Samantha in Europe

“ He riz right up and shook his fist at the man with the nightcap.” (See [page 641].)

Samantha
in
Europe

by
Josiah Allen’s Wife
(Marietta Holley)

Illustrated
by
C DeGrimm

Printed in the United States

New York · Funk and Wagnalls Company 1896
London and Toronto

Copyright, 1895, by
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

Registered at Stationers’ Hall
London, England

Dedication.

TO THE WEARY TRAVELLER WHO YEARNS TO SEE UNDER STRANGE SKIES THE LIGHT OF THE
OLD HOME FIRE,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY

Samantha and Josiah.

PREFACE.

Sez Josiah, as he see me writin’ this preface:

“Seems to me, Samantha, you’ve writ enough prefaces.”

(He wanted me to start the supper; but, good land! it wuzn’t only half past five, and I had a spring chicken all ready to fry, and my cream biscuit wuz all ready for the oven, on the kitchen table.)

Sez he, “It seems to me you’ve writ enough on em.”

And I sez, “Wall, Josiah, I’d hate to sadden the world by sayin’ I wouldn’t write any more.”

And he sez, “How do you know it would sadden the world—how do you know it would?” And he continued: “Samantha, I hain’t wanted to dampen you, but I have always considered your writin’s weak; naterally they would be, bein’ writ by a woman; and,” sez he, as he looked longin’ly towards the buttery door and the plump chicken, “a woman’s spear lays in a different direction.”

And I sez, “I thought I’d write some of our adventures in our trip abroad—that happy time,” sez I, lookin’ inquirin’ly at him.

“Happy time!” sez he, a-kinder ’nashin’ his teeth—“happy! gracious Heavens! Do you want to bring up my sufferin’s agin, when I jest lived through ’em?”

“Wall,” sez I, a-gittin’ up and approachin’ the buttery, and takin’ down the tea-kettle and fryin’-pan and coffee-pot, “I have writ other things in the book that I am more interested in myself.”

He sot kinder still and demute as I put the chicken on to fry in butter, and put the cream biscuit in the oven, and poured the bilein’ water on the fragrant coffee; his mean seemed to grow softer, and he sez:

“Mebby I wuz too hash a-sayin’ what I did about your writin’s, Samantha; I guess you write as well as you know how to; I guess you mean well;” and as he see me a-spreadin’ the snowy table-cloth on the little round table, and a-puttin’ on some cream cheese and some peach sass, he sez further:

“Nobody is to blame for what they don’t know, Samantha.”

I looked down affectionately and pityin’ly on his old bald head and then further off—way off into mysterious spaces no mortal feet has ever trod, and I sez:

“That is so, Josiah.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

SAMANTHA IN EUROPE.

CHAPTER I.

TRAINS OF RETROSPECTION.

Twilight on the broad ocean! Smooth, wild waste of blue-gray waters stretchin’ out as fur as the eye could reach on every side.

In the east a silvery moon hangin’ low and a shinin’ path leadin’ up to it. In the west Mars a-dazzlin’ bright over a pale pink sky, with streaks of yeller and crimson a-layin’ stretched acrost it, like bars put up by angel hands a-fencin’ in their world from ourn.

Now in a sunset in Jonesville it might seem as if you could put on your sun-bunnet and stride off over hills and valleys and at las’ reach the Sunset Land, and peek over the bars and ketch a glimpse of what wuz beyend.

It would seem amongst the possibles.

But here—oh! how fur-off, illimitable, unaproachable, duz that fur-off glory look!

And Mars seemed to wink that red eye of hisen at me mockin’ly as I strained my eyes over the long watery plain, as if to say—“The time has been when you wuz free to roam round, a-walkin’ off afoot; you may have gloated over me in your free thoughts and said—

“You are fixed and sot up there, while I am free to soar and sail. Now, haughty female mortal, your wings are clipped—the time has come when your walkin’ afoot and roamin’ round is stopped.”

To think that I myself, Josiah Allen’s Wife, should find myself on the Atlantic a-hangin’ onto the gunwale of the ship with one hand, and a-lookin’ off over the endless waters below and all round me, and a-thinkin’ if I should trust myself to step out onto its heavey, treacherous surface where should I go to, and when, and why! I, Samantha, who had ever been ust to slippin’ on my sun-bunnet and runnin’ into Miss Bobbettses, or out into the garden, or out to the hen-house for eggs, or down into the orchard, or the wood paster for recreation or cowslips.

To think that I wuz thus caged up as it were, my restless wings (speakin’ in metafor) folded in such clost quarters, with no chance (to foller up the metafor) of floppin’ ’em to any extent.

Oh! where wuz I? The thought wuz full of or. Why wuz I? This thought brung on trains of retrospection.

As I sot in my contracted corner of the aft fore-castle deck, and Night wuz lettin’ down, gradual, her starry mantilly over me and the seen, as erst it did over me as I sot in the sweet, restful door-yard at Jonesville. (Dear seen, shall I ever see thee agin?)

I will rehearse the facts that led to my takin’ this onpresidented step.

My pardner is asleep in his narrer bunk, or ruther on one of the shelves in our cell, that are cushioned, and on which our two forms nightly repose.

Asleep in his narrer bunk.

He is at rest. The waves are asleep, or pretty nigh asleep, the night winds are hushed, and all Nater seems to draw in her breath and wait for me as I tell the tale.

I will begin, as most fashionable novelists do, with a verse of poetry——

“Backward, turn backward (as fur as Jonesville), Oh Time, in thy flight—

Make me (a trusty, short-winded, female historian) jest for to-night.”

It wuz now goin’ on three years sence Uncle Philander Smith’s son, Philander Martin, named after his Pa and his Uncle Martin, writ a line to me announcin’ his advent into Jonesville. And in speakin’ of Philander I shall have to go back, kinder sideways, some distance into the past to describe him.

Yes, I will have to lead the horse fur back to hitch it on properly to the wagon of my history, or mebby it would be more proper, under the circumstances, to say how fur I must row my little personal life-boat back to hitch it onto the great steamer of my statement, in order that there shall be direct smooth sailin’ and no meanderin’.

Wall, with the first paddle of my verbal row-boat, I would state—

(And into how many little still side coves and seemin’ly wind-locked ways my little life-boat must sail on her way back to be jined to the great steamer, and how I must stay in ’em for some time! It can’t be helped.)

Yes, it must have been pretty nigh three years ago that we had our first letter from P. Martyn Smythe.

He is my second cousin on my own side. And he sot out from Spoonville (a neighborin’ hamlet) years ago with lots of ambition and pluck and energy, and about one dollar and seventy-five cents in money.

Uncle Philander, his father, had a big family, and died leavin’ him nothin’ but his good example and some old spectacles and a cane.

He wuz brung up by his Uncle Martin, a good-natered creeter, but onfaculized and shiftless.

Young Martin never loved to be hampered, and after he got old enough to help his uncle, he didn’t want to be hampered with him, so he packed up his little knapsack and sot out to seek his fortune, and he prospered beyend any tellin’, bought some mines, and railroads, and things, and at last come back East and settled down in a neighborin’ city, and then got rid of several things that he found hamperin’ to him. Amongst ’em wuz his old name—now he calls it “Smythe.”

Yes, he got rid of the good, reliable old Smith name, that has stood by so many human bein’s even unto the end. And he got rid, too, of his conscience, the biggest heft of it, and his poor relations.

For why, indeed, should a Bill or a Tom Smith claim relationship with a P. Martyn Smythe?

Why, indeed! He got rid of ’em all in a heap, as it were, a-ignorin’ “the hull kit and bilein’ of ’em,” as Aunt Debby said.

“Never seen hide nor hair of any of ’em, from one year’s end to the other,” sez Aunt Debby.

As to his conscience, he got rid of that, I spoze, kinder gradual, a little at a time, till to all human appearance he hadn’t a speck left, of which more anon.

But there wuz a little of it left, enough to leven his hull nater and raise it up, some like hop yeast, only stronger and more spiritual (as will also be seen anon).

Wall, he never seemed to know where his cousin, she that wuz Samantha Smith, lived, and his neck seemed to be made in that way—kinder held up by his stiff white collar mebby—that it held his head up firm and immovable, so’s he didn’t see me nor my Josiah when he’d meet him once in a great while at some quarterly meetin’ or conferences and sech.

I guess that neck of hisen carried him so straight that he couldn’t seem to turn it towards the old Smith pew at all.

And then he wuz dretful near-sighted, too; his eyes wuz affected dretful curous.

Uncle Mart Smith, the one P. Martin wuz named after, atted him about it, for he wuz his own uncle, and dretful shiftless and poor, but a Christian as fur as he could be with his nateral laziness on him.

As I say, he partly brung Martin up. A good-natered creeter he wuz. And one day he walked right up and atted P. Martyn Smythe as to why he never could see him.

And P. Martyn sed that it wuz his eyesight; sez he, “I’m dretful near-sighted.”

It made it all right with Uncle Martin, but his wife, Aunt Debby, she sed, “Why can he see bishops and elders so plain?”

“Wall,” sez Uncle Mart, “it is a curous complaint.” And she sez—

“’Tain’t curous a mite; it’s as nateral as ingratitude, and as old as Pharo.”

And she and Uncle Mart had some words about it.

Wall, his eyesight seemed to grow worse and worse so fur as old friends and relations wuz concerned, till all of a sudden—it wuz after my third book had shook the world, or I spoze it did; it kinder jarred it anyway, I guess—wall, what should that man, P. Martyn, do, but write to me and invite me to the big city where he lived.

Sez he, “Relations ort to cling closter to each other;” sez he, “Come and stay a week.”

I answered his note, cool but friendly.

And then he writ agin, and asked me to come and stay a month. Agin my answer wuz Christian, but about as cool as well water.

And then he writ agin and asked me to come and stay a year with ’em. And he would be glad, he said, he and his two motherless children, if I would come and live with ’em always.

This allusion to the motherless melted me down some, and my reply wuz, I spoze, about the temperture of milk jest from the cow.

But I said that Duty and Josiah binded me to my home and Jonesville.

Wall, the next summer what should P. Martyn do but to write to me that he and Alice and Adrian, his two children, wuz a-comin’ to Jonesville, and would we take ’em in for a week? He thought his children needed fresh air and a little cossetin’.

Wall, to me, Josiah Allen’s wife, who has brung up almost numberless lambs and chickens by hand as cossets, this allusion to “cossetin’” melted me so and warmed up my nater, that my reply wuz about the temperture of skim milk het for the calves.

So they come.

And indeed I said then what I say now, and I’ll defy anybody to dispute me, that two prettier, winnin’er creeters never lived than them two children.

Two prettier, winnin’er creeters never lived than them two.

Alice wuz about sixteen then, and Adrian wuz about five, and wuzn’t they happy! My hull heart went out to ’em, and mebby it wuz that love atmosphere that wropped ’em completely round that made ’em grow so bright and cheerful and healthy.

There hain’t no atmosphere that is at the same time so inspirin’ and so restful as the heart atmosphere of love.

You can always tell ’em that breathe its rare, fine atmosphere by the radiance in their faces and the lightness of their step.

I loved them two children dearly. They wuz both as handsome as picters, Alice fair and slender and sweet as a white day lily, with big, happy blue eyes, and hair of the same gold color that her mother had had.

Adrian had long curls of that same wonderful golden hair, and his eyes wuz big, inspirin’, blue gray, and his lips always seemed to hold a happy secret. He had that look some way.

Though what it could be we couldn’t tell, for he talked pretty much all the time.

And the questions he asked would more’n fill our old family Bible, I’m sure, and I thought some of the time that the overflow would fill Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs.”

Why, one day we got old Uncle Smedley to mow our lawn while Adrian wuz there, and I felt sorry that I didn’t put down the questions that Adrian asked that perfectly deaf man as he trotted along in his little velvet suit by the side of the lawn mower.

But then I d’no as I’m sorry, after all, for paper is sometimes skurce, and I don’t believe in extravagance.

And how he did love poseys, most of all the English violets! We had a big bed of ’em, and he always had a bunch of ’em in his little buttonhole, and be a-pinnin’ ’em to my waist and Alice’s. And he would have a big bunch in his hand, and jest bury his face in ’em, as if he wuz tryin’ to take in their deep, sweet perfume through his pores as it wuz. And always a little, low vase that stood before his plate on the table would be full of ’em.

I wondered at it some, but found out that before he wuz born his sweet Ma had jest sech a passion for ’em, and always had her room full of ’em. And I kinder wondered if, in some occult way, she wuz a-keepin’ up the acquaintance with her boy by means of that sweet and delicate language that we can’t spell yet, let alone talkin’.

I d’no, nor Josiah don’t, but anyway Adrian jest seemed to live on ’em in a certain way, as if they satisfied some deep hunger and need in his inmost nater.

And he would sometimes make the old-fashionedest remarks I ever hearn, and praise himself up jest as though he wuz somebody else. Not conceited at all, but jest sincere and honest.

One day after family prayers, Josiah had been readin’ about the New Jerusalem, and I spoze Adrian’s curosity wuz rousted up, and sez he, “Aunt Samantha, where is Heaven? Is it up in the sky, or where is it?”

“Aunt Samantha, where is Heaven? Is it up in the sky?”

And I sez, “Sometimes I have thought, Adrian, it wuz right here all round us, if we could only see it.”

“I wonder if I could find it?” sez he, and he peered all round him in the old-fashionedest way I ever see.

Sez he, “I spoze my pretty Mamma is there; I guess she wants me dreadfully sometimes; I am a very bright little boy—I am very agreeable.”

“But,” I sez, “that hain’t pretty for you to talk so.”

“Why, Papa sez I am, and he sez I am his wise little partner, and my Papa knows everything that wuz ever known—he knows more than any other man in the world.”

And I sez to myself, “No, he don’t. He don’t know enough to be jest, from all I’ve hearn of his doin’s.”

But I didn’t wonder that Adrian thought as he did, or Alice either, for if there wuz ever a indulgent and lovin’ father on earth, it wuz Martin Smith.

Nothin’ wuz too good for his children. He adored ’em, and tried to be father and mother both to his motherless boy and girl. And money, so fur as they wuz concerned, flowed as free as water.

P. Martyn didn’t stay but a few days this time, but left the children two weeks and come back for ’em.

He stayed right to our house, and his eyesight, so fur as the other relations wuz concerned, wuz jest the same. He rode round considerable with his children, and writ about five thousand letters, and sent off and received about the same number of letters and telegrams, and said and assured us at the end of the three days he wuz there, that “it wuz so sweet for him to have sech a perfect rest.”

He didn’t tell us much about what wuz in the letters, though the last day that he wuz there he got sech a enormous batch of ’em that he daned to explain the meanin’ of ’em to Josiah and me, for we both had helped him to carry ’em in. Sez he, “There is no such thing as satisfying the masses.

“Now,” sez he, “I’ve built a line of trolley cars, that are the means of saving no end of time, for my drivers, if they don’t come up to the swift schedule time I have marked down for them, I discharge them at once.

“They are economical, much cleaner and swifter than horses, an invaluable saving of time. They are convenient, rapid, and cheap. Now you would think that would satisfy them, but no; because they run through the most populous streets of the city, and because once in awhile an accident takes place, what do they want? They want me to add further to the enormous expense I have already been subjected to, and buy some fenders to prevent accidents.”

“Wall, hain’t you goin’ to?” sez I.

“No,” sez he, “I am not. If I do, they will probably want some sashay bags to hang up in the cars, and some automatic fans to fan them with as they ride.” But I had been a-readin’ a sight about the deaths them swift monsters had caused, and I sez—

“Martin, life is dear, and it seems as if every safeguard possible ort to be throwed round the great public, between ’em and death.”

“But,” sez he, “it is impudent in them to demand anything further than what I’ve already done. Horses were always causing accidents.”

“Wall,” sez I, “when folks are in danger of death, it makes ’em impudent. Why, Deacon Garvin sassed the minister when he fell into the pond at a Sunday School picnic, and the minister told him to call on the Lord in his extremity.”

He sassed him and yelled out to him, “You dum fool, you, throw me a board!”

He sassed him and yelled out, “You dum fool, you, throw me a board!”

Sez I, “Dretful danger makes folks sassy.”

“Well, I won’t be to the expense of getting them,” sez he.

Sez I mildly, “You told Josiah Allen and me yesterday that you’d laid up two millions of dollars sence you had gone into this enterprise. Now, as a matter of justice, don’t you think that the public who have paid you two millions of their money have a right to demand these safeguards to life and limb?”

He waived off the question.

“Why,” sez he, “in all the last year there have not been more than fifty lives lost in our city from these cars, and considering the hosts that have been carried, considering the convenience, the swiftness, the rapidity, and etcetera—what is fifty lives?”

“It depends on whose lives they be.”

“Wall,” sez I, “it depends on whose lives they be. Now I know,” sez I, a-glancin’ at my pardner’s shinin’ bald head a-risin’ up like a full harvest moon from behind the pages of The World—

“I know one life that if it went down in darkness under them wheels, it would make the hull world black and empty. It would take all the happiness and hope and meanin’ out of this world, and change it into a funeral gloom.”

Sez I, “It would darken the world for all who love him.” And sez I, “Every one of them fifty that have gone down under them death chariots have left ’em who loved ’em. Hearts have ached and broken as they have looked at the mangled bodies and the emptiness of life faced ’em.” Sez I, “Them rollin’ billows of blackness have swept over the livin’ and the lovin’ every time them cruel wheels have ground a bright human life to death.

“They have mostly been children,” sez I, “and think of the anguish mother hearts have endured, and father love and pride—how it has been crushed down under the rollin’ wheels of death.

