FOR FIVE DAYS HE WUZ SHET UP IN HIS ROOM AND KEP’ ON BREAD AND WATER.

Frontispiece.

SAMANTHA
ON
CHILDREN’S RIGHTS

BY

JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE

(MARIETTA HOLLEY)

Author of “Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition,” “Around the
World with Josiah Allen’s Wife,” “Samantha at Saratoga,” Etc.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
CHARLES GRUNWALD

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1909, by

G. W. Dillingham Company

Samantha on Children’s Rights

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

SAMANTHA ON CHILDREN’S RIGHTS

Jack has got a middlin’ round face, with eyes of dark blue. A sort of mornin’ glory blue, and at times they are big, that is when he is wonderin’ over sunthin’, or has found out sunthin’. And at times they will be sort o’ half shet up, like mornin’ glories when the sun is too hot. Then is the time when he has been wilted by Hamen and his wife. The fresh, vigorous desire for knowledge born in him, onbeknown to himself, jest as the freshness of the mornin’ glories wuz born in them, withered and too hardly sot down on by the searchin’ rays of misapprehension, ridicule, etc., etc.

When he wuz a little bit of a fellow he would always shet his eyes when he wuz scolded, for half an hour at a time, and walk round with ’em shet. It seemed as if he wuz some disgusted with the world, and wanted to lose sight on’t for a spell. Now he about half shets ’em when he is mortified.

His hair is curly at the ends, it is brown, some like the deep shinin’ brown you have seen in trout brooks, and where the curls kinder crinkle up a streak of gold runs through ’em. His forward is broad and pretty middlin’ white, and high enough, plenty high enough, and the hair hangs down in little short curls over it the most of the time.

Tamer Ann, that’s his Ma, don’t like it, she wants it brushed back tight to show his intellect, and nags at Jack because he don’t keep it back. Sez she in a very cross tone:

“Folks will think you hain’t got any intellect at all if they see your hair all over your forward.”

And I sez, “I wouldn’t worry, Tamer Ann, if the intellect is there it will work out, hair or no hair, and if it hain’t there no amount of plasterin’ the hair back will show it off—I’ve seen it tried.” Sez I in a milder tone, seein’ she looked kinder mad:

“I’ve seen hair brushed back straight from the forward so’s to give a free pass to the intellect, and left long on the neck to entice it out, but it wouldn’t appear, for the reason it wuzn’t there. Don’t you worry about Jack, Tamer Ann, you’ll find his intellect will push its way through them curls—I hain’t a mite afraid on’t.

“And at the same time, Jack,” sez I, for Duty is my companion and I foller her blindly, “you must try to mind your Ma and keep the curls back.”

Jack laughed and run his hand through ’em and put ’em back. Jack always minds me, or, that is, most always.

Now I don’t always mind the Higher Teacher, I don’t always set the stitches right in the great sampler that is hung up before me from day to day. It is a true remark that wuz once made at a conference meetin’ that “We often leave ondone the things that ort to be done, and do the things that we hadn’t ort.” Then why should I be hard on Jack when occasionally, very occasionally, mind you, he don’t do exactly as he ort, or duz as he ortn’t.

You see our Heavenly Father tells us what to do, He has told us once for all in the divine book, and then He wrops himself in the Everlastin’ Silence and leaves us to our own convictions, our own sense of duty to Him. He makes us afraid to disobey Him. His love constrains us, our sense of duty holds us (a good deal of the time) and we try (some of the time) to do right for the Right’s sake, and because of the completeness and constancy of the love and tender pity broodin’ over us.

Now, I have often wondered what we would do if our Heavenly Father nagged at us as some parents do at their children, if every time we make a miss-step, or a mistake, owin’ to the blindness of our ignorance, or our waywardness, if He kep’ naggin’ at us, and bringin’ us up short, and threatenin’ us with punishment, and twitched us about and pulled our ears, and sot us down in corners, and shet us up in dark closets, and sent us to bed without our supperses, and told us to, “Shet up instantly!” and etcetery. I wondered how long we would keep our love and reverence for Him.

Now, a father and mother are to their children the controlling power, the visible Deity of their lives. They stand in the High Place in their souls. Let ’em tremble and quail if they don’t hold that high place reverently, thoughtfully, prayerfully. The making or the marring of a life, a endless, immortal life, is in their hands, let ’em tremble at the thought.

Jack’s mouth is a good natered one more’n half the time, most all the time, when he is down on the farm with Josiah and me (he loves to be there). It is quite a big mouth, but none too big, not at all, with red lips, the upper one kinder short, and the ends curl up in a dretful sort of a laughin’, roguish way. But them curls can droop right down and the lips quiver like a baby’s—I’ve seen ’em. That is when he is nagged at. Tamer Ann nags at Jack more’n half the time.

Jack loves his mother, and that is why the naggin’s reach right through the little blue jacket and touches his heart. And the tremblin’ onhappiness of the heart makes the blue eyes shet about half up in a forlorn way, and the red lips quiver. I’ve seen ’em. Why, good land! Jack hain’t much more than a baby anyway, only about six and a half years old. He’s a stout little feller, and most always wears a dark blue cloth suit with a little sailor hat sot kinder back on his curls if he puts it on himself. And I don’t want to see a better lookin’ boy than Jack is. His father is my cousin on my own side.

Hamen Archibald Smith, old Elder Archibald Smith’s boy. Hamen is well off, he owns a big farm and a shingle mill up in Zoar, about seven miles from Jonesville on the old State Road. Hamen’s wife is a female he got acquainted with while he wuz away to school (Hamen is high learnt). His father sent him away for upwards of seven months to a high school, and then he got acquainted with Tamer Ann Bodley and married her. She wuz from a high family, she herself is over six feet high and spindlin’ in figger. She wuz to school to the same place. She had been there over nine weeks when Hamen got acquainted with her.

Their love wuz sudden and voyalent, and they married at the expiration of the term and left school and sot up housekeepin’, both of ’em bein’ high learnt, and havin’ traveled. Why, they went over forty milds on their weddin’ tower. And the high school where they got acquainted wuz upwards of thirty milds from Zoar.

Havin’ had all these advantages and bein’ forehanded, they naterally put on some airs, and wuz looked up to. They did make a handsome, high headed couple, I’ll say that for ’em. Hamen wuz about a inch or a inch and a half taller than she wuz.

Well, how time duz run along to be sure. It don’t seem like a year hardly sence we got the invitation to the weddin’ party Uncle Archibald gin to the bride and groom at the old Smith house out to Piller Pint. And now Hamen’s oldest child, Anna, is goin’ on nineteen years old. How time duz pass away! Why, I declare for’t, if it wuzn’t for these great tall livin’ mildstuns springin’ up all along life’s journey we could hardly believe our old family Bibles, and would deny our ages.

But these livin’ mildstuns can’t be gone by, they stand up straight and tall, and we have to stop and read ’em, and then we see for ourselves how fur we have come on the journey and how fast we are approachin’ the great Stoppin’ Place for the Night. Anna Smith is a good lookin’ mildstun. She is plump and fresh and sweet lookin’. I like Anna and Anna likes me. Her brother, next younger than herself, is named Cicero. Her Ma named him after some big man, old Captain Cicero, it seems to me it wuz, anyway he wuz a big talker and died some time ago.

Cicero Smith is now about fifteen years old, he is dull complected, kinder frosty and onwholesome lookin’, with great big round eyes, kinder pale and wild lookin’, some like gooseberries. His hair is thin and strings down the side of his face like little wisps of pale yeller straw, only of course some finer. His hands always felt kinder clammy, and he takes after his Ma in figger, tall and scraggly and spindlin’.

I never took to him at all nor he to me, he always wuz a indifferent actin’ chap even in his cradle. He’d turn over in his cradle when he wuz a infant and look at the rungs in the back side on’t when I would try to git his attention, and I hain’t never been able to git it sence. Jest as quick as he wuz old enough to read he jest took to dime novels. His mother encouraged it, she said it nourished a love for readin’, and would make him literary. He and his mother, I spoze, have read more’n twenty cords of ’em if they wuz corded up and measured with a yard stick, and most every one on ’em yeller covered and harrowin’.

I have told Tamer Ann that they wuzn’t good for her or Cicero to devour so much. But good land! I couldn’t move her a inch. She kep’ on readin’ ’em and givin’ ’em to him to read, and the more blood curdliner they wuz the more they doted on ’em. Why, I should have thought their blood would have turned to ice in their veins, and their skin got thick as a elephant’s hide with goose pimples caused by the horrow of ’em; why, their names wuz enough to skair anybody to death, let alone readin’ ’em. Anna never took to ’em, she seemed to take after the Smiths more, so I think, and Jack of course hain’t old enough, and I don’t believe he’ll ever love ’em anyway.

Hamen’s brother lived at their house when Jack wuz born, and he’s made it his home with ’em ever sence. His name is John Zebulen Smith, named after old Grandpa Smith.

And as he wuz always called John, why, they called little John Jack, when he wuz a baby, to keep him from gittin’ mixed up with his uncle and bein’ took for him, so he has always gone by the name of Jack. And Jack from the first on’t has been a favorite of mine, a great favorite. And I always felt so safe with him; I knew he wouldn’t die from bein’ too good, as so many little Sabbath school heroes do.

And yet he wuz always a noble child, truthful as the day wuz long. He would scorn to tell a lie, he wuz too proud to. If he had done anything he would own up to it, most every time he would. And he had naterally a religious mind, I believed, though sometimes Josiah would laugh the idee to scorn when Jack would git into one of his scrapes. He wuz kinder lazy some of the time, and opposition, onreasonable opposition, made him mad, and he would contend to the last minute when he got to goin’. And he had been fooled by Hamenses folks so much that he had got into the habit of keepin’ still and studyin’ out things for himself. The fools! they would tell him such stories, lies, a purpose to keep him wonderin’ and to hear him talk, that he had got sort o’ embittered and tried to rely on himself to find out strange things. It wuz pitiful as anything I ever see, and sometimes I thought pitifuler.

Now, spozin’ he wanted to find out some particular thing so dretfully it seemed as if he couldn’t live a minute without knowin’ about it, he would ask Hamen and Hamen would tell him the greatest story you ever hearn, and Jack would listen to it at first, and talk about it, curous, I’ll admit, but not curous at all if it wuz true.

