I didn’t git over it all day.
I felt some as if the meetin’-house to Jonesville should dissapear mysteriously, as if sunthin’ good had vanished, and some as if my boy Thomas J. should go off out of my sight for some time.
Adrian mourned for him several hours. Alice wuz writin’ a letter home, and didn’t hardly seem to know that he wuz gone, and Martin wuz glad, I believe. He had never took to him for a minute.
Wall, I will hang up a thick moreen curtain between my readers and the voyage homewards.
It needs a thick curtain to hide the fraxious, querilous complaints and the actin’s of my pardner, the howlin’s of the wind and waves, and the usual discomforts of a sea voyage.
There are times when Heaven knows I wuz glad to hide behind it myself.
Yes, I will cower down behind the thick folds, knowin’ that I am doin’ the best I can for myself and the world at large. Yes, I will let ’em droop down over our voyage through the wild waves, our arrival in our own dear native land, our feelin’s when we see the shore we loved dawn on us out of the mist, and when we sot our feet on the sile of the Continent that wears Jonesville like a pearl of great price on its tawny old bosom.
I will also let its thick folds screen us in our partin’ from Martin and the children, and our lonely but short journey by our two selves.
And I will only loop that curtain back in graceful folds as we draw nigh to Jonesville—Mecca of our hearts’ hopes and love.