“Sometimes a father, who wuz the only prop of a family, has gone down. How cold the world is to ’em when the love that wropped ’em round has been tore from ’em! Sometimes a mother—what can take the place of mother love to the little ones left to suffer from hunger, and nakedness, and ignorance?”

“You’re imaginative, Cousin Samantha,” said he; but I kep’ right on onbeknown to me.

“Who will care for the destitute children left alone in the cold world with no one to care for ’em and help ’em?”

“I’ll give ’em some money,” said little Adrian, who’d been leanin’ up aginst my knee and listenin’ to our talk, with his big, earnest eyes fixed on our faces.

“I’ll give ’em the gold piece that papa gave me yesterday.”

He had gin him a twenty dollar gold piece, for I see it.

“I’ll give ’em all I’ve got—I’ll work for that poor woman who lost her little boy—I’ll work for her and help her.”

“Who’ll work for me?” sez Martin. “You’re to be my partner, my boy; remember that. You’re my little partner now—half of all I own belongs to you.”

“And I will give it all to them,” sez Adrian.

But Martin went right on—“You are to be president of this company when I am an old man; you’re to work for me.”

“But I’ll work for those poor people, papa,” sez Adrian, and as he said this he looked way off through his father’s face, as he sot by the open window, to some distance beyend him. And his eyes, jest the color of that June sky, looked big and luminous.

“I’ll work for them, papa,” and as he spoke a sudden thrill, some like electricity, only more riz up like, shot through my soul, a sudden and deep conviction that he would work for ’em—that he would in some way redeem the old Smith name from the ojium attachin’ to it now as a owner of them Herod’s Chariots and a Massacreer of Innocents. But to resoom.

All the next day Adrian kep’ talkin’ about it, how he wuz goin’ to be his papa’s pardner, and how he wuz a-goin’ to work for poor folks who had lost their little children, and wanted so many things.

And the questions he asked me about ’em, and about poor folks, though wearisome to the flesh, wuz agreeable to the sperit.

Wall, Martin called him so much from day to day—“My little partner,” that we all got into the habit on’t, and called him so through the day.

And every evenin’ he would come to me and say—“Good-night, Aunt Samantha, good-bye till mornin’.”

And I would kiss him earnest and sweet, and say back to him, “Good-night, little pardner, till mornin’.”

And after he went home, Josiah and I would talk about him a sight, and wonder what the little pardner wuz doin’, and how he wuz lookin’ from day to day. And I would often go into the parlor, where his picter stood on the top shelf of the what-not, and stand and look dreamily at it. There he wuz in his little black velvet suit and a big bunch of English violets pinned on one side. The earnest eyes would look back at me dretful tender like and good. The mouth that held that wonderful sweet and sort o’ curous expression, as if he wuz thinkin’ of sunthin’ beautiful that we didn’t know anything about, would sort o’ smile back at me.

And he seemed to be a-sayin’ to me, as he said that day a-lookin’ out into the clear sky—

“I’ll work for them poor people!”

And I answered back to him out loud once or twice onbeknown to me, and sez I, “I believe you will, little pardner.”

And Josiah asked me who I wuz a-talkin’ to. He hollered out from the kitchen.

And I sez, “Ahem—ahem,” and kinder coughed. I couldn’t explain to my pardner jest how I felt, for I didn’t know myself hardly.

Wall, it run along for some time—Martin a-writin’ to me quite often, always a-talkin’ about his little pardner and Alice, and how they wuz a-gittin’ along, and a-invitin’ us to visit ’em.

And at last there came sech a pressin’ invitation from Alice to come and see ’em that I had to succumb.

But little, little did I ever think in my early youth, when I ust to read about Solomon’s Temple and Sheba’s Splendor, and sing about Pleasures and Palaces, that I should ever enter in and partake of ’em.

Why, the house that Martin lived in wuz a sight, a sight—big as the meetin’-housen at Jonesville and Loontown both put together, and ornamented with jest so many cubits of glory one way, and jest so many cubits of grandeur another. Wall, it wuz sunthin’ I never expected to see on earth, and in another sphere I never sot my mind on seein’ carpets that your feet sunk down into as they would in a bed of moss in a cedar swamp, and lofty rooms with stained-glass winders and sech gildin’s and ornaments overhead, and furniture sech as I never see, and statutes a-lookin’ pale with joy, to see the lovely picters that wuz acrost the room from ’em; and more’n twenty servants of different sorts and grades.

Why, actually, Josiah and I seemed as much out of place in that seen of grandeur as two hemlock logs with the bark on ’em at a fashionable church weddin’.

And nothin’ but the pure love I felt for them children, and their pure love for me, made me willin’ to stay there a minute.

Martin wuz good to us, and dretful glad to have us there to all human appearance; but Alice and Adrian loved us.

And I hadn’t been there more’n a few days before I see one reason why Alice had writ me so earnest to come—she wuz in deep trouble, she wuz in love, deep in love with a young lawyer, one who writ for the newspapers, too—

A man who had the courage of his convictions, and had writ several articles about the sufferin’s of the poor and the onjustice of rich men. And amongst the rest he had writ some cuttin’ but jest articles about the massacreein’ of children by them trolley cars, and so had got Martin’s everlastin’ displeasure and hatred.

The young man, I found out, wuz as good as they make anywhere; a noble-lookin’ young feller, too, so I hearn.

Even Martin couldn’t say a word aginst him, for, in the cause of Duty and Alice, I tackled him on the subject. Sez I, “Hain’t he honest and manly and upright?”

And he had to admit that he wuz, that he hadn’t a vice or bad habit, and wuz smart and enterprisin’.

I held him right there with my eye till I got an answer.

“But he is a fool,” sez he.

Sez I, “Fools don’t generally write sech good sense, Martin.”

Sez he wrathfully, “I knew your opinions—I expected you’d uphold him in his ungrateful folly.

“But he has lost Alice by it,” sez he; “for I never will give my consent to have him marry her.”

Sez I, “Then you had never ort to let him come here and have the chance to win her heart, and now break it, for,” sez I, “you encouraged him at first, Martin.”

“I know I did,” sez he—“I thought I had found one honest man, and I had decided on giving all my business into his hands. It would have been the making of him,” sez he; “but he has only himself to blame, for if he had kept still he would have married Alice, but now he shall not.”

Sez I, “Alice thinks jest as he duz.”

“What do women know about business?” he snapped out, enough to take my head off.

“If wimmen don’t know anything about bizness, Martin, I should think you’d be glad to know, in case you left Alice, that she and her immense fortune wuz in the hands of an honest man.

“And I want you to consent to this marriage,” sez I, “in a suitable time—when Alice gits old enough.”

“I won’t consent to it!” sez he—“the writer of them confounded papers never shall marry my daughter.”

“Why,” sez I, “there’s nothin’ harsh in the articles.” Sez I, “They’re only a strong appeal to the pity and justice of ’em who are responsible for all this danger and horrow!”

“Well,” sez he, “I’ve made up mind, and I never change it.”

Sez I, “I d’no whether you will or not.” Sez I, “This is a strange world, Martin, and folks are made to change their minds sometimes onbeknown to ’em.”

Wall, I didn’t stay more’n several days after this, when I returned to the peaceful precincts of Jonesville and my (sometimes) devoted pardner, and things resoomed their usual course.

But every few days I got communications from Martin’s folks. Alice writ to me sweet letters of affection, wherein I could read between the lines a sad background of Hope deferred and a achin’ heart.

And Adrian writ long letters to me, where the spellin’ left much to be desired, but the good feelin’ and love and confidence in ’em wuz all the most exactin’ could ask for.

And occasionally Martin would write a short line of a sort of hurried, patronizin’ affection, and the writin’ looked so much like ducks’ tracts that it seemed as if our old drake would have owned up to ’em in a law suit.

But Josiah and me would put on our strongest specks, and take the letter between us, and hold it in every light, and make out the heft on it.

Josiah and me put on our strongest specks.

Till at last, one notable day, long to be remembered, there come a letter in Martin’s awful chirography. And when we had studied out its contents, we looked at each other in a astounded astonishment and a sort of or.

“Would I go to Europe with him and his children as his guest?” He thought Alice seemed to be a little delicate, and mebby the trip would do her good, and he also thought she needed the company of some good, practical woman to see to her, and mother her a little.

That last sentence tugged at my heart strings.

But my answer went back by next mail—

“I wuz afraid of the ocean, and couldn’t leave Josiah.”

The answer come back by telegraph—

“The ocean wuz safer than land, and take Josiah along, too. He expected he would go.”

Then I writ back—“I never had been drownded on dry land, and didn’t believe I should be, and Josiah didn’t feel as though he could leave the farm.”

Then Martin telegrafted to Thomas J.—

“Arrange matters for father and mother to take trip. Send bill to me. Alice needs their care. Her health and happiness depend on it.”

So he got Thomas Jefferson on his side. Thomas J. and Maggie loved Alice like a sister. But there wuzn’t any bill to send to Martin, for Thomas J. pinted out the facts that Ury could move right into the house and take care of everything. And sez he, “The trip and the rest will do you both good.”

“But the danger,” sez I.

And he said, jest like Martin—“Less danger than the land, better rates of insurance given,” etc., etc., etc.

And Maggie put in too, and Josiah begun to kinder want to go.

And we wavered back and forth, until a long letter from Alice, beggin’ me and her Uncle Josiah to go with her to take care of her, tottled the balance over on the side of Europe.

And Josiah and I began to make preperations for a trip abroad.

Oh my heart! think on’t!

I announced our decision to Martin in a letter of 9 pages of foolscap—Josiah writ half of it—describin’ our doubts and delays and our final reasons for decision.

And he telegrafted back—

“All right—start 14th. Send bill of expense to me.”

But there wuzn’t no bill sent, as I said—no, indeed!

I guess we didn’t want nobody to buy clothes for us—no, indeed!

As for the travellin’ expenses of the trip, seein’ they thought we wuz necessaries to their comfort, and seein’ he’d invited us, and seein’ his income wuz about ten thousand dollars an hour, why we laid out to let him have his way in that.

It wuzn’t nothin’ that we’d ever thought on, and then, as I told Josiah, we could even it up some by invitin’ the children to stay all summer with us next year.

So the die wuz cast down, and the cloth wuz soon bought for Josiah’s new European shirts, and my own foreign nightcap and nightgown.

As for my clothes, by Maggie’s advice and assistance, aided by our two practical common senses, the work wuz soon completed.

Maggie said that I must dress better than I usually did on my towers, for the sake of pleasin’ Martin and Alice. And she and Thomas J. made me a present of a good black silk dress, and she see to makin’ it, with one plain waist for common wear, and one dressy waist, very handsome, with black jet trimmin’ on it for my best.

A good gray alpacky travellin’ dress, some the color of dust, with a bunnet of the same color, and a good brown lawn for hot days wuz enough, and didn’t take up much room. Plenty of good underclothes and a wool wrapper for the steamer completed my trossow.

Thomas J. see to it that his Pa had a good-lookin’ suit of black clothes for his best, and a suit of pepper and salt for every day.

I also made him 2 new flannel nightcaps. And I myself had two new nightcaps made. In makin’ ’em, I departed from my usual fashion of sheep’s-head nightcaps, thinkin’ in case of a panick at sea, and the glare of publicity a-bein’ throwed onto ’em, a modified sheep’s head would appear better than clear sheep.

It wuz very dressy when it wuz done.

They wuz gathered slightly in the crown, and had some very nice egin’ on ’em—7 cents per yard at hullsail—7 and ½ retail.

It wuz good lace.

They wuz very becomin’ to my style.

I also made Josiah a handsome dressin’-gown out of a piece of rep goods I had in the house. I had laid out to cover a lounge with it, but I thought under these peculiar circumstances Josiah needed it more’n the lounge did, and so I made it up for him. I made a cord with two tossels to tie it with. I twisted the cord out of good red and black woosted and made the tossels of the same.

It wuz very dressy when it wuz done. And he would have worn it out visitin’ if I had encouraged him in it. He wuz highly delighted and tickled with it.

But I tutored him that it wuz only to wear in his state-room, and in case of a panick on deck.

CHAPTER II.

A HEATHEN MISSIONARY.

Wall, I wuz a-settin’ in my clean settin’-room on a calm twilight, engaged in completin’ my preperations—in fact, I wuz jest a-puttin’ the finishin’ touches on one of Josiah’s nightcaps and mine.

I put cat stitch round the front of hisen, a sort of a dark red cat.

When all to once I hearn a knock at the west door. I had thought as I wuz a-settin’ a-sewin’ what a beautiful sunset it wuz. The west jest glowed with light that streamed over and lit up the hull sky. All wuz calm in the east, and a big moon wuz jest risin’ from the back of Balcom’s Hill. It wuz shaped a good deal like a boat, and I laid down my sheep’s-head nightcap and set still and watched it, as it seemed moored off behind the evergreens that stood tall and silent and dark, as if to guard Jonesville and the world aginst the gold boat that wuz a-sailin’ in from some onknown harbor. But it come on stiddy, and as if it had to come.

I felt queer.

And jest at that minute I hearn the knock at the west door.

A dark figger that riz up like a strange picter aginst the sunset.

And I went and opened it, and as I did the west wuz flamin’ so with light that it most blinded me at first; but when I got my eyesight agin I see a-standin’ between me and that light a dark figger that riz up like a strange picter aginst the sunset.

His back wuz to the light, and his face wuz in the shadder, but I could see that it wuz dark and eager, with glowin’ eyes that seemed to light up his dark features, some as the stars light up the sky.

And he wuz dressed in a strange garb, sech as I never see before, only to the World’s Fair. Yes, in that singular moment I see the value of travel. It give me sech a turn that if I hadn’t had the advantage of seein’ jest such costooms at that place, I should most probble have swooned away right on my own doorstep.

He wuz dressed in a long, loose gown of some dark material, and had a white turban on his head. Who he wuz or where he come from was a mystery to me.

But I felt it wuz safe anyway to say, “Good-evenin’,” whoever he wuz or wherever he came from; he couldn’t object to that.

So consequently I said it—not a-knowin’ but he would address me back in Hindoo, or Sanskrit, or Greek, or sunthin’ else paganish and queer.

But he didn’t; he spoke jest as well as my Thomas Jefferson could, and when I say that, I say enough, full enough for anybody, only his voice had a little bit of a foreign axent to it, that put me in mind some of the strange odor of Maggie’s sandal-wood fan, sunthin’ that is inherient and stays in it, though it is owned in America, and has Jonesville wind in it—good, strong wind, as good as my turkey feather fan ever had.

Sez he, “Good-evening, madam. Do I address Josiah Allen’s wife?”

Sez I, “You do.”

Sez he, “Pardon this intrusion. I come on particular business.”

Whereupon I asked him to come in, and sot a chair for him.

I didn’t know whether to ask him to lay off his things or not, not a-seein’ anything only the dress he had on, and not knowin’ what the state of his clothes wuz.

And after a minute’s reflection on it, I dassent venter.

So I simply sot him a chair and asked him to set.

He bowed dretful polite, and thanked me, and sot.

Then there wuz a slight pause ensued and follered on. I wuz some embarrassed, not knowin’ what subject to introduce.

Deacon Bobbett had lost his best heifer that day, and most all Jonesville wuz a-lookin’ for it, but I didn’t know whether it would interest him or not.

And Sally Garvin had a young babe. A paper of catnip even then reposed on the kitchen table a-waitin’ until her husband come back to send it, but I didn’t know whether that subject would be proper to branch out on to a man.

So I sot demute for as much as half a minute.

And before I could collect myself together and break out in conversation, he sez in that deep, soft, musical voice of hisen—

“Madam, I have come on a strange errand.”

“Wall,” sez I, in a encouragin’ voice, “I am used to strange errents—yes, indeed, I am! Why,” sez I, “this very day a woman writ to me from Minnesota for money to fence in a door-yard, and,” sez I, “Sime Bentley wuz over bright and early this mornin’ to borrer a settin’ hen. He had plenty of eggs, but no setters.”

Sez I in a encouragin’ axent, for I couldn’t help likin’ the creeter, “I am used to ’em—don’t be afraid.”

I didn’t know but he wuz after my nightgown pattern, and I looked clost at his garb; but I see that it wuz fur fuller than mine and sot different. The long folds hung with a dignity and grace that my best mull nightgown never had, and if it wuz so, I wuz a-goin’ to tell him honorable that his pattern went fur ahead of mine in grandeur.

And then, thinks I, mebby he is a-goin’ to beg for money for a meetin’-house steeple or sunthin’ in Hindoostan, and I wuz jest a-makin’ up my mind to tell him that we hadn’t yet quite paid for the paint that ornamented ourn. And I wuz a-layin’ out to bring in some Bible and say, “Charity begun on our own steeple.”

But jest as I wuz a-thinkin’ this he spoke up in that melodious voice, that somehow put me in mind of palm trees a-risin’ up aginst a blue-black sky, and pagodas, and oasises, and things. Sez he, “Will you allow me to tell you a little of my history?”

I sez, “Yes, indeed! I am jest through with my work.” Sez I frankly, “I have been finishin’ some nightcaps for my pardner, and I sot the last stitch to ’em as you come in. I’d love to set still and hear you tell it.”

So I sot down in the big arm-chair and folded my arms in a almost luxurious foldin’, and listened.

Sez he, “My name is Al Faizi, and I am come from a country far away.” And he waved his hand towards the east.

Instinctively I follered his gester, and his eyes, and I see that the gold boat of the moon had come round the pint, and wuz a-sailin’ up swift into the clear sky. But a big star shone there, it stood there motionless, as he went on.

Sez he, “I have always been a learner, a seeker after truth. When a small boy I lived with my uncle, who was a learned man, and his wife, who was an Englishwoman. From her I learned your language. I loved to study; she had many books. She was the daughter of a missionary, who died and left her alone in that strange land. My uncle was a convert to her faith. She married him and was happy. She had many books that belonged to her father; he was a good man and very learned; he did my people much good while he lived with them.