And then Hamen and his brother would laugh like two idiots to see Jack’s wonderin’ looks, and shamed and mortified and everything. And then he would go to Tamer Ann, but Tamer would most likely have some new dime novel that she’d just commenced, and would be so wropped up in the joys and sorrows of the heroine, and would be cryin’ over her lots of times, so she couldn’t see Jack through her tears, and she would have to wipe her eyes when Jack disturbed her, and tell him all choked down by her emotions to run away, that his Ma wuz too busy to answer him, or else she would have some new distemper that day, and tell Jack to run away for his noise wuz killin’ her.

Well, what wuz the poor little feller to do? Everything wuz new to him, he had so many things that he wanted to find out, what could he do? Wall, there wuz only one thing he could do, and that wuz to try to find ’em out for himself. Tamer Ann bein’ a good woman at the bottom of her heart (but the goodness bein’ all covered up with nonsense, dime novels, fancy distempers, etc.), she sent Jack to Sunday school.

And everything there wuz new to him. Tamer Ann had, I spoze, been willin’, but had never had the time to teach Jack the Bible. Havin’ so many heroines, pirates, etc., to drive along in front of her mind, she naterally hadn’t any room for the apostles and prophets. The procession of lovely bein’s and hoary villains wuz big, and the thoroughfare small (Tamer’s mind I mean). And when a woman is huntin’ round for new fancy distempers, what time has she to tell a child about the Babe of Bethlehem?

No, Jack didn’t know a thing about the Bible, and the female Sunday school teacher he went to wuz a Born Baptist, she wuzn’t as you may say a woman, a female citizen, or human bein’, she wuz jest Baptist, plain Baptist.

And so the food poor little Jack had put before him at that Sabbath school wuz hard, sound food. Good doctrine, but tough, fearful tough. Well, Jack accepted it jest as he did every new thing, and then, as his first move always wuz, he went to investigatin’ it himself.

She told him, with no explanation, that if any one prayed in faith their prayers would be answered. It wuz a new idee to Jack, and he wuz agitated over it. He asked his father that night if it wuz so, and told Hamen about the Lamb appearin’ to Abraham, and sez Jack:

“If I had faith would my prayers be answered?”

“Yes,” sez Hamen, “if you should pray to have it rain down candy, down it would come.”

Sez Jack, “Would the lamb appear?” That seemed to be uppermost in his mind.

“Yes,” sez Hamen, “the lamb would appear, and mebby a hull drove of ’em.”

And then Hamen looked at John and winked, and they both snickered, the fools! Well, Jack see that they wuz makin’ fun of him, and he kinder meached away with his mornin’ glory blue eyes most shot up. Poor little creeter! little, lonesome, abused creeter!

And when he got over his mortification a little he resolved to investigate for himself. So he went out in the kitchen and built up a fire in the stove, took off all the griddles, and piled on the wood as nigh as Abraham did as he could in a cook stove, accordin’ to a picter the Born Baptist had shown him. He got a good hot fire goin’, and then he took a book, a costly book that Hamen had gin to Jack, thinkin’ that though it wuz pretty old for him now, he would grow up to it. It wuz full of costly engravin’s, and wuz the thing that Jack loved best of all his possessions.

So he laid that book on the hot griddles, and then knelt down and prayed for God not to burn it up. He lifted his voice loud in prayer. Tamer Ann, who heard him, thought that he wuz preachin’, as he often did.

So she didn’t interfere, and she wuz at that very minute mistrustin’ she had got a new distemper. She had bumped her knee gittin’ down to look under the bed after a dime novel, “The Wild Princess of the Enchanted Forest,” and wuz some in hopes that she had got the sinevetus. But pretty soon she smelt a smudge, and she run out and there wuz the valuable book all burnt and shriveled up, and poor little Jack kneelin’ there with the tears runnin’ down his cheeks in copious astorents and he a moanin’ to himself, and groanin’ out:

“Oh, the Lord might a done it if He had wanted to!” and “Oh, the lamb didn’t come!” and “Oh, He didn’t save my book!” And so on and so on.

Well, Tamer Ann didn’t take the poor little mourner and seeker after truth to her heart and wipe away his tears and tell him all about it, all she could tell, all any of us can tell, which is little enough, Heaven knows. No, she jest whipped him severely. And when he tried to tell her what he did it for, how the teacher had told him that it wuz so, she told him to stop instantly and to not say another word to her about it, but to go to bed without his supper for his naughtiness. And poor little Jack had to meach off to bed and lay there with his little mind workin’ on and workin’ on, his hungry stomach makin’ his brain all the more active.

Tamer Ann might whip his tongue still, but she couldn’t stop his mind from workin’. No, the one that set that machinery to goin’ wuz the only one who could stop it. As he had told his Ma once, “You can make me keep my tongue still, but you can’t stop my thinker.” No, Tamer Ann couldn’t whip that still.

Well, the poor little creeter lay and pondered over what could have caused the failure of his plans. And he finally made up his mind that his sacrifice wuzn’t costly enough.

He loved the book the best of anything he owned, but the B. B. had told him that he must offer up what he loved best of anything in the world. And he remembered, too, in the story of Abraham it wuz a livin’ sacrifice. Why hadn’t he thought of it? Why, it must be his mother, of course. For, by that mystery of love born in the deep silence and perils of maternity, Jack loved his mother the best of all, and Tamer loved him (in her way).

Well, from that time Tamer Ann wuz doomed in Jack’s eyes, set apart as a costly oblation to be offered up on the altar of sacrifice, and he begun to watch her so mysterious like, and kinder prowl round her in such a strange way that they all noticed it. He went to Sabbath school agin in the meantime, and wuz agin fed on the sound, hard food that would almost have cracked the teeth of a adult, but which poor little Jack wuz expected to chew on and digest (poor little creeter!)

And agin the subject wuz Faith, and agin the story of Abraham wuz brung up, and agin they wuz admonished and adjured to sacrifice what they loved the best of all, if they would be rewarded, and see the lamb of sacrifice, snow white and glorious, appear at their right hand.

Jack’s eyes grew bigger and bigger, and his plans seemed nearer fulfilment. He wanted to do right and he wanted the lamb. He thought he could make a pen for it back of the woodshed. But, above all, the fervor of a martyr had been waked up in his ardent young soul. He felt lifted up and inspired. He would obey the Lord. He would do his duty regardless of his own feelings. He would sacrifice his best beloved.

That evenin’ Tamer wuz settin’ peaceful readin’ “Lost Eudora of the Gulch; or, The Becalmed Elephant,” when she heard a movement behind her and she looked round and there Jack wuz applyin’ a match to a string that wuz tied round her belt and wuz trailin’ along the carpet. He wuz jest as pale as death and wuz cryin’, but looked resolved. He wuz settin’ fire to his mother, sacrificin’ his best beloved, according to the commandment of the B. B.

Well, Jack looked so woe-be-gone and agitated, and the string looped into the belt and layin’ down on the floor like a train laid to a gunpowder plot looked so curous, that Jack wuz questioned, and it all came out. Well, I spoze that there never wuz a child whipped harder than that child wuz. He bore the marks for days and days. Tamer has got a dretful temper, everybody knows that, I hain’t tellin’ any news.

And for five days he wuz shet up in his room and kep’ on bread and water, and not one word said to him in all that time of comfort and sympathy or enlightenment. But they whipped the idee of sacrifice entirely out of him, and faith. For the next time the subject of faith come up in the Sunday school, and the B. B. wuz holdin’ forth all the beauties of faith, and the sureness of its rewards, Jack’s little voice piped out:

“There hain’t a word of truth in it; for my folks say so, and I know that there hain’t, for I’ve tried it for myself.”

Oh, the poor little creeter! not knowin’ one word of the divine faith of which the story he heard wuz the symbol. Of how when the dearest and best is offered up on the altar of a divine renunciation, God sends His peace and His rest into our lives like snow white lambs, and all sacrifices seem easy for His sake who gave us His best. Poor little Jack! not a word of this, not a word of common sense even, nothin’ but whippin’s and tellin’s to “shet up instantly!”

Poor little creeter!

CHAPTER II

My son, Thomas Jefferson, and his wife, Maggie, have got a little daughter, it wuz very pleasin’ to Josiah and me, and weighed over nine pounds. It is now most ten months old, and is, with the exception of my other grandchildren, the most beautiful child that wuz ever seen in Jonesville, some foolish folks would think I wuz prejudiced in its favor, but it is the prevailin’ opinion all over Jonesville, it has been talked to Thomas Jefferson and Maggie and Josiah and me repeatedly, so we have got to believe it, for what we know ourselves and the neighbors know to be a fact must be so.

Its name is Snow, after the little one that went home and left them. You know Maggie’s name wuz Snow, she is Maggie Snow that wuz, and I wuz in favor of the child bein’ named after her, in fact, as it may be remembered, I named the child, it wuz left to me.

“Mother,” sez Thomas J., the first time I went there after the first little Snow came and I see the baby layin’ on Maggie’s arm:

“Mother,” sez he, and, though there wuz a smile on his lips, there wuz tears in his voice as he said it, “nobody else shall name my little girl but you.”

“No,” spoke out my daughter, Maggie, smilin’ sweet from her pillow, “you must name it, Mother.”

The children like me, nobody can dispute that, not even my worst enemy, if I had one, but then nobody would believe him, anyway, for he would be a perfect liar. But, as I wuz sayin’, I looked down on ’em, Maggie’s face looked white and sweet out of the muslins and laces round her, the bed wuz white as snow, and so wuz she, and the baby wuz white. And Maggie’s soul wuz white, I knew, white as snow, and so wuz Thomas Jefferson’s, his morals are sound, extremely sound and light colored, and the baby’s, God bless it! I knew wuz like the newly driven snow fallin’ down onto the peaceful earth that blessed day, and so, sez I kinder soft:

“We’ll call the baby Snow.”

And I bent down and kissed Maggie, and Thomas Jefferson kissed us both, and the thing wuz done, their little girl wuz named Snow. And I said, “Try to bring her up so’s the name will be appropriate to her.”

And they both on ’em said they would, and they did. Oh, what a beautiful child that wuz, but it melted away like its namesake in a April day, drawn up to its native heaven by the warm sun of God’s love, and when this baby come to fill its place I wanted it called Snow, and they all did, and that’s its name, she is a very beautiful child, and they are bringin’ her up beautiful. Her behavior for a child ten months of age is the most exemplary I ever see (with the exception of my other grandchildren), it is a perfect pattern to other children to see that child behave.

