"The minute we passed the gate we wuz overwhelmed with the onspeakable aspect of the buildin's--See page 226."

SAMANTHA AT THE WORLD'S FAIR

BY

JOSIAH ALLEN'S WIFE

(MARIETTA HOLLEY)

ILLUSTRATED

BY

BARON C. DE GRIMM

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

New-York

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

London and Toronto

1893

Copyright, 1893, by the

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY.

[Registered at Stationer's Hall, London, England.]

TO

Columbia—

WHO HAS JEST SAILED OUT AND DISCOVERED WOMAN. AND TO THE SECT DISCOVERED—

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED.

PREFACE.

It wuz a beautiful evenin' in Jonesville, and the World. The Earth wuz a-settin' peaceful and serene under the glowin' light of a full moon and some stars, and I sot jest as peaceful and calm under the meller light of our hangin' lamp and the blue radiance of my companion's two orbs.

Two arm-chairs covered with handsome buff copper-plate wuz drawed up on each side of the round table, that had a cheerful spread on't, and a basket of meller apples and pears.

Dick Swiveller, our big striped pussy-cat (Thomas J. named him), lay stretched out in luxurious ease on his cushion, a-watchin' with dignified indulgence the gambollin' of our little pup dog. He is young yet, and Dick looked lenient on the innocent caperin's of youth.

Dick is very wise.

The firelight sparkled on the clean hearth, the lamplight gleamed down onto my needles as I sot peaceful a-seamin' two and two, and the same radiance rested lovin'ly on the shinin' bald head of my pardner as he sot a-readin' his favorite production, the World.

All wuz relapsted into silence, all wuz peace, till all to once my pardner dropped his paper, and sez he—

"Samantha, why not write a book on't?"

It started me, comin' so onexpected onto me, and specially sence he wuz always so sot aginst my swingin' out in Literatoor.

I dropped two or three stitches in my inward agitation, but instinctively I catched holt of my dignity, and kep calm on the outside.

And sez I, "Write a book on what, Josiah Allen?"

"Oh, about the World's Fair!" sez he.

"Wall," sez I, with a deep sithe, "I had thought on't, but I'd kinder dreaded the job."

And he went on: "You know," sez he, "that We wrote one about the other big Fair, and if We don't do as well by this one it'll make trouble," sez he.

"We!" sez I in my own mind, and in witherin' axents, but I kep calm on the outside, and he went on—

"Our book," sez he, "that We wrote on the other big Fair in Filadelfy, I spoze wuz thought as much on and wuz as popular for family readin' as ever a President's message wuz; and after payin' attention to that as We did, We hadn't ort to slight this one. We can't afford to," sez he.

"Can't afford to?" sez I dreamily.

"No; We can't afford to," sez he, "and keep Our present popularity. Now, there's every chance, so fur as I can see, for me to be elected Path-Master, and the high position of Salesman of the Jonesville Cheese Factory has been as good as offered to me agin this year. It is because We are popular," sez he, "that I have these positions of trust and honor held out to me. We have wrote books that have took, Samantha. Now, what would be the result if We should slight Columbus and turn Our backs onto America in this crisis of her history? It would be simply ruinous to Our reputation and my official aspirations. Everybody would be mad, and kick, from the President down. More'n as likely as not I should never hold another office in Jonesville. Cheese would be sold right over my head by I know not who. I should be ordered out to work on the road like a dog by Ury jest as like as not. I've been a-settin' here and turnin' it over in my mind; and though, as you say, I hain't always favored the idee of writin', still at the present time I believe We'd better write the book. There's ink in the house, hain't there?" sez he anxiously.

"Yes," sez I.

"And paper?" sez he.

Agin I sez, "Yes."

"Wall, then, when there's ink and paper, what's to hender Our writin' it?"

"Our!" "We!" Agin them words entered my soul like lead arrows and gaulded me, but agin I looked up, and the clear light of affection that shone from my pardner's eyes melted them arrows, and I suffered and wuz calm. But anon I sez—

"Don't great emotions rise up in your soul, Josiah Allen, when you think of Columbus and the World's work? Don't the mighty waves of the past and the future dash up aginst your heart when you think of Christopher, and what he found, and what is behind this nation, and what is in front of it, a-bagonin' it onwards?"

"No," sez he calmly; "I look at it with the eye of a business man, and with that eye," sez he, "I say less write the book."

He ceased his remarks, and agin silence rained in the room.

But to me the silence wuz filled with voices that he couldn't hear—deep, prophetic voices that shook my soul. Eyes whose light the dust fell on four hundred years ago shone agin on me in that quiet room in Jonesville, and hanted me. Heroic hands that wuz clay centuries ago bagoned to me to foller 'em where they led me. And so on down through the centuries the viewless hosts passed before me and gin me the silent countersign to let me pass into their ranks and jine the army. And then, away out into the future, the Shadow Host defiled—fur off, fur off—into the age of Freedom, and Justice, and Perfect rights for man and woman, Love, Joy, Peace.

Josiah didn't see none of these performances.

No; two pardners may set side by side, and yet worlds lay between 'em. He wuz agin immersed in his ambitious reveries.

I didn't tell him the heft or the size of my emotions as I mentally tackled the job he proposed to me—there wuzn't no use on't. I only sez, as I looked up at him over my specs—

"Josiah, We will write the book."

SAMANTHA AT THE WORLD'S FAIR.

CHAPTER I.

hristopher Columbus has always been a object of extreme interest and admiration to me ever sence I first read about him in my old Olney's Gography, up to the time when I hearn he wuz a-goin' to be celebrated in Chicago.

I always looked up to Christopher, I always admired him, and in a modest and meetin'-house sense, I will say boldly and with no fear of Josiah before my eyes that I loved him.

Havin' such feelin's for Christopher Columbus, as I had, and havin' such feelin's for New Discoverers, do you spoze I wuz a-goin' to have a celebration gin for him, and also for us as bein' discovered by him, without attendin' to it?

No, indeed! I made calculations ahead from the very first minute it wuz spoke on, to attend to it.

And feelin' as I did—all wrought up on the subject of Christopher Columbus—it wuz a coincerdence singular enough to skair anybody almost to death—to think that right on the very day Christopher discovered America, and us (only 400 years later), and on the very day that I commenced the fine shirt that Josiah wuz a-goin' to wear to Chicago to celebrate him in—

That very Friday, if you'll believe me, Christopher Columbus walked right into our kitchen at Jonesville—and discovered me.

If you'll believe me, Christopher Columbus Allen walked right into our kitchen--and discovered me.

Yes, Christopher Columbus Allen, a relative I never had seen, come to Jonesville and our house on his way to the World's Fair.

Jest to think on't—Christopher Columbus Allen, who had passed his hull life up in Maine, and then descended down onto us at such a time as this, when all the relations in Jonesville wuz jest riz up about the doin's of that great namesake of hisen—And the gussets wuz even then a-bein' cut out and sewed on to the shirt that wuz a-goin' to encompass Josiah Allen about as he went to Chicago to celebrate him—

That then, on that Friday, P.M., about the time of day that the Injuns wuz a-kneelin' to the first Christopher, to think that Josiah Allen should walk in the new Columbus into our kitchen—why, I don't spoze a more singular and coincidin' circumstance ever happened before durin' the hull course of time.

The only incident that mellered it down any and made it a little less miracalous wuz the fact that he never had been called by his full name.

He always has been, is now, and I spoze always will be called Krit—Krit Allen.

But still it wuz—in spite of this mellerin' and amelioratin' circumstance—strikin' and skairful enough to fill me with or.

He wuz a double and twisted relation, as you may say, bein' related to us on both our own sides, Josiah's and mine.

But I had never sot eyes on him till that day, though I well remember visitin' his parents, who lived then in the outskirts of Loontown—good respectable Methodist Epospical people—and runners of a cheese factory at that time.

Tryphenia Smith, relation on my side, married to Ezra Allen, relation on Josiah's side.

I remember that I went there on a visit with my mother at a very early period of my existence. I hadn't existed at that time more'n nine years, if I had that. We staid there on a stiddy stretch for a week; that wuz jest before they moved up to Maine.

Uncle Ezra had a splendid chance offered him there, and he fell in with it.

She wuz a dretful good creeter, Aunt Tryphenia wuz, and greatly beloved by the relations on his side, as well as hern.

Though, as is nateral with relations, she had to be run by 'em more or less, and found fault with. Some thought her nose wuz too long. Some on 'em thought she wuz too religious, and some on 'em thought she wuzn't religious enough. Some on 'em thought she wuzn't sot enough on the creeds, and some thought she wuz too rigid.

But, howsumever, pretty nigh all the Allens and Smiths jest doted on her.

There wuz one incident that jest impressed itself on my memory in connection with that visit, and I don't spoze I shall ever forgit it; it stands to reason that I should before now, if I ever wuz a-goin' to.

It took place at family prayers, which they held regular at Uncle Ezra's.

It wuz right in the hite of sugarin'. They had more'n two hundred maple trees, and they had tapped 'em all, and they had run free, and they had to sugar off every day, and sometimes twice a day.

That mornin' they had a big kettle of maple syrup over the stove, and Uncle Ezra and Aunt Tryphenia and mother wuz all a-kneelin' down pretty nigh to the stove. It wuz a cold mornin', and I wuz a-settin' with my little legs a-hangin' off the chair a-watchin' things, not at that age bein' particular interested in religion.

Uncle Ezra made a long prayer, a tegus one, it seemed to me; it wuz so long that the kettle of sugar had het up fearful, and I see with deep anxiety that it wuz a-mountin' up most to the top of the kettle.

Of course I dassent move to open the stove door, or stir it down, or anything—no, I dassent make a move of any kind or a mite of noise in prayer time. So I sot demute, but in deep anxiety, a-watchin' it sizzle up higher and higher and then down agin, as is the way of syrup, but each time a sizzlin' up a little higher.

Wall, finally Uncle Ezra got through with his prayer, and dear good Aunt Tryphenia begun hern. She spoke dretful kinder moderate, but religious and good as anything could be.

I well remember what it wuz she wuz sayin'—

"O Lord, let us be tried as by fire and not be movéd"—I remember she said movéd instead of moved, which wuz impressive to me, never havin' hearn it pronounced that way before.

And jest as she said this over went the sugar onto the stove, and Aunt Tryphenia and Uncle Ezra jest jumped right up and went and lifted the kettle offen the stove.

I remember well how kinder bewildered and curious mother looked when she opened her eyes and see that the prayer wuz broke right short off. Aunt Tryphenia looked meachin', and Uncle Ezra put his hat right on and went out to the barn.

It wuz dretful embarrissin' to him and Aunt Tryphenia. But then I don't know as they could have helped it.

I remember hearin' Father and Mother arguin' about it. Father thought she done right, but Mother wuz kinder of the opinion that she ort to have run the prayer right on and let the sugar spile if necessary.

But I remember Father's arguin' that he didn't believe her prayer would have been very lucid or fervent, with all that batch of sugar a-sizzlin' and a-burnin' right by the side of her.

I remember that he said that a prayer wouldn't be apt to ascend much higher than where one's hopes and thoughts wuz, and he didn't believe it would go up much higher than that kettle. (The stove wuz the common height, not over four feet.)

But Mother held to her own opinion, and so did a good many of the relations, mostly females. It wuz talked over quite a good deal amongst the Smiths. The wimmen all blamed Tryphenia more or less. The men mostly approved of savin' the sugar.

But good land! how I am eppisodin', and to resoom and go on.

As I say, it wuz jest after this that Uncle Ezra's folks moved up to Maine, Christopher Columbus bein' still onborn for years and years.

But bein' born in due time, or ruther as I may say out of due time, for Uncle Ezra and Aunt Tryphenia had been married over twenty years before they had a child, and then they branched out and had two, and then stopped—

But bein' born at last and growin' up to be a good-lookin' young man and well-to-do in the world, he come out to Jonesville on business and also to foller up the ties of relationship that wuz stretched out acrost hill and dale clear from Maine to Jonesville.

Strange ties, hain't they? that are so little that they are invisible to the naked eye, or spectacles, or the keenest microscope, and yet are so strong and lastin' that the strongest sledge-hammer can't break 'em or even make a dent into 'em.

And old Time himself, that crumbles stun work and mountains, can't seem to make any impression on 'em. Curious, hain't it?

But to leave moralizin' and to resoom, it was on Friday, P.M., that he arrove at our home.

I see a good-lookin' young chap a-comin' up the path from the front gate with my Josiah, and I hastily but firmly turned my apron the other side out—I had been windin' some blue yarn that day for some socks for my Josiah, and had colored it a little—it wuz a white apron—and then I waited middlin' serene till he come in with him.

And lo! and behold! Josiah introduced him as Christopher Columbus Allen, my own cousin on my own side, and also on hisen.

He wuz a very good-lookin' chap, some older than Thomas Jefferson, and I do declare if he didn't look some like him, which wouldn't be nothin' aginst the law, or aginst reason, bein' that they wuz related to each other.

I wuz glad enough to see him, and I inquired after the relations with considerable interest, and some affection (not such an awful sight, never havin' seen 'em much, but a little, jest about enough).

And then I learnt with some sadness that his father and mother had passed away not long before that, and that his sister Isabelle wuz not over well.

And there wuz another coincerdence that struck aginst me almost hard enough to knock me down.

Isabelle! jest think on't, when my mind wuz on a perfect strain about Isabelle Casteel.

Columbus and Isabelle!—the idee!

Why, my reason almost tottered on its throne under my recent best head-dress, when I hearn him speak the name. Christopher Columbus a tellin' me about Isabelle—

I declare I wuz that wrought up that I expected every minute to hear him tell me somethin' about Ferdinand; but I do believe that I should have broke down under that.

But it wuz all explained out to me afterwards by another relation that come onto us onexpected shortly afterwards.

It seemed that Uncle Ezra and Aunt Tryphenia, after they went to Maine, moved into a sort of a new place, where it wuz dretful lonesome.

They lost every book they had, owin' to a axident on their journey, and the only book their nighest neighbor had wuz the life of Queen Isabelle.

They lost every book they had, owin' to a axident on their journey.

And so Aunt Tryphenia for years wuz, as you may say, jest saturated with that book. And she named her two children, born durin' that time of saturation, Christopher Columbus and Isabelle. And I presoom if she had had another, she would have named it King Ferdinand. Though I hain't sure of this—you can't be postive certain of any such thing as this. Besides it might have been born a girl onbeknown to her.

But I know that she never washed them children with anything but Casteel soap, and she talked sights and sights about Spain and things.

So I hearn from Uncle Jered Smith, who visited them while he wuz up on a tower through Maine, a-sellin' balsam of pine for the lungs.

Wall, Isabelle had a sort of a runnin' down, so Krit said. He begged us to call him that—said that all his mates at school called him so. He had been educated quite high. Had been to deestrick school sights, and then to a 'Cademy and College. He had kinder worked his way up, so I found out, and so had Isabelle.

She had graduated from a Young Woman's College, taught school to earn her money, and then went to school as long as that would last, and then would set out and teach agin, and then go agin and then taught, and then went.

She wuz younger than Christopher, but he owned up to me that it wuz her example that had rousted him up to exert himself.

She wuz awful ambitious, Isabelle wuz. She wuz smart as she could be, and had a feelin' that she wanted to be sunthin' in the World.

But then the old folks wuz took down sick and helpless, and one of the children had to stay to home. And Isabelle staid, and sent Krit out into the World.

She sold her jewels of Ambition and Happiness, and gin him the avails of them.

She staid to home with the old folks—kinder peevish and fretful, Krit said they wuz, too—and let him go a-sailin' out on the broad ocean of life; she had trimmed her own sails in such hope, but had to curb 'em in now and lower the topmast.

You have to reef your sails considerable when you are a-sailin' round in a small bedroom between two beds of sickness (asthma and inflammatory rheumatiz). You have to haul 'em in, and take down the flyin' pennen of Hope and Asperation, and mount up the lamp of Duty and Meekness for a figger-head, instead of the glowin' face of Proud Endeavor.

But them lamps give a dretful meller, soft light, when they are well mounted up, and firm sot.

The light on 'em hain't to be compared to any other light on sea or on shore. It wrops 'em round so serene and glowin' that walks in it. It rests on their mild forwards in a sort of a halo that shines off on the hard things of this life and makes 'em endurable, takes the edge kinder off of the hardest, keenest sufferin's, and goes before 'em throwin' a light over the deep waters that must be passed, and sort o' melts in and loses itself in the ineffible radiance that streams out from acrost the other side.

It is a curious light and a beautiful one. Isabelle jest journeyed in its full radiance.

Wall, Isabelle would do what she sot out to do, you could see that by her face. Krit had brought her photograph with him—he thought his eyes of her—and I liked her looks first rate.

It wuz a beautiful face, with more than beauty in it too. It wuz inteligent and serene, with the serenity of the sweet soul within. And it had a look deep down in the eyes, a sort of a shadow that is got by passin' through the Valley of Sorrow.

I hearn afterwards what that look meant.

Isabelle had been engaged to a smart, well-meanin' chap, Tom Freeman by name, not over and above rich, and one that had his own duties to attend to. Two helpless aged ones, and two little nieces to took care on, and nobody but himself to earn the money to do it with.

The little nieces' Pa had gone to California after his wife's death—and hadn't been hearn from sence. The little children had been left with their grandparents and Uncle Tom to stay till their Pa got back. And as he didn't git back, of course they kept on a-stayin', and had to be took care on. They wuz bright little creeters, and the very apples of their eyes. But they cost money, and they cost love, and Tom had to give it, for they lost what little property they had about this time—and the feeble Grandma couldn't do much, and the Grandpa died not long after the eppisode I am about to relate.