“I learned from those books many things that our own wise men never taught me, and from them I got a great craving to see this land. I learned from these books and my aunt’s teachings taught me when I was so young that truth permeated my being and filled my heart, that this land was the country favored by God—this land so holy, that it sent missionaries to teach my people. Then I went to a school taught by English teachers, but always I searched for truth—I search for God in mosque and in temple. These books said God is here in this land. So I come. Many of my people come to this great Fair, I come also with them.

“But always I seek the great spirit of God I came here to find. I thought truth and justice would fill your temples, and your homes, and all your great cities.

“I come, I watch for this Great Light—I listened for the Great Voice, I see strange things, but I say nothing, I only think, but I get more and more perplexed. I ask many people to show me the temple where God is, to show me the great mosque where Truth and Right dwell, and the people are blessed by their white shining light, for I thought He would be in all the customs and ways of this wise people, so good that they instruct all the rest of the world. I come to learn, to worship, but I see such strange things, such strange customs. I see cruelties practised, such as my own people would not think of doing. I keep silent, I only think—think much. But more and more I wonder, and grow sad.

“I don’t love to hear that; that sounds bad.”

“I ask many men, preachers, teachers, to show me the place where God is, the great palace where truth dwells. They take me to many places, but I do not find the great spirit of Love I seek for. I find in your big temples altars built up to strange gods.”

Sez I mildly, “I don’t love to hear that; that sounds bad. I can take you to one meetin’-house,” sez I, “where we don’t have no Dagon nor snub-nosed idols to worship,” sez I.

But even as I spoke my conscience reproved me; for wuz there not settin’ in the highest place in that meetin’-house a rich man who got all his money by sellin’ stuff that made brutes of his neighbors?

What wuz we all a-lookin’ up to, minister and people, but a gold beast! What wuz that man’s idol but Mammon!

And then didn’t I remember how the hull meetin’-house had turned aginst Irene Filkins, who went astray when she wuz nothin’ but a little girl, a motherless little girl, too?

Where wuz the great sperit of Love and Charity that said—“Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more”? Wuz God there?

Didn’t I remember that in this very meetin’-house they got up a fair to help raise money for some charity connected with it, and one of the little girls kicked higher than any Bowery girl? Wuz it a-startin’ that child on the broad road that takes hold on death? Wuz we worshippin’ a idol of Expediency—doing evil that good might come?

There wuz poor ones in that very meetin’-house, achin’ hearts sufferin’ for food and clothin’ almost, and rich, comfortable ones who went by on the other side and sot in their places and prayed for the poor, with their cold forms and hungry eyes watchin’ ’em vainly as they prayed, hopin’ for the help they did not get.

Wuz we hyppocrites? Did we bow at the altar of selfishness?

Truly no Eastern idol wuz any more snub-nosed and ugly than this one.

I wuz overcome with horrow when I thought it all over, and sez I—“I guess I won’t take you there right away; we’ll think on’t a spell first.”

For I happened to think, too, that our good, plain old preacher, Elder Minkley, wuzn’t a-goin’ to preach there Sunday, anyway, but a famous sensational preacher, that some of the rich members wanted to call. Yes, many hed turned away from the good gospel sermons of that man of God, Elder Minkley, and wanted a change.

Wuz it a windy, sensational God set up in our pulpit? I felt guilty as a dog, for I too had criticised that good old Elder’s plain speakin’.

Al Faizi had sot me to thinkin’, and while I wuz a-meditatin’ his calm voice went on—

“I came to a city not far away; there I saw some words you had written. I felt that you, too, desired the truth. I have come to ask you if you have found it—if you have found in this land the place where Love and Justice reign, and to ask you where it is, that I, too, may worship there, and teach the truth to my people.”

I wuz overcome by his simple words, and I bust out onbeknown to me—

“I hain’t found it.” Sez I, and onconsciously I used the words of another—“‘We are all poor creeters,’ but we try to worship the true God—we try to follow the teachin’s of Him who loved us, and give His life to us.”

“The wise man who lived in Galilee and taught the people?” sez he.

“No,” sez I, “not the wise man, but the Divine One—the God who left His throne and dwelt with us awhile in the form of the human. We try to foller His teachings—a good deal of the time we do,” sez I, honestly and sadly.

For more and more this strange creeter’s words sunk into my heart, and made me feel queer—queer as a dog.

“I have read His words. I loved Him when a boy, I love Him still. I go into your great churches sacred to His name. I find in one grand church they say He is there alone, and not in any other. I go into another, just as great, and they say He is there, and not in the one I first visited; and then I go to another, and another, and yet another.

“All have different ways and beliefs. All say God is here within the narrow walls of this church, and not in the others. Oh! I get so confused, I know not what to do. How can I, a poor stranger, trace His footsteps through all these conflicting creeds? I grow sad, and my heart fills with doubt and darkness. Well I remember His words that I had pondered in my heart when a boy—‘That they who loved Him should bear the cross and follow Him,’ and love and care for His poor. In all these great, beautiful churches I hear sweet music. In some I see grand pictures, and note the incense floating up toward the Heavens; in some I see high vaulted roofs, and the light in many glowing colors falls on the bowed forms of the worshippers. I hear holy words, the voice of prayer, but I see no crosses borne, and all are rich and grand. I go down in the low places. I see the poor toiling on unpitied and uncared for. I see these rich people worship in the churches one day, and pray—‘Grant us mercy as we are merciful to others.’

“And then the next day they put burdens on the poor, so hard that they can hardly bear them, the poor, starving, dying, herded together like animals, in wretched places unfit for dumb creatures.

“And ever the rich despise the poor, and the poor curse the rich—both bitter against each other, even unto death.

“I find no God of Love in this.

“I go into your great halls where laws are made—I see the wise men making laws to bind the weak and tempted with iron chains—laws to help bad men lead lives of impurity—laws to make legal crimes that your Holy Book says renders one forever unfit for Heaven. I find no God of Justice in this.”

“No,” sez I, “He hain’t nigh ’em, and never wuz!”

“Well then,” sez he, “why do they not find out the way of truth themselves before they try to teach other people?”

“The land knows!” sez I; “I don’t.”

“Some of your teachers do much good,” sez he; “they are good, and teach some of my people good doctrines. But why ever are they permitted by your government to bring ways and habits into our land that cover it with ruin?

“I was walking once with my own relation, Hadijah, unconverted, and we found one of our people lying drunken by the wayside, with bottles of American whiskey lying by his side. ‘Boston’ was marked on them, a city, I find, that considers itself the centre of goodness and lofty thought. The bottles were empty. Hadijah says to me—‘That man is a Christian.’

“‘That man is a Christian.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘Because he is drunk.’”

“I said—‘No, I think not.’

“‘Yes he is,’ said he.

“‘How do you know it?’ said I.

“‘Because he is drunk.’ Hadijah, not being yet converted, and judging from appearances and from the evidences of his eyesight, associated the ideas and thought that in some way drunkenness was an evidence of Christianity. That belief is largely shared by all heathen people.

“And then I open your Holy Book and find it written, ‘No drunkard shall inherit eternal life,’ and I say to myself, What does it mean that these holy people over the seas, who try so hard to convert us, should send whiskey, and Bibles, and missionaries to us all packed in one great ship?”

Sez I—“The nation don’t mean to do it.” Sez I, “It don’t want to do any sech harm.”

“But I hear of the great power of this nation, could it not prevent it? If it could not prevent it, it must be a weak government indeed. And if truly this great country is so weak and so wicked as to set snares for the heathens—trying to lead them into paths that end in eternal ruin—I think why not keep their missionaries in their own land? They must need them even more than we do.”

Sez I—“Don’t talk so, poor creeter, don’t talk so. Missionaries go out to your land fired with the deathless zeal to save souls—to bring the knowledge of the Christ to all the world.”

“But if they bring the knowledge in the way I speak of, so the heathen honestly believes drunkenness is the sign of Christianity, is it not making a mockery of what they profess to teach?”

I wuz dumbfoundered. I didn’t know how to frame a reply, and so I sot onframed, as you may say.

“I heard the missionaries say, and I read it in your Holy Book, that the liar shall have his portion in the lake that burns forever. The same curses are on them that steal and on them that commit adultery.

“I thought the country that sends these missionaries, rebuking these sins so sharply—I thought their country must be pure and peaceable and holy in its ways. I come here, as I say, seeking the Great Light to guide me. I come here to hear the Great Voice, so I could go back and carry its teachings to our own people. For I thought there must be some mistake, and that the lessons failed in some way to carry the idea of your great government. So I come, I study; and I find that not only was your great government willing to have my poor people enslaved by the drink habit, but it was a partaker in it. It sent over the accursed whiskey and brandy and took a portion of the pay—a portion of the money spent by my poor people for making themselves unfit for earth, and shutting them forever out of Heaven.

“Again, this law that ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ that stands out so plain in the Holy Book, that divorce is only permitted for this one cause, I find this great government, which by its laws breaks even the holy marriage bonds by the committing of this sin—I find that this government makes this sin easy and convenient to commit. It grants licenses to make it lawful and right.

“When I get here and study I see such strange things. Forevermore I wonder, and forevermore I say—Why are not missionaries sent to this people, who do such things?

“And I, even I, so weak as I am and so ignorant, but fired as I am by the love of Christ Jesus—I say to myself, ‘I will tell this people of their sins. I will try to bring them to a knowledge of the pure and holy religion of Christ.’”

“You come as a missionary, then?” sez I, a-bustin’ out onbeknown to me. “Often and often I have wanted a heathen to come over and try to convert Uncle Sam—poor old creeter, a-wadin’ in sin up to his old knee jints and over ’em,” sez I.

“Uncle Sam a-wadin’ in sin up to his old knee jints.”

“Uncle Sam?” sez he; “I know him not. I meant your great people; I do not speak of one alone.”

“I know,” sez I; “that is what we call our Goverment when we are on intimate terms with it.”

“And,” sez I, “you little know what that old man has been through. He wants to do right—he honestly duz; but you know jest how it is—how mistaken counsellors darken wisdom and confound jedgment.”

But the sweet, melodious voice went on—

“Your missionaries preach loud to my people against the sins of stealing and gambling.

“But I find that in this country great places are fitted up for gambling and theft.”

Truly he spoke plain, but then I d’no as I could blame him.

“In these places of theft and gambling, called your stock exchanges, I find that you have people called brokers, and some wild animals called bulls and bears, though for what purpose they are kept I know not, unless it is that they are trained for the Arena. I know not yet all your customs.

“But this I know, that your brokers gamble and steal from the people—sometimes millions in one day. Which money, taken from the common people all over this country, is divided by these brokers amongst a few rich men. Perhaps then the game of bulls and bears, fighting each other for their amusement, begins. I know not yet all your ways.

THE GAME OF BULLS AND BEARS.

“But I know that in one day five million bushels of wheat were bought and sold when there was no wheat in sight—when even during that whole year the crop amounted to only two hundred and eighty millions. There were more than two million, two hundred thousand bushels of wheat bought and paid for that never grew—that were not ever in the world.

“As I saw this, oh! how my heart burned to teach this poor sinful people the morality that our own people enjoy.

“For never were there such sins committed in our country.

“I find your rich men controlling the market—holding back the bread that the poor hungered and starved for, putting burdens on them more grievous than they could bear. These rich men, sitting with their soft, white hands, and forms that never ached with labor, putting such high prices on grain and corn that the poor could not buy to eat—these rich men prayed in the morning (for they often go through the forms of the holy religion)—they prayed, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ and then made it their first business to keep people from having that prayer answered to them.

“They prayed, ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ and then deliberately made circumstances that they knew would lead countless poor into temptation—temptation of theft—temptation of selling Purity and Morality for bread to sustain life.”

Sez I, a-groanin’ out loud and a-sithin’ frequent—

“I can’t bear to hear sech talk, it kills me almost; and,” sez I honestly, “there is so much truth in it that it cuts me like a knife.”

Sez he, a-goin’ on, not mindin’ my words—“I felt that I must warn this people of its sins. I must tell them of what was done once in one of our own countries,” sez he, a-wavin’ his hand in a impressive gester towards our east door—

“In one of our countries the authorities learned that stock exchanges were being formed at Osaka, Yokohama, and Koba.

“The police, all wearing disguises, went at once to the exchanges and mingled with the crowd. When all was ready a sign was given, the police took possession of the exchanges and all the books and papers, the doors were locked and the prisoners secured. Over seven hundred were put in prison, the offence being put down—‘Speculation in margins.’

“I yearn to tell this great people of the way of our countries, so that they may follow them.”

“A heathen a-comin’ here as a missionary!” sez I, a-thinkin’ out loud, onbeknown to me. “Wall, it is all right.” Sez I, “It’s jest what the country needs.”

But before I could say anythin’ further, at that very minute my beloved pardner come in.

He paused with a look of utter amazement. He stood motionless and held complete silence and two pails of milk.

But I advanced onwards and relieved him of his embarrassment and one pail of milk, and introduced Al Faizi. Al Faizi riz up to once and made a deep bow, almost to the floor; but my poor Josiah, with a look of bewilderment pitiful to witness, and after standin’ for a brief time and not speakin’ a word, sez he—

Al Faizi made a deep bow, almost to the floor.

“I guess, Samantha, I will go out to the sink and wash my hands.”

Truly, it wuz enough to surprise any man, to leave a pardner with no companion but a sheep’s-head nightcap, partly finished, and come back in a few minutes and see her a-keepin’ company with a heathen, clothed in a long robe and turban.

Wall, Josiah asked me out into the kitchen for a explanation, which I gin to him with a few words and a clean towel, and then sez I—“We must ask him to stay all night.”

And he sez, “I d’no what we want of that strange-lookin’ creeter a-hangin’ round here.”

And I sez, “I believe he is sent by Heaven to instruct us heathens.”

And Josiah said that if he wuz sent from Heaven he would most probble have wings.

He didn’t want him to stay, I could see that, and he spoke as if he wuz on intimate terms with angels, a perfect conoozer in ’em.

But I sez, “Not all of Heaven’s angels have wings, Josiah Allen, not yet; but,” sez I, “they are probble a-growin’ the snowy feathers on ’em onbeknown to ’em.”

CHAPTER III.

OFF INTO SIDE PATHS.

Wall, the upshot of the matter wuz Al Faizi stayed right there for weeks. He seemed to have plenty of money, and I d’no what arrangement he and Josiah did make about his board, but I know that Josiah acted after that interview with him in the back yard real clever to him, and didn’t say a word more aginst the idee of his not bein’ there.

(Josiah is clost.)

As for me, I would have scorned to have took a cent from him, feelin’ that I got more’n my pay out of his noble but strange conversation.

But Josiah is the head of the family (or he calls himself so).

And mebby he is some of the time.

But suffice it to say, Al Faizi jest stayed and made it his home with us, and peered round, and took journeys, and tried to find out things about our laws and customs.

Thomas Jefferson loved to talk with him the best that ever wuz. And Al Faizi would make excursions to different places round, a-walkin’ mostly, a-seein’ how the people lived, and a-watchin’ their manners and customs, and in writin’ down lots of things in some books he had with him, takin’ notes, I spozed, and learnin’ all he could. One book that he used to carry round with him and make notes in wuz as queer a lookin’ book as I ever see.

With sunthin’ on the cover that looked some like a cross and some like a star.

There wuz some precious stuns on it that flashed. If it wuz held up in some lights it looked like a cross, and then agin the light would fall on’t and make it look like a star. And the gleamin’ stuns would sparkle and flash out sometimes like a sharp sword, and anon soft, like a lambient light.

It wuz a queer-lookin’ book; and he said, when I atted him about it, that he brought it from a country fur away.

And agin he made that gester towards the East, that might mean Loontown, and might mean Ingy and Hindoosten—and sech.

After that first talk with me, in which he seemed to open his heart, and tell what wuz in his mind, as you may say, about our country, he didn’t seem to talk so very much.

He seemed to be one of the kind who do up their talkin’ all to one time, as it were, and git through with it.

Of course he asked questions a sight, for he seemed to want to find out all he could. And he would anon or oftener make a remark, but to talk diffuse and at length, he hardly ever did. But he took down lots of notes in that little book, for I see him.

I enjoyed havin’ him there dretful well, and done well by him in cookin’, etcetery and etcetery.

But the excitement when he first walked into the Jonesville meetin’-house with Josiah and me wuz nearly rampant. I felt queer and kinder sheepish, to be walkin’ out with a man with a long dress, and turban on, and sandals. And I kinder meached along, and wuz glad to git to our pew and set down as quick as I could. But Josiah looked round him with a dignified and almost supercilious mean. He felt hauty, and acted so, to think that we had a heathen with us and that the other members of the meetin’-house didn’t have one.

But if I felt meachin’ over one heathen, or, that is, if I felt embarrassed a-showin’ him off before the bretheren and sistern, what would I felt if Josiah had had his way about comin’ to meetin’ that day?

Little did them bretheren and sistern know what I’d been through that mornin’.

Josiah wore his gay dressin’-gown down to breakfast, which I bore well, although it wuz strange—strange to have two men with dresses on a-settin’ on each side of me to the table—I who had always been ust to plain vests and pantaloons and coats on the more opposite sex.

But I bore up under it well, and didn’t say nothin’ aginst it, and poured out the coffee and passed the buckwheat cakes and briled chicken and etc. with a calm face.

But when church-time come, and Ury brought the mair and democrat up to the door, and I got up on to the back seat, when I turned and see Josiah Allen come out with that rep dressin’-gown on, trimmed with bright red, and them bright tossels a-hangin’ down in front, and a plug hat on, you could have knocked me down with a pin feather.

