But I s’pose from what they both said to me, they came pretty nigh partin’. And I know jest as well as if I see it myself, that Tirzah Ann bein’ so ambitius, and not wantin’ to be outdone by Mrs. Skidmore, went to flirtin’, and I mistrust it wus with old Skidmore himself. I know he and Whitfield don’t speak. Tirzah Ann never could bear him, but I s’pose she wanted to gall Mrs. Skidmore.
Oh, such doin’s, such doin’s! You hain’t no idee how it worked up Josiah and me, and mortified us. As I told Josiah that night—after we went to bed, we wus a-talkin’ the matter over—and says I:
“Josiah Allen, what would their morals have been, if they had rested and recreated any longer?”
And he groaned out, and sayed what galled him the worst wus to think of “the money they had throwed away.” Says he, “it will cramp ’em for months and months.” And it did.
A PLEASURE EXERTION.
They have been havin’ pleasure exertions all summer here to Jonesville. Every week a most they would go off on a exertion after pleasure, and Josiah was all up in end to go too.
That man is a well principled man, as I ever see, but if he had his head he would be worse than any young man I ever see to foller up picnics, and 4th of Julys, and camp meetings, and all pleasure exertions. But I don’t encourage him in it. I have said to him time and agin, “There is a time for everything, Josiah Allen, and afer any body has lost all their teeth, and every might of hair, on the top of their head, it is time for ’em to stop goin’ to pleasure exertions.”
But good land! I might jest as well talk to the wind! if that man should get to be as old as Mr. Methusler, and be a goin’ a thousand years old, he would prick up his ears if he should hear of an exertion. All summer long that man has beset me to go to ’em, for he wouldn’t go without me. Old Bunker Hill himself, haint any sounder in principle than Josiah Allen, and I have had to work head-work to make excuses, and quell him down. But last week the old folks was goin’ to have one out on the lake, on an island, and that man sot his foot down that go he would.
We was to the breakfast-table a talkin’ it over, and says I, “I shan’t go, for I am afraid of big water anyway.”