I despise now, and always have despised, the idee of grandparents bein’ so took up with their grandchildren that they can’t see their faults, it is dretful to witness such folly. But, as I have said to Josiah and to others, “What are you goin’ to do when there hain’t any faults to see? How be you a-goin’ to see ’em?” Why, there hain’t any reason in tryin’ to see things that hain’t there. If Delight and Snow and my other grandchildren ever have any faults I shall be the first one to see ’em, the very first one, and so I have told Josiah and the neighbors.

This little Snow is very white complected, and her eyes are jest the softened shade of the deep velvet blue of the pansy, and her hair is kinder yellowish, and curls in loose rings and waves all over her head, all round her white forward and satin smooth neck. She has got the same sweet smile on her lips that her Ma has, and little angel Snow had, but the look in her eyes, though they hain’t the same color, is like my boy, Thomas Jefferson’s, they look kinder cunning and cute some of the time jest like his, and then deep and tender jest like hisen. Thomas Jefferson is deep, it has been gin up that he is, it is known now all over Jonesville and out as fur as Loontown and all the other adjacent villages, that Thomas J. is deep.

I knew it when he wuz a child, I found it out first, but now everybody knows it, why the bizness that boy gits is perfectly oncommon, folks bring their lawsuits to him from as fur as way beyend Toad Holler and the old State Road, and all round Zoar, and Loontown, and Jonesville, why milds and milds they’ll fetch ’em ruther than have anybody else, and the land is perfectly full of lawyers, too, painfully full. He and Tom Willis, his confidential clerk, have more than they can do all the time, they have to employ one or two boys, they are makin’ money fast.

Well, I spozed that seein’ Thomas J. wuz doin’ so well, and Maggie’s father havin’ left her a handsome property of her own (the Judge died of quinsy, lamented some years ago), I spozed, seein’ she wuz abundantly able and its bein’ so fashionable, that Maggie would have a nurse for her little girl. But the day the child wuz a month old I spent the day with ’em, and Maggie told me she wuzn’t goin’ to. She looked kinder delicate as she sot there holdin’ little Snow, her cheeks wuz about as white as the dress she had on, and I sez, “It is goin’ to be quite a care for you, daughter.”

“Care!” And as she looked up in my face I wuz most struck with the look in her big eyes, it wuz a look of such tenderness, such rapture, such anxiety, such wonder, and most everything else; I declare for it I never see such a look in my life unless it wuz in the face of the Madonna hangin’ right up over her head. Thomas J. bought it and gin it to her a few months before, and it hung right at the foot of her bed. The Virgin mother and her child.

It wuz a beautiful face, Thomas J. thought it favored Maggie, and I don’t know but it did, it did jest that minute, anyway, she had the same look in her eyes that Mary had. Well, if you’ll believe it right while we wuz talkin’ about that baby, Miss Green Smythe come in to see Thomas Jefferson, she is tryin’ to git some divorces, and she wants Thomas J. to undertake the job, she is dretful good to Maggie and flatters Thomas Jefferson up, but Thomas J. won’t take the case, unless he sees he is on the right side.

Thomas Jefferson Allen has took his Ma’s advice; he has never, never took holt of a case that he didn’t think honestly and firmly he wuz on the right side on’t. He has got the name of bein’ a honest lawyer, and they say folks come milds and milds jest to look on him, they consider him such a curosity. That’s jest why he gits so much custom, folks would ruther see him than a circus, he bein’ such a rariety, and then when they see him they like him, they can’t help it, and so he gits their custom.

I told Thomas J. when he wuz young to do right for the right’s sake, sez I, “Thomas J., I despise that old proverb, ‘Honesty is the best policy.’ I don’t want you to do anything out of policy,” sez I, “do right for the right’s sake, for the sake of God’s truth and your own soul. You can’t like yourself, nor God can’t like you if you do a mean, shabby, contemptible act. Do jest as near right as you can, Thomas Jefferson Allen, and leave success or failure with Him who sees into your soul and your future clear to the end, if there is a end, which I don’t spoze there is. You had better be a failure outside than inside.” Sez I, “Let the one who can see inside of you look down into a clean soul, and even if you are covered with rags outside your Ma will be satisfied.”

So I would say to Thomas J. from day to day and from year to year in his school days. And when he went into the law, sez I, “Thomas Jefferson, it may be my lot to see you torn by wild horses and layin’ on a guillontine, but,” sez I, “though that would kill your Ma, it would kill her quicker to see and hear that you had got up in cold blood and wuz tryin’ to prove that a lie wuz the truth, and that the truth wuz a lie, usin’ all the intellect and power the God of truth give to prove a untruth, to go against Him, against your conscience, against your soul.”

Sez I, “Cases can be plastered over with all the thick plaster you can lay on ’em about duty to clients, expediency, etc., etc. But if a man is guilty he ort to be punished, and if he is innocent he hadn’t ort to be punished, and if you ever take the part of the guilty against the innocent, if you git up under God’s pure daylight and try to prove that the innocent is guilty, try and prove a lie, your Ma will not live long to see it go on,” sez I, “for mortification would set in powerful and so deep that it will soon end her days.”

Thomas Jefferson hearn to me, he wuz a honest boy by nature, and my teachin’s have struck in deep. He is a honest lawyer, and as I say folks come milds and milds jest to look at him. As it has turned out he is a success outside as well as inside.

And Miss Green Smythe wants him to take her case dretfully. Good land! she’s been in the law for years, her children have turned out real bad, and she’s turned out sort o’ curous herself. She is a great society woman, and has enormous success in that direction; why, she has been, so I have been told and believe, to nineteen parties in one night, she gives immense receptions, and has got diamonds as big as eggs almost (bird’s eggs, I cannot lie, I do not mean hen’s eggs). Yes, she has had great success in that way, but she has had dretful poor luck with her children.

She has got a husband somewhere, I spoze. I believe that I hearn once of somebody who had seen Mr. Green Smythe one day settin’ on the back doorstep of her city house. But she always has two or three young men danglin’ round, and she never sez a word about her husband. Somebody said to me one day that it seemed kinder queer that nobody ever see Mr. Smythe, but I sez:

“Oh, she most probable knew where he wuz; she most probable knew that he wuz settin’ out there at the back door.”

I will stand up for my sect when I can, but I don’t approve of her acts not at all; if I had a husband I should want one, and if I didn’t have a husband I shouldn’t want one, and I should want it fixed so I should know jest how it wuz.

But as I say, her children have turned out dretful, and most everybody thinks that it wuz the way they wuz brung up that made ’em turn out so. She left the hull care of ’em to hired nurses and servants, and they wuz mean, some of ’em, and neglected ’em sometimes, and sometimes learnt ’em by precept and example to be as mean as they wuz.

Why, a woman told me, and a likely woman, too, though I won’t mention any names, as I am afraid she wouldn’t like it if I did, but I will say that I always could depend on every word that Alvira Sampson said.

Well, she told me she called Miss Green Smythe’s attention to the way her children wuz bein’ dealt with by her help, and she said all the answer Miss Green Smythe made wuz to look kinder dreamily at her and wonder whether she had better have yellow or pink candles in her reception room at her next party; she wuz gittin’ up a Charity Ball for motherless children. And I told Alviry that Miss Green Smythe had better include her own children in the charity, for they wuz jest about the same as motherless.

And this certain woman said she tried to draw her attention agin to the needs of her own offspring, and agin Miss Green Smythe looked dreamily up and sez, “I am so ondecided whether to wear pale rose colored chiffon or cloth of gold on the night of the party.” And then that certain woman said she gin up the idee of gittin’ her mind onto her own children’s welfare, she didn’t say another word to her about it, and I believe her, for Alvira won’t lie.

So Miss Green Smythe wuz left with a anxious contemplation of the color of the light that wuz goin’ to softly gild the heads of her guests as they talked of the cruel needs of the motherless, and, bein’ took up with this, she hadn’t time to worry about the evil glare of vile and corrupt words and ways, deceit and lies, and worse, that wuz fallin’ on the heads of her own children.

But to resoom forwards agin. Maggie and I wuz settin’ there calm and peaceful, and saw the colored nigger’s countenance lookin’ round dretful clever from his high seat.

Miss Green Smythe swep’ up the neat gravel walk to the door, and in a few minutes entered the room. She is a kinder good natured little woman, but dretful wore out and haggard lookin’ under the embellishments she uses to cover up the ravages of time and care and fashionable ambition and worry. She always dresses in the very height of fashion, but she has too many feathers and flowers and danglin’ ends of ribbon to suit me.

I never took any fancy to her, though I spoze I ort to feel complimented on her comin’ clear from New York to git Thomas Jefferson to try her lawsuit. Her present husband is a distant, a very distant, relation of ourn. But I don’t spoze that makes any difference about her employin’ Thomas J., I spoze it is his smartness that draws her. She is spendin’ the summer at a summer hotel not fur off, she and her family, and she is tryin’ to git some divorces for herself and one of her children. She don’t want a divorce from Smith, Mr. Green Smythe gives her rope enough. I guess she feels pretty foot loose, ’tennyrate nobody ever sees him, though they know there is a husband somewhere in the background grubbin’ away to make money. They say he is a sad and humble sperited man, who sets a good deal on their back doorstep at Newport and New York, when he sets anywhere, a modest, bald headed man, with iron gray mustache and sad eyes. They say he don’t seem at home in the palatial front rooms and boodoors, and is kinder trompled on by the high headed servants in livery. But he, knowin’, I spoze, that he could turn ’em all out, neck and crop and leathered legs, if he wanted to, bears it pretty well, and sets out there and reads the daily papers. And sometimes I have hearn holds an old degariotype in his hand, and will look at it a long time, of a pretty young country girl that he loved when he wuz young and poor, and prized ambition and wealth a good deal more than he duz now. They say he looks at that a sight, and some letters writ by “Alice” and some little sprigs of old fashioned runnin’ myrtle that has opened its blue flowers for many summers over a grave on a country hillside.

