But I can’t think she duz jest right in this case, not to let the Irish people rule their own country. It stands to reason that Josiah and I wouldn’t want Deacon Gowdy to rule our house and farm, though he’s a real likely man and a brother in the same meetin’ house, and a good calculator.
But even if we didn’t do quite so well, we would ruther tend to our own house and affairs—everybody would. And I laid out to talk to Victoria on the subject the first time I had a real set-down visit with her.
I laid out to talk to Victoria on the subject.
And then if Deacon Gowdy took all the money he could rake and scrape out of us, and spent it all on his own place, that would mad us, too.
And like as not if he kep’ Josiah and me down so poor that we wuz most starved, and he should try to turn us out of our own house, and use that dear place, sacred to us, and the door-yard and orchard, for a home for his dogs and fightin’ roosters and sech, why, I d’no if Josiah see me barefooted and hungry, a-beggin’ Deacon Gowdy not to turn me out of the house I wuz born in, and on an empty stumick, too, I d’no but he’d knock him down and jump on him.
And that would make trouble—Miss Gowdy wouldn’t like that, but if she should come to me with it, I should say to her, “Let him tend to his own business, then, and let us alone.”
And if she should uphold him and say we hadn’t no jedgment, and wuz shiftless, and we couldn’t take care of our land, and they had to do it because we wuz too indolent, and slack, and sech—I’d tell her agin that it wuz none of her business. Sez I, “If we run through with our own property we can go to our own poor-house, can’t we?
“But,” I’d say, “you needn’t worry; what encouragement do we have to work and git things ahead when we know you’d take all the profits of our labor? You go off and tend to your own business, and we’ll work hard enough, and lay up.”
And then, after freein’ my mind to her, if old Gowdy wuz too bad off, I dare presoom to say I should offer him some wormwood to make a poultice of to show him that I didn’t have no malice towards him, only jest wantin’ to have my rights and be let alone. But to resoom.