“Yes, I see he is very perlite, I see you have set amongst very perlite folks, Samantha,” says he, a glarin’ at Deacon Balch as if he would rend him from lim to lim, “But as I said, I have no occasion to ride, I took off my boots and stockin’s merely—merely to pass away time. You know at fashionable resorts,” says he, “it is sometimes hard for men to pass away time.”
Says I in low, deep accents, “Do put on your stockin’s, and your boots, if you can get ’em on, which I doubt, but put your stockin’s on this minute, and get in, and ride.”
“Yes,” says Ezra, “hurry up and get in, Josiah Allen, it must be dretful oncomfortabe a settin’ down there in the grass.”
“Oh, no!” says Josiah, and he kinder whistled a few bars of no tune that wuz ever heard on, or ever will be heard on agin, so wild and meloncholy it wuz—“I sot down here kind o’ careless. I thought seein’ I hadn’t much on hand to do at this time o’ year, I thought I would like to look at my feet—we hain’t got a very big lookin’ glass in our room.”
Oh, how incoherent and over-crazed he was a becomin’! Who ever heard of seein’ anybody’s feet in a lookin’ glass—of dependin’ on a lookin’ glass for a sight on ’em? Oh, how I pitied that man! and I bent down and says to him in soothin’ axents: “Josiah Allen, to please your pardner you put on your stockin’s and get into this buggy. Take your boots in your hand, Josiah, I know you can’t get ’em on, you have walked too far for them corns. Corns that are trampled on, Josiah Allen, rise up and rends you, or me, or anybody else who owns ’em or tramples on ’em. It hain’t your fault, nobody blames you. Now get right in.”
“Yes, do,” says the Deacon.
Oh! the look that Josiah Allen gin him. I see the voyolence of that look, that rested first on the Deacon, and then on that, boot.
And agin I says, “Josiah Allen.” And agin the thought of his own feerful acts, and my warnin’s came over him, and again mortification seemed to envelop him like a mantilly, the tabs goin’ down and coverin’ his lims—and agin he didn’t throw that boot. Agin Deacon Balch escaped oninjured, saved by my voice, and Josiah’s inward conscience, inside of him.
Wall, suffice it to say, that after a long parley, Josiah Allen wuz a settin’ on the high seat with the driver, a holdin’ his boots in his hand, for truly no power on earth could have placed them boots on Josiah Allen’s feet in the condition they then wuz.
And so he rode on howewards, occasionally a lookin’ down on the Deacon with looks that I hope the recordin’ angel didn’t photograph, so dire, and so revengeful, and jealous, and—and everything, they wuz. And ever, after ketchin’ the look in my eye, the look in his’n would change to a heart-rendin’ one of remorse, and sorrow, and shame for what he had done. And the Deacon, wantin’ to be dretful perlite to him, would ask him questions, and I could see the side of Josiah’s face, all glarin’ like a hyena at the sound of his voice, and then he would turn round and ossume a perlite genteel look as he answered him, and then he glare at me in a mad way every time I spoke to the Deacon, and then his mad look would change, even to one of shame and meakinness. And he in his stockin’ feet, and a pertendin’ that he didn’t put his boots on, because it wuzn’t wuth while to put ’em on agin so near bed-time. And he that sot out that afternoon a feelin’ so haughty, and lookin’ down on Ezra and Druzilla, and bein’ brung back by ’em, in that condition—and bein’ goured all the time by thoughts of the ignominious way his flirtin’ had ended, by her droppin’ him by the side of the road, like a weed she had trampled on too hardly. And a bein’ gourded deeper than all the rest of his agonies, by a senseless jealousy of Deacon Balch—and a thinkin’ for the first time in his life, what it would be, if her affections, that had been like a divine beacon to him all his life, if that flame should ever go out, or ever flicker in its earthly socket—oh, those thoughts that he had seemed to consider in his own mad race for fashion—oh, how that sass that had seemed sweet to him as a gander, oh how bitter and poisonous it wuz to partake of as a goose.