“That is a disease that is very common amongst men, very common, though they hain't over and above willin' to own up to it. Too much population of the heart has ailed many a man before now, and woman too,” says I in reasonable axents. “But you mean palpitation.”
“Wall, I said so, didn't I? And it is jest your skairful talk that has done it.”
“Wall, if I thought I could convince men as I have you, I would foller the business stiddy, of skairin' folks, and think I wuz doin' my duty.” Says I, my emotions a roustin' up agin,—
“I should call it a good deal more honorable in you to get drunk yourself; and I should think more of you, if I see you a reelin' round yourself, than to see you make other folks reel. I should think it was your own reel, and you had more right to it than to anybody else's.
“Oh! to think I should have lived to see the hour, to have my companion in danger of goin' aginst the Scripter—ready to steal, or be stole, or knock down, or any thing, to buy votes, or sell 'em!”
“Wall, dumb it all, do you want me to appear as awkward as a fool? I have told you more than a dozen times I have got to do as the rest do, if I want to make any show at all in politics.”
I said no more: but I riz right up, and walked out of the room, with my head right up in the air, and the strings of my head-dress a floatin' out behind me; and I'll bet there wus indignation in the float of them strings, and heart-ache, and agony, and—and every thing.
I thought I had convinced him, and hadn't. I felt as if I must sink. You know, that is all a woman can do—to sink. She can't do any thing else in a helpful way when her beloved companion hangs over political abysses. She can't reach out her lovin' hand, and help stiddy him; she can't do nothin' only jest sink. And what made it more curious, these despairin' thoughts come to me as I stood by the sink, washin' my dinner-dishes. But anon (I know it wus jest anon, for the water wus bilein' hot when I turned it out of the kettle, and it scalded my hands, onbeknown to me, as I washed out my sass-plates) this thought gripped holt of me, right in front of the sink,—
“Josiah Allen's wife, you must not sink. You must keep up. If you have no power to help your pardner to patriotism and honor, you can, if your worst fears are realized, try to keep him to home. For if his acts and words are like these in Jonesville, what will they be in Washington, D.C., if that place is all it has been depictered to you? Hold up, Samantha! Be firm, Josiah Allen's wife! John Rogers! The nine! One at the breast!”
So at last, by these almost convulsive efforts at calmness, I grew more calmer and composeder. Josiah had hitched up and gone.