So it all devolved onto Tom. And Tom riz up to his duties nobly, though it wuz with a sad heart, as wuz spozed, for Isabelle, when she see what had come onto him to do, wouldn't hold him to his engagement—she insisted on his bein' free.

I spoze she thought she wouldn't burden him with two more helpless ones, and then mebby she thought the two spans wouldn't mate very well. And most probable they would have been a pretty cross match. (I mean, that is, a sort of a melancholy, down-sperited yoke, and if anybody laughs at it, I would wish 'em to laugh in a sort of a mournful way.)

Wall, Tom Freeman, after Isabelle sot him free, bein' partly mad and partly heart-broken, as is the way of men who are deep in love, and want their way, but anyway wantin' to keep out of the sight of the one who, if he couldn't have her for his own, he wanted to forgit—he packed up bag and baggage and went West.

Isabelle wouldn't correspond with him, so she told him in that last hour—still and calm on the outside, and her heart a-bleedin' on the inside, I dare presoom to say; no, she wanted him to feel free.

What creeters, what creeters wimmen be for makin' martyrs of themselves, and burnt sacrifices—sometimes I most think they enjoy it, and then agin I don't know!

But Isabelle acted from a sense of duty, for she jest worshipped the ground Tom Freeman walked on, so everybody knew, and so she bid adieu to Tom and Happiness, and lived on.

Wall, one of 'em must stay at home with the old folks, either she or Christopher Columbus. And when a man and a woman love each other as Isabelle and Krit did, when wuz it ever the case but what if there wuz any sacrificin' to do the woman wuz the one to do it.

It is her nater, and I don't know but a real true woman takes as much comfort in bein' sort o' onhappy for the sake of some one she loves, as she would in swingin' right out and a-enjoyin' herself first rate.

A woman who really loves anything has the makin' of a first-class martyr in her. And though she may not be ever tied to a stake, and gridirons be fur removed from her, still she has a sort of a silent hankerin' or aptitude for martrydom. That is, she would fur ruther be onhappy herself than to have the beloved object wretched. And if either of 'em has got to face trouble and privation, why she is the one that stands ready to face 'em.

So Isabelle sent Krit off into the great world to conquer it if possible.

Isabelle staid, and sent Krit out into the World.

And Krit, as the nater of man is, felt that he would ruther branch and work his way along through the World, and work hard and venter and dare and try to conquer fortune, than to set round and endure and suffer and be calm.

Men are not, although they are likely creeters and I wish 'em well, yet truth compels me to say that they are not very much gin to follerin' this text, "To suffer and be calm."

No, they had ruther rampage round and kill the lions in the way than to camp down in front of 'em and try to subdue 'em with kindness and long sufferin'.

Krit, as the nateral nater of man is, felt that he could and would earn a good place in the World, win it with hard work, and then lift Isabelle up onto the high platform by the side of him.

Though whether he had made any plans as how he wuz a-goin' to hist up the two feeble old invalids, that I can't state, not knowin'.

But Isabelle, he did lay out to do well by her, thinkin' as he did such a amazin' lot of her, and knowin' how she gin up her own ambitious hopes for his sake, and knowin' well, though he didn't really feel free to interfere, how she had signed the death-warrant to her own happiness when she parted with Tom Freeman. But so it wuz.

Wall, Krit wouldn't have to lift up the old folks onto any worldly hite, for the Lord took 'em up into His own habitation, higher I spoze than any earthly mount. About six months before Krit come to Jonesville, they both passed away most at the same time, and wuz buried in one grave.

Wall, we all on us in Jonesville thought a sight of Krit before he had been with us a week. He had come partly to see a man in Jonesville on particular business, and partly to see us. He wuz a civil engineer, jest as civil and polite a one as I ever laid eyes on, and wuz a-doin' well, but Thomas Jefferson thought he could help him to a still better place and position.

Thomas J. is very popular in Jonesville. He is doin' a big business all over the county, and is very influential.

Wall, Krit's business bid fair to keep him for some time in Jonesville and the vicinity, and as he see that Josiah Allen and I wuz a-makin' preperations to go to the World's Fair—and bein' warmly pursuaded by us to that effect, he concluded to stay and accompany us thither. The idee wuz very agreeable to us.

He said his sister Isabelle, after she wuz a little recooperated from her grief for the old folks, and recovered a little from the sickness that she had after they left her, she too laid out to come on to Chicago, and spend a few weeks.

He wuz a-layin' out to reconoiter round and find a good place for her to board and take good care on her. He thought enough on her—yes, indeed.

But, as he said, she wuz jest struck right down seemin'ly with her grief at the loss of them two old folks.

You see, if your head has been a-restin' for some time on a piller, even if it is a piller of stun, when it is drawed out sudden from under you, your head jars down on the ground dretful heavy and hard.

And when you've been carryin' a burden for a long time, when it is took sudden from you you have a giddy feelin', you feel light and faint and wobblin'.

And then she loved 'em—she loved her poor old charges with a daughter's love and with all the love a mother gives to a helpless baby, with the pity added that gray hairs and toothless gums must amount to added up over the sum of dimples and ivory and coral that makes up a baby's beautiful helplessness.

And they wuz took from her dretful sudden. There wuz a sort of a influenza prevailin' up round their way, and lots of strong healthy folks suckumbed to it, and it struck onto these poor old feeble ones some like simiters, and mowed 'em right down.

The old lady wuz took down first, and her great anxiety wuz—"That Pa shouldn't know that she wuz so sick."

But before she died, "Pa" in another room wuz took with it, and passed away a day before she did.

She worried all that mornin' about "Pa," and—"How bad he would feel if he knew she wuz so sick!" But along late in the afternoon, when the Winter sun wuz makin' a pale reflection on the wall through the south winder, she looked up, and sez she—

"Why, there stands Pa right by my bed, and he wants me to git up and go with him. And, Isabelle, I must go."

And she did.

"Why, there stands Pa, and he wants me to git up and go with him."

And Isabelle wuz left alone.

They wuz buried in one grave. And the funeral sermon, they say, wuz enough to melt a stun, if there had been any stuns round where they could hear it.

Isabelle didn't hear it (don't git the idee that I am a-wantin' to compare her to a stun; no, fur from it). She wuz a-layin' to home on a bed, with her sad eyes bent on nothin'ess and emptiness and utter desolation, so it seemed to her.

But after a time she begun to pick up a little, judgin' from her letters to her brother Krit. He had to leave her jest after the funeral on account of his business; for, civil as it wuz, it had to be tended to.

CHAPTER II.

Wall, we all enjoyed havin' Christopher there the best that ever wuz. For he wuz very agreeable, as well as oncommon smart, which two qualities don't always go together, as has often been observed by others, and I have seen for myself.

Wall, it wuzn't more than a week or so after Krit arrived and got there, that another relation made his appearance in Jonesville.

It wuz of 'em on his side this time—not like Krit, half hisen and half mine, but clear hisen. Clear Allen, with no Smith at all in the admixture.

Proud enough wuz my pardner of him, and of himself too for bein' born his cousin. (Though that wuz onbeknown to him at the time, and he ort not to have gloried in it.)

But tickled wuz he when word come that Elnathan Allen, Esquire, of Menlo Park, California, wuz a-comin' to Jonesville to visit his old friends.

Tickled wuz he when word come.

That man had begun life poor—poor as a snipe; sometimes I used to handle that very word "Snipe" a-describin' Elnathan Allen's former circumstances to Josiah, when he got too overbearin' about him.

For he had boasted to me about him for years, and years, and a woman can't stand only jest about so much aggravatin' and treadin' on before she will turn like a worm.

That is Bible about "The Worm," and must be believed.

What used to mad me the worst wuz when he would git to comparin' Elnathan with one of 'em on my side who wuz shiftless. Good land! 'Zekiel Smith hain't the only man on earth who is ornary and no account. Every pardner has 'em, more or less, on his side and on hern; let not one pardner boast themselves over the other one; both have their drawbacks.

But Elnathan had done well; I admitted it only when I wuz too much put upon.

He had gone fur West, got rich, invested his capital first rate, some on it in a big Eastern city, and had got to be a millionare.

He wuz a widower with one child, The Little Maid, as he called her; he jest idolized her, and thought she wuz perfect.

And I spoze she wuz oncommon, not from what her Pa said—no, I didn't take all his talk about her for Gospel; I know too much.

But Barzelia Ann Allen (a old maid up to date) had seen her, had been out to California on a excursion train, and had staid some time with 'em.

And she said that she wuz the smartest child this side of Heaven. With eyes of violet blue, big luminous eyes, that draw the hearts and souls of folks right out of their bodies when they looked into 'em, so full of radiant joy and heavenly sweetness wuz they.

And hair of waving gold, and lips and cheeks as pink as the hearts of the roses that climbed all Winter round her winder—and the sweetest, daintiest ways—and so good to everybody, them that wuz poor and sufferin' most of all.

Barzeel wuz always most too enthusiastick to suit me, but I got the idee from what she said that she wuz a oncommon lovely child.

Good land! Elnathan couldn't talk about anything else—like little babblin' brooks runnin' towards the sea, all his talk, every anecdote he told, and every idee he sot forth, jest led up to and ended with that child. Jest like creeks.

He worshipped her.

And he himself told me so many stories about her bein' so good to the poor, and sacrificin' her little comforts for 'em—at her age, too—that I thought to myself, I wonder why you don't take some of them object lessons to heart—why you don't set down at her feet, and learn of her—and I wonder too where she took her sweet charity from, but spoze it wuz from her mother. Her mother had been a beautiful woman, so I had been told. She wuz a Devereaux—nobody that I ever knew, or Josiah. Celeste Devereaux.

The little girl wuz named for her mother. But they always called her The Little Maid.

Wall, to resoom, and to hitch my horse in front of the wagon agin. (Allegory.)

Elnathan had left The Little Maid and her nurse in that Eastern city where he owned so much property, and had come on to pay a flyin' visit to Jonesville, not forgittin' Loontown, you may be sure, where a deceased Aunt had jest died and left her property to him.

He wuz close.

He had left The Little Maid in the finest hotel in the city, so he said. He had looked over more'n a dozen, so I hearn, before he could git one he thought wuz healthy enough and splendid enough for her. At last he selected one, standin' on a considerable rise of ground, with big, high, gorgeous rooms, and prices higher than the very topmost cupalo, and loftiest chimbly pot.

Here he got two big rooms for The Little Maid, and one for the nurse. He got the two rooms for the child so's the air could circulate through 'em.

"Here he got two big rooms."

He wuz very particular about her havin' air of the very purest and best kind there wuz made, and the same with vittles and clothes, etc., etc., etc.

Wall, while he wuz a-goin' on so about pure air and the values and necessities of it, I couldn't help thinkin' of what Barzelia had told me about that big property of hisen in the Eastern city where he had left The Little Maid.

Here, in the very lowest part of the city, he owned hull streets of tenement housen, miserable old rotten affairs, down in stiflin' alleys, and courts, breeders of disease, and crime, and death.

At first some on 'em fell into his hands by a exchange of property, and he found they paid so well, that he directed his agent to buy up a lot of 'em.

Barzelia had told me all about 'em, she was jest as enthusiastick about what she didn't like as what she did; she said the money got in that way, by housin' the poor in such horrible pestilental places, seemed jest like makin' a bargain with Death. Rentin' housen to him to make carnival in.

And while he wuz talkin' to such great length, and with such a satisfied and comfortable look onto his face, about the vital necessities of pure air and beautiful surroundin's, in order to make children well and happy, my thoughts kept a-roamin', and I couldn't help it. Down from the lovely spot where The Little Maid wuz, down, down, into the dretful places that Barzelia had told me about. Where squalor, and crime, and disease, and death walked hand in hand, gatherin' new victims at every step, and where the children wuz a-droppin' down in the poisinous air like dead leaves in a swamp.

I kep a-thinkin' of this, and finally I tackled Elnathan about it, and he laughed, Elnathan did, and begun to talk about the swarms and herds of useless and criminal humanity a-cumberin' the ground, and he threw a lot of statisticks at me. But they didn't hit me. Good land! I wuzn't afraid on 'em, nor I didn't care anything about 'em, and I gin him to understand that I didn't.

And in the cause of duty I kep on a-tacklin' him about them housen of hisen, and advisin' him to tear 'em down, and build wholesome ones, and in the place of the worst ones, to help make some little open breathin' places for the poor creeters down there, with a green tree now and then.

And then agin he brung up the utter worthlessness, and shiftlessness, and viciousness of the class I wuz a-talkin' about.

And then I sez—"How is anybody a-goin' to live pattern lives, when they are a-starvin' to death? And how is anybody a-goin' to enjoy religion when they are a-chokin'?"

And then he threw some more statisticks at me, dry and hard ones too; and agin he see they didn't hit me, and then he kinder laughed agin, and assumed something of a jokelar air—such as men will when they are a-talkin' to wimmen—dretful exasperatin', too—and sez he—

"You are a Philosopher, Cousin Samantha, and you must know such housen as you are a-talkin' about are advantageous in one way, if in no other—they help to reduce the surplus population. If it wuzn't for such places, and for the electric wires, and bomb cranks, and accidents, etc., the world would git too full to stand up in."

"Help to reduce the surplus population!" sez I, and my voice shook with indignation as I said it. Sez I—

"Elnathan Allen, you had better stop a-pilin' up your statisticks, for a spell, and come down onto the level of humanity and human brotherhood."

Sez I, "Spozen you should take it to yourself for a spell, imagine how it would be with you if you had been born there onbeknown to yourself." Sez I, "If you wuz a-livin' down there in them horrible pits of disease and death—if you wuz a-standin' over the dyin' bed of wife or mother, or other dear one, and felt that if you could bring one fresh, sweet breath of air to the dear one, dyin' for the want of it, you would almost barter your hopes of eternity—

"If you stood there in that black, chokin' atmosphere, reekin' with all pestilental and moral death, and see the one you loved best a-slippin' away from you—borne out of your sight, borne away into the onknown, on them dead waves of poisinous, deathly air—I guess you wouldn't talk about reducin' the Surplus Population."

I had been real eloquent, and I knew it, for I felt deeply what I said.

But Elnathan looked cheerful under all my talk. It didn't impress him a mite, I could see.

He felt safe. He wuz sure the squalor and sufferin' never would or could touch him. He thought, in the words of the Him slightly changed, that: "He could read his title clear to Mansions with all the modern improvements."

He and The Little Maid wuz safe. The world looked further off to him, the woes, and wants, and crimes of our poor humanity seemed quite a considerable distance away from him.

Onclouded prosperity had hardened Elnathan's heart—it will sometimes—hard as Pharo's.

But he wuz a visitor and one of the relations on his side, and I done well by him, killed a duck and made quite a fuss.

The business of settlin' the estate took quite a spell, but he didn't hurry any.

He said "the nurse wuz good as gold, she would take good care of The Little Maid. She wrote to him every day;" and so she did, the hussy, all through that dretful time to come.

Oh dear me! oh dear suz!

The nurse, Jean, had a sister who had come over from England with a cargo of trouble and children—after Jean had come on to California.

And Elnathan, good-natured when he wuz a mind to be, had listened to Jean's story of her sister's woes, with poverty, hungery children, and a drunken husband, and had given this sister two small rooms in one of his tenement housen, and asked so little for them, that they wuz livin' quite comfortable, if anybody could live comfortable, in such a stiflin', nasty spot.

Their rooms wuz on top of the house, and wuz kept clean, and so high up that they could get a breath of air now and then.

But the way up to 'em led over a crazy pair of stairs, so broken and rotten that even the Agent wuz disgusted with 'em and had wrote a letter to Elnathan asking for new stairs, and new sanitary arrangements, as the deaths wuz so frequent in that particular tenement, that the Agent wuz frightened, for fear they would be complained of by the City Fathers—though them old fathers can stand a good deal without complainin'.

Wall, the Agent wrote, but Elnathan wuz at that time buildin' a new orchid house (he had more'n a dozen of 'em before) for The Little Maid; she loved these half-human blossoms.

And he wuz buildin' a high palm house, and a new fountain, and a veranda covered with carved lattice-work around The Little Maid's apartments. And a stained-glass gallery, leading from the conservatory to the greenhouses, and these other houses I have mentioned, so that The Little Maid could walk out to 'em on too sunny days, or when it misted some.

And so he wrote back to his Agent, that "he couldn't possibly spend any money on stairs or plumbin' in a tenement house, for the repairs he wuz making on his own place at Menlo Park would cost more than a hundred thousand dollars—and he felt that he couldn't fix them stairs, and he thought anyway it wuzn't best to listen to the complaints of complaining tenants." And he ended in that jokelar way of hisen—

"That if you listened to 'em, and done one thing for 'em, the next thing they would want would be velvet-lined carriages to ride out in."

And the Agent, havin' jest seen the tenth funeral a-wendin' out of that very house that week, and bein' a man of some sense, though hampered, wrote back and said—"Carriages wouldn't be the next thing that they would all want, but coffins."

He said sence he had wrote to Elnathan more than a dozen had been wanted there in that very house, and the tenants had been borne out in 'em.

(And laid in fur cleaner dirt than they wuz accustomed to there;) he didn't write this last—that is my own eppisodin'.

And agin the Agent mentioned the stairs, and agin he mentioned the plumbin'.

But Elnathan wuz so interested then and took up in tryin' to decide whether he would have a stained-glass angel or some stained-glass cherubs a-hoverin' over the gallery in front of The Little Maid's room, that he hadn't a mite of time to argue any further on the subject—so he telegrafted—

"No repairs allowed. Elnathan Allen."

"No repairs allowed."

Wall, Elnathan had got the repairs all made, and the place looked magnificent.

Good land! it ort to; the hull place cost more than a million dollars, so I have hearn; I don't say that I am postive knowin' to it. But Barzelia gits things pretty straight; it come to me through her.

