“I mean for folks like you and Whitfield, who can do so. Of course, some have to work beyond their strength—let them take their rest and comfort when they can git it. Better take it once a year, like a box of pills, than not at all. But as for you and Whitfield, I say agin, in the words of the poet, ‘Better let well enough alone.’”
But says she:
“I want to do as other folks do. I am bound to not let Mrs. Skidmore get the upper hand of me. I want to be genteel.”
“Wall,” says I, “if you are determined to foller them paths, Tirzah Ann, you mustn’t come to your ma for advice. She knows nothin’ about them pathways; she never walked in ’em.”
“Mrs. Skidmore,” says she, “said that all the aristocracy of Janesville will go away for the summer for a change, and I thought a change would do Whitfield and me good.”
“A change!” says I, in low axents, a-lookin’ round the charming, lovely prospect, the clean, cool cottage, with its open doors and windows, and white, ruffled curtains swayin’ in the cool breeze; the green, velvet grass, the bright flower beds, the climbing, blossoming vines, the birds singing in the orchard, the blue lake layin’ so calm and peaceful in the distance, shinin’ over the green hills and forests, and the wide, cloudless sky bending above all like a benediction. “A change,” says I, in low, tremblin’ tones of emotion. “Eve wanted a change in Paradise, and she got it, too.”
But, says Tirzah Ann, for my axents impressed her fearfully:
“Don’t you believe in a change for the summer? Don’t you think they are healthy?”
I didn’t go onto the heights and depths of filosofy, on which I so many times had flew and doven; she had heard my soarin’ idees on the subject time and time again; and eloquence, when it is as soarin’ and lofty as mine, is dretful tuckerin’, especially after doin’ a hard day’s work, so I merely said, tacklin’ another side of the subject, says I:
“When anybody is a-bakin’ up alive in crowded cities, when the hot sun is shinin’ back on ’em from brick walls and stony roads, when all the air that comes to them comes hot and suffocatin’, like a simon blowin’ over a desert—to such, a change of body is sweet, and is truly healthy. But,” says I, lookin’ ’round agin on the cool and entrancin’ beauty and freshness of the land and other scape, “to you whom Providence has placed in a Eden of beauty and bloom, I agin repeat the words of the poet: ‘Better let well enough alone.’”