They commenced to bloom about a year after he married the rich widder Green, whose money put with his made him rich as a Jew. She had three husbands, Miss Green Smythe had, before she married Smith; Smith then but Smythe now. Her first husband, Sam Warn, he don’t count much in her thoughts, so I’ve hearn, bein’ young and poor, and havin’ married him for love, so called, and he her. He died in a few years, died from overwork, everybody said. He wuz tryin’ to work over hours to pay for a melodeon for his wife and a pair of bracelets; she wuz ambitious then in her young and poor days, ambitious as a dog. He died leavin’ her nothin’ but the twins, Eudora Francesca and Medora Francina.

Her next husband wuz old Green, he wuz goin’ on eighty when she married him, and he died in less than a year, leavin’ her with over two millions. Her next husband, Emery Tweedle, father of Algernon and Angenora, wuz much younger than herself, and I didn’t wonder at that so much as some did, thinkin’ that she wanted to sort o’ even up the ages of her pardners, and he wuzn’t nigh as much younger than her as Green wuz older, and I always believed (theoretically) that sass for the goose and sass for the gander might as well be about the same age.

Howsumever, they didn’t live happy, he throwin’ her downstairs the third year of their union and throwin’ a cut glass pitcher on top of her. The occasion bein’ that she found him tryin’ to help the pretty parlor maid carry upstairs the pitcher of ice water she had rung for.

She wuz a real pretty parlor maid, and Miss Tweedle by this time, havin’ run so hard after fashion, had got kinder worn out lookin’ and winded in the race, as you may say, with lots of small wrinkles showin’ round the eyes and nose, and real scrawny where her figger wuzn’t veneered and upholstered for company, and the parlor maid had a plump figger, and complexion like strawberries and cream, but wuzn’t considered likely. But ’tennyrate that fall precipitated affairs, and havin’ got up with little Eudora Francesca’s help, Miss Tweedle’s first move wuz to sue for a divorce.

Her back wuz hurt considerable, and so wuz her pride, but her heart not at all, so it wuz spozed, for she married him in the first place, not for love, but because he could sing bass good, she had a high terible voice, and their voices went well together. He wuz poor, and she made the first advances, so they said, bein’ anxious to secure his bass.

And didn’t it turn out queer as a dog that when she married for bass she got such a sight of it, she got more than she bargained for. She had never made any inquiries about him, and found out, when it wuz too late, that his voice wuzn’t the only base thing about him. He wuz real mean and tried to throw her out of the second story winder before they had been married two weeks. That wuz because she wouldn’t deed all her property to him. But she knew enough to hang onto her property, and he, bein’ so poor, hung onto her off and on for a little over two years. They got along somehow, and when she and affairs wuz finally precipitated, they had two children, which the law give to her, about a year and a half old. And about two months after the seperation she had another child, Angelia Genevieve, but she didn’t live only a year or so, havin’ crep’ up and fell into the bathtub, and wuz drowned, her Ma bein’ at a masked ball at the time.

Well, she got a Western divorce and married Mr. Ebenezer Smith, and spozed that the Tweedle eppisode wuz over. But after lettin’ her alone for years, Tweedle, bein’ base clear to his toes, and havin’ run through his property and had reverses, wuz botherin’ Miss Green Smythe, and demandin’ money of her. He said there wuz some legal error in the divorce papers, and he wuz threatenin’ her bad.

Well, she wuz in a hard place and I felt sorry for her. And then her girls had had sights of trouble, too, the two girls, Eudora Francesca and Medora Francina Warn, that wuz their right name, but their Ma thought that Green Smythe sounded fur more genteel, so she called ’em by that name, they have had dretful bad luck. Eudora’s nurse wuz a good faithful creeter (that wuz after her Ma had married old Green, good land! she nussed ’em herself till then). But as I was sayin’, Eudora’s nurse wuz a valuable woman but had one fault; she would drink once in a while, and it wuz when she had one of her drunken fits that she dropped the little girl onto the marble hearth and hurt her spine, she suffered dretful and went to a private hospital the year her Ma wuz in Europe for the fifteenth time, the nurse stayin’ with her and cryin’ over her lots of times, they say, for she had a good heart.

Well, she stayed there for years till she got to be a young woman, while Miss Green Smythe took Medora Francina round with her considerable. She had a great-aunt on her Pa’s side, Karen Happuck Warn, who wuz as rich as Creshus, her husband havin’ made his money in a coal mine discovered on his rocky old farm up in Maine.

Well, this old lady bein’ left without chick or child of her own, what should Miss Green Smythe do but take Medora Francina up there visitin’! And I spoze she done it from pure ambition and wantin’ to advance her child’s interests, she told her aunt that Medora’s name wuz Karen Happuck Warn, and she called her all the time she wuz there Karen Happuck. Well, that tickled the old lady dretfully, and she seemed to like Medora first rate, and her Ma left her there most a year, while she went off, I believe it wuz to Algeria that time, or Cairo or somewhere.

The Warns wuz dretful religious folks, and Medora wuz under better influences that year than she ever wuz before or since, I spoze, and she enjoyed herself first rate, and realized the beauty of a good honest life, of duty and labor and simple pleasures and domestic happiness. She fell in love up there with a handsome young lumberman, Hatevil White, and would have liked to married him, he wuz a distant, a very distant relation to old Miss Warn, though she didn’t have much to do with him then.

Well, they fell in love with each other, and I guess it would made a match, but Miss Green Smythe couldn’t bear to have Medora marry a common Mr. and a lumberman at that, she hankered after a title in her family, so she took her home to New York and there she met her titled man. You know that in one of the big hotels there you can always see a hull row of ’em settin’ in the hall, lookin’ out for rich wives; they write their letters from that hotel and hang round there, but sleep, it is spozed, in some hall bedroom downtown, and eat where they can, but they are real lucky in findin’ pardners, and there Medora found hern. He wuz quite good lookin’, and, owin’ to his title, a great pet amongst the four hundred. Why, they all wanted to marry him, the hull four hundred, or all of ’em that hadn’t got some husbands, mebby three hundred or so. But Medora carried off the prize, her Ma wanted the title in the family, and he wanted Medora’s money; she wuz spozed then, besides her own money, to be the heiress of her aunt.

But he turned out, as so many titled men do that hang round that 400 in New York, to be a imposter. He wuzn’t a Baron, he wuz formerly a valley, or that is what they call it, to a real titled man, and from him he had got the ways of high life, good dressin’, flowery, flattering language, drinkin’, billiard playin’, etc., etc. Well, he spent Medora’s money, and broke her heart, and I believe a few of her bones; he wuz a low brute, and I don’t blame her for wantin’ a divorce.

She left the sham Baron after her bones wuz sot and went up to Maine agin, and some say she made overtoors to that Hatevil White, but he wuz true to his name and wouldn’t marry the fickle creeter who had deceived him once. And then by that time (men’s hearts are so elastic) he had got in love with a pretty young school teacher, and married her the next year after these overtoors, and her aunt, having found out how she wuz deceived in regard to Medora’s name, left her hull property when she died to this distant relation, Hatevil White.

So poor Medora Francina felt that her Ma had ondone her for the second time. She has got a high temper, and her tongue is the worst scourge Miss Green Smythe has to stand, they fight perfectly fearful, so they say. Well, to resoom backwards a spell. About the time Medora wuz married Eudora’s disease seemed to take another form, it kinder went to her head, but she appeared well enough, and could walk round as well as anybody. So, as she wuz very beautiful, the handsomest one in the family, her mother took her home and had teachers and learnt her what she could and made of her. And it wuz the next winter after she went home to live that she ran away with the coachman.

Her mother had to go to Europe agin that winter, ’twas the twenty-fourth time, I believe; but, ’tennyrate, she wuz there. But she left Eudora in the care of a very accomplished and fashionable French governess. Miss Green Smythe didn’t have time to learn much about this governess, she wuz so busy gittin’ her trueso ready for her journey, and in givin’ a big fancy ball before she sailed, so she couldn’t take the time to find out much about this woman, and she wuz dretful romantick and kinder mean, and Eudora wuz completely under her influence.

The governess thought this coachman wuz a Marquiz in disguise, son of a long line of Earls, he said he wuz, when questioned about it. But he wuzn’t no such thing; his Pa wuz in the peanut line on the Bowery. The governess would have gladly married him herself, but she wuz older and kinder humbly, so he proposed to Eudora, and they run away and wuz married. There wuz no need of their runnin’ away, there wuz no one to interfere with ’em, for Mr. Green Smythe out on the back steps wouldn’t have noticed what wuz goin’ on. But the governess thought it would be so much more romantick to depart by midnight sarahuptishusly, so I spoze she helped rig up a rope ladder by which Medora descended to her coachman.

Well, he didn’t use her well, it wuzn’t hereditary in his family to use wimmen well, they generally struck at ’em with their fists, instead of polite tongue abuse when they offended ’em, and take it with her ill usage and the wild clamor her Ma made when she discovered the marriage, the poor awakening wits of Eudora Francesca fled utterly. The coachman wuz bought off with a small sum of ready money, and Eudora wuz taken back to the asylum for good and all.

Well, as I say, the two little Tweedle children, boy and girl, are queer little creeters, they are about eight or nine years old now, and are with their Ma to Jonesville for the summer, with a nurse for each one. The baby, the only child of Mr. Smith, is not with its Ma to Jonesville, he is at another private asylum, not fur from the one that Eudora Francesca is in; it is an asylum for idiots and a sort of school to try to teach ’em what they can be taught.

And that he is there isn’t the fault of any nurse. No, I should say it riz higher in profession and wuz the fault of the medical fraternity. All the year before he wuz born Miss Green Smythe wuz very delicate, but bein’ so fashionable, she considered it necessary to wear a tight, a very tight cosset till the very day the baby wuz born, and her doctor never said a word agin it, so fur as I know, but realizin’ how delicate she wuz and that her strength must be kep’ up in some way, he ordered her to take stimulants, and she drinked, and she drinked, and she drinked. Why, I spoze from what I’ve hearn that she jest took barrels of wine and champagne and brandy. She never went half way in anything, not even Hottentots, of which more hereafter. And the stimulants bein’ ordered she drinked continually. And when the boy wuz born it wuz a perfect idiot. Her fashionable doctor who ordered the stimulants said it wuz a “melancholy dispensation of Providence.”

The doctor who attended Mr. Green Smythe, and an old friend of hisen, said it wuz “a melancholy judgment on fools.” He wuz a quick tempered man, but honest and high learnt, and he wuz mad at the fashionable doctor and Miss Green Smythe, too. Well, it cured her of drinkin’, anyway; she had always wanted a boy dretfully, and when the only one she had ever had wuz born a idiot it mortified her most to death, and she could never bear the sight of it, and had never laid her eyes on it since it wuz took to the private asylum.