The Little Maid enjoyed it all, and Elnathan enjoyed it twice over, once and first in her, and then of course in his own self.

But The Little Maid looked sort o' pimpin, and her little appetite didn't seem to be very good, and the doctor said that a journey East would do her good.

And jest at this time the dowery in Loontown fell onto Elnathan, so that they all come East.

Elnathan had forgot all about Jean havin' any relation in the big Eastern city where they stopped first—good land! their little idees and images had got all overlaid and covered up with glass angels, orchids, bank stock, some mines, palm-houses, political yearnin's, social distinction, carved lattice-work, some religious idees, and yots, and club-houses, etc., etc., etc.

But when he decided to leave The Little Maid in the city and not bring her to Jonesville—(and I believe in my soul, and I always shall believe it, that he wuz in doubt whether we had things good enough for her. The idee! He said he thought it would be too much for her to go round to all the relatives—wall, mebby it wuz that! But I shall always have my thoughts.)

But anyway, when he made up his mind to leave her, he gin the nurse strict orders to not go down into the city below a certain street, which wuz a good high one, and not let The Little Maid out of her sight night or day.

He gin the nurse strict orders.

Wall, the nurse knew it wuz wrong—she knew it, but she did it. Jest as Cain did, and jest as David did, when he killed Ury, and Joseph's brother and Pharo, and you and I, and the relations on his side and on yourn.

She knew she hadn't ort to. But bein' out a-walkin' with The Little Maid one day, a home-sick feelin' come over her all of a sudden. She wanted to see her sister—wanted to, like a dog.

So, as the day wuz very fair, she thought mebby it wouldn't do any hurt.

The sky was so blue between the green boughs of the Park! There had been a rain, and the glistenin' green made her think of the hedgerows of old England, where she and Katy used to find birds' nests, and the blue wuz jest the shade of the sweet old English violets. How she and Katy used to love them! And the blue too wuz jest the color of Katy's eyes when she last see them, full of tears at partin' from her.

She thought of Elnathan's sharp orders not to go down into the city, and not to let The Little Maid out of her sight.

Wall, she thought it over, and thought that mebby if she kep one of her promises good, she would be forgive the other.

Jest as the Israelites did about the manny, and jest as You did when you told your wife you would bring her home a present, and come home early—and you bore her home a bracelet, at four o'clock in the mornin'.

And jest as I did when I said, under the influence of a stirring sermon, that I wouldn't forgit it, and I would live up to it—wall, I hain't forgot it.

But tenny rate, the upshot of the matter wuz that the nurse thought she would keep half of the Master's orders—she wouldn't let The Little Maid out of her sight.

So she hired a cab—she had plenty of money, Elnathan didn't stent her on wages. He had his good qualities, Elnathan did.

And she and The Little Maid rolled away, down through the broad, beautiful streets, lined with stately housen and filled with a throng of gay, handsome, elegantly clothed men, wimmen, and children.

Down into narrower business streets, with lofty warehouses on each side, and full of a well-dressed, hurrying crowd of business men—down, down, down into the dretful street she had sot out to find.

With crazy, slantin' old housen on either side—forms of misery filling the narrow, filthy street, wearing the semblance of manhood and womanhood. And worst of all, embruted, and haggard, and aged childhood.

Filth of all sorts cumbering the broken old walks, and hoverin' over all a dretful sicknin' odor, full of disease and death.

Wall, when they got there, The Little Maid (she had a tender heart), she wuz pale as death, and the big tears wuz a-rollin' down her cheeks, at the horrible sights and sounds she see all about her.

Wall, Jean hurried her up the rickety old staircase into her sister's room, where Jean and Kate fell into each other's arms, and forgot the world while they mingled their tears and their laughter, and half crazy words of love and bewildered joy.

The Little Maid sot silently lookin' out into the dirty, dretful court-yard, swarmin' with ragged children in every form of dirt and discomfort, squalor and vice.

She had never seen anything of the kind before in her guarded, love-watched life.

She didn't know that there wuz such things in the world.

Her lips wuz quiverin'—her big, earnest eyes full of tears, as she started to go down the broken old stairs.

And her heart full of desires to help 'em, so we spoze.

But her tears blinded her.

Half way down she stumbled and fell.

The nurse jumped down to help her. She wuz hefty—two hundred wuz her weight; the stairs, jest hangin' together by links of planked rotteness, fell under 'em—down, down they went, down into the depths below.

The nurse was stunted—not hurt, only stunted.

But The Little Maid, they thought she wuz dead, as they lifted her out. Ivory white wuz the perfect little face, with the long golden hair hangin' back from it, ivory white the little hand and arm hangin' limp at her side.

She wuz carried into Katy's room, a doctor wuz soon called. Her arm wuz broken, but he said, after she roused from her faintin' fit, and her arm wuz set—he said she would git well, but she mustn't be moved for several days.

Jean, wild with fright and remorse, thought she would conceal her sin, and git her back to the hotel before she telegrafted to her father.

Jest as you thought when you eat cloves the other night, and jest as I thought when I laid the Bible over the hole in the table-cover, when I see the minister a-comin'.

Wall, the little arm got along all right, or would, if that had been all, but the poisonous air wuz what killed the little creeter.

For five days she lay, not sufferin' so much in body, but stifled, choked with the putrid air, and each day the red in her cheeks deepened, and the little pulse beat faster and faster.

And on the fifth day she got delerious, and she talked wild.

She talked about cool, beautiful parks bein' made down in the stiflin', crowded, horrible courts and byways of the cities—

With great trees under which the children could play, and look up into the blue sky, and breathe the sweet air—she talked about fresh dewey grass on which they might lay their little hollow cheeks, and which would cool the fever in them.

She talked about a fountain of pure water down where now wuz filth too horrible to mention.

She talked very wild—for she talked about them terrible slantin' old housen bein' torn down to make room for this Paradise of the future.

Had she been older, words might have fallen from her feverish lips of how the woes, and evils, and crimes of the lower classes always react upon the upper.

She might have pictured in her dreams the drama that is ever bein' enacted on the pages of history—of the sorely oppressed masses turnin' on the oppressors, and drivin' them, with themselves, out to ruin.

Pages smeared with blood might have passed before her, and she might have dreamed—for she wuz very delerious—she might have dreamed of the time when our statesmen and lawgivers would pause awhile from their hard task of punishin' crime, and bend their energies upon avertin' it—

Helpin' the poor to better lives, helpin' them to justice. Takin' the small hands of the children, and leadin' them away from the overcrowded prisons and penitentaries toward better lives—

When Charity (a good creeter, too, Charity is) but when she would step aside and let Justice and True Wisdom go ahead for a spell—

When co-operative business would equalize wealth to a greater degree—when the government would control the great enterprises, needed by all, but addin' riches to but few—when comfort would nourish self-respect, and starved vice retreat before the dawnin' light of happiness.

Had she been older she might have babbled of all this as she lay there, a victim of wrong inflicted on the low—a martyr to the folly of the rich, and their injustice toward the poor.

But as it wuz, she talked only with her little fever-parched lips of the lovely, cool garden.

Oh, they wuz wild dreams, flittin', flittin', in little vague, tangled idees through the childish brain!

But the talk wuz always about the green, beautiful garden, and the crowds of little children walkin' there.

And on the seventh day (that wuz after Elnathan got there, and me and Josiah, bein' telegrafted to)—

On the seventh day she begun to talk about a Form she saw a-walkin' in the garden—a Presence beautiful and divine, we thought from her words. He smiled as he saw the happiness of the children. He smiled upon her, he wuz reachin' out his arms to her.

And about evenin' she looked up into her father's face and knew him—and she said somethin' about lovin' him so—and somethin' about the beautiful garden, and the happy children there, and then she looked away from us all with a smile, and I spozed, and I always shall spoze, that the Divine One a-walkin' in the cool of the evenin' in the garden, the benign Presence she saw there, happy in the children's happiness, drew nearer to her, and took her in his arms—for it says—

"He shall carry the lambs in His bosom."

That wuz two years ago. Elnathan Allen is a changed man, a changed man.

I hain't mentioned the word surplus population to him. No, I hadn't the heart to.

Poor creeter, I wuz good to him as I could be all through it, and so wuz Josiah.

His hair got white as a old man's in less than two months.

But with the same energy he brought to bear in makin' money he brought to bear on makin' The Little Maid's dream come true.

He said it wuz a vision.

And, poor creeter, a-doin' it all under a mournin' weed; and if ever a weed wuz deep, and if ever a man mourned deep, it is that man.

Yes, Elnathan has done well; I have writ to him to that effect.

He tore down them crazy, slantin', rotten old housen, and made a park of that filthy hole, a lovely little park, with fresh green grass, a fountain of pure water, where the birds come to slake their little thirsts.

He sot out big trees (money will move a four-foot ellum). There is green, rustlin' boughs for the birds to build their nests in. Cool green leaves to wave over the heads of the children.

They lay their pale faces on the grass, they throw their happy little hearts onto the kind, patient heart of their first mother, Nature, and she soothes the fever in their little breasts, and gives 'em new and saner idees.

They hold their little hands under the crystal water droppin' forever from the outspread wings of a dove. They find insensibly the grime washed away by these pure drops, their hands are less inclined to clasp round murderous weepons and turn them towards the lofty abodes of the rich.

They do not hate the rich so badly, for it is a rich man who has done all this for them.

The high walls of the prison that used to loom up so hugely and threatingly in front of the bare old tenement housen—the harsh glare of them walls seem further away, hidden from them by the gracious green of the blossoming trees.

The sunshine lays between them and its rough walls—they follow the glint of the sunbeams up into the Heavens.

CHAPTER III.

My beloved pardner is very easy lifted up or cast down by his emotions, and his excitement wuz intense durin' the hull of the long time that the warfare lasted as to where the World's Fair wuz to be held, where Columbus wuz goin' to be celebrated.

I thought at the time, Josiah wuz so fearful riz up in his mind, that it wuz doubtful if he ever would be settled down agin, and act in a way becomin' to a grandfather and a Deacon in the M.E. meetin'-house.

And it wuz a excitin' time, very, and the fightin' and quarrelin' between the rival cities wuz perilous in the extreme.

It would have skairt Christopher, I'll bet, if he could have seen it, and he would have said that he would most ruther not be celebrated than to seen it go on.

Why, New York and Chicago most come to hands and blows about it, and St. Louis wuz jest a-follerin' them other cities up tight, a-worryin' 'em, and a-naggin', and a sort o' barkin' at their heels, as it wuz, bound she would have it.

They couldn't all on 'em have it. Christopher couldn't be in three places at one time and simultanous, no matter how much calculation he had about him. No, that wuz impossible. He had to be in one place. And they fit, and they fit, and they fit, till I got tired of the very name of the World's Fair, and Josiah got almost ravin' destracted.

It seemed to me, and so I told Josiah, that New York wuz a more proper place for it, bein' as it wuz clost to the ocean, so many foreigners would float over here, them and their things that they wanted to show to the Fair.

It would almost seem as if they would be tired enough when they got here, to not want to disemmark themselves and their truck, and then imegiatly embark agin on a periongor or wagon, or car, or sunthin, and go a-trailin' off thousands of milds further. And then go through it all agin disembarkin' and unloadin' their truck, and themselves.

Howsumever, I spozed if they sot out for the Fair from Africa, or Hindoostan, or Asia, I spozed they would keep on till they got there, if they had to go the hull length of the Misisippi River, and travelled in more'n forty different conveniences, etc., etc. But it didn't seem so handy nor nigh.

But Chicago is dretful worrysome and active, jest like all children who have growed fast, and kinder outgrowed their clothes and family goverment.

She is dretful forward for one of her years, and she knows it. She knows she is smart, and she is bound to have her own way if there is any possible way of gittin' it.

And she had jest put her foot right down, that have that Fair she would. And like as not if she hadn't got it she would have throwed herself and kicked. I shouldn't wonder a mite if she had.

But she jest clawed right in, and tore round and acted, and jawed, and coaxed, and kinder cried, and carried the day, jest as spilte children will, more'n half the time.

Not but what New York wuz a-cuttin' up and a-actin' jest as bad, accordin' to its age.

But Chicago wuz younger and spryer, and could kick stronger and cut up higher.

New York wuz older and lamer, as you may say, its jints wuz stiffer, and it had lost some of its faculties, which made it dretful bad for her.

It wuz forgetful; it had spells of kinder losin' its memory, and had had for years.

Now, when the Great General died, why New York cut up fearful a-fightin' for the honor of havin' him laid to rest in its borders.

Why, New York fairly riz up and kicked higher than you could have spozed it wuz possible for her to kick at her age, and hollered louder than you could have spozed it wuz possible with her lungs.

When Washington, the Capital of this Great Republic, expressed a desire to have the Saviour of his Country sleep by the side of the Founder of it—why, New York acted fairly crazy, and I believe she wuz for a spell. Anyway, I believe she had a spazzum.

Her wild demeanor wuz such, her snorts, her oritorys, resounded on every side, and wuz heard all over the land. She acted crazy as a loon till she got her way.

She promised if she could have the Hero sleep there, she would build a monument that would tower up to the skies.

She would build a monument that would tower up to the skies.

The most stupendious, the most impressive work of art that wuz ever wrought by man.

Wall, she got her way. Why, she cut up so, that she had to have it, seemin'ly.

Wall, did she do as she agreed? No, indeed.

She had one of her forgetful spells come right on her, a sort of a stupor, I guess, a-follerin' on after a bein' too wild and crazy about gittin' her way.

And anyway, year after year passed, and no monument wuz raised, not a sign of one. She lied, and she didn't seem to care if she had lied.

There the grave of the Great One wuz onmarked by even a decent memorial, let alone the great one they said they would raise.

And when the Great Ones of the Old World—the renowned in Song and Story and History—when they ariv in New York, most their first thoughts wuz to visit the Grand Tomb of our Hero—

The one who their rulers had delighted to honor—the one who had been welcomed in the dazzlin' halls of their Kings. And them halls had felt honored to have his shadow rest on 'em as he passed through 'em to audiences with royalty.

They journeyed to that tomb. Some on 'em had been used to stand by the tombs of their own great dead under the magestic aisles of Westminster Abbey, whose lofty glories dwarfs the human form almost to a pigmy.

Some had stood by the white marble poem of the Tag Megal in India, wherein a royal soul has carved his love for a woman. If that race, to whom we send missionaries to civilize them, could raise such a tomb over its dead, and a woman too, who had done no great things, only loved the man who raised this incomparable monument over her—what could they expect to find raised by this great and dominant race over the dead form of the man who had saved the hull country from ruin?

So with feelin's of awe and wonder in their hearts, expectin' to see they knew not what, the awestruck, admirin' foreigner paused before the tomb of the Great Leader—and he see nothin'. Not even a respectable grave-stun, such as you see in any New England graveyard. (Or that has been the case till very lately. But now things look a little brighter in the monument line.)

But it has been a shame, and a burnin' one, so burnin' that it has seemed to me that it would take all the cool blue waters that glide along below, a-complainin' of the slight and insult to our Hero—it would take more than all these waters to wash it out and make the country clean agin.

But she had one of her spells, and whether she wuz well or whether she wuz sick, New York lied jest like a dog about it.

Whether she wuz crazy or not, the fact remained that she had bragged, and then gin out; had promised, and not performed.

I believe she wuz out of her head.

Then there wuz the same kind of a performance she went through with the Goddess of Liberty.

When France had gin that beautiful and most wondeful creeter to us as a present, it looked sort o' shabby in New York to not provide a platform for that female to stand up on.

Now, didn't it? She a-offerin' to light up the world if she only had a place to stand up on—and the great continent of America not bein' willin' to gin it to her.

She a-offerin' to light up the world, if she only had a place to stand up on.

New York talked—oh, yes, it wuz a-goin' to do great things! Oh, what a big, noble door-step it wuz a-layin' out to rize up for that goddess to stand on!

But there it wuz, New York had one of her spells agin, lost her faculties, forgot all about what she said she wuz a-goin' to do—and left that noble female, left that princely present to lay round in a heap, a perfect imposition to France and to human nater.

The idee of a goddess with no place to stand up on! The Great Republic a-stretchin' out on each side, and no place for her feet to rest on.

And no knowin' but she would have been a-layin' round to-day, all broke up and onjinted, if it hadn't been for a public-sperited newspaper man, who took the matter up, and worked at it, and called public attention to it, till at last it got a place for the goddess to be histed up on her feet, and rest her legs a spell, all crumpled up under her.

The idee of a goddess, and such a goddess, a layin' round with her legs all doubled up under her, and all broke up—the idee!

Then it got the Centenial Exhibition there. And it wuzn't no more than right, what it promised and bound itself to do, to make some triumphal arches for the processions to walk under, a-triumphin'.

Why, she vowed and declared solemn that she would make 'em if she could have it there.

They wuz goin' to be, accordin' to her tell, accordin' to what New York said about it, about the most gorgus and impressive arches that ever wuz arched over anybody, fur or near, anywhere.

Now, after it got the exhibition there, did it make 'em? No, indeed.

It had another spell come on, clean forgot all about it. And there the Columbian Exposition come and no arch for it to walk under, not a arch, only some old boards nailed up, some like a barn door, only higher.

Wall, you see these kind o' crazy spells, losin' its faculties every once in a while, made it dretful hard for New York.

I believe she would got the World's Fair if it hadn't been for that. But the question would keep a-comin' up, and the country had to pay attention to it—what if she got the World's Fair, and then had another fit! What if she had another spell come on, and forgot all about it!

And lo! and behold! have the World's Fair sail up and halt in front of her and she not have any place for it, and mebby be out of her head so she couldn't remember nothin', wouldn't remember who Christopher wuz, or anythin'.

