Samantha at the World's Fair

by Marietta Holley

She wuz awful ambitious, Isabelle wuz. She wuz smart as she could be, and had a feelin' that she wanted to be sunthin' in the World.

But then the old folks wuz took down sick and helpless, and one of the children had to stay to home. And Isabelle staid, and sent Krit out into the World.

She sold her jewels of Ambition and Happiness, and gin him the avails of them.

She staid to home with the old folks—kinder peevish and fretful, Krit said they wuz, too—and let him go a-sailin' out on the broad ocean of life; she had trimmed her own sails in such hope, but had to curb 'em in now and lower the topmast.

You have to reef your sails considerable when you are a-sailin' round in a small bedroom between two beds of sickness (asthma and inflammatory rheumatiz). You have to haul 'em in, and take down the flyin' pennen of Hope and Asperation, and mount up the lamp of Duty and Meekness for a figger-head, instead of the glowin' face of Proud Endeavor.

But them lamps give a dretful meller, soft light, when they are well mounted up, and firm sot.

The light on 'em hain't to be compared to any other light on sea or on shore. It wrops 'em round so serene and glowin' that walks in it. It rests on their mild forwards in a sort of a halo that shines off on the hard things of this life and makes 'em endurable, takes the edge kinder off of the hardest, keenest sufferin's, and goes before 'em throwin' a light over the deep waters that must be passed, and sort o' melts in and loses itself in the ineffible radiance that streams out from acrost the other side.

It is a curious light and a beautiful one. Isabelle jest journeyed in its full radiance.

Wall, Isabelle would do what she sot out to do, you could see that by her face. Krit had brought her photograph with him—he thought his eyes of her—and I liked her looks first rate.

It wuz a beautiful face, with more than beauty in it too. It wuz inteligent and serene, with the serenity of the sweet soul within. And it had a look deep down in the eyes, a sort of a shadow that is got by passin' through the Valley of Sorrow.