A pretty lookin’ child, too, they said it wuz, only not knowin’ anything. They said about this time Ebenezer Smith’s hair changed from iron gray to pretty near white, for he loved the baby, his only child and heir to all his millions. And he kep’ lookin’ and watchin’ for some signs of sense in it for a long time. And the only reason he gin his consent to have it go to the asylum wuz that he didn’t know but they might help it to some spark of reason. He read his old letters more than ever, they said, out on the back steps, and looked more at Alice’s face in the old velvet covered case, and then he would look away from that sweet, fresh face off onto the sky or ocean as the case might be, either in New York or Newport, he would look off for some time and wuz spozed to be thinkin’ of a good many things.

Well, it wuz to get a divorce for Medora and see to her own Tweedle bizness that Miss Green Smythe had come to Jonesville. She had employed a big New York lawyer, but he hadn’t been very successful, and she wanted Thomas J.’s help. Tweedle had once lived in this vicinity for some time, and she wanted Thomas J. to try and collect evidence for her and help her. But he will walk round the subject on every side and look at it sharp before he tackles it.

I spoze it is a great compliment to have such rich folks as the Green Smythes so anxious to secure his services. But that won’t make any difference to our son, he won’t touch it unless he thinks she is in the right on’t. He follers these two old rules that his Ma laid down before him when he first set out to be a lawyer. Sez I, “Always, Thomas Jefferson, foller them two rules, and you will be sure to come out right in the end:

“First rule, ‘Be sure you are in the right on’t,’” then,

“Second rule, ‘Go ahead.’”

As I sez to him impressive, “You will be sure to come out right if you foller them two rules. Mebby you won’t always win your case before earthly judges, though I believe you will be more apt to. But that hain’t the important thing, my son,” I would say, “the important thing is to win your case before the Great Judge that is above all. Why,” sez I, “wouldn’t you ruther win a case before the Supreme Court in Washington, D. C., than before a Jonesville jury?”

And he would say, “Why, yes, of course.”

“Well,” sez I, “wouldn’t you ruther win the case before the Great Judge that sets as high above them Supreme Judges as Heaven is above the earth?”

I tell you them simelys sunk into Thomas J.’s heart; he follers them rules day by day. As I said more formerly, he is inquirin’ round about Miss Green Smythe’s case, and if he makes up his mind that she and Medora are in the right on’t he will help ’em (and thereby ensure her success), and if she hain’t in the right on’t he won’t touch the case with a pair of tongs or leather mittens.

Well, to stop retrospectin’ and resoom backwards a little. Miss Green Smythe greeted me and Maggie with considerable warmth, about as warm as hot dish water, while our greetin’s to her wuzn’t any warmer than new milk. Maggie wuz holdin’ Snow in her arms when Miss Green Smythe wuz ushered in, leadin’ a pug dog by a ribbon, and one of her danglers wuz out in the carriage lookin’ at the house through a eye glass. Miss Green Smythe made a great flutter and excitement in comin’ in, and made a sight of Maggie and me, but we didn’t seem fluttered or excited by her, nor we didn’t make any more of her than we did of any of the neighbors, though we used her well, and she sot down and took her pug into her lap, for Maggie’s cat riz up her back that high at the sight of it that I thought it would break into, and I got up and let her out.

I knew what the call wuz for, it wuz to molify Thomas J. and make him willin’ to take her case in hand. Well, she wuz dretful good to Maggie, over good, I thought; she called her lots of kinder foolish names, “Petteet Ongey,” and “belle amey,” and lots of other trash. Maggie’s name hain’t Amy, nor never wuz.

Maggie took it all in good part and sot there smilin’ and holdin’ little Snow close to her heart. Miss Green Smythe didn’t notice the baby at all, no more than as if it wuz a rag babe. But she begun to talk about a big entertainment she wuz goin’ to have and wanted us to come to, and she called it a real curous name, it sounded some like Fate Sham Peter.

I guess it wuzn’t exactly that, for it sounded so curous to me I sez to her, sez I, “I spoze Peter is all for fashion and outside gildin’ and sham, and that’s how he got his name?” And I sez, “Is Peter any relation of yourn?” And then she explained it out to me as well as she could.

But I sez, “I guess I’ll call it Sham Peter, for that is nigh enough to distinguish it from other Peter’s and other shams, and that is the main thing.”

She acted as if she didn’t like it, and answered my questions kinder short and uppish. I never took to her, for I had hearn all these things I have sot down about her babies and husbands and danglers and everything, and I spozed like as not I should have to give her a piece of my mind before she left; I spozed that I might have to onbeknown to me.

Well, Maggie excused herself from goin’ on account of little Snow, she said she didn’t go out much to evening parties for they took her strength so, and she felt that she needed all her strength to take care of her baby. “Take care of your baby!” Miss Green Smythe fairly screamed out the words, she wuz that horrow struck. “You take care of your baby? Why, my dear Mrs. Allen, I could not have understood you aright, you take care of your baby yourself!”

“Yes,” sez Maggie quietly, “I take most of the care of my child myself, and I intend to do so.”

Miss Green Smythe held up both of her hands in horrow and leaned back in her chair, “Well, that is something I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t heard it myself, that you are goin’ to take care of your own child,” and the idee seemed to upset her so that she hurried off earlier, I believe, than she would otherwise. But before she went she did git me to promise to attend a reception she wuz goin’ to give before long; Maggie said she believed it would do me good to git out and have a little change.

CHAPTER III

If there ever wuz a girl in the world that I loved, no kin to me, it wuz Marion Martin. She lived nigh enough so I knew her hull history from A to Z, specially Z. It wuzn’t the beauty of her face nor her sweet disposition, though they wuz attractive, but it wuz her real self, the beauty and patience and duty of her hull life that made up her charm to me.

Her Ma died when she wuz fourteen, leavin’ two twins jest of a age, three singles, and a Pa with a weak tottlin’ backbone that had to be propped up by somebody, and when Miss Martin laid down the job Marion took it up. She wuz real sweet lookin’, her eyes wuz soft as soft brown velvet, and her hair about the same color, only with a sort of golden light when the sun shone on it, a clear white and pink complexion, a good plump little figger, always dressed in a neat quiet way, and pretty manners, so gentle and lovely that I always felt when I see her like startin’ up that old him:

“Sister thou art mild and lovely,

Gentle as a summer breeze.”

But didn’t always, knowin’ it would make talk. But I had noticed that she begun to look wan and peaked. I knowed that she had a lover, a good actin’ and lookin’ chap, that I liked first rate myself. He had been payin’ attention to her for over two years, and I wondered if the skein of true love that had seemed to run so smooth from the reel of life had got a snarl in it. I mistrusted it had, but wouldn’t say anything to force her confidence, thinkin’ that if she wanted me to know about it she had the use of her tongue, and had always confided in me from the time she used to show me her doll’s broken legs and arms with tears.

Marion wuz well educated and always the most helpful little thing about the house. She wuz one of the wimmen who would make a barn look homelike, a good cook, a real little household fairy, and Laurence Marsh had always seemed to appreciate these qualities in her. Her Pa wuz well to do, so Marion had enough to do with, but the care of the family all come on her, her Pa, the two twins, and three singles makin’ quite a burden for her soft little shoulders to bear. But she seemed to be strengthened for it some way, I guess the Lord helped her. She had jined the church when she wuz fourteen and wuz a Christian, everybody knew. She kep’ the house in perfect order, with the help of one stout German girl, makin’ mistakes at first but gittin’ the better of ’em as time went on, takin’ the best of care of the baby girls, kept an eye on the three unruly boys, kep’ ’em to home nights jest by lovin’ ’em and makin’ home a pleasanter place than they could find anywhere else, injected courage and hope into her Pa’s feeble will in jest the same way by her love and cheerful, patient ways.

She studied music chiefly so the boys could have some one to play for ’em—they had good voices and loved to sing—studied all the health books and books of household science so she could take the right care of her babies, and her home improved every year, so that now, when she wuz nineteen, I told Josiah that Marion Martin wuz jest as perfect as human bein’s can be. You know folks can’t be quite perfect, or else they would flop their wings and fly upwards. And oh, how Marion loved her baby girls, two plump, curly haired little cherubs, and how they loved her, and how her Pa and the boys leaned on her! And I could see, if nobody else could, how her heart wuz sot on Dr. Laurence Marsh, and I didn’t blame her, for he wuz as fine a young chap as there wuz in the country. He wuzn’t dependent on his profession, he had plenty of money of his own, that fell onto him from his Ma. And he’d paid her so much attention that I spozed he would offer her his heart and hand, though I thought mebby he wuz held back by the thought of how necessary she wuz in her own home. But it had come to me, and come straight—Elam Parson’s widder told it to Deacon Bissel’s aunt, and she told it to Betsy Bobbett’s stepdaughter, and she told Tirzah Ann, and she told me; it come straight—that Marion’s Pa had been seen over to Loontown three different times to the Widder Lummises, and I said to myself the Lord had planned to lead Marion out of the kinder stuny path of Duty into the rosy, love-lit path of Happiness, and I felt well over it.

But who can know anything for certain in this oncertain world? One day, when I had just been congratulatin’ myself while I washed my breakfast dishes about the apparently happy future waitin’ my favorite (Miss Bobbett had been in to borry some tea and told me she see the Widder Lummis in the store the day before buyin’ a hull piece of Lonsdale cambric. And I can put two and two together as well as the best. So I wuz washin’ away with a real warm glow of happiness—my dish water wuz pretty hot, but that wuzn’t it entirely), Josiah come in and said he wuz goin’ right by Marion’s on bizness, and I could ride over and stay there whilst he wuz gone. He wanted to go right away, but he wuz belated by the harness breakin’ after we got started, so it wuz after the middle of the forenoon before we got there.

Marion wuz dretful glad to see me and visey versey, yes, indeed! it wuz versey on my part, but I thought she looked wan, wanner than I had ever seen her look. The hired girl had gone home on a visit, and her Pa had took the two little girls and the boys out ridin’, so Marion wuz alone. And as I looked round and see the perfect order and beauty of her home, and my nose took in the odor of the good dinner, started early, so’s to be done good (it wuz a stuffed fowl she wuz roastin’ and cookin’ some vegetables that needed slow cookin’), and as I looked at her, a perfect picture with her satin brown hair, her pretty blue print dress, with white collar and cuffs and white apron with a rose stuck in her belt, I thought to myself the man that gits you will git a prize. But I wuz rousted from my admirin’ thought after I had been there a little while by Marion sayin’ in a pensive way:

“Do you think I could write poetry, Aunt Samantha?”