No; the hull country felt that it wuz resky, and that, I have always spozed, wuz one reason why New York lost it.

And then, as I have said heretofore, Chicago wuz jest bound to have it, and she did.

But then, if you'll believe it, jest like any spilte young child that cries for another big apple when both its hands are full of 'em—it hadn't no place for it.

It had got the World's Fair, but hadn't got any place to put it. The idee!

Jest crazy to have it, cried and yelled, and acted, (metafor) till it got it. And then, lo! and behold! where wuz she goin' to put it? Hadn't a place big enough, or ready for it.

Of course she had the lake. But she didn't want to drownd it, after makin' such a fuss over it; it wouldn't have seemed very horsepitable. And she didn't really want to put it out onto a prairie. And she couldn't put it right round under her feet, where it would git trampled on, and git bruised, and knocked round; that wouldn't be a-usin' Christopher Columbus as he ort to be used.

And, as I say, she wuz honorable enough to not want to put it in the lake.

And so, after worryin' and takin' on, and talkin' month after month about it, she concluded to split the Christopher Columbus World's Fair into some like this—put the Christopher part on a stagin' built out into the lake, and the Columbus part back a ways into the park.

Wall, I didn't make no objections to it; I thought I wouldn't say a word or make a move to break it up, or make their burdens any heavier. No; I jest stood still and see it go on.

Only I did talk some out to one side to my Josiah about it, about the curiosity of their behavior.

Sez I, "It seems as if, after what Columbus done for the country, he ort to be kep hull, and not be broke into, and split apart. But howsumever," sez I, "I sha'n't make any move to stop it."

And Josiah sez "he guessed it wouldn't make much difference whether I made a move or not. He guessed Chicago could take care of its own business, and would do it."

I wuz a-pinnin' the outside onto a comforter, and I had a lot of pins in my mouth, but before I put 'em in I sez—

"Wall, it looks kind o' shiftless to me, to think they hadn't no place to put it, after all their actions."

And as I resoomed my work, he went on:

"Now, you imagine how you would feel, Samantha Allen, if you had bought a big elephant, bigger than Jumbo, and you knew it wuz on its way here, approachin' nearer and nearer—had got as fur as Old Bobbet's, and we hadn't a place to put it in that wuz suitable and strong enough—we couldn't git her head hardly in the stable, we couldn't leave her out doors to rampage round and step over barns and knock down housen, and we couldn't git it offen our hands any way, kill it, or give it away—how would you feel?"

We couldn't git her head hardly in the stable.

Then I took my pins out of my mouth, and sez—

"I wouldn't have bought the elephant till I had measured my barn."

Then I put my pins in my mouth agin, for I thought like as not that I wouldn't have to use my tongue agin. I didn't lay out to, for my mouth wuz full, and I wuz in a hurry for my comforter.

But Josiah sez, "O shaw! lots of folks buy things they hadn't no idee of buyin' till they see somebody else wants 'em bad.

"I remember that is the way I come to buy that two-year colt; I hadn't a idee of wantin' it till I see Old Bobbet and Deacon Sypher jest sot on havin' it, and that whetted me right up, and I wuz jest bound to have that colt, and did. I didn't expect to find it profitable any of the time. I knew it would kick like the old Harry and smash things, and it did.

"And that is jest the way with Chicago; she knew the World's Fair wuzn't over and above profitable to have round, besides bein' dretful bothersome, but she see New York and St. Louis a-dickerin' for it, and then she wanted it."

"Wall," sez I, considerable dry and sharp, for I had three pins in my mouth at the time—

"She has got it!"

"Yes," sez Josiah, "and you'll see that she will put in and work lively, now she's got it; she'll show what she can do."

"Yes," sez I, dryer than ever, and more sharper; "before she got a stun laid for a foundation to rest the World's Fair on, before she got a stick laid for Christopher to plant one of his feet on, she begun to buy up hull streets of housen to rig up for saloons, to make men drunk as fools, to make murderers and assassins of 'em.

"I wonder what Columbus would say if he could stand there and see it go on."

"He'd probable step in and take a drink," sez Josiah.

"Never," sez I. "The eye that could discover without actual sight, the soul that could apprehend without comprehension—that could look fur off into the mist of the onknown, and see a New World risin' up before his rapt vision—such a eye and such a soul didn't depend on bad whiskey for its stimulent. No, indeed!

"He didn't lay round in bar-rooms with a red nose, and a stagger onto him. He wuz up and about, with his senses all straight, and the star he follered wuzn't the light of a corner saloon.

"No, indeed! He see the invisible. He wuz beloved of God, and hearn secrets that coarser minds round him never dremp of. He didn't try to cloy up them Heavenly senses with whiskey. No, indeed!

"And Isabella now, if that likely creeter could be sot down in front of that long street of grog-shops, she would almost be sorry she ever sold her jewelry, she would be so sot back by seein' that awful sight."

"O shaw!" sez Josiah, "she didn't sell her jewelry."

"Wall, she wuz willin' to," sez I.

"Id'no as she wuz. She jest talked about it; wimmen must talk or bust anyway, they are made so."

"How are men made?" sez I dryly, as dry as ever a corncob wuz, after many years.

"Oh, men are made so's they try to answer wimmen some—they have to; they have to keep their hand in so's to not lose their speech on that very account. I presume Columbus knew all about such things. He had two wives; he knew what trouble wuz."

I see that man wuz a-tryin' every way to draw my attention away offen them long streets of saloons built up in Chicago, and I wouldn't suckumb to it. So I branched right out, and back agin, and sez I—

"The idee of a civilized city, after eighteen hundred years of Christianaty—the idee of their doin' sunthin' that if savage Africans or Inguns wuz a-doin' the World would ring with it, and missionaries would start for 'em on the run, or by the carload.

"There is a awful fuss made about a cannibal eatin' a man now and then, makin' a good plain stew of him, or a roast, and that is the end of it; they eat up his flesh, but they don't make no pretensions to fry up his soul; they leave that free and pure, and it goes right up to Heaven.

"But here in our Christian land, in city and country, this great man-eatin' trade costs the country over a billion dollars a year, and devours one hundred and twenty thousand men each year, and destroys the soul and mind first, before it tackles the body.

"They go as fur ahead of cannibals in this wickedness as eternity is longer than time.

"And the Goverment, this great beneficent Goverment, that looks down with pity on oncivilized races—the Goverment of the United States sells and rents this man-eater and soul-destroyer at so much a year.

"If I had my way," sez I, a-gittin' madder and madder the more I thought on't—

"If I had my way I'd bring over a hull drove of cannibals and Hottentots, etc., and let 'em camp round Uncle Sam a spell, and try to reform him.

"And the first thing I would have 'em make that old man do would be to empty out his pockets, turn 'em right inside out and empty out all the accursed gains he had got from this shameful traffic. And then I'd have them cannibals jest trot that old man right round to every saloon and rum-hole he had rented and wuz a partner in the proceeds, and make him lay to and empty out every barrel and hogset of whiskey and beer and cider, and make him do the luggin' and liftin' his own self.

"And then I'd let them Hottentots drive him round a spell to all the houses of infamy in which he wuz in partnership, and I'd make him haul some matches out of his pockets and set fire to 'em, and burn 'em all down, every one of 'em.

"And then I'd let the old man set down and rest a spell, and let them heathens instruct him and teach him a spell their way of man-eatin'. And I'll bet after a while they could git the old man up to their level, so if he sot out to kill a man, he would jest kill him, and not destroy his soul first. For he hain't upon a level with 'em now," sez I, a-lookin' firm and decided at my pardner.

And he sez, "I shouldn't think you would dast to talk so about Uncle Sam; you have always pretended to like him—you would never bear to hear a word agin him."

"Wall," sez I, "it is because I like him that I want him to do right. Do you spoze a mother don't like a child when she spanks him for temper, or blisters him for croup, or gives him worm-wood for worms?

"I love that old man, and wish him awful well, and when I see him so noble and sot up in lots of things, it jest makes me mad as a hen to see him so awful mean and little in others.

"I love that old man, and wish him awful well."

"I wouldn't think I liked him half so well if I sot down and see him stalk right on to his own ruin, and not try to stop him.

"Do you spoze a ma would set and let the child she loved throw himself into the fire because he got mad? No; she would haul him back, and the more he kicked and struggled the more she would hang on, and like as not spank him.

"I want this country to be the Light of the World, the favored of Heaven, and the admiration of all the different nations that will camp round it at the Christopher Columbus Exhibition. But they can't be expected to uphold no such doin's as these, let alone admirin' of 'em."

Sez Josiah, "It beats all how wimmen will run on if a man gits drunk. Why don't you pitch into him, instead of blamin' the Goverment?"

And I sez, "If you go to work to move a tree you don't pull on the top branches. Of course they are more showy and easy to git holt of. But you have to dig the roots out if you want to move the tree."

Josiah looked real indifferent. He hain't like me in lots of things; he is more for dabblin' on the surface than divin' down under the water for first causes, and he spoke up the minute I had finished my last words, and sez he—

"Krit and Thomas Jefferson are a-comin' here to dinner; they are goin' up to Zoar on business, and are a-goin' to stop as they come back. And I should think it wuz about time you got sunthin' started."

And I sez, "The boys a-comin' here to dinner! Why'e—why didn't you tell me so?"

And I got right up and went to makin' a lemon puddin'.

CHAPTER IV.

I knew Thomas J. wuz a-layin' out to go up to Zoar some day that week to see about a young chap to stay in his office while he wuz at the World's Fair, and it seemed that Krit had gone along for company and for the ride.

Them two young fellers love to be together. They are both as smart as whips—the very keenest, snappiest kind of whips.

Wall, I laid out to git a good dinner, that wuz my calm intention; and I sent out Josiah Allen to ketch two plump pullets, I a-layin' out to stuff 'em with the particular kind of dressin' that Thomas J. is partial to. It is a good dressin'.

And then I wuz a-layin' out to have some nice mashed-up potatoes, some early sweet peas, some lemon puddin', besides some coffee, jest as Thomas J. likes it—rich, golden coffee, with plenty of cream in it; and then besides I wuz goin' to have one or two vegetables that Josiah liked, and some jellys, etc., that Krit wuz particular fond of. Oh, I wuz goin' to have a good dinner, there hain't a doubt of that! Oh, and I wuz goin' to have some delicious soup too, to start off the dinner with! I got the receipt of Job Pressley's wife and improved on it, (though I wouldn't want her to know I said it, she is jealous dispositioned.) But I did.

Wall, if you'll believe it, jest as I wuz a-finishin' my dressin', addin' the last ingregient to it, and my mind wuz all on a strain to have it jest right—

All of a sudden Josiah Allen rushed in all out of breath, and hollered to me for a rope.

"A rope?" sez I, bein' took aback.

"Yes, a long, stout rope," sez he, a-standin' still and a-breathin' hard. Why, he looked that wild and agitated and wrought up, that the idee passed through my mind:

Is that man a-contemplatin' suicide? Does he want to hang himself?

But, as I sez, the idee only jest passed through my fore-top; it didn't find any encouragement to stay—it went through on the trot, as you may say.

No, my noble-minded pardner never would commit suicide, I knew. But his looks wuz fearful, and I sez, almost tremblin'—

"What do you want the rope for? I don't know of any rope, only the bed-cord up in the old chamber."

At these words, that agitated, skairt man rushed right upstairs, I a-follerin' him, summer-savory still in my hands, and fear and tremblin' in my mean.

And I see him dash up to the old bedstead in the attick, dash off the bedclothes and the feather-bed, and beginnin' oncordin' of it.

I then laid hands on him, and commanded him to desist.

"I won't desist," sez he, "I won't desist."

There wuz I, still a-holdin' him by the back of his frock—he had on his barn clothes.

"Then do you tell your pardner the meanin' of your actions imegetly and to once."

"I hain't got time," sez he, and oh! how he wuz onriddlin' that old bedstead of the rope; the fuzz fairly flew offen the rope as he yanked it through them holes, and twice I wuz hit by it voyalently in my face, as I strove to hold him, and elicit some information out of him.

But I could git nothin' but hard breathin' and muttered oathes till the bed-cord wuz all onloosened, and then he gathered it over his arm and started on the run for the door, I a-follerin'.

And then I see that there stood Old Bobbet, Sime Yerden, Deacon Sypher, and, in fact, most all the men in the neighborhood and some beyend it, some from the Loontown road, and some from over towards Shackville. There wuz more'n twenty of 'em.

And I sez, and I almost fainted as I sez it—

"Has another war broke loose, or is it a wild animal from a circus? Tell me, oh, tell me what it is!"

And one on 'em hollered, "It is a wild beast in human shape, but he won't be a wild beast much longer!"

And he pinted to the rope he had on his arm.

And I see then the fearful meanin' hangin' round that bed-cord. I see that others had 'em, and I see that hangin' wuz about to take place and ensue. And I besought Josiah Allen "to pause, to stay a little, to tell me what it all meant, to not take the law into his own hands."

I poured out words like a flood, I wuz inkoherent in the extreme, and my words wuz vain.

But Josiah Allen—oh, how that man loves me! He darted back, throwed a paper at my feet, and hollered—

"That will explain, Samantha!" And then he wuz gone; I see 'em divide into four parties, and go towards the woods, and towards the hills, and towards the creek, and towards the beaver medder, each party havin' a rope, and I sez solemn like, before I thought—

"May God have mercy on your poor soul!"

I spoze I meant the one they wuz after, and mebby I meant them that wuz after him, I don't know; I wuz too inkoherent and wrought up to know what I did mean.

But I know I sot down and read that paper as quick as I could find my specks. And I well remember that after huntin' high and low for 'em and all over the house with tremblin' knees and shaky hands cold as a frog's, I found 'em on my own fore-top, and I sot right down in my tracts and read.

Well, it wuz enough to melt the heart of a stun, a granit stun, and as I sot there and read, the tears jest run down my face in a stream; why, they fell so that they wet the front of my gingham dress wet as sop, and ontirely onbeknown to me.

But I kep a-thinkin' to myself, "Oh, that poor little creeter! Oh, them poor, poor creeters that loved her! Oh, that poor mother!" And then anon I would say to myself, "Oh, what if it wuz my Tirzah Ann! What if it wuz the Babe! Oh, that villian; may the Lord punish him!"

And that is jest the way I sot, and wept, and cried, and cried and wept.

You see, the way it wuz, there wuz a sweet little girl, only ten years old, decoyed by a lyin' excuse from her warm, cosey home at midnight by a villian, and took through the snowy, icy streets to her doom.

Her little cold body wuz found in an empty old barn, and her destroyer, her murderer, had fled. But men wuz on his tracts, the hull country wuz roused, and they wuz huntin' him down, as if he wuz a wild animal, as indeed he wuz.

But anon, as I read the paper over again, I see these words—"The man was intoxicated."

And then I begun to weep on the other end of my handkerchief (metafor).

And then, when other accounts come out, and the man wuz ketched, he swore, and swore solemn, too, that he did not remember one single solitary thing after he left that saloon where he got his drink till he sobered up and found himself by the side of that little dead body.

And other witnesses swore that they see him drunk as a fool before he sot out on his murderous and worse than murderous assault.

But from the time of the first tidings that come of the deed that had been done—though the excitement wuz more rampant that I ever knew it to be, and every single man in the community wuz out bloodthirsty for his death, and every party a-carry-in' a rope to hang him, and every woman a-lookin' out eager to see him hung, and all on 'em a-cursin' him, and a-weepin' over what he had done—

Durin' all this time, not one word did I hear uttered agin the cause of his crime, agin the man who sold him what made him a murderer, and worse, or the man that supplied the saloon with this damnable liquid.

No, not a single word did I hear from a Jonesvillian, male or female. And not one word from my pardner, though his excitement wuz so extreme that that night, jest about dusk, he rushed out thinkin' that he had got the murderer, and throwed the rope round Deacon Sypher, who had come over to borrow an auger. And once in a similer way he ketched Old Bobbet, his excitement and zeal wuz so rampant and intense.

He rushed out and throwed the rope around Deacon Sypher.

Them old men wuz mad as hens, and cause enough they had, though they forgive him when they see what a state he wuz in, and they jest about as bad themselves.

But not a word from them, nor from any one did I hear durin' the hull time the excitement rained—and oh! how it did rain—about the cause of the crime.

Not one man waded in and dived down into the deep undercurrent of causes, that strange deep that underlays all human actions.

And once durin' the last day's hunt for the murderer, who wuz hidin' round somewhere—it wuz spozed in the woods—I see as I looked out of my kitchen winder, at a party headed for our swamp, one man fur more ferocious actin' than any I had seen; he wuz a-hollerin' wilder, and he carried a fur longer rope.

And I asked my companion who that man wuz that acted madder and fur more fiercer than any of the rest and more anxious to git holt of the escapin' man, so he could be hung up to once to the highest tree that could be found.

I hearn him say that right out of my own kitchen winder—I hearn him say—

"We won't wait for no law; if we only ketch him we will hang him up so high that the buzzards can't git him."

And then he yelled out savage and fierce and started off on a run for the swamp, the rest of the men applaudin' him up high, and follerin' on after him.

And Josiah told me that wuz the saloon-keeper up to Zoar.

Sez I, "The very man that sold that poor sinner the licker on that night?"

"Yes," sez Josiah.

"Wall," sez I, "the rope ort to be used on his own neck."

And Josiah Allen acted awfully horrified at my idee, and asked me "if I wuz as crazy as a loon?"

And sez he, "He has been one of the fiercest ones to head him off that has been out."

And I sez dryly—dry as a chip, "He wuzn't so fierce to head him off the night he sold him the whiskey and hard cider." Sez I, "That headin' off would have amounted to sunthin'."

