Says I, “I believe it, I believe you; you couldn’t have stood another mite of rest and recreation, without it’s killin’ of you—anybody can see that by lookin’ at your mean.” But says I, knowin’ it wus my duty to be calm, “It is all over now, Tirzah Ann; you hain’t got to go through it agin; you must try to overcome your feelin’s. Tell your ma all about it. Mebby it will do you good, in the words of the him, ‘Speak, and let the worst be known. Speakin’ may relieve you.’”
And I see, indeed, that she needed relief. Wall, she up and told me the hull on it. And I found out that Mrs. Skidmore wus to the bottom of it all—she, and Tirzah Ann’s ambition. I could see that them wus to blame for the hull on it.
Mrs. Skidmore is the wife of the other lawyer in Janesville; they moved there in the spring. She wus awful big feelin’, and wus determined from the first to lead the fashion—tried to be awful genteel and put on sights of airs.
And Tirzah Ann bein’ ambitius, and knowin’ that she looked a good deal better than Mrs. Skidmore did, and knew as much agin, and knowin’ that Whitfield wus a better lawyer than her husband wus, and twice as well off, wusn’t goin’ to stand none of her airs. Mrs. Skidmore seemed to sort o’ look down on Tirzah Ann, for she never felt as I did on that subject.
Now, if anybody wants to feel above me, I look on it in this light, I filosofize on it in this way: it probably does them some good, and it don’t do me a mite of hurt, so I let ’em feel. I have always made a practice of it—it don’t disturb me the width of a horse-hair. Because somebody feels as if they wus better than I am, that don’t make ’em so; if it did, I should probably get up more interest on the subject. But it don’t; it don’t make them a mite better, nor me a mite worse, so what hurt does it do anyway?
As I said, it probably makes them feel sort o’ good, and I feel ferst-rate about it; jest as cool and happy and comfortable as a cluster cowcumber at sunrise. That’s the way I filosofize on it. But not studyin’ it out as I have, not divin’ into the subject so deep as I have doven, it galled Tirzah Ann to see Mrs. Skidmore put on such airs. She said:
“She wus poor, and humbly, and did’t know much, and it maddened her to see her feel so big, and put on such airs.”
And then I had to go deep into reeson and filosofy agin to convince her; says I:
“Such folks have to put on more airs than them that have got sunthin’ to feel big over.” Says I, “It is reeson and filosify that if anybody has got a uncommon intellect, or beauty, or wealth, they don’t, as a general thing, put on the airs that them do that hain’t got nothing’; they don’t have to; they have got sunthin’ to hold ’em up—they can stand without airs. But when anybody hain’t got no intellect, nor riches, nor nothin’—when they hain’t got nothin’ only jest air to hold ’em up, it stands to reeson that they have got to have a good deal of it.”
I had studied it all out, so it wus as plain to me as anything. But Tirzah Ann couldn’t see it in that light, and would get as mad as a hen at Mrs. Skidmore ever sense they came to Janesville, and was bound she shouldn’t go by her and out-do her. And so when Mrs. Skidmore gin it out in Janesville that she and her husband wus a goin’ away for the summer, for rest and pleasure, Tirzah Ann said to herself that she and her husband would go for rest and pleasure, if they both died in the attempt. Wall, three days before they started, Tirzah Ann found that Mrs. Skidmore had got one dress more than she had, and a polenay, so she went to the store and got the material and ingredients, and sot up day and night a-makin’ of ’em up; it most killed her a-hurryin’ so.