And sez I sternly, “What duz this mean, Josiah Allen?”

Sez he, “I am a-goin’ to wear this to meetin’, Samantha.”

“To meetin’?” sez I almost mekanically.

“Yes,” sez he; “I am a-doin’ it out of compliments to Fazer; he would feel queer to be the only man there with a dress on, and so I thought I would keep him company; and,” sez he, a-fingerin’ the tossels lovin’ly, “this costoom is very dressy and becomin’ to me, and I’d jest as leave as not let old Bobbett and Deacon Garvin see me appearin’ in it,” sez he.

“Do you go and take that off this minute, Josiah Allen! Why, they’d call you a idiot and as crazy as a loon!”

Sez he, a-puttin’ his right foot forward and standin’ braced up on it, sez he, “I shall wear this dress to meetin’ to-day!”

Sez I, “You won’t wear it, Josiah Allen!”

Sez he, “You know you are always lecturin’ me on bein’ polite. You know you told me a story about a woman who broke a china teacup a purpose because one of her visitors happened to break hern. You praised her up to me; and now I am actin’ out of almost pure politeness, and you want to break it up, but you can’t,” sez he, and he proceeded to git into the democrat.

Ury wuz a-standin’ with his hands on his sides, convulsed with laughter, and even the mair seemed to recognize sunthin’ strange, for she whinnered loudly.

Sez I in frigid axents, “Even the old mair is a whinnerin’, she is so disgusted with your doin’s, Josiah Allen.”

“The old mair is whinnerin’ for the colt!” sez he, and agin he put his foot on the lowest step.

Sez I, a-risin’ up in the democrat, “I’ll git out.”

“Wall,” sez I, a-risin’ up in the democrat, with dignity, “I’ll git out and stay to home. I will not go to church and see my pardner took up for wearin’ female’s clothin’.”

He paused with his foot on the step, and a shade of doubt swept over his liniment.

“Do you spoze they would?” sez he.

“Of course they would!” sez I; “twilight would see you a-moulderin’ in a cell in Loontown.”

“I couldn’t moulder much in half a day!” sez he.

But I see that I wuz about to conquer. He paused a minute in deep thought, and then he turned away; but as he went up the steps slowly, I hearn him say—“Dum it all, I never try to show off in politeness or anything but what sunthin’ breaks it up!”

But anon he come down clothed in his good honorable black kerseymeer suit, and Al Faizi soon follered him in his Oriental garb, and we proceeded to meetin’.

As I say, the excitement wuz nearly rampant as we went in. And I spoze nothin’ hendered the female wimmen and men from bein’ fairly prostrated and overcome by their feelin’s, only this fact, that the winter before a Hindoo in full costoom had lectured before the Jonesville meetin’-house, so that memory kinder broke the blow some. And then some on ’em had been to the World’s Fair, and seen quantities of heathens and sech there.

So no casuality wuz reported, though feather fans wuz waved wildly, and more caraway wuz consoomed, I dare presoom to say, than would have been in a month of Sundays in ordinary times.

But while the wonder and curosity waxed rampant all round, Al Faizi sot silent and motionless as the dead, with his soft, brilliant eyes fixed on the minister’s face, eager to ketch every word that fell from his lips—a-tryin’ to hear the echo of the Great Voice speak to him through the minister’s words, so I honestly believe.

For I think that a honester, sincerer, well-meanin’er creeter never lived and breathed than he wuz; and as days went on I see nothin’ to break up my opinion of him.

Politer he wuz than any female, or minister, I ever see fur or near. Afraid of makin’ trouble to a marked extent, eager and anxious to learn everything he could about everything—all our laws, and customs, and habits, and ways of thinkin’—and tellin’ his views in a simple way of honest frankness, that almost took my breath away—anxious to learn, and anxious to teach what he knew of the truth.

Though, as I said, after that first bust of talk with me he seemed inclined to not talk so much, but learn all he could. It wuz as if he had his say out in that first interview. Dretful interestin’ creeter to have round, he wuz—sech a contrast to the inhabitants of Jonesville, Deacon Garvin and the Dankses, etc.

He didn’t stay to our house all the time, as I said, but would take pilgrimages round and come back, and make it his home there.

Wall, it wuz jest about this time that a contoggler come to our house to contoggle a little for me. I wanted some skirts, and some underwaists, and some of Josiah’s old clothes contoggled.

You know, it stood to reason that we couldn’t have all new things for our voyage, and so I had to have some of our old clothes fixed up. You see, things will git kinder run down once in awhile—holes and rips in dresses, trimmin’ offen mantillys, tabs to new line, and pantaloons to hem over round the bottom, and vests to line new, and backs to put into ’em, and etcetery and etcetery.

And, then, you’ll outgrow some of your things, and have to let ’em out; or else they’ll outgrow you, and you’ll have to take ’em in, or sunthin’.

Sech cases as these don’t call for a dressmaker or a tailoress. No, at sech times a contoggler is needed. And I’ve made a stiddy practice for years of hirin’ a woman to come to the house every little while for a day or two at a time, and have my clothes and Josiah’s all contoggled up good.

This contoggler I had now wuz a old friend of mine, who had made it her home with me for some time in the past, and now bein’ a-keepin’ house happy not fur away, had sech a warm feelin’ for me in her heart, that she always come and contoggled for me when I needed a contoggler.

She had a dretful interestin’ story. Mebby you’d like to hear it?

I hate to have a woman meander off into side paths too much, but if the public are real sot and determined on hearin’ me rehearse her history, why I will do it. For it is ever my desire to please.

It must be now about three years sence I had my first interview with my contoggler. And I see about the first minute that she wuz a likely creeter—I could see it in her face.

She wuz a perfect stranger to me, though she had lived in Jonesville some five months prior and before I see her.

And Maggie, my son’s, Thomas Jefferson’s, wife, hearn of her through her mother’s second cousin’s wife’s sister, Miss Lemuel Ikey. And Miss Ikey said that she seemed to be one of the best wimmen she ever laid eyes on, and that it would be a real charity to give her work, as she wuz a stranger in the place, without much of anything to git along with, and seemed to be a deep mourner about sunthin’. Though what it wuz she didn’t know, for ever sence she had come to Jonesville she had made a stiddy practice of mindin’ her own bizness and workin’ when she got work.

She had come to Jonesville kinder sudden like, and she had hired her board to Miss Lemuel Ikey’s son’s widow, who kep’ a small—a very small boardin’-house, bein’ put to it for things herself though, likely.

I told Maggie to ask her mother to ask her second cousin’s wife to ask her sister, Miss Lemuel Ikey, to ask her son’s wife what the young woman could do.

And the word come back to me straight, or as straight as could be expected, comin’ through five wimmen who lived on different roads.

“That she wuzn’t a dressmaker, or a mantilly maker, or a tailoress. But she stood ready to do what she could, and needed work dretfully, and would be awful thankful for it.”

Then feelin’ deeply sorry for her, and wantin’ to befriend her, I sent word back in the same way—“To know if she could wash, or iron, or do fancy cookin’. Or could she make hard or soft soap? Or feather flowers? Or knit striped mittens? Or pick geese? Or paint on plaks? Or do paperin’?”

And the answer come back, meanderin’ along through the five—“That she wuzn’t strong enough, or didn’t know how to do any one of these, but she stood ready to do all she could do, and needed work the worst kind.”

Then I tackled the matter myself, as I might better have done in the first place, and went over to see her, bein’ willin’ to give her help in the best way any one can give it, by helpin’ folks to help themselves.

I went over quite early in the mornin’, bein’ on my way for a all-day’s visit to Tirzah Ann’s.

But I found the woman up and dressed up slick, or as slick as she could be with sech old clothes on.

And I liked her the minute I laid eyes on her.

Her face, though not over than above handsome, wuz sweet-lookin’, the sweetness a-shinin’ out through her big, sad eyes, like the light in the western skies a-shinin’ out through a rift in heavy clouds.

Very pale complected she wuz, though I couldn’t tell whether the paleness wuz caused by trouble, or whether she wuz made so. And the same with her delicate little figger. I didn’t know whether that frajile appearance wuz nateral, or whether Grief had tackled her with his cold, heavy chisel, and had wasted the little figger until it looked more like a child’s than a woman’s.

And in her pretty brown hair, that kinder waved round her white forward, wuz a good many white threads.

Of course I couldn’t tell but what white hair run through her family—it duz in some. And I had hearn it said that white hair in the young wuz a sign of early piety, and of course I couldn’t set up aginst that idee in my mind.

But them white hairs over her pale young face looked to me as if they wuz made by Sorrow’s frosty hand, that had rested down too heavy on her young head.

She met me with a sweet smile, but a dretful sad one, too, when Miss Ikey introduced me.

She met me with a sweet smile.

But when I told my errent she brightened up some. But after settin’ down with her for more’n a quarter of a hour, a-questionin’ her in as delicate a way as I could and get at the truth, I found that every single thing that she could do wuz to contoggle.

So I hired her as a contoggler, and took her home with me that night on my way home from Tirzah Ann’s as sech, and kep’ her there three weeks right along.

I see plain that she could do that sort of work by the first look that I cast onto her dress, which wuz black, and old and rusty, but all contoggled up good, mended neat and smooth, and so I see, when she got ready to go with me, wuz her mantilly, and her bunnet; both on ’em wuz old and worn, but both on ’em showed plain signs of contogglin’.

She wuz a pitiful-lookin’ little creeter under her black bunnet, and pitiful-lookin’ when the bunnet wuz hung up in our front bedroom, and she kep’ on bein’ so from day to day, as pale and delicate-lookin’ as a posey that has growed in the shade—the deep shade.

And though she kep’ to work good, and didn’t complain, I see from day to day the mark that Sufferin’ writes on the forwards of them that pass through the valleys and dark places where She dwells. (I don’t know whether Sufferin’ ort to be depictered as a male or a female, but kinder think that it is a She.)

But to resoom. I didn’t say nothin’ to make her think I pitied her, or anything, only kep’ a cheerful face and nourishin’ provisions before her from day to day, and not too much hard work.

I thought I’d love to see her little peekéd face git a little mite of color in it, and her sad blue eyes a brighter, happier look.

But I couldn’t. She would work faithful—contoggle as I have never seen any livin’ woman contoggle, much as I have witnessed contogglin’.

And I don’t mean any disrespect to other contogglers I have had when I say this—no, they did the best they could. But Miss Clark (that wuz the name she gin—Annie Clark), she had a nateral gift in this direction.

She worked as stiddy as a clock, and as patient, and patienter, for that will bust out and strike every now and then. But she sot resigned, and meek, and still over rents and jagged holes in garments, and rainy days and everything.

Calm in thunder storms, and calm in sunshine, and sad, sad as death through ’em all, and most as still.

And I sot demute and see it go on as long as I could, a-feelin’ that yearnin’ sort of pity for her that we can’t help feelin’ for all dumb creeters when they are in pain, deeper than we feel for talkative agony—yes, I always feel a deeper pity and a more pitiful one for sech, and can’t help it.

And so one day, when I wuz a-settin’ at my knittin’ in the settin’-room, and she a-settin’ by me sad and still, a-contogglin’ on a summer coat of my Josiah’s, I watched the patient, white face and the slim, patient, white fingers a-workin’ on patiently, and I stood it as long as I could; and then I spoke out kinder sudden, being took, as it were, by the side of myself, and almost spoke my thoughts out loud, onbeknown to me, and sez I:

“My dear!” (She wuzn’t more’n twenty-two at the outside.)

“My dear! I wish you would tell me what makes you so unhappy; I’d love to help you if I could.”

She dropped her work, looked up in my face sort o’ wonderin’, yet searchin’.

I guess that she see that I wuz sincere, and that I pitied her dretfully. Her lips begun to tremble. She dropped her work down onto the floor, and come and knelt right down by me and put her head in my lap and busted out a-cryin’.

You know the deeper the water is, and the thicker the ice closes over it, the greater the upheaval and overflow when the ice breaks up.

She sobbed and she sobbed; and I smoothed back her hair, and kinder patted her head, and babied her, and let her cry all she wanted to.

My gingham apron wuz new, but it wuz fast color and would wash, and I felt that the tears would do her good.

I myself didn’t cry, though the tears run down my face some. But I thought I wouldn’t give way and cry.

And this, the follerin’, is the story, told short by me, and terse, terser than she told it, fur. For her sobs and tears and her anguished looks all punctuated it, and lengthened it out, and my little groans and sithes, which I groaned and sithed entirely onbeknown to myself.

But anyway it wuz a pitiful story.

She had at a early age fell in love voyalent with a young man, and he visey versey and the same. They wuz dretful in love with each other, as fur as I could make out, and both on ’em likely and well meanin’, and well behaved with one exception.

He drinked some. But she thought, as so many female wimmen do, that he would stop it when they wuz married.

Oh! that high rock that looms up in front of prospective brides, and on which they hit their heads and their hearts, and are so oft destroyed.

They imagine that the marriage ceremony is a-goin’ in some strange way to strike in and make over all the faults and vices of their young pardners and turn ’em into virtues.

Curous, curous, that they should think so, but they do, and I spoze they will keep on a-thinkin’ so. Mebby it is some of the visions that come in the first delerium of love, and they are kinder crazy like for a spell. But tenny rate they most always have this idee, specially if love, like the measles, breaks out in ’em hard, and they have it in the old-fashioned way.

Wall, as I wuz a-sayin’, and to resoom and proceed.

Annie thought he would stop drinkin’ after they wuz married. He said he would. And he did for quite a spell. And they wuz as happy as if they had rented a part of the Garden of Eden, and wuz a-workin’ it on shares.

Then his brother-in-law moved into the place, and opened a cider-mill and a saloon—manafactered and sold cider brandy, furnished all the saloons round him with it, took it off by the load on Saturdays, and kep’ his saloon wide open, so’s all the boys and men in the vicinity could have the hull of Sunday to git crazy drunk in, while he wuz a-passin’ round the contribution-box in the meetin’-house.

For he wuz a strict church-goer, the brother-in-law wuz, and felt that he wuz a sample to foller.

Wall, Ellick Gurley follered him—follered him to his sorrer. The brother-in-law employed him in his soul slaughter-house—for so I can’t help callin’ the bizness of drunkard-makin’. I can’t help it, and I don’t want to help it.

And so, under his influence, Ellick Gurley wuz led down the soft, slippery pathway of cider drunkenness, with the holler images of Safety and old Custom a-standin’ up on the stairway a-lightin’ him down it.

Ellick first neglected his work, while his face turned first a pink, and then a bloated, purplish red.

Then he begun to be cross to his wife and abusive to little Rob, the beautiful little angel that had flown to them out of the sweet shadows of Eden, where they had dwelt the first married years of their life.

Finally, he got to be quarrelsome. Annie wuz afraid of him. And all of his money and all of hern went to buy that cider brandy (it makes the ugliest, most dangerous kind of a drunk, they say, of any kind of liquor, and I believe it from what I have seen myself, and from what Annie told me of her husband’s treatment of her and little Rob).

Finally, he got to be quarrelsome.

And at last she begun to suffer for food and clothin’ for herself and the child.

And as the drink demon riz up in Ellick’s crazy brain, and grew more clamorous in its demands, and he weaker to contend aginst it, Ellick sold all of the household stuff he could git holt of to appease this dretful power that had got holt of him, body and soul.

Annie took in all the work she could do, did washin’ for the neighbors, who ust to envy her her happiness and prosperity—rubbed and hung out the heavy garments with tremblin’ fingers—sewed with her achin’ head a-bendin’ over the long seams, and her tear-filled eyes dimmed with the pain of unavailin’ agony.

But heartaches and abuse made her weak form weaker and weaker, and then there wuz but little work to do, if she had been as strong as Sampson; so, bein’ fairly drove to it by Agony, and Fear, and Starvation, them three furies a-drivin’ her, as you may say, harnessed up three abreast behind her, a-goadin’ her weak, cowerin’ form with their fire-tipped lashes, she appealed to the brother-in-law.

She told him, what he knew before, that she and little Robbie were starvin’, and she wuz afraid of her life, and she urged him to not sell Ellick any more of the poison that wuz a-destroyin’ him.

He wuz to meetin’ when she went. He wuz dretful particular about his religious observances.

No Hindoos wuz ever stricter about burnin’ their widders on the funeral pyre of the departed than he wuz a-follerin’ up what he called his religion.

(Religion, sweet, pure sperit, how could she stand it, to have him a-burnin’ his incense in front of her? But, then, she has had to stand a good deal in this old world, and has to yet.)

But, as I wuz a-sayin’, there never wuz a Pharisee in old or modern times that went ahead of him in cleanin’ the outside of his platters and religious deep dishes, and makin’ broad the border of his phylakricy. Why, his phylakricy wuz broader and deeper than you have any idee on.

But inside of his platters and deep dishes wuz dead men’s bones!

More’n one quarrel, riz up out of his accursed brandy, had led to bloodshed, besides achin’ and broken hearts without number, and ruined souls and lives.

And his phylakricy ort to be broad, for it had to be used as a pall time and agin, and it covered, so he thought, a multitude of sins.

Yes, indeed!

Wall, as I say, he wuz to a church meetin’. There wuz a-goin’ to be a Association of Religious Bodies for the Amelioration of Human Woe. And he wuz anxious to be sent as a delegate, so he hung on to the last, and wuz appinted.

But finally he got home, and Annie tackled him on the subject nearest her heart, talked to him with tears in her eyes and a voice tremblin’ with the anguished beatin’s of her poor, achin’ heart.

She begged him to not sell her husband any more drink, begged him for her sake and for the sake of little Rob. For she knew that if the man had a tender place in his heart it wuz for his little nephew. He did love him deeply, or as deep as a man like this could love anything above his money and his reputation as a religious leader.

