Sez I, “Do you expect to outlive Ury’s grandson, Josiah Allen?”
Sez he, “They did in Bible times.” Sez he, “I wouldn’t be nigh so old then as Methusler,” and he went on—“I use my help as good agin as they do here. If I should put Ury to work in sech a dark, dirty, onhandy place as these workmen have, he’d kick in a minute and leave me; but here they work, generations of ’em, all in one place.”
“It don’t pay to tussel with ’em.”
Sez I feelin’ly, “I wish I could git sech a generation of hired girls; but no sooner duz an American housekeeper git a hired girl broke in, so she can bile a potato decent, or make a batch of bread, than off she trapes somewhere else to better herself. It don’t pay to tussel with ’em,” sez I.
“Wall,” sez Josiah, “you ort to go into some of these factories; it is a sight to see how perfect everything is done. One part of a knife, for instance, done in one house, and then another house doin’ another part, and then another another, and every part done jest as well as it can possibly be.”
And then Josiah went on about that wonderful knife they make here, with a new blade added for every year.
And bein’ we wuz alone, and I hadn’t nothin’ else on my mind, I moralized some, and sez I—
“Old Fate is makin’ her knife pretty stiddy, and seems to add a new blade every year for us to cut our feelin’s on, and jab ourselves with.”
And sez I, “They don’t hurt any the less because we dig the metal ourselves and shape the sharp blades with our ignorant hands, not knowin’ what we’re a-workin’ on, and some on ’em,” sez I, “handed down from foolish, ignorant workmen who have gone before—queer!” sez I, “passin’ queer!”