“Oh,” sez I, “you mean them old market gardeners, them old cabbage raisers, fur hunters, and pumpkin farmers. Why, how you talk,” sez I, “I think more of Von Crank than I did. I had no idee his ancestors wuz good honest farmers, plantin’ and diggin’ their own sile. I spozed from his looks and mean that he had never done anything more useful than to gnaw canes and look through a glass eye onto nothin’, I am glad you told me, Tamer, why his ancestors must be real congenial to Josiah and me, though of course we own more land and live better than them old Dutchmen did. But they wuz likely, though poor, and put to it for things, and a sort of beer guzzlin’, ignorant set, but not to blame for not knowin’ much.”
Tamer didn’t like it, but she turned the subject off onto her resolve to not let Anna have anything to do with Tom Willis, seemin’ly not carin’ a mite what wuz goin’ on in Anna’s heart, no more than if she wuz one of the enchanted females she had read so much about.
But all this time, in spite of Tamer Ann’s perfect indifference to the life happiness of Anna, she didn’t let anything interfere with her riggin’ her up in the latest fashion, she didn’t let any of the “Enchanted Females of the Wild Forest; or, Petrified Dragons of the Dark Prairies,” or the last of the new diseases hender her from seein’ with her own eyes that Anna had the newest and curiousest kind of tattin’ on her underclothin’ and her dresses made in the latest fashion, and all the smaller things about her clothin’ wuz in first rate order.
These Tamer Ann called the essentials of life, and she allowed nothin’ to interfere with ’em, but if she had been one of the Enchanted Princesses or petrified animals she couldn’t been more dumb and deef to the real soul and heart needs of her child. It is pitiful, mighty pitiful, when the door of a child’s heart is blockaded day by day by the stupidity and ignorance of a mother, till at last the doors and winders are all shet up and the mother shot out doors, ornamentin’ the outside with shiffon and jewelry and knowin’ nothin’ of what is goin’ on inside.
It is pitiful, and in ninety cases out of a hundred the mother is the one to blame. Why, good land! she is inside in the first on’t, and there is nothin’ to hender her from keepin’ inside but ignorance, carelessness, neglect, lack of sympathy, or lack of time. In Tamer’s case it wuz mostly lack of time as I have shown. The elopin’ females and Dejected Denizens of the Dungeon Keep kep’ her too busy, them and her basiler menigitis and sinevetus and sangeletus and perinitus and etc., etc., etc., and her domestic duties, some on ’em which she wuz to blame for undertakin’, and I told her so. She had a new hired girl whose real name wuz Hannah, but who thought it would be more romantick to call herself Arabeller, and she made a specialty of the “beller,” she wanted it pronounced Arabeller, and Tamer Ann, thinkin’ that it would be real romantick to have a hired girl by that name, she jined forces with her, and by the time I got there the name Hannah wuz forgot, seemin’ly, and Arabeller wuz the name.
Well, Arabeller wuz a girl I wouldn’t have inside my house. She wuz big and fat, and I never see her face when it wuz what I called clean, and her dirty lookin’ hair, kinder drab color, wuz all covered with hair oil and scented with bergamont. What her complexion would be if it wuz washed clean I didn’t know, and spoze I never shall, but as it wuz it looked muddy and grimy, and wuz all covered with black heads and pimples, and coarse powder. She wore, in the afternoon, her cheap, gaudy dresses in a train draggin’ round the house, and cheap, high-heeled shues, settin’ table and washin’ dishes with them dirty ruffles floppin’ after her, wipin’ up all the dirt and nastiness that she couldn’t seem to git enough of in any other way.
She had girted her waist down into the smallest dimension she could, but bein’ fat and her buttons not to be relied on, there would be dretful gaps on the waist in different places, and between the waist and draggly skirt, and as she wuz one of the girls so common in the country, who won’t work out unless she is one of the family, her clothin’ showed up to good advantage at the table, the dirt on her face and dress bein’ emphasized by blotches of flour and grease, stove blackin’, prespiration, and sweat.
She, too, wuz most always to be seen with a dime novel in her hand. Sometimes she would stop and take up “The Queen of the Haunted Palace” in her hands and foller her fortunes while her dish water got cold. And once I see her myself readin’ the Police Gazette while she wuz fryin’ sassige, and one end of the dirty sheet drizzled down into the fat (I didn’t eat any of the sassige).
She had took music lessons. Her Ma went out washin’ and had to mortgage her cow, the only thing she possessed in the world, to pay for Arabeller’s lessons. And, though there wuz no prospects of her ever havin’ anything to practice on more melogious that the clothes wringer, no earthly prospect or heavenly, either, for I didn’t believe she would ever be good enough to play on the golden harp even if she knew the notes. But she would take lessons, and now when she could escape for a minute from the kitchen we could hear her singin’ and playin’ at the top of her rough, coarse voice, “The Bowery Boy” and the “Beauteous Ballet Girl,” which she pronounced “beauchieus ballet.”
If she had a spark of talent I should have approved of her ambition, but she couldn’t sing no more than a horse can make fried cakes. And I told Tamer that if her Ma had gin the cow music lessons and mortgaged Arabeller to pay for them, she would have got better returns for her money, though who would take the mortgage wuz more than I knew, unless it was Cicero.