But he wouldn’t promise, and he acted dretful high-headed and hateful to her to cover up his meanness, for he felt that if he should refuse to sell his stuff, it would not only stop his money-makin’, but it would be like ownin’ up that he had been in the wrong.

And he plumed himself, and carried the idee that cider wuz a healthful beverage, and very strengthenin’ in janders and sech. Why, he carried the idee to the world, and mebby in the first place he did to his own soul, so blindin’ is the spectacles of selfishness that he wore, that he wuz a-doin’ a charitable work a-keepin’ that old cider-mill and saloon a-goin’.

So he wouldn’t pay no attention to her pleadin’s, only acted hateful and cross to her, his guilty conscience makin’ him so, I spoze.

And then, too, he wuz in a hurry, for his church duties wuz a-waitin’ for him, and his barrels of cider wanted doctorin’ with alcohol and sech.

So he turned onto his heel and left her.

And Annie went home more broken-hearted than ever, for his cold, cruel sneers and scorn hurt her on the poor heart made sore by her husband’s brutality.

And Ellick went on worse than ever. And it wuz on that very day that his brother-in-law (and to make it shorter we will call him B. I. L.)—it wuz on the very day that the B. I. L. went to New York on his great Amelioratin’ Human Misery errent, that Ellick, crazy drunk with cider shampain, struck little Rob sech a blow that it knocked the child down, and he laid stunted for more’n a hour. And he threatened Annie that he would take her life, because she interfered between him and the boy.

He raved round, like the maniac that he wuz. He said that he would throw her out doors if she didn’t git a good dinner, when there wuzn’t a mite of food in the house to cook. He raved about the house bein’ so freezin’ cold, when there wuzn’t a stick of wood nor a lump of coal.

Ellick lay drunk in the office.

And finally he reeled off to his usual place of resort. And while the B. I. L. wuz a-raisin’ up in the great meetin’-house, and a-smoothin’ out his phylakricy, and a-layin’ the border of it careful, so’s it would show off well, and then bustin’ out into sech a speech, on the duties of church-members to the sinful and the sorrowin’ round ’em—a speech that riz him up powerful in religious circles—Ellick lay drunk in the office of his cider-mill.

Little Rob lay like a dead child in a cold, bare room, and a white-faced, half-starved mother bent over him with big, despairin’, anxious eyes—bent over him till life come back to his poor, bruised body; and then as darkness crept over the earth she stole away, a-carryin’ him in her arms.

She got a ride with a passin’ teamster, got carried fur off, then got another ride, wuz fed and warmed by pityin’ hearts on the way; so she come to a place nigh Jonesville, onbeknown to anybody.

When Ellick rousted up out of his drunken sleep he went back to a desolate, empty house. His surprise, his grief, sobered him. He flew to the B. I. L., woke him out of a sound sleep filled with visions of his triumphs.

The B. I. L. wuz in a tryin’ place. He wuz about to be riz up to a high position in the meetin’-house. If this story got out, it might and probble would hurt him. Annie must be found and brought back. They jined forces to try to find her. They sot out that very day, but the quest wuz a long one.

Annie stayed a spell with the family who took her in first out of the cold and the darkness.

The man of the house, and the woman, too, wuz relations on the soul side to the good old Samaritan mentioned in Skripter. They did well by her.

But little Rob never got over the effects of the cruel blow, and the fall on the hard floor, and the awful journey through the coldness of the midnight escape. They all sort o’ underminded his little constitution, and he wuz took sick a bed.

And bein’ too tired out and hardly dealt with here on earth, he wuz promoted up to that higher home, where we may be sure that his True Father, the Helper of all the oppressed and burdened, accepted him right into His great heart of Love, and wuz good to the little, patient soul.

Wall, Annie couldn’t tell me much about that time, when she had to let the child, a part of her own life, go out of her arms, and she wuz left alone—alone amongst strangers, helpless, despairin’, and poor.

No, she couldn’t talk much about it, not in words, but I understood the language of her tremblin’ lips and her fallin’ tears.

Wall, when little Rob wuz laid away under the dead grasses and the bare shade trees of that little country church-yard, Annie couldn’t stay long in the house where he had been and now wuz not.

His little figger hanted every room, and her agonized Remembrance wuz a-walkin’ up and down with her. So she heard of a place in Jonesville where mebby she could git work, and she come there.

But lately news had come to her that her husband and B. I. L. wuz huntin’ for her.

Ellick really and truly loved his wife and child, so it wuz spozed, and hunted for Love’s and Anxiety’s sakes.

The B. I. L. hunted ’em so’s to hush up the story; it wuz a-hurtin’ him dretfully in the eyes of the meetin’-house. And Anger and Selfishness and Hypocrocy wuz a-holdin’ up their blue-flamed torches to light him on his hunt.

Wall, Annie wuz in deathly fear that they would find her. She had took another name—her mother’s maiden name—but she wuz afraid they would find it out.

She said that she could not live to go through agin what she had gone through with. And yet when I pinned her right down on the subject (a calm, religious pinnin’) she owned up that she did love her husband yet. She cried when she said it.

And I thought to myself that I would cry if I wuz in her place, if I loved such a thing as that.

But she said, and mebby it wuz so, that he would have been all right if it hadn’t been for the influence of the B. I. L. and his bein’ gradual led back into drinkin’ agin by sunthin’ that he thought wouldn’t hurt him. She said that he never would have touched whiskey agin, havin’ promised and broke off.

But he thought, somehow, that the liquid sech a highly religious man wuz a-sellin’ under the name of cider must be sort o’ soothin’ to his insides; but instead of that it set fire to ’em, and his morals and all, and burnt ’em right up.

Annie showed me Ellick’s picter, and it wuz a good-lookin’ face, or kinder good; it would have been handsome if it hadn’t been for a sort of a weak look onto it.

But weak or strong, she loved him. And so I didn’t really know how she wuz a-comin’ out so fur as her own happiness wuz concerned. Wimmen are so queer.

But I chirked her up all I could, told her to keep jest as calm as she could conveniently, and I would take care of her for the present.

CHAPTER IV.

SAMANTHA’S SWORD OF TRUTH AND JUSTICE.

Wall, if you’ll believe it, it wuz the very next day I had a occasion to go to Jonesville for some necessaries; and Josiah wuz busy a-makin’ a new stanchil in the barn, so I sot off alone after breakfast with a large pail of good butter, and a cross-cut saw that Josiah had sent down to be filed, and the mair.

Wall, jest about a mild from our house is a old tarvern that has been fixed up and is used now as a sort of a half-way house between Jonesville and Loontown. Teamsters and sech stop there a sight to git “Refreshments for man and beast,” as the sign reads.

Wall, I had got most there when I see a man approachin’ me a-walkin’ afoot. And I knew him the first minute I sot my eyes on him.

It wuz Ellick Gurley.

It wuz Ellick Gurley.

And the very minute I sot my eyes onto his face Duty and Principle both hunched me up hard to tackle him in this matter.

Wall, most probble he had been hangin’ round for some time, for he knew me the first thing, and he come up to the side of the democrat wagon I wuz a-ridin’ in, bold as brass, and he sez:

“Is this Josiah Allen’s wife?” sez he.

“Yes, sir,” sez I, up clear and decided.

“Is a woman calling herself Anna Clark at your house?”

I wuzn’t a-goin’ to fight for Annie with any pewter weepons of untruth. No, I wuz a-goin’ to fight with the two-edged sword of Eternal Truth and Jestice, and I took ’em out and whetted ’em (as it were), and sez I, sharp and keen—

“Yes, sir!”

“Well,” sez he, lookin’ dretful defiant and mad at me, “she is my wife, and I hereby forbid you harboring her, for I will pay no debts of her contracting.”

“Like as not,” sez I coolly, “as you never paid any of your own.”

He kinder blushed up some, but he went on some as if he wuz a-rehearsin’ a piece he had learnt:

“She has left my bed and board!”

Then I waved that sword of Truth agin that I had been a-whettin’, and sez I—

“It wuz her bed. Her mother gin it to her for her settin’ out, and picked every feather in it from her own geese and ganders. I got it from Annie’s own lips, and you sold it for drink. As for the boards,” sez I candidly, for even in the midst of the fiercest battle with the forces of wrong I must be jest to my foe, and so sez I—

“As for the piece of board you speak of, I d’no whose it wuz, but I believe it wuz hern. Anyway, I know she earnt every mite of food and drink you took into your miserable body.”

And the remembrance of Annie’s wrongs and woes so overmastered me, that I sez right out—

“You drunken, low-lived snipe, you! how dast you be comin’ round that good little creeter, and tryin’ to git her back into her starvation and slavery, and peril of life and limb? How dast you, you drunken coot, you?” sez I, a-lookin’ two or three daggers at him and some simeters.

He quailed. I d’no as I ever see signs of quail any plainer than I see it in him.

But he muttered sunthin’ about—“A man’s having a right to his wife and child.”

“A right?” sez I; “do you dast to look anybody in the face and talk of your right to wife and child, when it wuz your poor, abused, half-starved wife’s weak arms and mighty love that riz up between you and your child and murder? Riz up between you and the gallows?”

He quailed deeper, fur deeper than he had quailed, and his lips trembled.

And I see under the quail, come to look clost at him, that there wuz a kinder good-hearted look under all the weakness and dissipated look of his face. I see, or thought I see, that it wuz bad influences that had led him astray, and if he had kep’ under good influence and away from bad ones (the B. I. L. and his hard cider, etc.), I thought like as not, from the generous lay of his features, that he might have been a tolerable good-lookin’ feller and behaved middlin’ well.

And that is why I spozed that Annie looked so heart-broken, that wuz why, I spoze, that, in spite of all she had underwent, my contoggler loved him.

But anon he sprunted up some and said sunthin’ about bein’ bound to have his wife.

And I waved my sword of Jestice agin (mentally) and sez—

“Wall, I am bound that you shan’t have her, and you’ll see,” sez I, “who’ll carry the day!”

And then he sez, “What right have you to interfere? What relation are you to her?”

And sez I, a-liftin’ up my head in a very noble way—“The same relation that the Samaritan wuz to the man by the wayside. She’s my relation on the heart’s side, the Pity and Sympathy’s side. Closter ties than the false, shaky ones that bound her to a life of slavery and danger with you—bound her to you, who promised to protect her, and then half-murdered her. And you’ll find out so!” sez I, a-lookin’ as bold as brass, but in my heart I quaked considerable, not knowin’ but I wuz a-goin’ agin the hull statute and constitution and by-laws of the U. S. of America.

But I spoze my mean skairt him. It had sech determination and courage into it, and he sez—

“I will go and call my brother-in-law. He is a rich and respectable man and very religious. I will bring him to talk with you.”

“Wall, do so!” sez I, bold as a lioness on the outside. “I’d love to set my eyes onto that creeter, jest out of curosity, jest as I would look at a menagerie of wild beasts and man-eaters.”

So he went back into the tarvern and brung him.

He wuz a mean-lookin’ creeter in his face, and he wuz short in statter, and his figger looked sort o’ sneakin’ under the weight of guilt he wuz a-carryin’ round under the cloak of religion.

And his little black eyes looked guilty, and his hull face, under some kinder red hair, looked withered and hardened, as if his doin’ for years what he knew wuz wicked had hardened his face into a cruel meanness. He looked mean as mean could be.

But he tried to hold his head up, and he bust out the first thing about takin’ the law to me!

“You take the law to me! you!”

And oh! how my simeter of Truth and Jestice jest flashed round that man’s short, meachin’ figger.

“You take the law on anybody, you mean creeter you! who have brung all this sin and misery to pass for your own selfishness. You, who took the good-tempered, weak boy and poured your poison down his throat till you flooded out all his moral sense and husbandly and fatherly affection, and filled up the empty space with the demons of Hatred and Brutality and crazy quarrelin’s!

“You talk of law, who stole away every mite of that poor girl’s happiness and every cent of her money for your cursed drink!

“You, who drove out of their home the sweet angel of Happiness, who used to board with ’em stiddy, and drove in your beasts of prey!

“You ruined her happiness, you starved her, you broke her heart, and now you want her back to torment her agin!

“Wall, you won’t have her, unless you take her over my prostrate form!”

The B. I. L. wuz half skairt to death, and he stood demute.

But Ellick broke in with tremblin’ lips. He stopped talkin’ about Annie for a spell, bein’, I spoze, perfectly overcome by my eloquence. And he begun on another tack, and sez he in tremblin’ axents—

“I want my boy,” sez he, “I will have my child!”

And I see that he did have a deathly longin’ and hungry look in his eyes. I could see that he did love his wife and child, deep and earnest. And I felt a little mite tenderer towards him, not much, for I kep’ a-thinkin’ of how Annie’s face had looked as she come and throwed herself at my feet.

The memory of that white face and them big, anguished eyes riz my heart up and kep’ it from meltin’ right down under the agony of that man’s look.

The B. I. L., whose selfishness had done the hull work, he too looked a heartfelt anxiety about the boy. I see that he loved him too, and wuz proud of him.

But, as I say, the memory of the Giant Wrong that had struck down Annie and the boy stood right by me and nerved me up, and I sez—

“You can’t have the child!”

Then Ellick flared right up, and sez he—

“I will have the child, and I’ll let you know that I will! I am his natural guardian, and I’ll let you know that the law is on my side, and I can take him, and I will take him!”

“No,” sez I, “you can’t take him!”

“He can!” sez the B. I. L., speakin’ up sharp as a meat-axe—“he can; nobody loves the child as well as we do; and he is the child’s natural guardian, and we can take him away from any place you have put him in.”

And agin I sez, “No you can’t, not from the place he is in now. The boy has got another gardeen now, a better one.”

“Another guardian!” sez the father; “well, I will tear him right out of his hands; I will make him give him up!”

He wuz jealous as a dog, I could see, of the gardeen.

“No you won’t!” sez I.

“Yes he will!” sez the B. I. L.; “we’ll teach him what the law is, and that a father can get his boy every time!”

“Not this time!” sez I; “this gardeen is powerful and kind, too; and he has got him in a safe place. He wuz misused and kicked and beaten and half starved; but he has enough now; he has got a home of plenty and rest and happiness. He is safe,” sez I.

“No matter how safe it is we will have him right out of it!” sez the B. I. L.

“He is my child, and I will have him!” says Ellick Gurley.

“No,” sez I, “you can’t have him. You can’t pull that tender little body out of the grave to misuse it agin. You can’t draw the sweet little sperit out of God’s happy home to torment it agin. The Lord is his father and his gardeen now, and He will keep the boy!”

“Dead!” cried the B. I. L., and he staggered back like a drunken man, and his face turned white as a bleached white cotton shirt.

“Dead! my baby dead!” sez Ellick Gurley. “Then I am his murderer!”

And he threw up his arms as if he had received a pistol shot right in his heart, and then he fell jest like a log right down in the road. Wall, I disembarked from my democrat, and by the time the B. I. L. had got him up in a more settin’ poster on a log by the side of the road, I wuz by him a-holdin’ his head and a-chafin’ his hands and his forward.

When he come to and riz up and sot upright, his first words wuz—

“Oh! poor Annie! poor girl! how did she bear it, all alone with our dead boy! Oh! my boy! my boy that I killed!”

I see plain that there wuz good in the man, after all.

But the B. I. L. had by this time sprunted up, and wuz a-thinkin’ of his phylakricy, and a-pullin’ it over himself and Ellick, and seemed anxious to sort o’ hush him up, and sez he—

“It wasn’t your doings, it wasn’t the accident that killed the boy, it was probably something else.”

“Yes,” sez I, lookin’ at the B. I. L. straight in the face—“yes, it wuz sunthin’ else, it wuz you! You smooth-faced, selfish hyppocrite, you; it wuz your doin’s that killed the boy! If you had left his Pa alone, and not led him into a condition fit to murder, jest to put a few cents into your own pocket, the boy would have been alive and happy to-day, and so would Ellick and Annie.” Sez I, “It wuz your doin’s, and you don’t want to forgit it!” sez I.

“Yes, it wuz sunthin’ else; it wuz you.”

He quailed, he quailed hard, and sez he—

“You talk like a fool!”

“No,” sez I; “you are the fool, for it is the fool that hath said that there is no God, and you see there is,” sez I—“a God that punishes sin, who is even now a-punishin’ you; a God who said, “Cursed is he who putteth the cup to his neighbor’s lips.” Sez I, “You have prospered and grown rich in your bizness of beast-makin’, and you didn’t believe there wuz Eternal Jestice a-watchin’ over your sinful deeds, and you find now that you wuz a fool to believe it. For you find now that there is a God. You find now that you are cursed for your sin in makin’ murderers and assassins and wife-beaters and child-killers!”

Sez I, “You loved little Rob; your bad heart is achin’ now this minute to think it wuz your hand that dealt out the poison that reached him through his father’s weakness and miserable vice!”

He wuz demute. He didn’t say a word, but a look come over his face that I don’t want to see agin. He didn’t want to give up and own up his guilt and repent, and he wuz jest crushed right down about little Rob. He wuz jest tosted both ways, between agony and selfishness. He didn’t want to give up his profitable bizness of beast-makin’, and he wuz horrow struck to think that his own little idol had fell a victim.

His face looked like a humbly fallen angel’s, or how I spoze they look. I never see one fall.

He didn’t say another word, but turned on his heel and walked off.

The last word he said to me, as I stated heretofore, wuz callin’ me “a fool.”

But I didn’t care for that. I knew I wuzn’t.

But still that broken-hearted father, that wretched, lonesome husband sot there by the side of the road. Finally he spoke——

“Can I see Annie?”

“No, sir!” sez I plain and square—jest as plain and jest as square as if my own heart wuzn’t a-achin’, and a-achin’ hard, too, for the miserable, broken-hearted man.