And agin I sez, "The rope ort to be used on his own neck, if it is on anybody's, his and Uncle Sam's."

And agin Josiah Allen asked me, "If I wuz as crazy as a dumb loon and a losin' my faculties—what few of 'em you ever had," sez he.

And I sez, "The two wuz in partnership together, and they got the man to do the murder." Sez I, "Most all the murders that are done in this country are done by that firm—the Goverment and the Saloon-keeper. And when their poor tools, that they have whetted up for bloodshed, swing out through their open doors and cut and slash and mow down their ghastly furrows of crime and horrer, who is to blame?"

And Josiah turned over the almanac to the yeller cover and perused it, so's to show his perfect and utter indifference and contempt for my words.

Wall, they ketched the man a day or two after, about sundown. He had been a little ahead of his pursuers, a-dodgin' 'em this way and that way, jest like a fox a-dodgin' a pack of hounds.

His old rubber boots wuz all wore offen him, his clothes hangin' in rags and tatters where he had rushed through the woods and swamps, his feet and hands all froze. Half starved, and almost idiotic with fear and remorse and the effects of the poisoned licker and doctored cider he had drinked, he wuz the most pitiful and wretched-lookin' object I ever see in my hull life.

And it happened he wux took a little over a mile from us, and he wuz brung right by our door.

There wuz some officers in the party, so they interfered and kep the mob from hangin' him right up by the neck.

They said they had to hold that saloon-keeper to keep his hands offen him, and they said that in spite of all he did git the rope round him.

But the officers interfered, and after that they had to hold the saloon-keeper to keep him from the prisoner.

And I sez, when Josiah was a-praisin' up the saloon-keeper's zeal, and how the officers had to hold him—

I sez, "It is a pity the officers didn't hold him in the first place, and then all the horrer and tragedy might have been saved."

But my pardner wouldn't even notice a thing I said. He felt, I could see, that my remarks wuz indeed beneath his notice.

Wall, I stood and see this poor, weak, despairin' victim of rum dragged off to a felon's doom, dragged off to the scaffold, and one of his chief draggers wuz the one that caused his crime—caused it accordin' to law. And the rest of his draggers wuz the ones who had voted to have the trade of murderer makin' and child killin' and villian breedin' perpetuated and kep up.

And the Goverment of the United States hung him, the same Goverment that wuz in partnership with that saloon up in Zoar, and took part of the pay for makin' this man murder that innocent little girl.

Wall, Josiah and me, we went to that funeral. I felt that I must go, and so did he; it wuz only about five milds from here, in the Methodist Episcopal Meetin'-House up to Zoar.

Her father and mother wuz members in good standin'. Lots of Jonesvillians went to the funeral; there hadn't been such a excitement in Zoar and Jonesville sence Seth Widrik murdered his wife's mother with a broad axe (and that wuz done through whiskey, so they say; it wuz done before my time).

The Meetin'-House in Zoar wuz crowded to its utmost capacity and the ceilin'. And seats wuz sot in all the aisles, and the pulpit stairs wuz full of folks, and the door-steps, and the front yard wuz packed full. We went early, and got a seat.

Wall, Josiah and me, we went to that funeral.

All the ministers of Zoar, and Jonesville, and Loontown, and Shackville wuz there, and of all the sermons that wuz preached—wall, it wuz a sight. The tears jest run down most everybody's face, and when the mourners wuz addressed, why, big, hefty men all round me jest boohooed right out. Why, it wuz enough to melt a stun.

Then the preacher depictered that little golden head that had made sunshine in her home through the darkest days, as bein' brung low by an asassin. Then he spoke of that sweet little silvery voice a-ringin' through the home and the hearts of her father and mother, of how it wuz lifted up in vain appeal to her slayer that dretful night.

Then he spoke of the tender white arms that clung so lovingly round her parent's neck, how they wuz lifted up in frantic appeal and vain to her destroyer that bleak night, and wuz now folded up to be lifted no more till she met that man at the bar of God. And then the little arm would be raised and point him out "murderer." The sweet eyes, full of God's avenging wrath, would smite him as accursed from God's presence forever.

And then he depictered it all how she would be taken to His own heart by Him "who said that He would carry the lambs in His bosom." And this poor wounded lamb, He would hold more tenderly than any other, while the murderer! the villian! the asassin! would be hurled downward into everlasting burning, where he would dwell forever and forever in the midst of unquenchable flames, in partial payment of that deed of hisen.

Why, when he said them last words about the prisoner, folks looked so relieved and pleased that their tears almost dried.

And the saloon-keeper, who sot right in front of me, hollered out—"Amen, amen, so mote it be!"

He wuz a Methodist, he had a right to holler. And folks looked approvin' at him for it.

But I didn't—no, fur from it. I kep up a-thinkin' what I read—

"That the prisoner wuz a good-hearted man, only drink made a fiend and a fool of him." And that he said solemn "that he did not remember one thing that had taken place after he had taken his three first drinks up in that saloon, till he sobered up and found himself in that deserted old barn, with the little dead body by his side, little delicate creeter, dead and frozen, with all of the black future of desperate remorse and agony for him a-lookin' at him in the stare of her open blue eyes."

Sweet little forget-me-not eyes, like two spring violets frozen in a drift of snow. What strange things I read in 'em, with my tears a-fallin' fast onto 'em!

They seemed full of mute questionin'. They seemed to be lookin' up through the blue sky clear up to God's throne. They seemed to almost compel a answer from divine justice as to what wuz the cause of her murder. To appeal dumbly to the God of Justice and Mercy to wipe out this curse from our land—the curse that wuz causin' jest such murders, and jest such agonies, all over our land—sendin' out to the gallows and down to perdition jest such criminals.

The little coffin had to be put out in the yard, as I say, so the crowd could walk past it.

And there the little golden head and white face lay for 'em all to see. But nobody seemed to see in 'em what I see. For amongst the many curses of the murderer that I heard, not one word did I hear about the man that caused the murder, about the voters and upholders of that man, about the Goverment that wuz in partnership with that man and went shares with him, and for the sake of a few cents had dealt out that agony, that shame, and that criminality.

Not one word did I hear about the Goverment that wuz in partnership with that man.

Wall, the little coffin wuz closed at last, the mother wuz carried faintin', and lookin' like a dead woman, back to her empty, darkened home. The father, with a face like white marble, curbin' down his own agonized grief so's to take care of her, and try to bring her back to the world agin, so they could together face its blackness and emptiness.

And the crowd dispersed, lookin' forward to the excitement of the hangin'.

And the saloon-keeper went home and mebby counted over the few cents that accrued to him out of the hull enterprise.

And the wise male voters returned, a-calculatin' (mebby) on votin' for license so's to improve the condition of their towns.

And Uncle Sam, poor, childish old creeter, mebby wrote down aginst this hull job—"three cents revenue." And mebby he rattled them cents round in his old pockets. I don't know what he did; I hain't no idee what he won't take it into his old head to do.

And the prisoner sot in his dark, cold cell, and didn't appreciate, mebby, the wisdom of the wise law-makers increasin' our revenues by such means.

No; he had all he could do to set and look at the bare stun walls, and figger out this sum—on one side the three cents profit; and substract from it—a bright young life ended, lifelong agony to the hearts that loved her.

His own old mother's and sister's heads and hearts bowed down in shame and sorrow.

His own hopeful life cut short at the edge of the scaffold, and for the future—what?

He couldn't quite work that out, for this text kep comin' into his sum—"No drunkard shall inherit eternal life."

And then another text kep a-comin' up—

"Cursed is he that putteth the cup to his neighbor's lips."

No, he didn't feel the triumphant wisdom of the licker traffic. He wouldn't feel like rattlin' the three cents round in his pockets if he had 'em, but he didn't have 'em. His sum, no matter how many times he figgered it out, stood nothin' but orts, nothin' but clear loss to him, here and hereafter.

Wall, I have rode off considerable of a ways with my wagon hitched on in front of my horse, and to go back to the horse's head agin.

I had a good dinner by the time the boys got back from Zoar—a excellent one.

And in order to go on with my story, and keep right by that horse's head I spoke of, I will pass over Josiah's excitement when he come in jest before dinner, and throwed his rope down in the corner of the kitchen; but suffice it to say, his excitement wuz nearly rampant.

I will pass over the two boys' indignant anger, which wuz jest the same as mine, only stronger, as much stronger as man's strength is stronger than a woman's.

Thomas J. had been successful in gittin' the young chap; he wuz a-comin' when he wuz wanted. Thomas J. wuzn't goin' to wait till the last minute before he engaged him; our son is a wonderful good business man—wonderful.

And everything seemed to bid fair that we should git off with no hendrances to the World's Fair, to pay our honor and our respects to Christopher Columbus.

And oh, how I did honor that man! I sot there in my peaceful kitchen that afternoon, after the boys had gone away, perfectly satisfied with the dinner I had gin 'em.

And when I had got my mind a little offen that poor little girl and her poor drunken destroyer, I begun to think agin of Christopher Columbus, and what he had done, and what he hadn't done, till I declare for't I got fairly lost in thoughts.

I thought of how he had been scorfed at and jerred at for not thinkin' as other folks did. And how he kep workin', and hopin', and believin', and persistin' in thinkin' that he wuz in the right on't, and kep on a lookin' over the wide waste of waters for the New Land.

And I thought to myself how I would enjoy a good visit with Christopher, and how he would sympathize with us, who, though we may be scorfed at by our pardners, and the world.

Yet can't help a-lookin' off over the troubled waves of unjust laws, and cruel old customs, a-tryin' to catch a glimpse of the New and Freer Land, that our hopes and our divine intuitions tell us is there beyend the shadows, a-waitin' for free men and free wimmen.

Yes, I did feel at that time how conjenial Christopher Columbus would have been to me.

As I have said more formally, Christopher wuz sot up in my mind to a almost tottlin' hite, on account of several things he did, and several things he didn't do.

Yes; Christopher wuz sot up in my mind to a almost tottlin' hite, on account of several things he did, and several things he didn't do.

Now, if anybody to-day branches out into any new and beautiful belief and practice—anything that is beyend the vision of more carnal-minded people—

Why they raise the cry to once, "Let us cling to common sense. Let us be guided by what we see and know. Don't let us float out on any new theory. Don't less go out of sight of the Shore of old Practice, and Custom."

And lots of times them rare souls to whom the secrets of God are revealed—them who see the High White Ideal lightnin' the Darkness—the glowin' form of a New Truth shinin' out amidst the thick clouds overhead—lots of times they git bewildered and skairt by the mockin' voices about them. They drop their eyes before the insultin', oncomprehendin' sneers of the multitude, and fall into commonplace ways, and walks, to please the commonplace people about them. Jest dragged down by them Mockers and Scoffers.

Some of 'em mebby united to 'em by links of earth-made metal, Sons of God married to the Daughters of men, mebby, and castin' their kingly crowns at the feet of a Human Love.

Did Columbus do so? No, indeed. I dare presume to say that the more Miss Columbus nagged at him the more sotter he grew in his own views.

(I have used this simely on this occasion on the side of males, but it is jest as true on the side of females. For Inspiration and Genius when it falls from Heaven is jest as apt to descend and settle down onto a female's fore-top as a male's, and the blind and naggin' pardner is jest as apt to be a male—jest exactly.)

But as I wuz a-sayin', the more Columbus wuz mocked at—the more they jeered and sneered at him, the more stiddy and constant he pursued after the Land that appeared only to his prophetic eyes.

Day after day, when he wuz tired out, beat completely out by the incomprehension, and weary doubts, and empty denials of the multitude—then, like a breath of balm, came to his weary forward the soft gale from the land he sought; he saw in his own mind the tall pines reach up into the blue skies, the rich bloom and greenness of its Savannas; he inhaled the odor of rare blossoms that the Old World never saw, and then he riz up agin, refreshed, as it were, and ready to press forwards.

He saw in his own mind the tall pines reach up into the blue skies.

Yes, in every country, through all time, there has always been some Columbus, walkin' with his feet on the ground amongst mortals, and his head in the Heavens amongst Gods.

He has oftenest been poor, and always misunderstood, and undervalued, by the grosser souls about him.

The discoverers, the inventors, whom God loves best, it must be, sence He confides in 'em, and tells 'em things He keeps hid from the World. Them who apprehend while yet they cannot comprehend.

And that is what we have got to do lots of times if we git along any in this World, if we calculate to git out of its Swamps and Morasses onto any considerable rise of ground.

You can't foller a ground-mice or a snail, if you lay out to elevate yourself; no, you must foller a Star.

You have got to keep your eyes up above the ground, or your feet will never take you up any mountain side.

And how them mariners tried to make Columbus turn back after he had at last, through all his tribulations, sot sail on the broad, treacherous Ocean—jest think of his tribulations before he started!

Troubles with poverty, and ignorance, and unbelief, and perils by foes, and perils by false friends, and perils by long delay.

How for years and years he carried round them strong beliefs of hisen, ofttimes in a hungry and faint body, and couldn't git nobody to believe in 'em—couldn't git nobody to even hear about 'em.

Year after year did he toil and endeavor to git somebody to listen to his plans, and glowin' hopes.

Year after year, while the lines deepened on his patient face, and the hopes that wuz glowin' and eager became deep and fervent, and a part of him.

How strange, how strange and sort o' pitiful, this one man out of a world full of men and wimmen, this one man with his tired feet on the dust and worn sand of the Old World, and his head and heart in the New World.

No one else of the world full of men and wimmen to believe as he did—no one else to be even willin' to hear him talk about his dreams, his hopes, and impassioned beliefs.

No; and I don't know but Columbus would have dropped right down in his tracts, and we wouldn't have been discovered to this day, if a woman hadn't stepped in, and gin the seal of her earnest trust to the ideal of the ambitious man.

He a-willin' to plough the new path into the ontried fields, she a-bein' willin' to hold the plough, as you may say, or, at all events, to help him in every way in her power—with all her womanly faith, and all her ear-rings, and breast-pins, etc., etc.

With all her womanly faith, and all her ear-rings and breast-pins, etc., etc.

She, a female woman, out of all that world full of folks, she it wuz alone that stood out boldly the friend of Columbus and Discovery.

"Male and female created He them." Another deep instance of that great truth in life and in nature, and in all matters relatin' to the good of the world. "Male and female created He them."

The world will find it out after awhile, and so will Dr. Buckley.

Ferdinand wuz a good creeter—or that is, middlin' good; but his eye-sight wuzn't such as would see down clear through the truth of Columbuses theory.

And if folks set out to blame Ferdinand too much, let 'em pause and think what the World would say and do if a man should appear in our streets to-day, and say that he believed that he had proof that there wuz a vast, beautiful country a-layin' in the skies to the west of us beyend the clouds of the sunset, and he wanted to git money to build a air-ship to sail out to it.

How much money would he git? How much stock would he sell in that enterprise? How many men would he git to sail out with him on that voyage of Discovery? What would Vanderbilt and Russell Sage say to it?

What would Russell Sage say?

Why, they would say that the man wuz a fool, and that the only way to travel wuz on iron rails or steamships. They would say that there wuzn't any such land as he depictered. That it existed only in his crazy brain.

Wall, it wuz jest about as wild a idee that Ferdinand had to listen to; I d'no that he wuz any more to blame than they would be for not hearin' to it.

But Isabelle, she wuz built different. There wuz some divine atmosphere of Truth and Reality about this idee that reached her heart and mind. Her soul and mind bein' made in jest the right way to be touched by it.

She, too, wuz built on jest the right plan so she could apprehend what she could not yet comprehend. So she gin him her cordial sympathy, and also, as I said, her ear-rings, etc.

But after the years and years that he toiled and labored for the means to carry out his idees—after these long years of effort and hardship, and disappointments and delays—after his first vain efforts—after he did at last git launched out on the Ocean a-sailin' out on the broad, empty waste in search of sunthin' that he see only in his mind's eye—

How the storms beat on him—how the winds and waves buffeted him, and tried to drive him back—but—"No, no, he wuz bound for the New Land! he wuz bound for the West!"

How the sailors riz up and plead with him and begged him to turn back—but "No," sez he, "I go to the New Land!"

Then they would tell him that there wuzn't any such Land, and stick to it right up and down, and jeer at him.

Did it turn him round—"No! I sail onward," sez he, "I go to the West!"

Then the principalities and powers of the onseen World seemed to take it in hand and tried to drive him back. There wuz signs and omens seen that wuz reckoned disastrous, and threatened destruction.

Mebby the souls of them who had passed over from the New Land, mebby them disembodied faithful shades wuz a-tryin' to save their free sunny huntin' grounds from the hands of the invader, and their race from the fate that threatened 'em—mebby they hurled onseen tommyhawks, and shrieked down at 'em, tryin' to turn 'em back—

Mebby they did, and then agin mebby they didn't.

But anyway, there wuz lurid lightin' flashes that looked like flights of fiery arrows aimed at the heads of the Spanish seamen, and shriekin's of the tempest amidst the sails overhead that sounded like cries of anger, and distress, and warnin'.

Did Columbus heed them fearful warnin's and turn back? No; dauntless and brave, a-facin' dangers onseen, as well as seen, he sez—

"I sail onward!"

And so he did, and he sailed, and he sailed—and mebby his own brave heart grew sick and faint with lookin' on the trackless waste of waters round him, and no shore in sight for days, and for days, and for days.

But if it did, he give no signs of it—"I sail onward!" he sez.

And finally the lookout way up on the dizzy mast see a light way off on the horizon, and then the night came down dark, and when the sun wuz riz up—lo! right before 'em lay the shores of the New World. And the Man's and the Woman's belief wuz proved true—and the gainsayin' World wuz proved wrong. Success had come to 'em.

