We had hard work to git through the gorgeous lookin’ crowd, every country and every nation wuz represented. Queens, flashin’ with jewels; flower girls, carryin’ baskets of flowers; kings, cardinals, monks, officers in brilliant uniform, fairies, Night covered with stars and a pale pearl moon in her forehead, and Mornin’ dressed in a rosy cloud with a sunburst of diamonds on her brow; Injuns, male and female, clad in short embroidered skirts and leggins and feathers in their long, straight locks. Eastern men and wimmen with long flowin’ robes, the wimmen with veils on, the men with strange simeters and weepons at their sides. And, in fact, think of any costoom under the sun and there it wuz before you. And, sure enough, the girl wuz right, lots and lots of folks appeared in their own clothes and wuz here as themselves.
Well, at last we come to the first booth, and I bought a little fan and a mite of a handkerchief for Delight, both dearer than beautiful, but havin’ that sufferin’ Heathen in my mind I paid quite cheerful, Josiah groanin’ some at the money I lavished on them two articles. But I whispered, “Remember what is said of the cheerful giver. Groans don’t become this enterprise and occasion, Josiah Allen.”
And then, hearin’ the money clink merrily down into the boxes of the booth tenders, I sez almost onbeknown to myself to the pretty girl who wuz doin’ up my things:
“I hope it hain’t goin’ to make him vain and overbearin.” And she asked me who I meant?
And sez I, “Why, that Heathen; he’ll be rich as a Jew by mornin’. I am most afraid such onexpected riches will make him hold his head and feet up above his mates.” Sez I, “If everything is sold as high as the things you’ve sold me, he will be independent rich.” She kinder laughed and said, “Oh, you know that things sold for charity are always higher priced.”
“Oh, I don’t begrech the money, not at all, and shouldn’t if I didn’t git nothin’ back. I wuz always sorry for that Heathen, and am glad to take holt and help him, but,” sez I, “I wuz wonderin’ what effect such sudden wealth would have on him, whether it would quell down his appetite for missionaries, or whet it up, you know you can never tell what sudden prosperity will do to anybody’s character.”
And she said, with a kinder shrewd look, that she guessed that the Heathen wouldn’t be enriched to any alarmin’ extent, for, sez she, lookin’ round the almost enchantin’ seen and down onto her own gorgeous costoom, “The expenses to-night have been something enormous, and the Heathen can’t have anything till the expenses are paid. And then,” she said, “it is very expensive to get the funds carried so far.”
“Why, yes,” sez I, “I know there would have to be a money order bought or sunthin’ of that kind.” But she smiled and went to wait on her next customers, and who should they be, for all the world, but my own son and daughter, Thomas J. and Maggie? They wuz real glad to see their Pa and Ma, and showed it. She looked very sweet in a thin, black lace dress, a white lace bunnet with some pink and white flowers in it, and some posies of the same color in her belt and bosom, white gloves and a white fan completed her pretty costoom. I wuz glad enough to see she, too, had come as herself, and so had Thomas J. come as himself. She bought a number of articles, and Thomas J. did, too.
But when I told them of my misgivin’s about the sudden wealth settin’ up the Heathen too much, and wished that I could talk to him a spell about the vanity of riches and the needecessity of his behavin’ himself as he ort to under his sudden change of fortune, Thomas J. said, “No need to worry, Mother, the Heathen won’t git enough out of this to hurt his character.” And he sez, when I commented on the fairy-like beauty of the seen: