Samantha on Children's Rights

by Marietta Holley

Well, how time duz run along to be sure. It don’t seem like a year hardly sence we got the invitation to the weddin’ party Uncle Archibald gin to the bride and groom at the old Smith house out to Piller Pint. And now Hamen’s oldest child, Anna, is goin’ on nineteen years old. How time duz pass away! Why, I declare for’t, if it wuzn’t for these great tall livin’ mildstuns springin’ up all along life’s journey we could hardly believe our old family Bibles, and would deny our ages.

But these livin’ mildstuns can’t be gone by, they stand up straight and tall, and we have to stop and read ’em, and then we see for ourselves how fur we have come on the journey and how fast we are approachin’ the great Stoppin’ Place for the Night. Anna Smith is a good lookin’ mildstun. She is plump and fresh and sweet lookin’. I like Anna and Anna likes me. Her brother, next younger than herself, is named Cicero. Her Ma named him after some big man, old Captain Cicero, it seems to me it wuz, anyway he wuz a big talker and died some time ago.

Cicero Smith is now about fifteen years old, he is dull complected, kinder frosty and onwholesome lookin’, with great big round eyes, kinder pale and wild lookin’, some like gooseberries. His hair is thin and strings down the side of his face like little wisps of pale yeller straw, only of course some finer. His hands always felt kinder clammy, and he takes after his Ma in figger, tall and scraggly and spindlin’.

I never took to him at all nor he to me, he always wuz a indifferent actin’ chap even in his cradle. He’d turn over in his cradle when he wuz a infant and look at the rungs in the back side on’t when I would try to git his attention, and I hain’t never been able to git it sence. Jest as quick as he wuz old enough to read he jest took to dime novels. His mother encouraged it, she said it nourished a love for readin’, and would make him literary. He and his mother, I spoze, have read more’n twenty cords of ’em if they wuz corded up and measured with a yard stick, and most every one on ’em yeller covered and harrowin’.

I have told Tamer Ann that they wuzn’t good for her or Cicero to devour so much. But good land! I couldn’t move her a inch. She kep’ on readin’ ’em and givin’ ’em to him to read, and the more blood curdliner they wuz the more they doted on ’em. Why, I should have thought their blood would have turned to ice in their veins, and their skin got thick as a elephant’s hide with goose pimples caused by the horrow of ’em; why, their names wuz enough to skair anybody to death, let alone readin’ ’em. Anna never took to ’em, she seemed to take after the Smiths more, so I think, and Jack of course hain’t old enough, and I don’t believe he’ll ever love ’em anyway.

Hamen’s brother lived at their house when Jack wuz born, and he’s made it his home with ’em ever sence. His name is John Zebulen Smith, named after old Grandpa Smith.

And as he wuz always called John, why, they called little John Jack, when he wuz a baby, to keep him from gittin’ mixed up with his uncle and bein’ took for him, so he has always gone by the name of Jack. And Jack from the first on’t has been a favorite of mine, a great favorite. And I always felt so safe with him; I knew he wouldn’t die from bein’ too good, as so many little Sabbath school heroes do.

And yet he wuz always a noble child, truthful as the day wuz long. He would scorn to tell a lie, he wuz too proud to. If he had done anything he would own up to it, most every time he would. And he had naterally a religious mind, I believed, though sometimes Josiah would laugh the idee to scorn when Jack would git into one of his scrapes. He wuz kinder lazy some of the time, and opposition, onreasonable opposition, made him mad, and he would contend to the last minute when he got to goin’. And he had been fooled by Hamenses folks so much that he had got into the habit of keepin’ still and studyin’ out things for himself. The fools! they would tell him such stories, lies, a purpose to keep him wonderin’ and to hear him talk, that he had got sort o’ embittered and tried to rely on himself to find out strange things. It wuz pitiful as anything I ever see, and sometimes I thought pitifuler.

Now, spozin’ he wanted to find out some particular thing so dretfully it seemed as if he couldn’t live a minute without knowin’ about it, he would ask Hamen and Hamen would tell him the greatest story you ever hearn, and Jack would listen to it at first, and talk about it, curous, I’ll admit, but not curous at all if it wuz true.

And then Hamen and his brother would laugh like two idiots to see Jack’s wonderin’ looks, and shamed and mortified and everything. And then he would go to Tamer Ann, but Tamer would most likely have some new dime novel that she’d just commenced, and would be so wropped up in the joys and sorrows of the heroine, and would be cryin’ over her lots of times, so she couldn’t see Jack through her tears, and she would have to wipe her eyes when Jack disturbed her, and tell him all choked down by her emotions to run away, that his Ma wuz too busy to answer him, or else she would have some new distemper that day, and tell Jack to run away for his noise wuz killin’ her.