And after the doubt, and the danger, and the despair, and the discouragement had all been endured—after the ideal had been made real, why then it wuz considered quite easy to discover a New World.

It wuzn't considered very hard. Why, all you had to do wuz to sail on till you come to it.

After a thing is done it is easy enough.

Nowadays we are sot down before as great conundrums as Columbus wuz. The Old World groans under old abuses, and wrongs, and injustices. The old paths are dusty and worn with the feet of them who have marked its rocks and chokin' sands with their bleedin' feet, as they toiled on over 'em bearin' their crosses.

Dark clouds hang heavy over their paths—the atmosphere is chokin' and stiflin'.

Fur off, fresh and fair, lays the New Land of our ideal. The realm of peace, and justice to all, of temperance, and sanity, and love and joy.

Fur off, fur off, we hear the melodious swash of its waves on its green banks—we see fur off the gleam of its white, glory-lit mountain-tops.

Men have gin their strength and their lives for this ideal, this vision of glory and freedom.

Wimmen have took their jewels from their bosom, and gin 'em to this cause of Human Right. Gin 'em with breakin' hearts, and white lips that tried to smile, as the last kiss of lover and son, husband and brother, rested on 'em.

Yes, men and wimmen both have seen that Ideal Land, that New Land of Liberty and Love. They have apprehended it with finer senses than comprehension—have seen it with the clearer light of the soul's eyes.

Some green boughs from its high palms have been washed out on the swellin' waves that lay between us and that Land, and floated to our feet. Sometimes, when the air wuz very still and hushed, and a Presence seemed broodin' on the rapt listnin' earth, we have looked fur, fur up into the clear depths of blue above us, and we have ketched the distant glimpse of birds of strange plumage onknown to this Old World. Fur off, fur off their silvery wings have floated, a-comin' from the West, from the land that lays beyend the sunset's golden glory.

Some of the light of that New Country has shone on us in inspired eyes, some of its strange language has been hearn by us from inspired lips.

But oh! the wide, pathless sea that lays between us and that land of full Fruition and Glory and Freedom.

Shall we set down on the shores of our Old World, and give up the hope and glory of the New? Shall we listen to the jeers and sneers of them that tell us that there hain't any such country as that we look for—that it is impossible, that it is aginst all the laws of Nater—that it don't exist, and never can, only in our crazed brains?

No, we will man the boat, though the waves dash high, and the skies are dark—we will man and woman the life-boat—side by side will the two great forces stand, the Motherhood and the Fatherhood, Love and Justice, the hope and strength of Humanity shall stand at the hellum. The wind is a-comin' up; it is only a light breeze now, but it shall rise to a strong power that shall waft us on to the New Land of Justice and Purity and Liberty—for all that our souls long for.

But we have got to shet our eyes to the outward world that presses round us closter than the streets of Genoa did round Columbus. We have got to see things invisible, trust in things to come—sail onwards through the doubts, and the darkness, and the dangers round us, not heeding the jeers and sneers of a gainsayin' world.

Will we be discouraged and drove back by the powers of darkness? by the things seen and the things onseen?

No, the man and the woman side by side will sail on through them rough waves. The wind is a-comin' up fresh and free that shall spread the sails and waft the life-boat into the Land of Promise.

For the word is sure, and He says—

"I will bring you out into a great place."

But I am a-eppisodin', and a-eppisodin' to a length and depth almost onpresidented and onheard on—and to resoom, and go on.

CHAPTER V.

Hain't it curious how tellin' over a thing will bring back all of the circumstances a-surroundin' of it round—bring 'em all up fresh to you.

I wuz a-tellin' Krit about that Equinomical Counsel that wuz held to Washington, D.C. And though I hain't no hand and never wuz to find one word of fault with my dear companion to outsiders, still, as he wuz all in the family, I did say that his Uncle wuz at one time very anxious to go to it.

And after Krit went away—he had come over from Tirzah Ann's that day, and staid to supper with us—I sot there alone, for Josiah had took him back in the democrat, and all the circumstances of that time come back onto me agin.

It wuz on a Monday that I had my worst trial with him about that Equinomical Counsel, as I remember well. And though I didn't tell Krit any of my worst tribulations with him, still, oh, how vivid they did come back to me, as I sot there alone, and a-seamin' two and two!

As I say, it wuz on a Monday morning. The two children had invited their Pa and me to visit a good deal durin' the week before, and I had got kind a behindhand with my work.

And then I had felt so kinder mauger for a few days, that Josiah insisted that I should git a young girl in the neighborhood to help me for a few days, Philury and Ury bein' away on a visit to some relations.

Wall, that day I had washin', bakin', churnin', and some fruit cake to make.

It fairly made me ache to think on't, the numbers and amounts of the work that pressed onto me, and nobody but that young girl to help me. And she that took up with her bo, Almanzo Hagidone, that she wuz in a forgitful state more'n half the time, and liable to carry a armful of wood meant for the kitchen stove into the parlor, and put it end first onto the what-not, or pump water into Josiah's hat instead of the water-pail.

I tried to instil some common sense into her head, but her hair wuz bound up that tight with curl papers that nothin' could git past that ambuscade, so it would seem, but jest the image and the idee of Almanzo Hagidone.

Wall, I kep her pretty much in the wood-shed, when she wuz in her worst stages, where there wuzn't much besides the old cook-stove and wash-tubs that she could graze aginst and fall over.

I dast as well die as to trust her with vittles, for I felt that them wuz vital pints, and must not be meddled with by loonaticks or idiots, and with them two ranks I had to stand Mary Ann Spink in her most love-sick spazzums.

So I sot her to rubbin' onto Josiah's shirts, and I took my bowl of raisins and English currants and things into the kitchen and sot down calmly to pickin' 'em over and choppin' 'em.

My fruit cake is good, though I say it that ort not to; it is widely known and admired.

Wall, I sot there middlin' calm, and a-hummin' over a sam tune loud enough so's Mary Ann could hear it; and I hummed it, too, in a strictly moral way, and for a pattern; it was this:

"Put not your trust in mortal man,
Set not your hopes on him," etc., etc., etc.

And I see I wuz impressin' of her, for I could hear after a while from the wood-shed that she too had broke forth in song, and she was a-jinin' in, low and dretful impressive, with—

"Hark from the tombs a mournful sound."

I don't think she meant my singin'—Josiah did when we talked it over afterwards.

He believed it firm.

I believe I wuz a-moralizin' of her, and should have done good if I hadn't been broke in on.

But all of a sudden Josiah Allen fairly bust into the house, all wrought up, and fearful excited.

He had been a-talkin' with Deacon Henzy out by the gate, and I spoze Deacon Henzy had disseminated some new news to him. But anyway he wuz crazy with a wild and startlin' idee.

A-talkin' with Deacon Henzy.

He wanted to set off to once to the Equinomical Counsel, which he said wuz a-goin' to be held by the male Methodists in Washington, D.C. And, sez he—

"Samantha, git my fine shirt and my best necktie to once, for I want to start on the noon train."

"What for?" sez I coldly; for I discourage his wild projects all I can.

I have to act like a heavy weight in a clock movin' half the time, or he would be jest swept to and frow like a pendulum. It makes me feel queer.

Sez I, "What are you a-layin' out to set off for Washington, D.C., for?"

My tone kinder hung on to him, and stiddied him down some. And he lost some of his wild and excited mean. And he stopped onbuttonin' his vest—he had onbuttoned his shirt-collar and took his old necktie off on his way from the gate—so ardent and impulsive is my dear pardner, and so anxious to start.

"Why," sez he, "I told you, didn't I? I am goin' to Washington to tend to that Equinomical Counsel. Five hundred male men are a-goin' to git together to counsel together on the best ways of bein' equinomical. And here at last"—sez he proudly—"here at last is the chance I have always been a-lookin' out for. Here is the opportunity for me to show off, and be somebody."

And here he begun agin to onbutton his shirt-sleeves and loosen his collar.

But I sez slowly and firmly, and as much like a heavy weight as I could—

"It is three hours to train time. Set down and act like a human bein' and a Methodist, and tell me what it is you want to do."

He glanced up at the clock onto the mantlery-piece, and he see I wuz right about the time. And he sot down, and sez he—

"That is jest how I want to act, like a Methodist, and a equinomical counsellor."

"What for?" sez I. "What do you want to do?"

"Why, to teach 'em," sez he. "To show myself off. To counsel 'em."

"To counsel 'em about what?" sez I heavily, bein' bound to come to the bottom of the matter, and the sense on't, if sense there wuz in it.

"Why," sez he, "they are havin' a counsel there to see if there are any new ways for men and Methodists to be equinomical. And I'll be dumned if there is a man or a Methodist from Maine to Florida that can counsel 'em better about bein' equinomical than I can.

"Why, you have always said so," sez he. "You have called it tightness, but I have always known that it wuz pure economy; and now," sez he, "has come the chance of a lifetime, for me to rise up and show myself off before the nation. To git the high, lofty name that I ort to have, and do good."

I dropped my choppin' knife out of my hand, and rested my elbow on the table, and leaned my head on my hand in deep thought.

I see he had more sense on his side than I thought he had. I recollected the different and various ways in which he had showed his equinomical tightness sence our married life begun, and I trembled for the result.

I ruminated over our early married life, and how, in spite of his words of almost impassioned tenderness and onwillingness for me to harm and strain myself by approachin' the political pole—still how he had let me wrestle with weighty hop-poles and draw water out of a deep well with a cistern pole for more'n fourteen years.

I remembered how he had nearly flooded out his own precious and valuable insides at Saratoga by his wild efforts to git the full worth of the five cents he had advanced to the Spring-tender.

I remembered the widder's mite, how he had interpreted that scriptural incident about that noble female—as interpreters will, to suit their own idees as males—and how I had argued with him in vain on the mite, and his onscriptural and equinomical views.

I felt that he had a strong and powerful case; and though I could not brook the idee of his goin', still I thought that I must be as wise as a serpent and as harmless as a turkle-dove, to git the victory over him.

He see by the fluckuations of color on my usially calm cheek, and by the pensive and thoughtful look in my two gray orbs, that I felt the strength and powerfulness of his cause.

And as he mused, he begun in joyous and triumphant axents to bring up before me some of his latest and most striking instances of equinomical tightness.

Sez he, "Do you remember the case of Sy Biddlecomb, and them green pumpkins of mine, how I—" But I interrupted his almost fervid eloquence, and sez I, with my right hand extended in a real eloquent wave,

"Pause, Josiah Allen, and less consider and weigh things in the balances. Go not too fast, less disapintment attend your efforts, and mortification wrops you in its mantilly.

"Your equinomical ways, Josiah Allen," sez I, "it seems to me ort to rize you up above every other man on the face of the globe, and make a lion of you of the first magnitude, even a roarin' African lion, as it were."

He looked proud and happy, and I proceeded.

"But pause for one moment," sez I, in tender, cautious axents, "and think of the power, the tremendious econimy of the males you are a-tryin' to emulate and outdo. Think of how they have dealt with the cause of wimmen's liberty for the past few years, and tremble. How dast you, one weak man, though highly versed in the ways of equinomical tightness—how dast you to try and set up and be anybody amid that host?"

He looked skairt. He see what he wuz a-doin' plainer than he had seen it, and I went on:

"Think of that big Methodist Conference in New York a few years ago that Casper Keeler told us about—think how equinomical they wuz with their dealin's with wimmen on that occasion, and ever sence.

"The wimmen full of good doin's and alms deeds, who make up two thirds of the church, who raise the minister's salary, run the missionary and temperance societies, teach the Sabbath schools, etc., etc., etc.—

"Who give the best of their lives and thoughts to the meetin'-house from the time they sell button-hole bokays at church fairs in pantalettes, till they hand in their widder's mite with tremblin' fingers wrinkled with age—think of this econimy in not givin' in, not givin' a mite of justice and right to the hull caboodle of such wimmen throughout the length and breadth of the country, and then think where would your very closest and tightest counsel of econimy stand by the side of this econimy of right, and manliness, and honor, and common sense."

He quailed. His head sunk on his breast. He knew, tight as he had always been, there wuz a height of tightness he had never scaled. He knew he couldn't show off at that Equinomical Counsel by the side of them instances I had brung up, and to deepen the impression I had made, which is always the effort of the great oriter, I resoomed:

"Think of how they keep up their econimy of justice, and right, and common sense, so afraid to use a speck of 'em, especially the common sense. Think of how they refused to let wimmen set down meekly in a humble pew, and say 'Yea' in a still small voice as a delegate, so 'fraid that it wuz outstrippin' wimmen's proper spear—when these very ministers have been proud to open their very biggest meetin'-housen to wimmen, and let 'em teach 'em to be eloquent—let wimmen speak words of help and wisdom from their highest pulpits.

"Think of this instance of their equinomical doin's," sez I, "and tremble. And," sez I, still more impressively and eloquently, "what is pumpkins by the side of that?"

His head sunk down lower, and lower. He wuz dumbfoundered to think he had been outdone in his most vital parts, his most tightest ways. He felt truly that even if they would listen to his equinomical counsels, they didn't need 'em.

He looked pitiful and meek, and sot demute for a couple of minutes. I see that I had convinced him about the Equinomical Counsel; he see that it wouldn't do, and he wouldn't make no more show than a underlin'.

But anon, or about that time, he spoke out in pitiful axents—

"Samantha, if I can't show off any at the Equinomical Counsel, I'd love to see them male law-makers a-settin' in the Capitol at Washington, D.C. I'd love to mingle with 'em, Samantha. You know, and I know, too, that I am one of 'em. Wuzn't I chose arbitrator in Seth Meezik's quarrel with his father-in-law? Hain't I sot on juries in the past, and hain't I liable to set?

"I want to see them male law-makers, Samantha. I want to be intimate with 'em."

I almost trembled. I can withstand my pardner's angry or excited moods, but here I see pleadin' and longin'; I see I had a hard job in front of me. I hate to dissapint him. I hate to, like a dog. But duty nerved me, and I sez—

"Josiah, less talk it over before you decide to go. Less bring up some of the laws them males have made, or allow to go on.

"I want to talk to you about 'em, Josiah," sez I, "before I let you depart to be intimate with 'em." Sez I, "Do you remember the old adage, a dog is known by the company he keeps? Before you go to be one of them dogs, Josiah Allen, and be known as one of 'em, less recall some of the lawful incidents of a few months back." Sez I, "We won't raise our skirts and wade back into history to any great depth, and hove out a large quantity of 'em, but will keep in the shaller water of a few short fleetin' months, and pick up one or two of the innumerable number of 'em; and then, if you want to go, why—" sez I, in the tremblin' axents of fond affection—"why, I will pack your saddle-bags."

Then I went on calmly and brung up a few laws and laid 'em down before him.

I brung up the Indians doin's, the Mormons, the Chinese, all on 'em flagrant.

But still he had that longin' look on his face.

Then I brung up the rotten political doin's, the unjust laws prevailin' in regard to female wimmen, and also the onrighteousness of the liquor laws and the abomination of the license question; I talked powerful and eloquent on them awful themes, but as I paused a minute for needed breath, he murmured—

"I want to be intimate with 'em, Samantha."

And then, bein' almost at my wits' end, I dropped the general miscellaneous way I had used, and begun to bring up little separate instances of the injustices of the Law. And I see he begun to be impressed.

How true it is that, from the Bible down to Josiah Allen's Wife, you have to talk in stories in order to impress the masses! You have to hold up the hammer of a personal incident to drive home the nail of Truth and have it clench and hold fast.

But mine wuz some different—mine wuz facts, every one of 'em.

I could have brung them to that man and laid 'em down in front of him from that time, almost half past ten a.m., and kep stiddy at it till ten p.m., and then not know that I had took any from the heap, so high and lofty is the stack of injustices and wrongs committed in the name of the Law and shielded by its mantilly.

But I had only brung up two, jest two of 'em; not the most flagrant ones either, but the first ones that come into my mind, jest as it is when you go to a pile of potatoes to git some for dinner, you take the first ones you come to, knowin' there is fur bigger ones in the pile.

But them potatoes smashed up with cream and butter are jest as satisfyin' as if they wuz bigger.

So these little truthful incidents laid down in front of my pardner convinced him; so they wuz jest as good for me to use as if I had picked out bigger and more flagranter ones.

I first brung up before him the case of the good little Christian school-teacher who had toiled for years at her hard work and laid up a little money, and finally married a sick young feller more'n half out of pity, for he hadn't a cent of money, and had the consumption, and took good care of him till he died.

And wantin' to humor him, she let him make his will, though he didn't so much as own the sheet of paper he wrote on, or the ink or the pen.

And after his death she found he had willed away their onborn child, and when it wuz a few months old, and her love had sent out its strong shoots, and wropped the little life completely round, his brother she had never seen come on from his distant home and took that baby right out of its mother's arms, and bore it off, accordin' to law.

I looked curiously at him as I concluded this true tale, but he murmured almost mechanically—

"I want to mingle with 'em, Samantha; I feel that I want to be intimate with 'em."

But his axent wuz weak, weak as a cat, and I felt that my efforts wuz not bein' throwed away. So I hurriedly laid holt of another true incident that I thought on, and hauled it up in front of him.

"Think of the case of the pretty Chinese girl of twelve years—jest the age of our Tirzah Ann, when you used to be a-holdin' her on your knee, and learnin' her the Sunday-school lesson, and both on us a-kissin' her, and a-brushin' back her hair from her sweet May-day face, and a-pettin' her, and a-holdin' her safe in our heart of hearts.

"Jest think of that little girl bein' sold for a slave by her rich male father, and brought to San Francisco, the home of the brave and the free, and there put into a place which she thought wuz fur worse than the bottomless pit—for that she considered wuz jest clean brimstone, and despair, and vapory demons.

