mingle clost as they can, some in some cases like the hill of knowledge. Then the contact is too clost, when they sot out to climb up by ’em. Truly there are deep conundrums and strange ones, all along through life; though the white man may be, and is, cleer up out of his way, on the sunshiny brow of the hill, and the black man at the foot, way down amongst the shadows and darkness of the low grounds. They don’t come very nigh each other. But the arms that have felt the clasp and the lips that have felt the kisses of that very same black climber all through life, moves ’em and shouts ’em to “go down,” to “go back,”

“The contact is getting too clost, danger is ahead.” Curious, haint it? Jest as if any danger is so dangerous as ignorance and brutality. Curious, haint it? But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom.

Wall, right after the babies we’d meet a Catholic priest with a calm and fur away look on his face, a lookin’ at the crowd as if he wuz in it, but not of it. And then a burgler, mebby, anyway a mean lookin’ creeter, ragged and humble. And then 2 or 3 men foreign lookin’, jabberin’ in a tongue I know nothin’ of, nor Josiah either. And then some more childern, and wimmen, and dogs, and parasols, and men, and babies, and Injuns, and Frenchmen, and old young wimmen, and young old ones, and handsome ones, and hombly ones, and parasols, and some sweet young girls ag’in, and some black men, and some white men, and some more wimmen, and parasols, and silk, and velvet, and lace, and puckers, and raffles, and gethers, and gores, and flowers, and feathers, and fringes, and frizzles, and then some men, some Southerners from the South, some Westerners from the West, some Easterners from the East, and some Cubebs from Cuba, and some Chinamen from China.

Oh! what a seen! What a seen! back and forth, passin’ and repassin’, to and fro, parasols, and dogs, and wimmen, and men, and babies, and parasols, to and fro, to and fro. Why, if I stood there long so crazed would I have become at the seen, that I should have felt that Josiah wuz a To and I wuz a Fro, or I wuz a parasol and he wuz a dog.

And to prevent that fearful catastrophe, I sez, “If we ever get beyond this side of the village that seems all run together, if we ever do get beyond it, which seems doubtful, le’s go and sit down, in some quiet spot, and try to collect our scattered minds.” Sez I, “I feel curius, Josiah Allen!” and sez I, “How do you feel?”