“Poetry?” sez I. “I d’no whether you could or not.” But as I looked round agin I sez mildly, “Mebby you couldn’t write it, Marion, but you could live it, and you do now in my opinion.”

“Live poetry!” sez she wonderin’ly.

“Yes,” sez I, “livin’ poetry is full as beautiful and necessary as to write it, and a good deal more of a rarity.”

I knew her hull life had run along better and smoother than any blank verse I had ever seen, better than any Eppicac or Owed; it had been a full, sweet, harmonious poem of love and order and duty. But she sez agin sadly:

“I can’t live poetry; I can only do common things. I can’t read Greek or write poems, or carve statutes, or paint beautiful pictures.”

Her sweet eyes looked mournful. I wanted to chirk her up. So I sez, as my nose agin took in a whiff of the delicious food, “Folks can worry along for quite a spell without knowin’ Greek, when they can understand and do justice to a well cooked meal of vittles.” And sez I, as my eye roamed round the clean, sweet interior, “There is such a thing as livin’ a beautiful picture, and moulding immortal statutes” (I meant the dear, good actin’ little twins), “and in my idee you’ve done it, and I know somebody else that thinks so, too.”

“Oh, no, he don’t! he don’t!” And suddenly she knelt down by my side and almost buried her pretty head in my shoulder and busted into tears. And so it all come out, for all the world tellin’ me about it jest as she did when the sawdust flowed from her doll’s legs.

It seemed that Laurence Marsh had been away to a relative’s visitin’, and went to some charity doin’s and had there met a young widder visitin’ in the place, a poetess and artist and sculptor; she read a Greek poem dressed in Greek costoom, and some of her pictures and statuettes wuz on sale. He got introduced to her. She made the world and all of him, and I see how it wuz—men are weak and easy flattered and don’t know when they’re well off—the bright, pure star that had lit his life so long didn’t seem so valuable and shinin’ as the dashin’ glitter of this newly discovered meteor (metafor). The widder had writ to him and he had writ to her, and his talk since then had been full of her, and I see how it wuz, he wuz kinder waverin’ back and forth, though I mistrusted, and as good as told Marion so, that his love for her wuz as firm as ever, it wuz only his fancy that had been touched.

Well, if you’ll believe it, that very afternoon after I’d got home, who should come in but Laurence Marsh, he brought some legal papers he had been fixin’ for Josiah—and I treated him quite cool, about as cool as spring water, I should judge, for I didn’t like the idee of his usin’ Marion as he had, though of course he wuzn’t engaged to her, and had a right to pick and choose. And, for all the world, if he didn’t go to work and confide in me. It duz beat all how folks do open their hearts to me; I spoze it is my oncommon good looks that makes ’em, and my noble mean, mebby, and if you’ll believe it, and though I hadn’t no idee I should, I did feel kinder sorry for him before he got through. He appreciated Marion, I see, to the very extent of appreciation, but his fancy had been touched, the romance in his nater had responded to Miss Piddockses romance.

“Miss Piddock?” sez I, “she that wuz Evangeline Allen?”

“Her name is Evangeline; so suited to her,” sez he.

“A widder with three children?” sez I.

“Yes, three beautiful little cherubs; I love them already from their mother’s description.”

“Why,” sez I, “Miss Piddock is related to Josiah on his own side, and we’ve been layin’ out to go and see her, but sunthin’ has hendered. She lived out West, and has only moved back a year or so ago. We’ve writ back and forth; and Josiah and I got it all planned to stop and see her,” sez I; “I, too, have been greatly took with her writings.” His handsome face grew earnest, he has perfect confidence in me, and sez he:

“I can trust you, after you have been there will you tell me what you think of her? Will you?” And sez he, “I feel that you will love her, adore her; for if she is so lovely away among strangers what a jewel she will be in the precious setting of her own beautiful home! She has described it to me, and I have loved Nestle Down jest from her description.”

I sez coolly, “Josiah and I hain’t goin’ to be sent out like spies to discover the land; why don’t you go yourself?”

“She don’t want me to visit her,” sez he; “she is so sensitive, so delicate, she has some reason I do not understand, and my duties to the hospital tie me here until my vacation, which seems an age. But my life’s happiness depends upon my decision,” sez he.

Well, I didn’t give no promises nor refuse ’em. What made me more lienitent to Laurence Marsh wuz that I, too, had such feelin’s of deep respect for Evangeline Piddock. I, too, had read with a beatin’ heart some of her poems on the beauty and sacredness of home and domestic happiness, her glorification of Mother Love and Duty, and at a relative’s I had seen some of her pictures and statuettes in stun, beautiful as a dream—she wuz truly a disciple of Art and Beauty and a Creator. And then—I heard his ardent words, I see the light in his eyes. And oh, the joys and pains and the dreams of youth, the raptures and the agonies! I could look back and feel ’em agin in memory. The impatience with Destiny, the hopes, the uncertainty, the roads that branch off in so many different ways before the hasty impatient feet. Setting at rest at eventide in the long cool shadows, don’t let us forget the blazing skies, the heart beats, the ardent hopes, the ambitions, the perplexing cares of the forenoon.

Well, if you’ll believe it, the very next Sunday after that Marion’s Pa married the Widder Lummis, stood up after meetin’ and married her in a good, sensible, middle-aged way, and brung her home, and Josiah and I wuz invited there the next week a-visitin’. We’re highly thought on in Jonesville.

I found Marion’s stepma quite a good lookin’ woman, full of animal sperits and dressed handsome; she seemed good enough to Marion on the outside, but I could see that home wuzn’t what it had been to Marion in any way; her new Ma wanted to go ahead and be mistress, and thought she had a right to, and she didn’t keep the house as Marion did; things wuzn’t dirty, but if the house resembled any poem at all it wuz a poem of Disorder and Tumult. She wanted the two boys and the twins to like her, and she humored ’em, gin ’em candy and indigestible stuff that Marion never approved of, but they did highly, and they seemed kinder weaned from Marion and took up with their good natered, indulgent new Ma. And of course Marion’s Pa, as wuz nateral, wuz all engrossed in his new wife; she wuz healthy, handsome, and a good cook. Poor Marion! in the new anthem they wuz all jinin’ in there didn’t seem to be any part for her voice. She looked like a mournin’ dove; my heart ached for her.

Towards night I see her leanin’ up against the west winder of the parlor lookin’ out sadly, and, though the settin’ sun wuz on her face, it couldn’t lighten the shadder on it. I went up to her and laid my hand on her shoulder, and I see then that her eyes had been fixed on the pretty cottage Dr. Marsh had jest bought, the prettiest place in Jonesville, a sort of a stun gray house settin’ back in its green trees with a big lawn like velvet in front, all dotted with flowering shrubs and handsome trees. But I never let on that I knew what she wuz lookin’ at. But I sez, as I laid my hand tenderly on her shoulder:

“Dear, I shan’t see you agin for some time, as we’re goin’ to make a few visits, if I can get Josiah started.”

She lifted her big sad eyes to mine, they wuz full of tears, and she didn’t need to say a word. Her tragedy wuz writ there, the loss of everything she had loved and held dearest in her life; she didn’t need to speak, I read it all, it wuz coarse print to me, I didn’t need specs. And she read what she see in my eyes, the deep love and sympathy I wouldn’t profane by puttin’ into words. No, I jest bent down and kissed her and she me, and, havin’ passed the compliments with the new Miss Martin, we went home, and the next day we started on our tower.

Well, as we approached Pennell Hill, the abode of Evangeline Allen Piddock, I looked anxiously at myself and pardner and picked off some specks of lint from his coat collar and my mantilly and anxiously smoothed the creases of my umbrell and tried to fold it up closter and more genteel, but I could not, it would bag, but I felt a or in approachin’ her home, for I had studied her poems a sight and almost worshipped ’em, and through them the writer, you know sunthin’ as it reads, “Up through Nater to Nater’s God.” So I had looked up through her glorious poems of Love and Home and Childhood and Beauty, her divine poems and statutes, up to the author, and my soul had knelt to her, and thinkses I, I am now on the eve of enterin’ a home more perfect and beautiful than my eyes have ever beheld, presided over by a perfect angel. Of course I didn’t spoze she had wings or a halo, knowin’ a woman couldn’t git around sweepin’ and dustin’ worth a cent with white feather wings, and knowin’ the halo would more’n as likely as not drop off when she wuz smoothin’ rugs or pickin’ posies to ornament her mantelry piece. But I expected to see a woman perfected as I had never seen her before in every way. And I not only paid attention to the outside of our two frames, but I tried to pick out the very finest soul garment I had by me, to clothe my sperit in, knowin’ then that it wuz hardly worthy of her.

AND THEN ALL THREE ON ’EM YELLED OUT: “RUBBER NECK! RUBBER NECK!”

Page [49].

But my meditations wuz broke in on about a mild from Pennell Hill by seein’ a strange lookin’ group of children ahead on us; they wuz bareheaded and clad in ragged dirty garments, and their faces and hands and feet wuz as near to Nater’s heart as dirt could make ’em.

Their manners, too, wuz sassy, and grotesque in the extreme, for when we stopped and I asked ’em politely if they could tell us where Miss Evangeline Piddock lived, the oldest one sung out:

“What do you want with her? You can’t see her anyway, she’s abed!”

“No,” sez another of ’em, “she won’t look at you, you’re too homely.” And still another stuck a grimy forefinger on the side of a smudgy nose and sez, “What are you givin’ us?” And then all three on ’em yelled out, “Rubber neck! Rubber neck!” Some sort of a slang word, I spoze—and then they kicked up their dirty heels and run and jumped over a fence, and one boy turned two or three summersets, while the other ones kicked at us. Worse lookin’ children I never see, nor worse actin’ ones, not in my hull durin’ life; I felt stirred up and mad clear to my bones as they disappeared over a hill. And I sez to Josiah:

“I should think that the ennoblin’ influence of Evangeline Allen Piddock would have elevated even neighborin’ children and kep’ ’em from bein’ perfect savages like these.”