"But this child, with five or six other wimmen, wuz put into a sickenin' den polluted with every crime, and subject to the brutal passions of a crowd of live, dirty human devils.

"And when, half dead from her dreadful life, she ran away at the peril of her life, and wuz taken in by a charitable woman, and nursed back to life and sanity agin.

"The law took that baby out of that safe refuge, and give her back into the hands of her brutal master—took her back, knowin' the life she would be compelled to lead.

"Think if it wuz our Tirzah Ann, Josiah Allen!"

"Dum the dum fools!" sez he, a chokin' some, and then he pulled out his bandanna handkerchief and busted right out a-cryin' onto it.

"Dum 'em, I say!"

"Dum 'em, I say!" sez he, out of its red and yeller depths. "I'd love to skin the hull on 'em, Judge and Jury."

And I sez meanin'ly, "Now, do you want to go and be intimate with them law-makers, Josiah Allen?"

"No," sez he, a-wipin' his eyes and a-lookin' mad, "no, I don't! I want sunthin' to eat!"

And I riz up imegatly, and got a good dinner—a extra good one. And he never said another word about goin' to Washington, D.C.

CHAPTER VI.

There wuz sights and sights of talk in Jonesville and the adjacent and surroundin' world about the World's Fair bein' open on Sundays.

There wuz sights and sights of fightin' back and forth about the rights and the wrongs of it.

And there wuz some talk about the saloons bein' open too, bein' open week days and Sundays.

But, of course, there wuzn't so much talk about that; it seemed to be all settled from the very first on't that the saloons wuz a-goin' to be open the hull of the time—that they must be.

Why, it seemed to be understood that drunkards had to be made and kep up; murderers, and asassins, and thieves, and robbers, and law-breakers of every kind, and fighters, and wife-beaters, and arsons, and rapiners, and child-killers had to be made. That wuz neccessary, and considered so from the first. For if this trade wuz to stop for even one day out of the seven, why, where would be the crimes and casualities, the cuttin's up and actin's, the murders and the suicides, to fill up the Sunday papers with?

And to keep the police courts full and a-runnin' over with business, and the prisons, and jails, and reformatorys full of victims, and the morgues full of dead bodies.

No; the saloons had to be open Sundays; that wuz considered as almost a settled thing from the very first on't.

Why, the nation must have considered it one of the neccessarys, or it wouldn't have gone into partnership with 'em, and took part of the pay.

But there wuz a great and almost impassioned fight a-goin' on about havin' the World's Fair, the broad gallerys of art and beauty, bein' open to the public Sunday.

Lots of Christian men and wimmen come right out and said, swore right up and down that if Christopher Columbus let folks come to his doin's on Sunday they wouldn't go to it at all.

I spoze mebby they thought that this would skare Christopher and make him gin up his doin's, or ruther the ones that wuz a-representin' him to Chicago.

They did talk fearfully skareful, and calculated to skare any man that hadn't went through with what Christopher had. They said that ruther than have the young people who would be gathered there from the four ends of the earth—ruther than have these innocent young creeters contaminated by walkin' through them rooms and lookin' at them wonders of nature and art, why, they had ruther not have any Fair at all.

Why, I read sights and sights about it, and hearn powerful talk, and immense quantities of it.

And one night I hearn the most masterly and convincin' arguments brung up on both sides—arguments calculated to make a bystander wobble first one way and then the other, with the strength and power of 'em.

It wuz at a church social held to Miss Lums, and a number of us had got there early, and this subject wuz debated on before the minister got there.

Deacon Henzy wuz the one who give utterance to the views I have promulgated.

He said right out plain, "That no matter how keen the slight would be felt, he shouldn't attend to it if it wuz open Sunday." He said "that the country would be ruined if it took place."

"Yes," sez Miss Cornelius Cork, "you are right, Deacon Henzy. I wouldn't have Cornelius Jr. go to Chicago if the Fair is open Sundays, not for a world full of gold. For," sez she, "I feel as if it would be the ruin of him."

And then sister Arvilly Lanfear (she is always on the contrary side), sez she—"Why?"

"Why?" sez Miss Cork. "You ask why? You a woman and a perfessor?"

"Yes," sez Arvilly—"why?"

Sez Miss Cork, "It would take away all his reverence for the Sabbath, and the God who appointed that holy day of rest. His morals would be all broke up, and he would be a ruined boy. I expect that he will be there two months—that would make eight days of worldliness and wickedness; and I feel that long enough before the eighth day had come his principles would be underminded, and his morals all tottered and broke down."

"Why?" sez Arvilly. "There hain't any wickedness a-goin' on to the Fair as I know of; it is a goin' to be full and overflowin' of object lessons a teachin' of the greatness and the glory of the Lord of Heaven, and the might and power of the human intellect. Wonders of Heaven, and wonders of earth, and I don't see how they would be apt to ruin and break down anybody's morals a-contemplatin' 'em—not if they wuz sound when they begun.

"It seems to me it would make 'em have ten times the reverence they had before—reverence and awe and worshipful love for the One, the great and loving mind that had thought out all these marvels of beauty and grandeur and spread 'em out for His children's happiness and instruction."

"Oh, yes," sez Miss Cork. "On week days it is a exaltin' and upliftin' and dreadful religious sight; but on Sundays it is a crime to even think on it. Sundays should be kep pure and holy and riz up, and I wouldn't have Cornelius desecrate himself and the Sabbath by goin' to the Fair not for a world full of gold."

"Where would he go Sundays while he wuz in Chicago if he didn't go there?" sez Arville.

She is real cuttin' sometimes, Arville is, but then Miss Cork loves to put on Arville, and twit her of her single state, and kinder act high-headed and throw Cornelius in her face, and act.

Sez Arville—"Where would Cornelius Jr. go if he didn't go to the Fair?"

Cornelius Jr. drinks awful and is onstiddy, and Miss Cork hemmed and hawed, and finally said, in kind of a meachin' way—

"Why, to meetin', of course."

He hadn't been in a meetin'-house for two years, and we all knew it, and Miss Cork knew that we knew it—hence the meach.

"He don't go to meetin' here to Jonesville," sez Arville.

"He don't go to meetin' here."

It wuz real mean in her, but I spoze it wuz to pay Miss Cork off for her aggravatin'.

And she went on, "I live right acrost the road from Fasset's saloon, and I see him and more'n a dozen other Jonesvillians there most every Sunday.

"Goin' to Chicago hain't a-goin' to born a man agin, and change all their habits and ways to once, and I believe if Cornelius Jr. didn't go to the Fair he would go to worse places."

"Well," sez Miss Cornelius Cork, "if he did, I wouldn't have to bear the sin. I feel that it is my duty to lift my voice and my strength aginst the Sunday openin' of the Fair, and even if the boys did go to worse places, my conscience would be clear; the sin wouldn't rest on my head."

Sez Arville, "That is the very way I have heard wimmen talk who burned up their boys' cards, and checker-boards, and story-books, and drove their children away from home to find amusement.

"They wanted the boys to set down and read the Bible and sam books year in and year out, but they wouldn't do it, for there wuz times when the young blood in 'em riz up and clamered for recreation and amusement, and seein' that they couldn't git it at home, under the fosterin' care of their father and mother, why, they looked for it elsewhere, and found it in low saloons and bar-rooms, amongst wicked and depraved companions. And then, when their boys turned out gamblers and drunkards, they would say that their consciences wuz clear.

"But," says Arville, "that hain't the way the Lord done. He used Sundays and week days to tell stories to the multitude, to amuse 'em, draw 'em by the silken cord of fancy towards the true and the right, draw 'em away from the bad towards the good. And if I had ten boys—"

"Which you hain't no ways likely to have," says Miss Cork; "no, indeed, you hain't."

"No, thank Heaven! there hain't no chance on't. But if I had ten boys I would ruther have 'em wanderin' through them beautiful halls, full of the wonders of the world which the Lord made and give to His children for their amusement and comfort—I would ruther have 'em there than to have 'em help swell a congregation of country loafers in a city saloon—learnin' in one day more lessons in the height and depth of depravity than years of country livin' would teach 'em.

"These places, and worse ones, legalized places of devils' pastime, will lure and beckon the raw youth of the country. They will flaunt their gaudy attractions on every side, and appeal to every sense but the sense of decency.

"And I would feel fur safer about the hull ten of 'em, if I knew they wuz safe in the art galleries, full of beauty and sublimity, drawin' their minds and hearts insensibly and in spite of themselves upward and onward, or lookin' at the glory and wonders of practical and mechanical beauty—the beauty of use and invention.

"After walkin' through a buildin' forty-five acres big, and some more of 'em about as roomy, I should be pretty sure that they wouldn't git out of it in time to go any great lengths in sin that day; and they would be apt to be too fagged out and dead tired to foller on after Satan any great distance."

"Well," says Miss Snyder, "I d'no but I should feel safer about my Jim and John to have 'em there in the Fair buildin's than runnin' loose in the streets of Chicago. They won't go to meetin' every Sunday, and I can't make 'em; and if they do go, they will go in the mornin' late, and git out as soon as the Amen is said.

"My boys are as good as the average—full as good; but I know when they hain't got anything to do, and git with other boys, they will cut up and act."

"Well," says Miss Cornelius Cork, "I know that my Cornelius will never disgrace himself or me by any low acts."

She wuz tellin' a big story, for Cornelius Jr. had been carried home more'n once too drunk to walk, besides other mean acts that wuz worse; so we didn't say anything, but we all looked queer; and Arville kinder sniffed, and turned up her nose, and nudged Miss Snyder. But Miss Cork kep right on—she is real high-headed and conceited, Miss Cork is.

And, sez she, "Much as I want to see the Fair, and much as I want Cornelius and Cornelius Jr. to go to it, and the rest of the country, I would ruther not have it take place at all than to have it open Sundays."

"And I feel jest so," sez Miss Henzy.

Then young Lihu Widrig spoke up. He is old Elihu Widrig's only son, and he has been off to college, and is home on a vacation.

He is dretful deep learnt, has studied Greek and lots of other languages that are dead, and some that are most dead.

He spoke up, and sez he:

"What is this Sabbath, anyway?"

We didn't any of us like that, and we showed we didn't by our means. We didn't want any of his new-fangled idees, and we looked high-headed at him and riz up.

But he kep right on, bein' determined to have his say.

"You can foller the Sabbath we keep right back, straight as a string, to planet worship. Before old Babylon ever riz up at all, to say nothin' of fallin', the dwellers in the Euphrates Valley kep a Sabbath. They spozed there wuz seven planets, and one day wuz give to each of them. And Saturday, the old Jewish Sabbath, wuz given to Saturn, cruel as ever he could be if the ur in his name wuz changed to e. In those days it wuz not forbidden to work in that day, but supposed to be unlucky.

"Some as Ma regards Friday."

It wuz known that Miss Widrig wouldn't begin a mite of work Fridays, not even hemin' a towel or settin' up a sock or mitten.

And, sez he, "When we come down through history to the Hebrews, we find it a part of the Mosaic law, the Ten Commandments.

"In the second book of the Bible we find the reason given for keeping the Sabbath is, the Lord rested on that day. In the fifth book we find the reason given is the keeping of a memorial for the deliverance out of Egypt.

"Now this commandment only forbids working on that day; no matter what else you do, you are obeying the fourth commandment. According to that command, you could go to the World's Fair, or wherever you had a mind to, if you did not work.

"The Puritan Sabbath wuz a very different one from that observed by Moses and the Prophets, which wuz mainly a day of rest."

"Wall, I know," sez Miss Yerden, "that the only right way to keep the Sabbath is jest as we do, go to meetin' and Sunday-school, and do jest as we do."

Sez Lihu, "Maybe the people to whom the law wuz delivered didn't understand its meaning so well as we do to-day, after the lapse of so many centuries, so well as you do, Miss Yerden."

We all looked coldly at Lihu; we didn't approve of his talk. But Miss Yerden looked tickled, she is so blind in her own conceit, and Lihu spoke so polite to her, she thought he considered her word as goin' beyend the Bible.

Then Lophemia Pegrum spoke up, and sez she—

"Don't you believe in keeping the Sabbath, Lihu?"

"Yes, indeed, I do," sez he, firm and decided. "I do believe in it with all my heart. It is a blessed break in the hard creakin' roll of the wheel of Labor, a needed rest—needed in every way for tired and worn-out brain and muscle, soul and body; but I believe in telling the truth," sez he.

He always wuz a very truthful boy—born so, we spoze. Almost too truthful at times, his ma used to think. She used to have to whip him time and agin for bringin' out secret things before company, such as borrowed dishes, and runnin's of other females, and such.

So we wuz obliged to listen to his remarks with a certain amount of respect, for we knew that he meant every word that he said, and we knew that he had studied deep into ancient history, no matter how much mistook we felt that he wuz.

But Miss Yerden spoke up, and sez she—

"I don't care whether it is true or not. I have always said, and always will say, that if any belief goes aginst the Bible, I had ruther believe in the Bible than in the truth any time."

And more than half of us wimmen agreed with her.

You see, so many reverent, and holy, and divine thoughts and memories clustered round that book, that we didn't love to have 'em disturbed. It wuz like havin' somebody take a spade and dig up the voyalets and lilies on the grave of the nearest and dearest, to try to prove sunthin' or ruther.

We feel in such circumstances that we had ruther be mistook than to have them sweet posies disturbed and desecrated.

Holy words of counsel, and reproof, and consolation delivered from the Most High to His saints and prophets—words that are whispered over our cradles, and whose truth enters our lives with our mother's milk; that sustains us and helps us to bear the hard toils and burdens of the day of life, and that go with us through the Valley and the Shadow—the only revelation we have of God's will to man, the written testimony of His love and compassion, and the only map in which we trace our titles clear to a heavenly inheritance.

If errors and mistakes have crept in through the weaknesses of men, or if the pages have become blotted by the dust of time, we hated to have 'em brung out and looked too clost into—we hated to, like a dog.

So we, most all of us, had a fellow feelin' for Miss Yerden, and looked approvin' at her.

And Lihu, seein' we looked cold at him, and bein' sensitive, and havin' a hard cold, he said "he guessed he would go over to the drug-store and git some hoarhoun candy for his cough."

So he went out. And then Miss Cork spoke up, and sez she—

"How it would look in the eyes of the other nations to have us a breakin' Sundays after keepin' 'em pure and holy for all these years."

"Pure and holy!" sez Arvilly. "Why, jest look right here in the country, and see the way the Sabbath is desecrated. Saturday nights and Sundays is the very time for the devil's high jinks. More whiskey and beer and hard cider is consumed Saturday nights and Sundays than durin' all the rest of the week.

"Why, right in my neighborhood a man who makes cider brandy carrys off hull barrels of it most every Saturday, so's to have it ready for Sunday consumption.

"The saloons are crowded that day, and black eyes, and bruised bodies, and sodden intellects, and achin' hearts are more frequent Sundays than any other day of the week, and you know it.

"And after standin' all this desecration calmly for year after year, and votin' to uphold it, it don't look consistent to flare up and be so dretful afraid of desecratin' the Sabbath by havin' a place of education, greater than the world has ever seen or ever will see agin, open on the Sabbath for the youth of the land."

"But the nation," sez Miss Henzy, in a skareful voice. "This nation must keep up its glorious reputation before the other countries of the world. How will it look to 'em to have our Goverment permit such Sunday desecration? This is a national affair, and we should not be willin' to have our glorious nation do anything to lower itself in the eyes of the assembled and envious world."

Sez Arville, "If our nation can countenance such doin's as I have spoke of, the man-killin' and brute-makin', all day Sundays, and not only permit it, but go into pardnership with it, and take part of the pay—if it can do this Sundays, year after year, without bein' ashamed before the other nations, I guess it will stand it to have the Fair open."

"But," says Miss Bobbet, "even if it is better for the youth of the country, and I d'no but it will be, it will have a bad look to the other nations, as Sister Henzy sez—it will look bad."

Says Arville, "That is what Miss Balcomb said about her Ned when she wouldn't let him play games to home; she said she didn't care so much about it herself, but thought the neighbors would blame her; and Ned got to goin' away from home for amusement, and is now a low gambler and loafer. I wonder whether she would ruther have kep her boy safe, or made the neighbors easy in their minds.

"She wouldn't let her Ned play games at home."

"And now the neighbors talk as bad agin when they see him a-reelin' by. She might have known folks would talk anyway—if they can't run folks for doin' things they will run 'em for not doin' 'em—they'll talk every time."

"Yes, and don't you forgit it," sez Bub Lum.

But nobody minded Bub, and Miss Cork begun agin on another tact.

"See the Sabbath labor it will cause, the great expenditure of strength and labor, to have all them stupendious buildin's open on the Sabbath. The onseemly and deafnin' noise and clatter of the machinery, and the toil of the men that it will take to run and take care of all the departments, and the labor of the poor men who will have to carry guests back and forth all day."

"I d'no," sez Arville, "whether it will take so much more work or not; it is most of it run by water-power and electricity, and water keeps on a-runnin' all day Sunday as well as week days.

"Your mill-dam don't stop, Miss Cork, because it is Sunday."

Miss Cork's house stands right by the dam, and you can't hear yourself speak there hardly, so it wuz what you might expect, to have her object specially to noise.

Miss Cork kinder tosted her head and drawed down her upper lip in a real contemptious way, and Arvilly went on and resoomed:

"And electricity keeps on somewhere a-actin' and behavin'; it don't stop Sundays. I have seen worse thunder-storms Sundays, it does seem to me, than I ever see week days. And when old Mom Nater sets such a show a-goin' Sundays, you have got to tend it, whether you think it is wicked or not.

"And as for the work of carryin' folks back and forth to it, meetin'-housen have to run by work—hard work, too. Preachin', and singin', and ringin' bells, and openin' doors, and lightin' gas, and usherin' folks in, and etc., etc., etc.