My tears, if they fell, and I spoze they did from my feelin’s, fell inside of my head; for I wouldn’t let him have a chance to misuse and torment that good little creeter agin, not if I could help it.

He trembled like a popple leaf. He wuz paler than any dish-cloth I ever see, and I see my advantage, and I hardened my heart, some like Pharo’s, only a more pious hardenin’, for it wuz done on principle.

“You talk of wantin’ that poor girl to go back to your cold, naked home, to hardship, to starvation, to wretchedness—bodily wretchedness and heart wretchedness. For she loves you still, you poor snipe, you; she loves you, fool that she is, but wimmen are weak.”

I see his face grow brighter for a minute, and then turn pale as death agin.

“Will she forgive me?” sez he in axents weak as a cat, and weaker, too, and fur hopelesser than any cat I ever see.

“Not if I can help it!” sez I heartlessly (on the outside) and boldly.

“I’ll do better. I’ll promise her to not drink another drop!”

“Promises are cheap,” sez I in a lofty way, a-lookin’ up into a tree, for his pale face weakened me, and I felt that I must be strong. So I looked up into the tree overhead. It wuz a slippery ellum, but I held firm.

“Promises are cheap and slippery,” sez I. I spoze it wuz that tree that put me in mind of that simely. “She shan’t be led away by ’em agin, by my consent.”

“If I don’t drink for a year will you help me to have my wife back again?”

His voice trembled.

“That is beginnin’ to talk like a human creeter,” sez I, and I looked down from the ellum sort o’ benignantly. And I sez in a more warmer axent, but not too warm—jest about milk warm—

“You stop drinkin’ for a year. You git another home for her as good as you took her to at first, and I’ll advise her to talk with you about goin’ back, and not one minute before!” sez I.

“Can I see her one minute?” sez he.

Annie wuz to home. Josiah wuz away. All devolved on me, and I riz up to the occasion.

“No!” sez I, “you can’t; you can’t see her to-day for a minute, or a secont!”

(I knew putty wuz hard in comparison to her heart, and I wouldn’t run the resk.)

“You stop drinkin’ for six months,” sez I, “and you may see her for one-half hour in my presence, and not a minute longer,” sez I, as resolute as iron. “I’ll take care of her, and when you’ve earnt the right to have her agin with you, I’ll give her up to you and not a minute before,” sez I—“not a minute!”

He riz right up, the tears runnin’ down his face, and he ketched holt of my hand and kissed it. I d’no when I’ve been so kinder took back.

But I knew that Josiah wouldn’t care on sech a occasion as this, there wuzn’t anything immoral in it, and I couldn’t hender it anyway, it wuz done so quick. And then he started right off, fast as he could go.

And as sure as the world, that man went to work at his trade. Got two dollars a day. He didn’t drink a drop. He rented a little house with five acres of grass land round it and a paster. He kep’ two cows, milked ’em nights and mornin’s, sold his milk and laid up money.

Workin’ with all his heart and soul to be worthy of his wife and home.

And I writ to that man stiddy, jest as stiddy as though I wuz a-keepin’ company with him, every week of my life.

Josiah didn’t care. Good land! I writ on duty. I sent him good letters, all about how Annie wuz, and how she looked, and what she said, and a-holdin’ up his arms like Arun and Hur (specially Hur, it sounds some like a woman).

She made it her home with me, but went out to contoggle here and there, and laid up money, bought sheets and piller-cases and sech. And I helped her to two comforters and a bed-spread.

But she didn’t go back to him till the year wuz up.

No, I see to that.

And when that year had gone by, he wuz a sober man all the time, completely out from under the influences of the B. I. L. and cider and whiskey and saloons, and completely under ourn, Annie’s and mine and Temperance. And we a-doin’ our very best for him, and a-believin’ in him, and a-helpin’ him, all three on us.

Why, then I ventered to let her go and live with him agin. And I even made a party for ’em on the occasion. Some like a weddin’ party, for we all brung presents to ’em. And the children and a few sincere well-wishers that she had contoggled for and Josiah and me all jinin’ hearty in the prayer Elder Minkley put up after supper for the peace and prosperity of the new home.

And they’ve prospered first-rate.

Their sweet, cozy home is pleasant, as a home where Love is always must be. But it is a-settin’ down under a shadder, and always will set there. It can’t be helped.

The shadder stands up behind it, some like a mountain; but the peace and happiness of the present is gradually a-makin’ a meller, tender haze in front on’t; some as the blue, luminous sky of Injun Summer floats in and softens the truth of the year’s decay.

It is there, all the same, but time and that soft, tender mist wears off the sharp edges on’t, and sometimes the shadders fall some in the shape of a cross. The sun hits it in jest the right way.

Annie and Ellick jined the meetin’-house the year after they come together agin, and the Elder and several of us bretheren and sistern gathered round ’em, and held up their courage and helped ’em along all we could.

And though some are kinder mean and throw out hints, for human nater can’t be helped, and mean and small souls have got to act out what is inherient in ’em, and some, specially the B. I. L. and his family, made lots of talk about him and her, and poked fun at ’em, and acted. But Ellick is a-learnin’ to be patient and bear what he says he knows is “The Wages of Sin.”

But, as naterally follers, he is now in the employ of another Master, and his wages is a-comin’ in better and better every day.

And wuzn’t he happy when he held another little boy on his knee? Little Tom Josiah, named after my two best-beloved males.

And Annie wanted to add “Sam” to it for me, but I demurred, sayin’, “They didn’t seem to go together smooth. Tom Josiah Sam didn’t seem to have the flow and rythm to suit my melodious idees.

Sez I, “Save the Sam, it may come in handy in the futer.”

“Save the Sam, it may come in handy in the futer.”

But the dimpled hands of that child seemed to draw Annie and Ellick nigher together than they’d ever been, and pull ’em both along, onbeknown to ’em, into the sunshiny fields of happiness.

Thomas J. gin little Tom Josiah ten dollars to put in the Savin’s Bank at compounded interest, and Josiah gin him two lambs, which are a-goin’ to be put out to double to the very best advantage for him.

By the time he is twenty-one he will have considerable money, and a big flock of sheep to drive on before him down the path of the futer.

But I might talk for hours and hours and not exhaust the fascinatin’ subject of the peace and prosperity of the one who has left the paths of sin and hard cider and whiskey, etc., and is walkin’ in the paths of sobriety and success.

But to them not interested so much in this cause, so dear to the heart of her whose name wuz once Smith, the subject may grow monotunous and tejus, so I will resoom and take up the thread of my discourse over my finger agin, and let it purr along on the spool of History.

CHAPTER V.

A HEATHEN’S STANDARD OF MORALITY.

Wall, Al Faizi hearn this story about the contoggler’s sufferin’s and the doin’s of the B. I. L., and I never see him so riz up about anything as he wuz with that.

Sez he—“This man who loved the child sold stuff to his father that he knew would make him liable to murder him? I cannot believe it possible that such a crime can be permitted.

“To one coming from a heathen land it seems incredible.”

“Yes,” sez I, “I’ve always said that it wuz a worse practice than any savages ever dremp of.”

Said Al Faizi—

“This is probably the one solitary instance that ever occurred where the death of a person much beloved was caused by a man for a few cents’ gain.”

“One instance!” sez I; “why, all over this broad country, day after day, and year after year, murders are brought about almost solely by this cause!”

He sithed deep and seemed to be turnin’ in his mind some possible remedy for this dretful state of things.

“Could not these men be persuaded to stop this trade that kills men in this world, and destroys their hopes of Heaven?”

“No,” sez I, “they can’t be persuaded; it has been tried by good men and good wimmen for years and years; they will keep on, driv by Selfishness and Ignorance, that span of bloody beasts!”

“Could not the law interfere?” sez he; “could not your great police force step in and punish these dreadful doings?”

Sez I, “It could, if it wuzn’t spendin’ its hull strength on devisin’ ways to protect the liquor traffic.

“The police might bring some on ’em up if it wuzn’t a-sneakin’ into side-doors a-partakin’ on the sly of the poison!”

Sez I, “It gits braced up in this way, so’s it’s ready to drag off to jail the poor, weak drunkards, made so by the saloons, and by the men who supply the saloons, and by the voters who make this thing possible, and by the goverment that sustains it.”

“Why does not your great nation interfere and compel them to stop it?” sez he.

“Because this great nation is in company with ’em,” sez I—“partakers in this iniquity, and takin’ part of the bloody gain.”

And my feathers drooped and my face wuz as red as blood to have to own up these things to a heathen, that wuz a-contrastin’ our ways with his own, which wuz so much more superior and riz up on the liquor question.

“Your holy church,” sez he, “why does not that, so great and powerful a force in this land, why does it not interfere and frown down these wicked ways? Why does it not pronounce its anathema on all those who commit this sin—this B.I.L., as I have heard him called, and men like him, who own saloons and supply the stuff that makes murderers?”

“This B.I.L.,” sez I, “is a piller in his meetin’-house. He sets in the highest place,” sez I.

“One of your holy men who take charge of the sacred things, permitted by your customs to carry on such iniquity? I cannot understand it,” sez he.

Sez I—“Nobody ort to understand it!” Sez I, “It is a shame and a disgrace, anyway!”

“Why,” sez he, “in my own country our men who take part in holy observances have to lead pure lives—to fast and pray continually. I cannot understand that one would be permitted to carry on an evil business six days during the week and touch the sacred things of your religion the seventh day.”

Agin I sez—“Nobody ort to understand it; it would be a shame to heathen countries!” sez I.

Sez he—“This very man who was the cause of all this wretchedness and crime and murder—he prays for the heathen, does he not?”

“I spoze so,” sez I.

“He carries round the vessel in which you gather the money to send to the heathen for charity and instruction?”

“Yes,” sez I; “but we call it the contribution plate.”

“Well,” sez he, “we refuse to accept his money; we refuse to take the money that man desecrates by touching.

“And,” sez he, “I will tell him so.”

And so I spoze he did—good, simple-minded creeter. He didn’t seem to have but two idees in his head—one to learn the will of God, and the other to do it.

And from what I’ve hearn sence I guess he did impress the B.I.L.

The idee of havin’ a heathen from heathen lands come to labor with him on religion kinder shook him up, from all I can hear.

I shouldn’t wonder if he did leave off his dretful trade, and come part way up to a heathen’s standard of morality.

But if he duz, no thanks are due to our own law or to our own gospel. They wuz both weighed in the balances and found wantin’.

If things are ever put on a more religious and noble and riz up footin’ it will all be caused by the missionary efforts of a heathen.

But to resoom.

Another thing about our contoggler interested Al Faizi dretfully. It wuz some talks he had with her about wimmen’s dress.

Annie wuz sensible, and hated the tight girtin’s indulged in by some of our females. And Al Faizi expressed the greatest wonder at the ignorance and folly showed by civilized wimmen.

The pressin’ in and destroyin’ all the vital organs by lacin’ in the waist. He expressed great wonder that a civilized people could commit this crime aginst the laws of health and the solemn laws of heredity.

He said when he contrasted the loose, comfortable robes of his own wimmen with the deformities caused by tight lacin’, more and more he wondered at the strange sights of civilization.

And then he said that in hospitals (for this strange creeter had peered round everywhere in search of knowledge), he had seen some of the terrible effects of tight lacin’ and high-heeled shoes.

He said that he had seen cases of blindness, caused by the last, and a destruction of the nerves.

In lacin’, he had seen dretful cases of internal diseases, incurable, and had seen terrible diseases in infants, caused alone by this destructive custom of the mothers—young infants who, if they lived, must carry a maimed body through life with ’em, caused alone by this habit.

Sez he, “Compare these high-heeled shoes with the loose, comfortable sandals that our own women wear. And these painful steel waists, that compress the lungs and heart, with our own women’s loose, flowing garments,” and he wuz astounded at our ways.

Wall, I agreed with him from the bottom of my heart, but sech is poor human nater that it kinder galded me to have my sect so sot down on and despised by a heathen. And I, kinder onbeknown to me, brung up their own veiled wimmen. “And,” sez I, “every country has its own shortcomin’s; I don’t like the idee of your wimmen havin’ their faces all covered up with veils.”

My tone wuz kinder het up and agitated.

But his voice wuz as sweet and calm as the evenin’ breeze a-blowin’ over a bed of Japanese lilies.

“Yes,” sez he, “perhaps we err in that direction, in veiling our women too much from the public gaze.

“But,” sez he, “I went to a grand party once in your great city Chicago, and to one also in Washington, and I see the women’s forms almost entirely disrobed and nude, while great folds of cloth trailed after them down on the floor. I knew not where to look for shame, for even when I was a nursing babe in my mother’s arms, I could not have witnessed such sights.

“And while we Eastern people may err in the direction of veiling the charms of our women-kind, methinks you Western people err still further in the opposite direction. At these public parties I saw the naked forms of the women, displayed with far more than the freedom of the courtesans in my own country, and my heart sank down with shrinking and wonder at the strange customs of civilization.”

I felt meachin’. I felt small enough to have gone to bed through my bedroom key-hole. But I thought I wouldn’t. I only sez—“Wall, I guess it is about bed-time.”

Josiah had already sought repose in our bedroom.

And Al Faizi got up at once and took his night-lamp, and bid me good-night with one of his low, reverential bows.

WITH ONE OF HIS LOW, REVERENTIAL BOWS.

I knew what he said wuz the truth. I had meditated on it. And in my own way I had tried to break it up—the tight-lacin’, train-dragglin’, high-heeled doin’s.

But, as I say, it galded me deeply to hear these truths discanted on by a heathen.

I love my sect, and wish her dretful well, and I can’t bear to see heathens a-lookin’ down on her.

And then Al Faizi hearn about how little children are put to work at a tender age down in the damp, dark mines, shet away from Heaven’s light, through long, long days, until their youth is gone and old age dims their eyes.

And he sot off for a distant part of the country to see the owners of the mines, and see for himself, and use his influence to have this evil abolished.

And then he hearn about how young children are bought in the great stores of the big citys.

He hearn all the tales of sin and woe connected with sech doin’s—worse than the Masacreein’ of the Innocents.

He sot out to once to investigate, and to warn, and to rebuke.

And he hearn with wonder and unbelief, at first, the story how children could sell their honor and all their hopes of the futer at a tender age.

And how this great nation permits this iniquity, and makes laws to perpetuate it, and shield the guilty men who indulge in this sin.

And all the horrows that gathers round them infamous words—

“The Age of Consent.”

As he talked with me about it, I could see by the deep fire that wuz lit up in his usually soft eyes his burnin’ indignation aginst this idee that had jest been promulgated to him.

Sez he—“You Christians talk a sight about the car of Juggernaut that rolls on over living victims and crushes them down, but,” sez he, “death leaves the soul free to fly home to its paradise; but your Christian country has found the way to ruin the souls of children, as well as their bodies. How can you sit down calmly and know that such a law is in existence? How can mothers happily watch their sweet little baby girls at play, and know that such a horrible danger lurks in the path their ignorant little feet have got to tread, such a snare is set for them?”

“They don’t set calm and happy—mothers don’t!” I bust out; “their hearts and souls are full. They cry to God in their anguish and fear, but they can’t do nothin’ else, wimmen can’t; men made this law, made it for men. Men say they don’t want to put wimmen to the trouble of votin’, and so they hender ’em from the hardship of droppin’ a little scrap of paper in a small box once a year, and give ’em this corrodin’, constant fear and anguish to carry with ’em day and night, like a load of swords and simeters, every one of ’em a-stabbin’ their hearts.”

“But how can men, fathers of young girls, make this law, or allow it to go on? Don’t they think of their own young daughters, who may be ruined by it?”

“They don’t make this law and vote for this law for their own girls—it is to ruin other men’s girls that it is made.”

“Don’t they know that the sword of retribution is two-sided—that it is liable to cut down their own beloved?”

“No, they don’t think at all; their vile passions clog up their ears and blind their eyes.”

“But your ministers, your holy men, what are they doing? I supposed their mission was to preach to sinners, and try to make the world better. I have heard them speak of many things in the high places where they stand to warn the people of their sins, and the judgment to come, but I never heard them allude to this. Why do they let this enormous crime go on unrebuked?”

“The land knows!” sez I; “I don’t; they go on year in and year out, a-preachin’ about Job’s sufferin’s, and Pharo’s hardness of heart, and the Deluge, and other ancient sins and sufferin’s all healed up and done away with centuries ago.

“Why, it is six thousand years sence Pharo’s heart hardened or Job’s biles ached, and the green grass of centuries has riz up over the sweepin’ swash of the Deluge, but they will calmly go on Sunday after Sunday for years a-preachin’ on that agony and that wickedness and that overflow, and not one word do they say about the hardness of heart of the men who make and permit this law, which makes Pharo’s hardness seem like putty in comparison, or the agony and dread this law brings to mothers’ hearts in the night watches, a-thinkin’ on’t, and thinkin’ of their own helplessness to protect the ones who they would give their life for. And the depths of wretchedness that overwhelms the souls this law wuz made to ruin! What are biles compared to these pains?

“But the clergymen, the most on ’em, go calmly on a-pintin’ these old sins and pains out, and the overflow of the Deluge, and drawin’ tenthlies and twentiethlies from ’em, and not one word about this cryin’ iniquity, so great that it seems as if it would open the very sluce-ways of Heaven and let a new flood down onto this guilty age that will allow sech crime to go on unrebuked.

