But thinkses I she’d better begun her watchin’ and care before she left home, for of all the sights they wuz I never see since I wuz weaned, I don’t believe I ever see such low necks in my hull life as they had, the hull caboodle on ’em. Why, my pardner jest glanced at ’em and blushed as red as a piney. I wuz proud on him to see his modesty, and instinctively stepped still furder between him and them. The Ma’s neck wuz kinder fat and flabby and wrinkly, and the girls’, the most on ’em, wuz real boney and scrawny. But one on ’em wuz quite fat and had a real pretty figger, I know, for I could see the hull on it, bones, fat or lean, they wuz all showed off to be read by man or woman. But to resoom. I asked this woman when the music wuz goin’ to commence?
“Why,” sez she, wonderin’, “we’ve had it.”
Sez I, “Wuz that music?”
She said, “Yes.”
“Well,” sez I, “I have seen strange sights since I come here and hearn strange things, but none stranger than that, if that wuz music. Why,” sez I, “I might have heard it for years and years and never mistrusted what it wuz.”
“Well,” she said, “it wuz music, and be-a-utiful.”
Jest then a young feller come in with a dark, eager, earnest face and sung a love song.
That wuz music. It wuz a song about how a slave loved a Princess, and as you heard it you could almost see the shinin’ palm boughs, the splash of the fountain, the white, shinin’ walks of the palace, and the beautiful dark-eyed Princess lookin’ down from her latticed window listenin’ to the words, every one of ’em had a heart throb, a heart ache in it. For he said in the song that he wuz of a race, “Who if they loved must die.” Well, they didn’t seem to like that very well, but I did, it made my heart ache and beat, with its passion and its power.
And then a modest, refined lookin’ woman with her neck and arms covered up considerable, jest as they should be outside of bedrooms, come forward modestly and recited a poem, as pitiful a thing as I ever hearn in my life. About how a great, strong, manly, lovin’ heart wuz cheated out of its happiness, its very life, by the vanity and sinfulness of a woman and the villiany of a man, of how he patient bore his sorrow, kneelin’ and prayin’ for her, and blessin’ her for bearin’ with him all the time she did, and how for his sake he begged the Lord to forgive her for runnin’ off with the other man and leavin’ her husband and child. He lived on heartbroken, but pious and good as they make ’em, loved her all through her life of sin and shame, and then, when the villian deserted her and she wuz dyin’ alone, he went to her and held her dyin’ head on his bosom, and rared up a stun above her poor guilty head and carved on it the sacred name of “Wife.”
Why, they wuzn’t a dry eye in my head, not one, when she had finished it. And, though mebby it wouldn’t be my first choice to recite to an evenin’ party, still I wuz jest melted down by it, and so wuz Josiah Allen, as I glanced round at him he wuz jest puttin’ his bandanna back into his pocket and wuz winkin’ hard, he has got a heart, Josiah Allen has.