"And horse-cars and steam-cars have to run to and frow; conductors, and brakemen, and firemen, and engineers, and etc., etc.

"And horses have to be harnessed and worked hard, and coachmen, and drivers, and men and wimmen have to work hard Sundays. Yes, indeed.

"Now, my sister-in-law, Jane Lanfear, works harder Sundays than any day out of the seven. They take a place with thirty cows on it, and she and Jim, bein' ambitious, do almost all the work themselves.

"Every Sunday mornin' Jane gets up, and she and Jim goes out and milks fifteen cows apiece, and then Jim drives them off to pasture and comes back and harnesses up and carries the milk three miles to a cheese factory, and comes back and does the other out-door chores.

"And Jane gets breakfast, and gets up the three little children, and washes 'em and dresses 'em, and feeds the little ones to the table. And after breakfast she does up all her work, washes her dishes and the immense milk-cans, sweeps, cleans lamps and stoves, makes beds, etcetry, and feeds the chickens, and ducks, and turkeys. And by that time it is nine o'clock. Then she hurries round and washes and combs the three children, curls the hair of the twin girls, and then gets herself into her best clothes, and by that time she is so beat out that she is ready to drop down.

"But she don't; she lifts the children into the democrat, climbs her own weary form in after 'em, and takes the youngest one in her lap. And Jim, havin' by this time got through with his work and toiled into his best suit, they drive off, a colt follerin' 'em, and Jim havin' to get out more'n a dozen times to head it right, and makin' Jane wild with anxiety, for it is a likely colt.

"Wall, they go four milds and a half to the meetin'-house—there hain't no Free-well Baptist nearer to 'em, and they are strong in the belief, and awful sot on that's bein' the only right way. So they go to class-meetin' first, and both talk for quite a length of time; they are quite gifted, and are called so. And then they set up straight through the sermon, and that Free-well Baptist preaches more'n a hour, hot or cold weather, and then they both teach a large class of children, and what with takin' care of the three restless children, and their own weariness on the start, they are both beat out before they start for home. And Jane has a blindin' headache.

"But she must keep up, for she has got to git the three babies home safe, and then there is dinner to get, and the dishes to wash, and the housework, and the out-door work to tend to, and what with her headache, and her tired-out nerves and body, and the work and care of the babies, Jane is cross as a bear—snaps everybody up, sets a bad pattern before her children and Jim—and, in fact, don't get over it and hain't good for anything before the middle of the week.

"The day of rest is the hardest day of the week for her.

"But she told me last night—she come in to get my bask pattern, she is anxious to get her parmetty dress done for the World's Fair—but she said that she shouldn't go if it wuz open Sunday, for her mind wuz so sot on havin' the Sabbath kep strict as a day of rest.

"Now I believe in goin' to meetin' as much as anybody, and always have been regular. But I say Jane hain't consistent." (They don't agree.)

Arvilly stopped here a minute for needed breath. Good land! I should have thought she would; and Lophemia Pegrum spoke up—she is a dretful pretty girl, but very sentimental and romantic, and talks out of poetry books. Sez she:

"Another thought: Nature works all the Sabbath day. Flowers bloom, their sweet perfume wafts abroad, bees gather the honey from their fragrant blossoms, the dews fall, the clouds sail on, the sun lights and warms the World, the grass grows, the grain ripens, the fruit gathers the sunshine in its golden and rosy globes, the birds sing, the trees rustle, the wind blows, the stars rise and set, the tide comes in and goes out, the waves wash the beach, and carries the great ships to their havens—in fact, Nature keeps her World's Fair open every day of the week just alike."

"Yes," sez Miss Eben Sanders—she is always on the side of the last speaker—she hain't to be depended on, in argument. But she speaks quite well, and is a middlin' good woman, and kind-hearted. Sez she—

"Look at the poor people who work hard all the week and who can't spend the time week days to go to this immense educational school.

"Them who have to work hard and steady every working day to keep bread in the hands of their families, to keep starvation away from themselves and children—clerks, seamstresses, mechanics, milliners, typewriters, workers in factories, and shops, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

"Children of toil, who bend their weary frames over their toilsome, oncongenial labor all the week, with the wolves of Cold and Hunger a-prowlin' round 'em, ready to devour them and their children if they stop their labor for one day out of the six—

"Think what it would be for these tired-out, beauty-starved white slaves to have one day out of the seven to feast their eyes and their hungry souls on the best of the World.

"What an outlook it would give their work-blinded eyes! What a blessed change it would make in all their dull, narrow, cramped lives! While their hands wuz full of work, their quickened fancy would live over again the too brief hours they spent in communion with the World's best—the gathered beauty and greatness and glory of the earth. Whatever their toil and weariness, they had lived for a few hours, their eyes had beheld the glory of God in His works."

Miss Cork yawned very deep here, and Miss Sanders blushed and stopped. They hain't on speakin' terms. Caused by hens.

And then Miss Cork sez severely—a not noticin' Miss Sanders speech at all, but a-goin' back to Arvilly's—she loves to dispute with her, she loves to dearly—

"You forgot to mention when you wuz talkin' about Sabbath work connected with church-goin' that it wuz to worship God, and it wuz therefore right—no matter how wearisome it wuz, it wuz perfectly right."

"Wall, I d'no," sez Arvilly—"I d'no but what some of the beautiful pictures and wonderful works of Art and Nature that will be exhibited at the World's Fair would be as upliftin' and inspirin' to me as some of the sermons I hear Sundays. Specially when Brother Ridley gits to talkin' on the Jews, and the old Egyptians.

"It stands to reason that if I could see Pharo's mummy it would bring me nearer to him, and them plagues and that wickedness of hisen, than Brother Ridley's sermon could.

"And when I looked at a piece of the olive tree under which our Saviour sot while He wuz a-weepin' over Jeruesalem or see a wonderful picture of the crucifixion or the ascension, wrought by hands that the Lord Himself held while they wuz painted—I believe it would bring Him plainer before me than Brother Ridley could, specially when he is tizickey, and can't speak loud.

"Why, our Lord Himself wuz took to do more than once by the Pharisees, and told He wuz breakin' the Sabbath. And He said that the Sabbath wuz made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.

"And He said, 'Consider the Lilies'—that is, consider the Lord, and behold Him in the works of His hands.

"Brother Ridley is good, no doubt, and it is right to go and hear him—I hain't disputed that—but when he tries to bring our thoughts to the Lord, he has to do it through his own work, his writin', which he did himself with a steel pen. And I d'no as it is takin' the idees of the Lord so much at first hand as it is to study the lesson of the Lilies He made, and which He loved and admired and told us to consider.

"The World's Fair is full of all the beauty He made, more wonderful and more beautiful than the lilies, and I d'no as it is wrong to consider 'em Sundays or week days."

"But," sez Miss Yerden, "don't you know what the Bible sez—'Forget not the assemblin' of yourselves together'?"

Bub Lum.

"Well," piped up Bub Lum, aged fourteen, and a perfect imp—

"I guess that if the Fair is open Sundays, folks that are there won't complain about there not bein' folks enough assembled together. I guess they won't complain on't—no, indeed!"

But nobody paid any attention to Bub, and Arvilly continued—

"I believe in usin' some common sense right along, week days and Sundays too. It stands to reason that the Lord wouldn't gin us common sense if He didn't want us to use it.

"We don't need dyin' grace while we are a livin', and so with other things. There will be meetin'-housen left and ministers in 1894, most likely, and we can attend to 'em right along as long as we live.

"But this great new open Book of Revelations, full of God's power and grace, and the wonderful story of what He has done for us sence He wakened the soul of His servant, Columbus, and sent him over the troubled ocean to carry His name into the wilderness, and the strength and the might He has given to us sence as a nation—

"This great object lesson, full of the sperit of prophecy and accomplishment, won't be here but a few short months.

"And I believe if there could be another chapter added to the Bible this week, and we could have the Lord's will writ out concernin' it, I believe it would read—

"'Go to that Fair. Study its wonderful lessons with awe and reverence. Go week days if you can, and if you can't, go Sundays. And you rich people, who have art galleries of your own to wander through Sundays, and gardens and greenhouses full of beauty and sweetness, and the means to seek out loveliness through the world, and who don't need the soul refreshment these things give—don't you by any Pharisaical law deprive my poor of their part in the feast I have spread for both rich and poor.'"

Sez Miss Cork, "I wouldn't dast to talk in that way, Arville. To add or diminish one word of skripter is to bring an awful penalty."

"I hain't a-goin' to add or diminish," says Arville. "I hain't thought on't. I am merely statin' what, in my opinion, would be the Lord's will on the subject."

But right here the schoolmaster struck in. He is a very likely young man—smart as a whip, and does well by the school, and makes a stiddy practice of mindin' his own business and behavin'.

He is a great favorite and quite good-lookin', and some say that he and Lophemia Pegrum are engaged; but it hain't known for certain.

He spoke up, and sez he, "There is one great thing to think of when we talk on this matter. There is so much to be said on both sides of this subject that it is almost impossible to shut your eyes to the advantages and the disadvantages on both sides.

"But," sez he, "if this nation closes the Fair Sundays, it will be a great object lesson to the youth of this nation and the world at large of the sanctity and regard we have for our Puritan Sabbath—

"Of our determination to not have it turned into a day of amusement, as it is in some European countries.

"It would be something like painting up the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer in gold letters on the blue sky above, so that all who run may read, of the regard we have for the day of rest that God appointed. The regard we have for things spiritual, onseen—our conflicts and victories for conscience' sake—the priceless heritage for which our Pilgrim Fathers braved the onknown sea and wilderness, and our forefathers fought and bled for."

"They fit for Liberty!" sez Arville. She would have the last word. "And this country, in the name of Religion, has whipped Quakers, and Baptists, and hung witches—and no knowin' what it will do agin. And I think," sez she, "that it would look better now both from the under and upper side—both on earth and in Heaven—to close them murderous and damnable saloons, that are drawin' men to visible and open ruin all round us on every side, than to take such great pains to impress onseen things onto strangers."

She would have the last word—she wuz bound to.

And the schoolmaster, bein' real polite, though he had a look as if he wuzn't convinced, yet he bowed kinder genteel to Arvilly, as much as to say, "I will not dispute any further with you." And then he got up and went over and sot down by Lophemia Pegrum.

And I see there wuz no prospect of their different minds a-comin' any nearer together.

And I'll be hanged if I could wonder at it. Why, I myself see things so plain on both sides that I would convince myself time and agin both ways.

I would be jest as firm as a rock for hours at a time that it would be the only right thing to do, to shet up the Fair Sundays—shet it up jest as tight as it could be shet.

And then agin, I would argue in my own mind, back and forth, and convince myself (ontirely onbeknown to me) that it would be the means of doin' more good to the young folks and the poor to have it open.

Why, I had a fearful time, time and agin, a-arguin' and a-disputin' with myself, and a-carryin' metafors back and forth, and a-eppisodin', when nobody wuz round.

And as I couldn't seem to come to any clear decision myself, a-disputin' with jest my own self, I didn't spoze so many different minds would become simultanous and agreed.

So I jest branched right off and asked Miss Cork "If she had heard that the minister's wife had got the neuralligy."

I felt that neuralligy wuz a safe subject, and one that could be agreed on—everybody despised it.

Neuralligy wuz a safe subject.

And gradual the talk sort o' quieted down, and I led it gradual into ways of pleasantness and paths of peace.

CHAPTER VII.

Christopher Columbus Allen got along splendid with his railroad business, and by the time the rest of us wuz ready for the World's Fair, he wuz.

We didn't have so many preparations to make as we would in other circumstances, for Ury and Philury wuz goin' to move right into our house, and do for it jest as well as we would do for ourselves.

They had done this durin' other towers that we had gone off on, and never had we found our confidence misplaced, or so much as a towel or a dish-cloth missin'.

We have always done well by them while they wuz workin' for us by the week or on shares, and they have always jest turned right round and done well by us.

Thomas Jefferson and Maggie went with us. Tirzah Ann and Whitfield wuzn't quite ready to go when we did, but they wuz a-comin' later, when Tirzah Ann had got all her preperations made—her own dresses done, and Whitfield's night-shirts embroidered, and her stockin's knit.

I love Tirzah Ann. But I can't help seein' that she duz lots of things that hain't neccessary.

Now it wuzn't neccessary for her to have eleven new dresses made a purpose to go to the World's Fair, and three white aprons all worked off round the bibs and pockets.

Good land! what would she want of aprons there in that crowd? And she no need to had six new complete suits of under-clothes made, all trimmed off elaborate with tattin' and home-made edgin' before she went. And it wuzn't neccessary for her to knit two pairs of open-work stockin's with fine spool thread.

I sez to her, "Tirzah Ann, why don't you buy your stockin's? You can git good ones for twenty cents. And," sez I, "these will take you weeks and weeks to knit, besides bein' expensive in thread."

But she said "she couldn't find such nice ones to the store—she couldn't find shell-work."

"Then," sez I, "I shall go without shell-work."

But she said, "They wuz dretful ornamental to the foot, specially to the instep, and she shouldn't want to go without 'em."

"But," sez I, "who is a-goin' to see your instep? You hain't a-goin' round in that crowd with slips on, be you?"

"No," she said, "she didn't spoze she should, but she should feel better to know that she had on nice stockin's, if there didn't anybody see 'em."

And I thought to myself that I should ruther be upheld by my principles than the consciousness of shell-work stockin's. But I didn't say so right out. I see that she wouldn't give up the idee.

And besides the stockin's, which wuz goin' to devour a fearful amount of time, she had got to embroider three night-shirts for Whitfield with fine linen floss.

Then I argued with her agin. Sez I, "Good land! I don't believe that Christopher Columbus ever had any embroidered night-shirts." Sez I, "If he had waited to have them embroidered, and shell-work stockin's knit, we might have not been discovered to this day. But," sez I, "good, sensible creeter, he knew better than to do it when he had everything else on his hands. And," sez I, "with all your housework to do—and hot weather a-comin' on—I don't see how you are a-goin' to git 'em all done and git to the Fair."

And she said, "She had ruther come late, prepared, than to go early with everything at loose ends."

"But," sez I, "good plain sensible night-shirts and Lyle-thread stockin's hain't loose—they hain't so loose as them you are knittin'."

But I see that I couldn't break it up, so I desisted in my efforts.

Maggie, though she is only my daughter-in-law, takes after me more in a good many things than Tirzah Ann duz, who is my own step-daughter. Curious, but so it is.

Now, she and I felt jest alike in this.

Who—who wuz a-goin' to notice what you had on to the World's Fair; and providin' we wuz clean and hull, and respectable-lookin', who wuz a-goin' to know or care whether our stockin's wuz open work or plain knittin'?

There, with all the wonder and glory of the hull world spread out before our eyes, and the hull world there a-lookin' at it, a-gazin' at strange people, strange customs, strange treasures and curiosities from every land under the sun—wonders of the earth and wonders of the sea, marvels of genius and invention, and marvels of grandeur and glory, of Art and Nature, and the hull world a-lookin' on, and a-marvellin' at 'em. And then to suppose that anybody would be a-lookin' out for shell-work stockin's, a-carin' whether they wuz clam-shell pattern, or oyster shell.

The idee!

That is the way Maggie and I felt; why, if you'll believe it, that sweet little creeter never took but one dress with her, besides a old wrapper to put on mornin's. She took a good plain black silk dress, with two waists to it—a thick one for cool days and a thin one for hot days—and some under-clothes, and some old shoes that didn't hurt her feet, and looked decent. And there she wuz all ready.

She never bought a thing, I don't believe, not one. You wouldn't ketch her waitin' to embroider night-shirts for Thomas Jefferson—no, indeed! She felt jest as I did. What would the Christopher Columbus World's Fair care for the particular make of Thomas J's night-shirts? That had bigger things on its old mind than to stop and admire a particular posey or runnin' vine worked on a man's nightly bosom. Yes, indeed!

But Tirzah Ann felt jest that way, and I couldn't make her over at that late day, even if I had time to tackle the job. She took it honest—it come onto her from her Pa.

The preperations that man would have made if he had had his head would have outdone Tirzah Ann's, and that is sayin' enough, and more'n enough.

And the size of the shoes that man would have sot out with if he had been left alone would have been a shame and a disgrace to the name of decency as long as the world stands.

Why, his feet would have been two smokin' sacrifices laid on the altar of corns and bunions. Yes, indeed! But I broke it up.

I sez, "Do you lay out and calculate to hobble round in that pair of leather vises and toe-screws," sez I, "when you have got to be on foot from mornin' till night, day after day? Why under the sun don't you wear your good old leather shoes, and feel comfortable?"

And he said (true father of Tirzah Ann), "He wuz afraid it would make talk."

"Leather vises and toe-screws."

Sez I, "The idee of the World's Fair, with all it has got on its mind, a noticin' or carin' whether you had on shoes or went barefoot! But if you are afraid of talk," sez I, "I guess that it would make full as much talk to see you a-goin' round a-groanin' and a-cryin' out loud. And that is what them shoes would bring you to," sez I.

"Now," sez I, "you jest do them shoes right up and carry 'em back to the store, and if you have got to have a new pair, git some that will be more becomin' to a human creeter, let alone a class-leader, and a perfessor, and a grandfather."

So at last I prevailed—he a-forebodin' to the very last that it would make talk to see him in such shoes. But he got a pair that wuzn't more'n one size too small for him, and I presumed to think they would stretch some. And, anyway, I laid out to put his good, roomy old gaiters in my own trunk, so he could have a paneky to fall back on, and to soothe.

As for myself, I took my old slips, that had been my faithful companions for over two years, and a pair of good big roomy bootees.