“And philosophers will moralize on old laws and new ones, and their cause and effects; on Heaven and earth, and not seemin’ly cast a eye of their spectacles on this law of sin and shame that rises up right before their eyes. And scientists rack their brains to discover new laws and utilize old ones, but don’t make a effort towards discoverin’ a way to avert this enormous cause of woe and guilt, this fur-reachin’ and ever-increasin’ anguish and crime. And law-makers, instead of tryin’ to overcome it, try their best to perpetuate it and make it permanent; bend all their powers of intellect, band together, and use the cunnin’ of serpents and the wisdom of old Lucifer to git their laws passed and git Uncle Sam to jine in with ’em. Poor misguided old creeter, a-bein’ led off by his old nose, and made to consent to this crime and help it along!”

Al Faizi had been listenin’ in deep thought, and now he sez: “This uncle of yours I know him not; but your great Government, could it not interfere and stop this iniquity?”

“It could” (sez I, mad as a hen)—“it could, if it wuzn’t jined right in with them law-makers and helpin’ ’em along; and,” sez I, “now they’re tryin’ to git the poor old creeter to consent to a new idee. Some big clergymen and other wise men are a-tryin’ to have these wimmen, ruined by the evil passions of men, shet up in a certain pen to keep ’em from doin’ harm to innocent folks, and not one word said about shettin’ up the men who have made these wimmen what they are. Why don’t they shet them up? There they be foot loose. If they have ruined one pen full of wimmen, what henders ’em from spilin’ another pen full? But there they be a-runnin’ loose and even a-votin’ on how firm and strong the pen should be made to confine these victims of theirn. And how big salaries the men who keep these pens in order shall have—good big salaries, I’ll warrant you. Wise men and ministers advocate this onjestice, and laymen are glad to practise what they preach.

“There hain’t nothin’ reasonable in it; if a pen has got to be made for bad wimmen, why not have another pen, jest like it, only a great deal bigger, made for the bad man?

“Why, this seems so reasonable and right I should think that Jestice would lift the bandage offen her eyes and holler out and say it must he done! But no, there hain’t no move made towards pennin’ bad men up—not a move.”

Al Faizi sez—“I cannot understand these strange things.”

And I sez—“Nobody can, unless it is old Belzibub; I guess he gits the run on it.”

Wall, he took out that book of hisen and writ for pretty nigh an hour.

And that is jest the way he went on and acted from day to day.

CHAPTER VI.

A LITTLE FUN AND ITS PRICE.

Al Faizi got acquainted with the Baptist minister at Jonesville, and Elder Dean took to that noble heathen in a remarkable way. He wuz a truly Christian man and deep learnt, and he and Al Faizi talked together right in my presence in languages, a good many of them dead, I spoze, and some on ’em, jedgin’ from the sound, in a sickly and dyin’ state.

Elder Dean wuz English, college bred. Been abroad as a missionary, broke down, and come to Jonesville with a weak voice and lungs, but a full head and a noble heart, for six hundred dollars a year and parsonage found.

They’d always had a hard time, bein’ put to it for things and kinder sickly. But he and his heroic wife had one flower in their life that wuz a-bustin’ into full bloom, and a-sweetenin’ their hard present and their wearisome past, and the promise and beauty on’t a-throwin’ a bright, clear light clear acrost their futer—even down the steep banks where the swift stream rushes through the dark, and clear over onto the other side.

This brightness and blessin’ that lightened up their hard and toilsome way wuz their only child, a youth of such manly beauty and gentle goodness that his love made up to ’em, so they said to me, for all they had suffered and all they had lost through their lives.

He had been brought up on clear love mostly. His Pa and Ma had literally carried him in their hearts from the time his sweet, baby face had smiled up to ’em from his cradle.

Nobody could tell the tenderness and love that had been lavished on him. His Ma jest lived in him and his Pa, too, but their devotion hadn’t spilte him, not at all—not mentally nor morally.

Though there wuz them that did think that his Ma, bein’ so dretful tender of him and lookin’ out so for his health in every way, had kinder weakened his constitution and he would have been stronger if he had roughed it more.

Bein’ watched over so lovin’ly all his days, he wuz jest about as delicate and couldn’t stand any more hardship than a girl; but he wuz stiddy and industrious, a good Christian, and dretful ambitious. And they looked forrered to him as bein’ an honor as well as a blessin’ to ’em in the futer.

The minister had learnt him all he knew, so he said, and for years back they’d been savin’ every penny they could, deprivin’ themselves of even necessaries to git the money to send Harry to college. From his babyhood they’d worked for this. And jest before Al Faizi come to Jonesville, the long looked-for and worked-for end had come—Harry had gone to college, a-carryin’ with him all his parents’ love and hope for the futer, and a small trunk full of necessaries, some Balsam of Fir for his lungs, and some plasters and things his Ma had put in.

Wall, as I said, Elder Dean had took dretfully to Al Faizi, and he to him. So one day I invited the elder and his wife over to dinner. I went myself to gin ’em the invitation.

I found the elder a carefully coverin’ a old book of poems he had bought, which wuz very rare, so he said, and jest what Harry had wanted. He had took the money he had been savin’ for a winter coat, so I hearn afterwards, to buy it.

And she wuz knittin’ a african to put over the couch in his room. She had ravelled out a good shawl of her own to git the red for it, so I hearn.

“But,” she sez, “when he comes into his room a little chilly, it will be so nice to throw over his feet, and he always liked that soft, crimson color. He gits cold real easy,” sez she, a-holdin’ up the african and lookin’ real affectionate at it. It wuz a good african.

I asked ’em to come to dinner the next day, and they both demurred at first, sayin’ that it wuz the day for Harry’s long letter to come. He writ ’em long letters twice a week, and they both felt that they wanted to be right there by the post-office so’s to git it the minute it arrove.

Wall, it wuz compromised in this way—I promisin’ that Ury should be at the post-office when the afternoon mail come in and bring it to ’em right to our house. And I mentioned that the old mair could go pretty fast when Ury and Necessity wuz a-drivin’ her; so they consented to come.

And I cooked up dretful good vittles. I don’t think they’re ever than above well fed to home, and I did enjoy a-cookin’ up good, nourishin’ food for ’em with Philury’s help.

I had some good beef soup, two roast chickens, with garden sass of all kinds, cream biscuit, strawberry shortcake and jell, and rich, yellow coffee with cream and loaf sugar in it.

I did well by ’em.

And I had a real good visit with ’em; for I jest as lives spend my time a-hearin’ about Harry as not. I wuz a-knittin’, and of course could hear and knit. And Josiah and Al Faizi (good creeters both on ’em) had jest as lives hear the elder praise up his boy in dead languages as in live ones.

And so they enjoyed themselves real well.

As I say, when the elder would git tired of praisin’ him up in English he would try it in Greek, and when that language got tired out and kinder dead, he would try a healthier, stronger one, so I spoze. He and Al Faizi sot out in the porch some of the time, but I could hear ’em.

Miss Dean and I got along first-rate in our own native tongues, though once in awhile I felt that, visitor or no visitor, I had to sprunt up a little and tell my mind about Thomas J., and what a remarkable boy he always wuz, and what a man he’d made.

But I see they wuz so oneasy when they wuzn’t a-praisin’ Harry that I switched off the track as polite as I could and gin ’em a clear sweep. And from that time Happiness and Harry rained supreme in our settin’-room and piazza. And reminescenes wuz brung up and plans laid on and prophecies foretold, and all wuz Harry, Harry, Harry.

Wall, I see Miss Dean kep’ a-lookin’ at the clock, though I told her it lacked three hours of train time. But in the same cause of politeness I had held up through the day I sent Ury off a hour before it wuz time, and in due time he come back bearin’ a letter.

He brung it up to the stoop and handed it to the elder.

As the Elder took it he turned pale.

As the elder took it he turned pale—white as a piece of white cotton shirt, and sez he—

“This is not Harry’s hand!”

Miss Dean jest leaped forward and ketched holt of his hand.

“What is it? Not Harry’s writin’, what does it mean?”

Wall, when the letter wuz opened, we found what it meant.

Dead! dead! That bright young life, full of hope and beauty and promise, had been cut down like a worthless weed by the infamous practice of Hazin’.

Gentlemen’s sons, young men who had had every means of civilization at their command, had committed the brutality of a savage. Young men of riches, education, culture, position, they had committed this murder jest for wanton fun. They had called him out of his bed at midnight on a false errent, locked him out of his room for hours, poured a lot of icy water on him; he, shiverin’ with his almost naked limbs, had plead in vain for help.

Where wuz his Ma and Pa at this time? Asleep and dreamin’ of him, mebby.

A congestive chill had attackted the weak lungs, and in two days he wuz dead.

One of the pupils not engaged in it, in deep sympathy and pity, writ the hull thing out to the bereaved parents.

We carried ’em home and helped ’em out of the democrat—helped ’em to walk into the house, for they couldn’t walk alone. We sot him down under a picter of Harry that had fresh flowers under it—laid her on a couch covered with the woosted work she wuz a-makin’ for him, and took care on ’em as well as we could while they waited for Harry to come home.

Oh dear me! Oh dear suz!!!

I can’t tell nothin’ about that time. My pen trembles, jest as my heart duz, when I try to write about it.

I’m a-goin’ to hang up a black bumbazeen curtain between the reader and that seen for the next few days. Reader, it is best for you that I do it—you couldn’t stand it if I didn’t.

The curtain ort to be crape, but crape, though all right in the line of mournin’, is pretty thin for the purpose—you might see through it.

But I will jest lift up a corner on’t a few days later to show you another coffin, with the broken-hearted mother a-layin’ in it, with a broken-down old man bendin’ over it alone, waitin’ for the summons to jine ’em in another country.

One victim buried, another victim layin’ in the coffin, another victim, most to be pitied of all, a-stayin’ on here alone in a dark world a-waitin’ for the end.

Gay, light-hearted young man, havin’ a good time at college—sowin’ your wild oats—havin’ royal good fun, what do you think of the end of that night’s jollity?

Al Faizi couldn’t understand it. Sez he to me—

“His murderers will be hanged, will they not?”

“Hung!” sez I in astonishment; “oh, no! this is merely Hazin’—college fun for young gentlemen.”

“Gentlemen!” sez he. “Do gentlemen murder in your country? Why, your missionaries tell our people that if they murder they must be hanged in this world and eternally punished in the next.”

“But,” sez I, “these young gentlemen were simply havin’ a little fun!” My tone wuz as bitter as wormwood and gaul, and he see it.

“Has such a thing ever been done before in this country?” sez he.

“Oh, yes!” sez I (wormwood and gaul still saturating my axents); “it is very common—it is always practised. Sometimes the victims are only frightened to death and maimed and made idiots and invalids of; sometimes they don’t die so soon; but then, agin,” sez I, “they die fur quicker—sometimes, when the young gentlemen want to be extra funny, and use some deadly gas, their victim dies to once, right under their hands.”

“But don’t the Government interfere to punish such dreadful deeds?”

“Oh, no!” sez I; “the Government has its hands too full a-grantin’ licenses and sech, sellin’ the stuff that helps to make these disgraceful seens.”

“Well, do not men and women rise and punish such deeds themselves?”

“Oh, no!” sez I; “wimmen are considered too feeble-minded to pass any jedgment on sech doin’s—they’re considered by the college professors and presidents, as a general thing, as too weak-minded and volatile to take in a college education, and men are kep’ pretty busy a-bringin’ up arguments to keep wimmen in their place.

“Of course, no sech doin’s ever took place in a woman’s college. They generally spend their time in learnin’, and don’t riot round and act, and that itself is considered, I believe, an evidence that wimmen are inheriently weak and not really fitted for the higher education. It is, I believe, considered a damagin’ evidence agin her powers of mind to think she don’t have no hankerin’ to spend her college days a-gittin’ up the reputation of a prizefighter and a boat-swain, and had ruther spend her time a-bringin’ out the strength of her mind and soul instead of her muscles.”

Sez I, “Take that with her refusal to kill and maim and torture her fellow students by Hazin’, and her dislike to cigarettes, drinkin’, etc.—take ’em all together, though she carries off prizes right and left for learnin’ and good behavior, yet these weaknesses of hern in refusin’ to jine in such upliftin’ exercises, tells agin her dretfully in the eyes of the male world!”

Oh! how the wormword showed in my axent as I spoke.

“Of all the strange things which I have seen in your strange country,” sez Al Faizi, “this is one of the strangest—a civilized nation practising such barbarities!”

And he took out that little book with the cross on’t and writ for a quarter of an hour, and I d’no but more.

Wall, the days went along, one after another, as days will, droppin’ off, droppin’ off the rosary Time counts its beads on, and the time pretty near elapsted for us to embark on our trip to Europe.

The tickets wuz bought, the nightcaps wuz packed, and the time drawed near.

But as the time aproached, the thought of the deepness of the water in the Atlantic growed more and more apparient to me.

I took down my old Atlas.

I took down my old Atlas and Gography from the cupboard over the suller way and poured over ’em, and sithed, and sithed and poured.

The distance looked fearful between shore and shore, and my reason told me, also experience, that the reality wuz jest as much worse as black water is worse than yeller paper.

The ocean wuz painted on this old Atlas bright yeller.

And the last time Al Faizi came back from quite a long trip he had took to Washington and New York he found me a-pourin’ over the old Atlas; while the nightcaps and dressin’-gown, all done up, lay on a stand by my side.

As I mentioned more formally, I’d made a nice flannel dressin’-gown for myself, and it satisfied my desires for comfort and also my pride; though I didn’t act over it as my pardner did over hisen. No; a sense of dignity and propriety restrained me.

I cut it out by my nightgown pattern and made it fuller—it looked well. It wuz a brown and red stripe, tied down in front with lute string ribbin, that I paid as high as 14 cents a yard for, and thought it none too good for the occasion; I thought in case of a panick at sea, and I had to appear in it, I wouldn’t begrech the outlay for the ribbin.

And then, agin, seein’ we wuzn’t to any extra expense for the voyage, I thought it wuzn’t extravagant in us to lanch out in clothes, or that is, lanch out some in ’em, not too fur.

For I didn’t believe in goin’ through Europe follered by a dray full of trunks.

No; I felt that two large satchels, that we could carry ourselves, wuz what the occasion demanded.

That wuz our first thought, though we afterwards decided to take a trunk.

Of course I took my mantilly, with tabs. It wuz jest as good as it ever wuz, and a big woollen shawl to wear when it wuz cold on the steamer. And my good, honorable bunnet, with my usual green baize veil to drape it gracefully on the left side.

My umbrell, it is needless to say, occupied its usual place in my outfit—protection from storms and tramps and other dangers, and it could also be used for a cane.

Noble utensil! I would have felt lost indeed to have missed it from its accustomed place at my right hand.

As I say, Al Faizi come back and found us engrossed in preperations and study.

I with my Atlas, and Josiah carefully brushin’ his dressin’-gown, though there wuzn’t a speck of dust on it, and a-smoothin’ out them tossels.

We wuz a-makin’ our last preperations, for it only lacked about six weeks of the time when we wuz to embark. Our satchels stood all unlocked, with the keys fastened to ’em with good strong weltin’ cord, so’s we wouldn’t have to hunt for the keys at the last minute. Some long letters for the relations on both sides lay on Josiah’s desk, to be sent after our departure; they wuz dretful affectin’ letters; we thought more’n as like as not they would bring tears.

And as Al Faizi come in and witnessed our hasty preperations, he announced in that calm way of hisen that he would go with us.

For a minute I wuz dumfoundered, and knew not whether I wuz tickled to death at the proposal, or felt sorry and meachin’ over it.

I felt queer.

Sez Al Faizi, “I come to your land expecting I hardly know what.

“My heart had been touched by learning of your holy religion. I had accepted the teachings of the blessed Lord Christ with all my heart and soul; warmed by His love, I come to your country to learn what that Divine religion would be amongst the people who had followed His teachings eighteen hundred years, and had no false religion to paralyze its power——and now—”

“Wall,” sez I, for Al Faizi paused for a good while, not a-lookin’ mad, nor pert, nor anythin’, but jest earnest and some sad, and very quiet.

“Now what?” sez I.

He didn’t say nothin’. He looked as if he wuz afraid of hurtin’ somebody’s feelin’s; but at last he said in that soft, melodious voice of hisen—

“Now, I should like to go to other lands.”

I felt fearful meachin’, and showed it, I spoze, to have a Hindoo come here and git disgusted with our ways, for I mistrusted that he wuz, though he didn’t say so out plain. And there wuzn’t a shadder of blame on his face; jest calm and earnest, jest as he always had been, and always would be, so fur as I could tell.

He couldn’t find Truth and Jestice here, and so he wuz for follerin’ off on their trail over the Atlantic.

I felt queer as a dog, but Josiah hailed the idee with joy. He seemed highly tickled to have one more ingregient of curosity added to our cavalcade.

CHAPTER VII.

THE EMBARKATION.

And so it wuz settled, and Martin bein’ writ to to git another ticket, he got it, and sent it in a letter to us. But what he would say when he see the passenger who wuz goin’ to use it I knew not, but I knew that Alice and Adrian wuz good-natered, and would feel as I did about usin’ folks well. And then I remembered that complaint in Martin’s eyes, and felt that if he didn’t take to Al Faizi, he would most probble be so near-sighted that he couldn’t see him much, if any.

And so it turned out (to go ahead of the wagon a spell, or, ruther, to paddle backwards a few furlongs), after the first conversation Martin held with him, and see what his bizness wuz over here in America and wuz a-goin’ to be in Europe—Martin’s eyes wuz so bad that he couldn’t see him hardly ever.

But Alice wuz sweet and courteous to him, and Adrian liked him dretfully from the first. And Al Faizi, when he first see Alice’s sweet face, he stood stun still for more’n quite a spell.

And on his dark, handsome face dawned a look sech as a man might have who had been walkin’ a considerable time through a underground way, who had come out full in view of the mornin’ sun a-risin’ up on a June world.

