“Live poetry!” sez she wonderin’ly.
“Yes,” sez I, “livin’ poetry is full as beautiful and necessary as to write it, and a good deal more of a rarity.”
I knew her hull life had run along better and smoother than any blank verse I had ever seen, better than any Eppicac or Owed; it had been a full, sweet, harmonious poem of love and order and duty. But she sez agin sadly:
“I can’t live poetry; I can only do common things. I can’t read Greek or write poems, or carve statutes, or paint beautiful pictures.”
Her sweet eyes looked mournful. I wanted to chirk her up. So I sez, as my nose agin took in a whiff of the delicious food, “Folks can worry along for quite a spell without knowin’ Greek, when they can understand and do justice to a well cooked meal of vittles.” And sez I, as my eye roamed round the clean, sweet interior, “There is such a thing as livin’ a beautiful picture, and moulding immortal statutes” (I meant the dear, good actin’ little twins), “and in my idee you’ve done it, and I know somebody else that thinks so, too.”
“Oh, no, he don’t! he don’t!” And suddenly she knelt down by my side and almost buried her pretty head in my shoulder and busted into tears. And so it all come out, for all the world tellin’ me about it jest as she did when the sawdust flowed from her doll’s legs.
It seemed that Laurence Marsh had been away to a relative’s visitin’, and went to some charity doin’s and had there met a young widder visitin’ in the place, a poetess and artist and sculptor; she read a Greek poem dressed in Greek costoom, and some of her pictures and statuettes wuz on sale. He got introduced to her. She made the world and all of him, and I see how it wuz—men are weak and easy flattered and don’t know when they’re well off—the bright, pure star that had lit his life so long didn’t seem so valuable and shinin’ as the dashin’ glitter of this newly discovered meteor (metafor). The widder had writ to him and he had writ to her, and his talk since then had been full of her, and I see how it wuz, he wuz kinder waverin’ back and forth, though I mistrusted, and as good as told Marion so, that his love for her wuz as firm as ever, it wuz only his fancy that had been touched.
Well, if you’ll believe it, that very afternoon after I’d got home, who should come in but Laurence Marsh, he brought some legal papers he had been fixin’ for Josiah—and I treated him quite cool, about as cool as spring water, I should judge, for I didn’t like the idee of his usin’ Marion as he had, though of course he wuzn’t engaged to her, and had a right to pick and choose. And, for all the world, if he didn’t go to work and confide in me. It duz beat all how folks do open their hearts to me; I spoze it is my oncommon good looks that makes ’em, and my noble mean, mebby, and if you’ll believe it, and though I hadn’t no idee I should, I did feel kinder sorry for him before he got through. He appreciated Marion, I see, to the very extent of appreciation, but his fancy had been touched, the romance in his nater had responded to Miss Piddockses romance.
“Miss Piddock?” sez I, “she that wuz Evangeline Allen?”
“Her name is Evangeline; so suited to her,” sez he.