“I did look at her, and encountered so hopelessly vacant a visage that I laughed to myself at his credulity.
“I was invited, rather commanded, to join ‘The Dorcas Society for the Relief of Indigent Females,’ which met every week, and where the members always sewed on unbleached muslin and sixpenny calico; they made me president, and in consequence I was expected, at each meeting, to take home the unfinished work and do it up during the week. I was collector for the poor—and in my rounds some gave me sixpence, some nothing, and some impudence. I was superintendent of the Sunday-school, besides teacher of a Bible-class of middle-aged young ladies who were not quite grown up. I was member of a ‘Society for the Diffusion of Useful Reading,’ which also met every week; and where, had I not been a minister’s wife, I should certainly have fallen asleep over the ‘Exhortations,’ ‘Helps,’ ‘Aids,’ and ‘Addresses,’ that were showered upon us poor women; while I wondered that nobody took the trouble to write to men.
“You must acknowledge that my time was pretty well employed; but, besides all this, I was expected to entertain innumerable visitors. Traveling clergymen always made our house their stopping-place; and it must have been conveniently on the route to almost every place in the Union; for some were going north, some east, and some west, but that was always the halting-place. Their hours of arriving were various and unexpected; but I was expected to furnish banquets at the shortest notice—to drag forth inexhaustible store of linen and bedding—and throw open airy apartments that had hitherto been concealed by secret springs. Mr. S—— was firmly convinced that the house possessed the elastic properties of India-rubber, and mildly disregarded my ignorance when I asserted that it would not stretch to any extent.
“A convention of ministers was to meet in the village, for some purpose or other, and the visitors, like British soldiers during the revolution, were to be quartered upon the inhabitants—with only this difference, they were to be invited before they entered a house. I was seated in Mr. S——’s study when he mentioned the ministers.
“‘I spoke for you, too, my dear,’ said he coolly, ‘and said that we could accommodate six.’
“‘Mr. S——!’ I exclaimed, roused past all endurance; ‘are you really crazy!’
“‘Anna!’ replied my husband, as he turned his eyes upon me. Mr. S—— was usually very mild, and appeared to think that a look was sufficient to subdue refractory spirits. He now undertook to look me into reason; while I, fairly boiling at the idea of being treated like a naughty child, and yet struggling with a sense of right and wrong, sat with downcast eyes trying in vain to get cool.
“‘I hope,’ continued Mr. S——, ‘that my wife has not forgotten the rules of hospitality, or the precepts of the Bible?’
“‘But it is so impossible!’ I pleaded, ‘Neither beds nor any thing else will hold out under such an inundation.’
“‘Remember the widow’s cruse of oil,’ replied my husband.