I d’no as anybody noticed that look but jest me; I don’t believe they did, for Martin wuz talkin’ to Josiah in a dretful kind and patronizin’ way, and Alice wuz all took up a-lookin’ with her heart’s eye on the land where her prince reigned.

And Adrian wuz, as I say, dretful took up with Al Faizi, and see nothin’ in his dark, expressive face only what he looked for, and what he found in it from day to day all through our tower—the good nater of a patient comrade, who loved him for his own bright, winnin’ little self, and loved him more for the sake of another, whose heart’s joy Adrian wuz.

Martin’s eye complaint seemed to be real bad so fur as the noble heathen wuz concerned.

I guess Al Faizi, in the first conversation he had with him, tackled him in the everlastin’ cause of jestice, and pity, and mercy—subjects that Martin hain’t “o fay” in (that is French. I seldom use foreign languages, but I’ve hearn Maggie use it considerable, and know it is lawful).

No; Martin and Al Faizi looked on this earth and the things of life with sech different pairs of eyes that I d’no as they could be said to look on this old planet on the same side.

Al Faizi looked on the deep side of subjects. He looked fur down under the outside current to try to discern the hidden springs, from whence these clear and turbid torrents flowed.

If he found a spring that yielded black water, his first thought wuz to give warnin’ and try to dam it up.

Martin would try to keep it a-humpin’, so’s to utilize it—sell the mud that flowed from it, mebby.

Al Faizi’s gaze pierced through the clouds of earth, and rested on the gold pinnacles of Heaven.

Martin clutched handfuls of the gold ore of earth and held it clost to his eyes, and so shet out the sight of the Heavenly City.

One wuz honestly a-tryin’ to sweep away utterly the vile sperits of ignorance, evil, and want, etc., etc. Martin wuz for catchin’ ’em and hitchin’ ’em to his lawn-mower, to keep the lawn smooth round the house of his earthly tabernacle.

Curous extremes as ever met, I believe, and as interestin’ to witness from day to day as the most costly and curous menagerie of wild animals would be.

But, as I said, Martin’s eyes bein’ formed in jest that way, he wuzn’t able to hardly see the noble heathen after that first interview.

Wall, to go back to the wagon agin and proceed onwards with my history, or paddle back to the steamer.

At last the last minute come—Ury and Philury had took us to the cars and been shooken by the hands, and amidst fervent good-byes had been adjured over and over about the necessity of keepin’ the cat out of the milk room, and the gate shet between the garden and paster, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

And they had promised faithfully to adhere to our wishes, and to advise us of the results in weekly letters.

We let ’em move right in and have half of everything—butter, cheese, eggs, wool, black caps, etc. And they wuz highly tickled as well as we.

Thomas Jefferson and Maggie had gone with us to the station, where Whitfield and Tirzah Ann put in a late appearance, on account of Tirzah’s bein’ ondecided whether to wear a thick or a thin dress; the day bein’ one of them curous ones when you don’t really know whether it will be hazy or warm.

And they’d come in time to kiss us and clasp our hands in partin’.

In time to kiss us and clasp our hands in partin’.

The girls both brought bokays with ’em, and Babe, the darlin’, brought a bunch of English violets to send to Adrian, knowin’ that he jest worshipped that posy—and it’s one of my favorites, too. Wall, the last words wuz said to us, Al Faizi had made his last low bow to the children, and said the last polite, melodious adieu, and we embarked on to the cars.

But I looked back, and I see Tirzah Ann a-wrestlin’ with her polynay, that had got ketched into her parasol, and Whitfield a-helpin’ her to ondo herself.

And I see Maggie’s sweet, upward look to the car winder, and met the clear, affectionate, comprehendin’ look of my boy, Thomas Jefferson.

It is curous how well acquainted our sperits be with each other, hisen and mine, and always has been, from the time when he sot on my lap as a child. Our souls are clost friends, and would be if he wuzn’t no kin to me.

He is a young man of a thousand, and he understands my mind without my speakin’, and I do hisen.

But to resoom. It had been arranged that we should proceed directly to a hotel that wuz nigh to the Atlantic, and Martin should call for us there, his own residence bein’ in a opposite direction.

We did so, and after a good meal—and we all did jestice to it, bein’ hungry—a big carriage driv up, and Martin alighted from it and come in.

Anon we embarked in it, and after a seen of almost indescribable tumult, owin’ to the screamin’ of drivers, the conflict of passin’ wagons and carriages and dray carts, etc., etc., etc., etc.

And after numerous givin’s up on my part that now indeed wuz the time I wuz to “likewise perish,” we found ourselves on the big steamer’s deck that wuz to bear us away from our own native land.

Lots of folks wuz there a-takin’ leave of friends. Some wuz weepin’, some wuz laughin’, some wuz talkin’, and that las’ some wuz multiplied by hundreds and thousands, seemin’ly.

And piles of flowers lay round, offerin’s to and from fond hearts that must sever.

Adrian had his bunch of sweet blue violets, and the violets wuzn’t any sweeter than his eyes. And I, even at the resk of losin’ my umbrell, clutched my precious bokays—the frail links that seemed to connect me with my own native Jonesville and my loved ones there.

Josiah seemed to be lookin’ round for somebody he could scrape acquaintance with.

And Al Faizi stood in that silent way of hisen, with his dark, ardent face seemin’ly on the lookout for sunthin’ or other he could learn, and a-seein’ every move that Alice made, as I could see, though nobody else noticed it.

Martin wuz a-flyin’ round, busy a-seein’ to everything. Alice wuz a little apart a-bendin’ over the side of the great ship. She seemed to be lookin’ intently on sunthin’ or somebody on the pier, and as we sailed off I see her snowy handkerchief wave out, and where she’d been a-lookin’ I see an arm lifted up and another white handkerchief wave out a farewell.

Her big blue eyes wuz full of tears.

When I looked clost at her, I see that her big blue eyes wuz full of tears.

As for me, I wuz tryin’ my best to keep my equilibrum, for the boat tosted some, and my equilibrum hain’t what it would be if it hadn’t had the rheumatiz so much.

But my umbrell helped me some; I planted it down and leaned heavy on it, and in its faithful companionship and support I found some relief as I see the land sail swift away from me, seemin’ to be in a hurry to go somewhere.

And I sez in my heart—“Good-bye, dear old Land! you no need to be in sech a hurry to go back and dissapear in the distance; no truer lover did you ever have than she who now witnesses your swift departure,” and even in my reverie wantin’ to be exact, I added—“she whose name wuz once Smith.”

Quite a while did I stand there until Reason and also Josiah told me that I had better seek my state-room.

I don’t find no fault with that room, it probble wuzn’t its fault that the narrer walls riz up so many times, and seemed to hit me in my head and stomach, specially the stomach, and then anon turn round with me, and teeter, and bow down, and hump up, and act.

No; the little room wuzn’t to blame, and my sufferin’s with Josiah Allen for the three days when he lay, as he said, in a dyin’ state, right over my head—

I a-sufferin’ twice over—once in myself and agin in my other and more fraxious and worrisome self.

The wild demeanors, the groans, the frenzied exclamations, and anon the faint and die-away actions of that man can’t never be described upon, and if it could, it would make readin’ that no man would want to read, nor no woman neither.

But after a long interval, in which, while I wuz a-layin’, a-tryin’ in a agonized way to think how I wanted my effects distributed amongst the survivors—I would be called away from that contemplation to receive my pardner’s last wills and testaments, and I heard anon or oftener, spoke in solemn axents—

“Bury me in the dressin’-gown, Samantha.”

He clung to that idee, even in his lowest and most sinkin’est moments.

I reached up, or tried to, and took holt of his limp hand that dangled down over my head, and I sez—

“You will live, Josiah, to wear it out.”

And as feeble as he wuz, and as much as he had wanted to die, them words would seem to sooth him some, and be a paneky to him.

I repeated ’em often, for they seemed to impress him where more affectionate and moral arguments failed.

But I may as well hang up a double rep curtain between my hearers and the fearful seens that wuz enacted in our state-rooms for nearly three days and nights.

I hang a rep curtain, so’s it would shelter the seens more; cretonne is too thin.

But some of the seens are so agonizin’ and sharp pinted that they seem to pierce even through that envelopin’ drapery.

One of them dagger-like episodes wuz of the fog horns.

If Josiah’s testementary idees and our united wretchedness would have let me doze off some in rare intervals, the tootin’ of them horns would be sure to roust me up.

Yes, they made the night dretful—ringin’ of bells, tootin’ of horns, etc.

And once, it wuz along in the latter part of the night, I guess, I heard a loud cry a-risin’ above the fog horn. It seemed to be a female in distress.

And Josiah wuz all rousted up in a minute.

And sez he—“Some female is in distress, Samantha! Where is my dressin’-gown?” Sez he, “I will go to her rescue!” And he rung the bell wildly for the stewardess, and acted.

Sez I—“Josiah Allen, come back to bed! no woman ever yelled so loud as that and lived! If it is a female she’s beyend your help now.” And I curdled down in bed agin, though I felt queer and felt dretful sorry for her; but felt that indeed that yell must have been her last, and that she wuz now at rest.

But he wuz still wildly arrangin’ his gown, and hollerin’ for the tossels—they’d slipped off from it.

“Where is them dum tossels?” he yelled; “must I hear a female yell like that and not fly to her rescue? Where is the tossels?” he yelled agin. “You don’t seem to have no heart, Samantha, or you’d be rousted up!”

“I am rousted up!” sez I; “yes, indeed, I have been rousted up ever sence I laid my head onto my piller; but if you wuz so anxious to help and save, Josiah, you wouldn’t wait for tossels!”

But at that minute, simultaneous and to once, the chambermaid come to the door, and he found his tossels.

“Who is that female a-screamin’?” sez Josiah, a-tyin’ the cord in a big bow-knot.

“That is the Syren,” sez she. And she slammed the door and went back; she wuz mad to be waked up for that.

“The Syren!” sez Josiah; “what did I tell you, Samantha?” And sez he, a-smoothin’ out the tossels, “I wouldn’t have missed the sight for a dollar bill! How lucky I found my tossels!” sez he.

“Yes, dretful lucky,” sez I faintly, for I wuz wore completely out by my long night watches, and I felt fraxious.

“Yes,” sez he, “I wouldn’t have appeared before a Syren without them red tossels for no money. I always wanted to see a Syren!” sez he, a-smoothin’ out the few hairs on each side of his cranium.

Sez he, “She wuz probble a-screamin’ for her lookin’-glass and comb; I’ll go to once on deck. It is a bad night; if she has missed her comb, I might lend her my pocket-comb,” sez he.

“You let Syrens alone, Josiah Allen!” sez I, gittin’ rousted up; “you don’t want to meddle with ’em at all! and do you come back to bed.”

“Not at all,” sez he; “here is the chance of my lifetime. I’ve always wanted to see a Syren, and now I’m a-goin’ to!”

And he reached up to a peg and took down his tall plug hat, and put it on kinder to the side of his head in as rakish a lookin’ way as you ever see a deacon’s hat in the world; he then took his umbrell and started for the door.

Then took his umbrell and started for the door.

Agin come that loud and fearful yell; it did, indeed, seem to be a female in direst agony.

“But,” I sez, “I don’t believe that’s any Syren, Josiah Allen; we read that her voice lures sailors to foller her; no sailor would be lured by that voice, it is enough to scare anybody and drive ’em back, instead of forrered.

“What occasion would a Syren have to yell in sech a blood-curdlin’ way, Josiah Allen?”

“Wall,” sez he, put to his wits’ end, “mebby her hair is all snarled up by the wind and salt water, and in yankin’ out the snarls, it hurts her so that she yells.”

I see the common sense of this, for the first night I had used soap and salt water my hair stood out like quills on my head, and it almost killed me to comb it out. “But,” sez I, “Syrens are used to wind storms and salt water. I don’t spoze their hair is like other folkses.”

Agin come that fearful, agonizin’ yell.

Agin Josiah sez—“While we are a-bandyin’ words back and forth, I am losin’ the sight,” and agin he made for the door.

But I follered him and ketched holt of the tossels.

He paused to once. He feared they would be injured.

Sez I, “Come back to bed; how it would look in the Jonesville paper to hear that Josiah Allen had been lured overboard by a Syren, for they always try to drown men, Josiah!” sez I.

“Oh, shaw!” sez he; “they never had me to deal with. I should stand still and argy with her—I always convince the more opposite sect,” sez he, lookin’ vain.

But I see the allusion to drowndin’ made him hesitate, and sez he—

“You don’t spoze there is any danger of that, do you, Samantha? I would give a dollar bill to tell old Gowdey and Uncle Sime Bentley that I’d interviewed a Syren!” sez he. “It would make me a lion, Samantha, and you a lioness.”

“I shan’t be made any animal whatsoever, Josiah Allen, by follerin’ up a Syren at this time of night. They never did anything but harm, from their grandmothers’ days down, and men have always been fooled and drownded by ’em!” sez I; “you let Syrens alone and come to bed,” sez I; “you’re a perfessor and a grandfather, Josiah Allen, and I’d try to act becomin’ to both on em,” sez I.

He fingered the red tossels lovin’ly.

“Sech a chance,” sez he, “mebby I never shall have agin. I don’t spoze any man who ever parlied with ’em wuz ever so dressy in his appearance, and so stylish—no knowin’ what would come of it!” sez he. He hated to give up the idee.

“Wall,” sez I, “it’s rainin’ as hard as it can; them tossels never would come out flossy and beautiful agin, they would all be limped and squashed down and spilte.”

“Do you think so?” sez he anxiously.

He took off his hat and put down his umbrell, and sez he—“It may be as well to not foller the investigation to-night; there will probble be a chance in fairer weather.”

But the next day we found out that the Syren wuz a thing they fixed onto the fog horn for certain signals, and Josiah felt glad enough that he hadn’t made no moves to talk with her.

I wuz glad on the side of common sense. He on the account of them tossels.

But after we found out what it wuz, and all about it, that fog horn made us feel dretful lonesome and queer when we heard it, half asleep and half awake. It would seem as if one half of our life wuz a-hollerin’ out to the other half.

Youth and middle age a-callin’ out to each other——

“Loss! loss!” and “Gain! gain!” as the case might be.

Jonesville and London, “Yell! yell!”

Love! peace! death! danger! “Shriek! shriek!”

Them you love who wuz here on earth, and them who’d gone over the Great Flood, “Shout! shout!”

“Ship ahoy! What hail!”

Queer sounds as I ever hearn floated in on them high yells, borne by the winds and the washin’ waves of ocean depths and the misty billows from Sleep Land, broken up some as they drifted and mixed with the billows of our own realm.

But daylight would always seem to calm down this tumult and bring more lusid and practical idees.

Wall, the time come when we tottered up on deck, two pale, thin figgers, to be confronted by other faces that wuz as wan, and some that wuz wanner.

We tottered up on deck, two pale, thin figgers.

But after these days we begun to feel first-rate. Alice and Adrian had had a hard time of it, so I had learned before from the stewardess. And I’d sent ’em lovin’ messages time and agin, and they me.

Martin, I don’t believe, had a minute’s sickness, nor Al Faizi. They both seemed to be real chipper; though they both seemed to be perfect strangers to each other; and I spoze they wuz and will be to all eternity—even if they wuz settin’ on the same seat on high.

Their two souls hain’t made right to ever be intimate with each other.

CHAPTER VIII.

LANDING IN THE EMERALD ISLE.

Wall, after all, as much as I wuz afraid of the deepness and length and breadth of the ocean, I had a pretty good time, after all.

Somehow, I got to feelin’ that the ship wuz a big city, and I got to feelin’ as if it wuz about as safe as the land.

We d’no what is a-goin’ on under us on land—no, indeed, we don’t, and if we git to forgittin’ it, we often git a shake-up and a hunch from old Mom Nater to let us know that we are entirely ignorant of what she’s a-doin’ down in the depths of the earth.

Yes, we git shook up with earthquakes, or cyclones lift us up and sweep us off, and hurricanes and water-spouts are abroad, and cars break down, and horses throw us out of wagons, etc., etc.

I’d bring up these consolin’ thoughts a sight when I’d be a-layin’ on my narrer piller and a-thinkin’ that only a few boards wuz between me and—what? And I’d kinder shudder and turn over, and try to forgit it.

How cold the water wuz and how deep, and how lonesome it would be a-sinkin’ down, and down, and down, and how big the shark’s mouth wuz, and how the cold, bitter, chokin’ waves would wash anythin’ to and fro like a piece of weed, and sweep one so fur off and so fur down that it didn’t seem as if the Angel of the Resurrection could ever find us!

But I spoze he could.

It stands to reason that we could as well be found in a shark as in some poseys that grow up from the dust of our body, and whose perfume exhale in the mornin’ dew goin’ up to the clouds, fallin’ in rain, and goin’ through countless forms before the resurrection.

Oh! did I not bring up all these thoughts anon or oftener? And did I not say to myself, time and agin, for my comfort and consolation, “The One who formed me out of nothin’ is able to reform me.” Yes, my best comfort wuz to ask the One who careth for ’em who go down to the sea in ships to care for me, and to rest in that thought.

To lay down in the depths of that wide love and care and repose myself in it.

Wall, we had a pretty good time on board. There wuz lots of different kinds of folks there, jest as there always is on land.

I had hearn that there wuz a live English Lord on board, and Josiah picked him out the first time we went on deck.

Yes, there he wuz, as we spozed, a tall, slim, supercilious-actin’ and lookin’ feller, who ordered round the ship’s crew, and wuz dissatisfied with his food, and snubbed the ocean, and felt that it hadn’t no need to breathe so loud, and looked askance at the Heavens if the day wuz dull.

Yes, he looked down on everybody and everything. And Josiah sez—“He can’t help it, he wuz brung up that way; he is a Lord.”