And Josiah sez, “I’d love to try the ennoblin’ influence of a good birch gad on ’em,” and I didn’t blame him, not a mite. Anon we approached a shamblin’, run-down lookin’ place, the house with the paint all off in spots and the picket fence dilapidated, the pickets and rails hangin’ loose, and weeds runnin’ loose over the yard, and Josiah sez, “We might inquire here where Evangeline lives.”

I sez, “She wouldn’t have anything to do with folks that live in such a lookin’ place, but it wouldn’t do any hurt to inquire.”

So Josiah approached the rickety piazza, and carefully stepped up on the broken doorstep and rapped, the door-bell hangin’ down broke. He rapped agin and yet agin, and the third time the door wuz opened and a female appeared clad in a long flowing robe of sage green, and her kinder yellow hair hangin’ loose, only banded in a Greek sort of a way with a dirty ribbin and the robe wuz dirty and two or three holes in it.

Sez Josiah, “Mom, can you tell me where she that wuz Evangeline Allen lives, Miss Piddock that now is?”

And then the female struck a sort of a graceful attitude and sez, “I am Evangeline Allen Piddock.”

You could have knocked me down with a hair-pin, and my poor Josiah wuz also struck almost sensible, and sez he, “Well, we’ve come!” And the female looked down on him, still holdin’ that graceful attitude. But I broke the deadlock that ensued by callin’ out from the democrat, I wuz only a little ways off:

“Miss Piddock, let me introduce Josiah to you.”

She come forward eagerly and sez with effusion, “Is this Cousin Josiah Allen?” And she shook his hands warmly. “And is this my dear Cousin Samantha?” sez she, approachin’ the vehicle and holdin’ my hand in both of hers. “Descend from your equipage!” sez she. “Welcome, dear cousins, to Nestle Down!”

“Thank you, Evangeline,” sez I, as I slowly backed out of the democrat and alighted down. But my soul wildly questioned me, “Where, where shall we nestle down?” For I couldn’t see any place. And after we got our things off and wuz visitin’ my soul still kep’ up this questionin’, “When, when shall I nestle down? And where?” For the outside of the house wuzn’t a circumstance to the inside; everything that could be out of place wuz, and everything that could be dirty lived up to its full privileges in that respect. The hired girl, a shiftless critter, I could see, wuz sick with nooraligy, but appeared with a mussy, faded out, calico wrapper and a yeller flannel tied round her face, and inquired what she should git for supper. Evangeline wuz at that minute describing to me a statute she had in her mind to sculp, but she left off and gin the girl some orders, and then kep’ on with her talk.

She sez, “My mind revels in the heroic, the romantic, it spreads its wings and flies away from the Present and the Real into the Beautiful, the Ideal.”

And I thought to myself I didn’t blame the soul for wantin’ to git away somewhere, but knew that it ort to be right there up and a-doin’ sunthin’ to make matters different.

Well, after a long interval we wuz called out to the supper table. There wuz a crumpled, soiled tablecloth hangin’ onevenly on a broken legged table, propped up by a book on one side. I looked at the book, and I see that it wuz “The Search for the Beautiful,” and I knowed that it could never find it there. Some showy decorated dishes, nicked and cracked, held our repast—thick slices of heavy indigestible bread; some cake fallen as flat as Babylon (you know the him states “Babylon is fallen to rise no more”), some dyspeptic lookin’, watery potatoes and cold livid slices of tough beef; some canned berries that had worked, the only stiddy workers I judged that had been round; some tea made with luke-warm water. Such wuz our fare enlivened by the presence of three of the worst actin’, worst lookin’ children I ever see in my life, clamberin’, disputin’, sassy little demons, reachin’ acrost the table for everything they wanted, sassin’ their Ma and makin’ up faces at us sarahuptishously, but I ketched ’em at it. The girl with the nooraligy waited on the table; her dress hadn’t been changed, but a mussy lookin’ muslin cap wuz perched on top of the yeller flannel and a equally crumpled, soiled, white muslin apron surmounted her dress, but, style bein’ maintained by these two objects, Evangeline seemed to be content.

She wuz the only serene, happy one at the table, and she led the conversation upward into fields of Poesy with a fine disregard to her surroundin’s that wuz wonderful in the extreme. Her talk wuz beautiful and inspirin’, and in spite of myself I found myself anon or oftener led up some distance into happier spears of fancy and imagination. But a howl from some of the little demons would bring me down agin, and a look at my dear pardner’s face of agony would plunge me, too, into gloom. Eat he could not; I myself, such is woman’s heroism and self-sacrifice, and feelin’ that I must make up for his arrearages, eat more than wuz for my good, which I paid for dearly afterwards, and knowed I must; dyspepsia claimed me for its victim, and I suffered turribly, but of this more anon and bimeby.

After supper we returned into the parlor, the children with variegated faces and hands, caused by berry juice and butter, swarmin’ over us and everything in the room, so I see plain the reason that every single thing wuz nasty and broken in the house and outside. They wuz oncomfortable as could be, every one on ’em had the stomach ache; and why shouldn’t they! The acid in their veins made ’em demoniac in their ways. Not one mouthful had they eat that wuz proper for children to eat, nor for any one else unless their stomach wuz made of iron or gutty-perchy. And I didn’t believe they ever took a bath unless they fell into the water, which they often did. The girl had gin their face and hands a hasty wipe with a wet towel, and their hair, which wuz shingled, wuz as frowsy and onclean as shingles would admit of.

Evangeline wuz good natered, and she had the faculty, Heaven knows how she could exercise it, of bein’ perfectly oblivious to her surroundin’s, and soarin’ up to the pure Heavens, whilst her body wuz down in a state worse than savages. Yes, so I calmly admitted to myself, for savages roamed the free wild forest, and clean spots could be found amongst the wild green woods, but here in vain would you seek for one. Her poems and statutes wuz beautiful, and she had piles on ’em, some done, some only jest begun; she wuz workin’ now on a statute of Sikey, beautiful as a poem in marble could be, and as we wuz lookin’ at it she sez, liftin’ her large, fine eyes heavenward:

“Oh, to create, to be a creator of beauty in poem or picture or statute, it seems to make one a partner with the Deity.”

“Yes,” sez I, “there is a good deal of sense in that, and I fully appreciate beauty wherever I see it.”

But, bein’ gored by Duty, sez I, “How would it work to make your own children, of which you are the author, works of art and beauty, care for them, work at them some as you do at your own stun figgers, cuttin’ off the rough edges, prunin’ and cuttin’ so the soul will show through the human, and they havin’ the advantage over your statutes that the good work you expend on them is liable to go on to the end of time, carryin’ out your lofty ideals in other lives—how would it work, Evangeline, and makin’ your own home as nigh as you can like the ideal one you dote on—wouldn’t it be better for you?”

She said it wouldn’t work at all; the care of home and children hampered her and held her down; she preferred pure, unadulterated art, onmingled with duties.

But I sez, “Wouldn’t the time to decide that question been before you volunteered to assume these cares; but after you have done so how would it work to do the very best you could with them, finish the work you have begun in as artistic and perfect a way as you can?”

I was cautious, I didn’t come out as I wanted to, so I sez, “How would it work?”

But she sez agin, “It wouldn’t work at all.” Sez she, “To describe the beauty of home and love, and child life in marble and poem and picture, she had to be severed entirely from all low and ignoble cares.”

“Low and ignoble!” sez I, for that kinder madded me. “No work a woman can do is more noble and elevatin’ than to make a beautiful home where lovely children rise up to call her blessed. Such a work is copyin’ below as nigh as mortals can the work divine; for isn’t Heaven depictered as our everlastin’ home, and God the Father as lovin’ and carin’ for His children with everlastin’ love, countin’ the hairs of their heads even, He takes such clost care of ’em?”

“He don’t order us to be shingled, either,” spoke up Josiah. “He don’t begretch the work of countin’ our hair.”

I wunk at him to be calm, for oh! how cross his axent wuz, but knowin’ that famine wuz the cause of it I didn’t contend, but resoomed:

“See how our Father beautifies and ornaments our home, Evangeline, with the glories of spring and summer, fills it with the perfume of flowers, the song of birds, hangs above us His dark blue mantilly studded with stars, and from the least little mosses in hid-away nooks up to the everlastin’ march of the planets, every single thing is perfect and in order. His tireless love and care never ceases, but surrounds us every moment in the home He makes and keeps up for us below,” sez I. “If a woman prefers to keep aloof from the cares and responsibilities of wifehood and parenthood, let her do so, but havin’ assumed ’em let her realize their duty and dignity, for,” sez I, “to create a true home, Evangeline, is worthy of all a woman’s efforts, and in such a cause even brooms and dish-cloths take on a sacred meaning.”

But she said that mops and dish-cloths and such things wuz fetters that she could not brook. And at that moment the three little imps all fell into the room demandin’ with shrieks and kicks sunthin’ or ruther that their Ma couldn’t pay any attention to, as she wuz absorbed in contemplating a slight thickness in a minute part of the butterfly’s wing on Sikey’s shoulder, and her mind wuz all took up in thinkin’ how could she prune it off without destroying the wing, it wuz so fragile and yet so highly necessary to be done. So havin’ howled round her for a spell and tugged at her Greek robe, so I see plain how the dirt and rents come on it, they hailed the passin’ figger of the hired girl in the hall and precipitated themselves onto her, havin’ previously kicked at the panels of the door so it almost parted asunder, so I could see plain how in a year’s time everything wuz in ruins outside and inside Nestle Down, and how impracticable it wuz that any ordinary person could by any possibility ever nestle down there, but Josiah here broke in agin:

“Evangeline, how long did your husband live?”

Sez she, liftin’ a torn lace handkerchief to her eyes, and leanin’ up against one of her statutes a good deal as I’ve seen Grief in a monument in a mournin’ piece, “He lingered along for years, but he wuz sick all the time, he had acute dyspepsia.”

“I thought so,” said Josiah, “I almost knowed it!”

Agin I wunk at him to keep still, but his arms wuz folded over his empty stomach with a expression of agony on him, and he answered my sithe with a deep groan, and knowin’ that I had better remove him to once, I proposed that we should retire. But Evangeline wuz describing a most magnificent sunset which she proposed to immortalize in a poem, and in spite of the gripin’ in my stomach, which had begun fearful, I couldn’t help bein’ carried away some distance by her eloquent language.

