But I got up at 2 o’clock, and made a cup of tea, as strong as I could, for we both felt beat out, worse than if we had watched in sickness.
But as bad, and wore out as Josiah felt bodily, he was all animated in his mind about what a good time he was a goin’ to have. He acted foolish, and I told him so. I wanted to wear my brown and black gingham, and a shaker, but Josiah insisted that I should wear a new lawn dress that he had brought me home as a present, and I had jest made up. So jest to please him I put it on, and my best bonnet. And that man, all I could do and say, would wear a pair of pantaloons I had been a makin’ for Thomas Jefferson. They was gettin’ up a military company to Thomas J’s school, and these pantaloons was white with a blue stripe down the sides, a kind of uniform. Josiah took a awful fancy to ’em. And says he:
“I will wear ’em Samantha, they look so dressy.”
Says I, “They hain’t hardly done. I was goin’ to stitch that blue stripe on the left leg on again. They haint finished as they ought to be, and I would not wear ’em. It looks vain in you.”
Says he, “I will wear ’em, Samantha. I will be dressed up, for once.”
I didn’t contend with him. Thinks I, we are makin’ fools of ourselves, by goin’ at all, and if he wants to make a little bigger fool of himself by wearin’ them white pantaloons, I won’t stand in his light. And then I had got some machine oil onto ’em, so I felt that I had got to wash ’em any way, before Thomas J. took ’em to school. So he put ’em on.
I had good vittles, and a sight of ’em. The basket wouldn’t hold ’em. So Josiah had to put a bottle of raspberry jell into the pocket of his dress coat, and lots of other little things, such as spoons, and knives, and forks, in his pantaloons, and breast pockets. He looked like Captain Kidd, armed up to the teeth, and I told him so. But good land! he would have carried a knife in his mouth, if I had asked him to, he felt so neat about goin’, and boasted so, on what a splendid exertion it was goin’ to be.
We got to the lake about eight o’clock, for the old mare went slow. We was about the first ones there, but they kep’ a comin’, and before 10 o’clock we all got there. There was about 20 old fools of us, when we all got collected together. And about 10 o’clock we set sail for the island.
I had made up my mind from the first on’t to face trouble, and so it didn’t put me out so much when Deacon Dobbins in getting into the boat stept onto my new lawn dress, and tore a hole in it as big as my two hands, and ripped it half offen the waist. But Josiah havin’ felt so animated and tickled about the exertion, it worked him up awfully when, jest after we had got well out onto the lake, the wind took his hat off and blew it away out onto the lake. He had made up his mind to look so pretty that day, and be so dressed up, that it worked him up awfully. And then the sun beat down onto him; and if he had had any hair onto his head it would have seemed more shady. But I did the best I could by him, I stood by him, and pinned on his red bandanna handkerchief onto his head. But as I was a fixin’ it on, I see there was something more than mortification that ailed him. The lake was rough, and the boat rocked, and I see he was beginning to be awful sick. He looked deathly. Pretty soon I felt bad too. Oh! the wretchedness of that time. I have enjoyed poor health considerable in my life, but never did I enjoy so much sickness, in so short a time, as I did on that pleasure exertion to the island. I suppose our bein’ up all night a most, made it worse. When we reached the island we was both weak as cats.