If I wuz back in Jonesville, fair Jonesville on the Lyme.”
And there wuz one to Thomas J., and one to Tirzah—
“Tell Tirzah Ann that other Pars must comfort her young age,”
etc., etc., etc., all put down jest as if he wuz in a dyin’ state; no regularity or symetry in the lines, but powerful in feelin’s. There wuz more’n twenty-one on ’em. I didn’t hear all on ’em—I wouldn’t, and we had some words.
Wall, Martin wuz sot on not goin’ to Germany, till Adrian sed he would love to see the Rhine. That settled it—the Rhine wuz seen. That man would go through fire and water if his little pardner jest motioned him that way.
And that very fact, I felt, shed a perfect halo round Martin Smith. It showed that deep down in the nater of the man, all covered up by layers of pride, worldiness, fashion, ambition, etc., there wuz a fount of pure water a-springin’; but few indeed could pierce down to it. Alice can, and Adrian can, but nobody else, so fur as I know; but that love permeates everything he sez and duz.
As wuz nateral on French sile, we got to talkin’ about poor young Prince Louis, the pride of the third Napoleon—the very heart and soul of his beautiful Ma. His sad fate seemed to impress Adrian dretfully. He wuz dretful sorry for him, and sed he wuz. Good little creeter! Any tale of sadness and sorrer found a ready sympathy in his tender, generous young breast. But Martin seemed to draw a different moral from it, and sez he, when I wuz a-tellin’ how sorry I wuz for his poor Ma, sez he—
“She ought to have looked ahead, she never ought to have allowed him to go into such danger, she ought to do as I do. I always surround my boy with safeguards to keep him out of danger’s way entirely, and therefore he is safe.”
But I sez, “Martin, in this world it is hard to tell always where danger is, and who is really safe.”
“But I know,” sez he, “because I am right with him. If he was a child of poor parentage, now, one of the masses, why, then, I grant you I could not surround him with such safeguards, but as it is Adrian is perfectly safe.”