Well, at my second or third request we retired and went to bed. Our room wuz a big empty lookin’ one, the girl havin’ lately started to clean it, but prevented by nooraligy, the carpet nails hadn’t been took out only on two sides, and the children had been playin’ under it, I judged by the humps and hummocks under it. Josiah drawed out from under it a sled, an old boot-jack, and a Noah’s Ark that he had stubbed his foot aginst, and I tripped and most fell over a basket-ball and a crokay mallet. The washstand had been used by them, I thought, for headquarters for the enemy, for some stuns wuz piled up on it, a broken old hammer, a leather covered ball, and some marbles.

The lamp hadn’t been washed for weeks, I judged, by the mournin’ chimbly and gummed-up wick, and there wuz mebby a spunful of kerseen in the dirty bottom of the lamp. The bed wuz awful; the children had used it also as a receptacle for different things. We drawed out of it a old sponge, a dead rat, crumbs of bread and butter, and a pair of old shoes.

The girl who showed us up said the children had played there all the day before, it bein’ rainy, but she guessed we would find everything all right. Not a mite of water in the broken nosed pitcher, not a particle of soap, but an old apple core reposed in the dirty soap dish.

Well, I fixed things as well as I could, and we pulled the soiled, torn lace coverlet over us and sought the repose of sleep, but in vain, awful pains in my stomach attested to the voyalation of nater’s laws. Josiah wore out, and, groanin’ to the last, fell asleep, for which I wuz thankful, the oil burnt out to once, leavin’ a souvenir of smoke to add to the vile collection of smells, so I lay there in the dark amidst the musty odors and suffered, suffered dretful in body and sperit.

Amidst the gripin’ of colic I compared this home to the home Marion had composed like a rare poem of beauty, and I bethought how much more desirable is real practical duty and beauty than the gauzy fabric wrought of imagination, or ’tennyrate how necessary it wuz not to choose two masters. If one loved Art well enough to wed it and leave father and mother for its sake, well and good, but after chosin’ love and home and children, how necessary and beautiful it wuz to tend to them first of all, and then pay devotion to Art afterwards.

Well, I couldn’t allegore much, I wuz in too much pain, dyspepsia lay holt of me turribly. But amidst its twinges I remember wishin’ that Laurence Marsh could compare as I had the two homes and lives composed by Marion and Evangeline.

And then a worse twinge of pain brung this thought, a doctor I ought to have. A woman should be allowed to choose her own doctor. I said to myself I will send for Doctor Laurence Marsh in the mornin’, which I did. Josiah bein’ skairt telephoned to him to come to once. He come on the cars, arrivin’ at about ten A. M.

I guess I had better hang up a curtain between the reader and Laurence Marsh as he stood in that home confronted by Evangeline Allen Piddock and her household. I hadn’t told her who I had sent for, not havin’ seen her that mornin’, so he see ’em all in a state of nater as it were.

Yes, I will hold up a thick, heavy curtain with Josiah’s help, for I don’t want the reader to see Laurence Marshes face as he looked about him in the parlor and up by my bedside—such a bedside! His face, as he measured out the medicine, wuz, as Mr. Byron sez, “a scroll on which unutterable thoughts wuz traced.” But, amidst all his perturbations of mind and wrecks of airy castles and dreams, nothin’ could prevent him from bein’ a good doctor, though owin’ to a urgent hurry, a case of life and death, he said, he had to return to Jonesville immegiately, which he did.

But I felt so much better after takin’ the tablets twice every half hour that we started home a little after leven.

It seemed to me that home never seemed so good, so dear, and so clean to me in my hull life before, and what added to my perfect enjoyment, jest as we set down to a delicious supper, cooked by my own hands, one of the singles brought over a note to me from Marion. It wuz a invitation to her weddin’, which wuz to take place the next week.

CHAPTER IV.

What Maggie said about her makin’ a change kinder staid with me. Great is the power of suggestion. She suggested it to me, and I passed on the influence to my pardner.

I sez, “We’ve worked hard, and why not rest off and take a little comfort?”

“Comfort! Who ever took any comfort a-visitin’! Bound up in your best clothes settin’ round and talkin’ polite.”

“Your clothes don’t bind you, Josiah, and you know I always seek comfort first, hopin’ mebby good lookin’ things may be added unto me. And as for politeness, you don’t strain yourself much that way, and I’d love to see some of these friends we owe visits to.”

He sez, “Don’t you want to go to Nestle Down agin?” And I sez, “No, I did all the nestlin’ I wanted to once.”

Well, it wuz a number of days before he gin his consent, but finally he did, and we sot off, and our first visit wuz to Alcander and Fidelia Pogram’s.

We had been owin’ ’em visits for some time. They’re movin’ planets, and revolve round considerable, and always have. We are stars, Josiah and me, that are more fixed in our orbits. It wuz on one of Alcanderses revolutions (with of course his satellite Fidelia a-revolvin’ round him) that they lived neighbor to us for over two years, and I got real attached to Fidelia. She is a conscientious, painstaking woman, and her husband is well off, and naterally good-natered and well-meanin’. But when they wuz first married Fidelia made a Molok of him, and burnt incense before him day and night, burnin’ up on that altar all her own preferences and desires, all her chances of recreation and rest, all her own ideals, her own loves.

Never tryin’ to lift herself up and look abroad into the sunlight, and foller it outdoors into happiness—no; she jest sot crouched before that altar till her eyes got dim with the smoke of her sacrifice and she couldn’t straighten up. And the cloud of incense she wuz offerin’ up to him from day to day wuz so heavy between ’em that he’d lost sight of her; and bein’ at his feet, instead of by his side where she belonged, he couldn’t see her very well, and she seemed to be quite a distance away from him. She had made over by such doin’s his naterally generous disposition into a selfish, overbearin’ one. He wuz about as innocent as a babe of the way it wuz done, and she, too. But, take it all in all, she had made about the worst botch of married life that I had ever seen made, and she all the time jest as conscientious and religious as old Job or Zekiel or any of ’em; and he, too, thought that he wuz jest as good as Obadiah or Jonah or Enoch. And, what made it seem still worse to me, she wuz bringin’ up her girl in the same way.

Elinor wuz goin’ on twenty-one, and had a bo, Louis Arnold by name. Her Ma had told me about it the year before, and I had noticed that Elinor looked real rosy and sweet. That wuz in the first days of courtship, and I could see that the spell wuz upon her. The earth wuz glorified; the heavens bent down clost to her; she and Louis wuz a-walkin’ through Eden. But the next time I see Elinor she looked considerable faded and anxious-eyed; for all the world her eyes looked like her Ma’s—lovin’ and faithful as a dog’s, and as anxious lookin’ as a dog’s when it has been doin’ sunthin’ and expects a whippin’. I had hearn from a neighbor that Louis wuz of late growin’ cool in his attentions to Elinor. And I felt bad, for I mistrusted how it wuz done. She had sot him up on such a hite that he looked down on her. Good land! with her poster, he had to look down if he see her at all. The neighbor said that it wuz spozed that Elinor wuz goin’ into a decline, and sez she: “That Louis Arnold is a villian. He paid her attention for a year and won her love, and wuz as good as engaged to her, and she doin’ everything under the sun to keep his love, and then he grew cool and drawed off. He is a villian!” she repeated.

“Well, mebby there is blame on both sides.”

And agin she sez, “Elinor did everything to hold him, and duz yet, for she still hopes to keep him.”

And I sez, “Mebby she did too much.”

And the neighbor glared at me, and sez coldly, “I don’t understand you.”

And I sez, “No, I spoze not.” And I didn’t explain furder, nor she didn’t.

And this neighbor, bein’ a sharp-eyed-and-nosed woman, who evidently loved scandal, sez, “Have you hearn anything more about Fidelia’s troubles?”

And I sez, “No.”

And she sez, “Poor creeter! she is passin’ through the waters.”

And I sez: “What waters? Has she fell into the creek, or has her suller overflowed?”

And then she sez, right out, “Her hired girl gits more of her husband’s attention than she duz. Folks talk a sight!” sez she.

And I sez, coolly, “They generally do; they mostly make out not to lose the use of their tongues by tyin’ ’em to their teeth.”

And I wouldn’t ask a word more; but she went on: “Everybody sez Minnie acts more like the mistress of the house than Fidelia duz, dressed up and loiterin’ round; though they do say that she is faithful and honest; but Fidelia duz the hardest of the work herself, and folks say that Minnie eats with them, and if anything is wanted Fidelia gits up and gits it, and Minnie sits like a lady.”

“Well,” sez I, “most probable that is Fidelia’s fault. She wouldn’t do it unless she wuz a fool!” sez I.

“And some one told me,” sez the neighbor, “that hearn it from one that wuz knowin’ to it, that Alcander had been known to pay Minnie compliments on her good looks and pretty dresses and find fault with Fidelia.”

“Well,” sez I, “that is nothin’ but human man-nater; they will always find fault with their wives in preference to other wimmen; they’re built in jest that way, and mebby they can’t help it. I spoze mebby they think that they’re complimentin’ ’em, payin’ attention to ’em; men are so queer.”

And agin she looked real meanin’, and sez, “Well, folks talk a sight.”

And I sez agin, “They most generally do.”

Well, Fidelia Pogram wuz dretful glad to see me, and so wuz Elinor. Alcander, owin’ to the course of treatment he had had, acted some hauty, bein’ I wuz a woman—Fidelia’s fault, every mite on’t. Alcander wuz warm-hearted when he wuz married, and liked wimmen jest as well as he did men—and better, too, his wife bein’ a woman. Well, I see in a minute that Elinor looked bad, holler-eyed, pale, wan, and some stoopin’ in the shoulders (but of that more anon). Well, they hurried round and got a good supper. Fidelia is a splendid cook and duz all the cookin’, for Alcander likes her cookin’ better than he duz anybody else’s; and Fidelia, bein’ so anxious to please him, duz it all, every mite; and he thinks that Fidelia duz up his shirt bosoms better, and so she irons all the fine clothes; and Alcander finds a sight of fault if the house hain’t kep’ jest so; and, Minnie not bein’ a nateral housekeeper, Fidelia jest slaves round all the time, cleanin’ and pickin’ up, and looks fagged out and tired and worn all the time, and the hired girl pert and rosy; and Alcander paid her a compliment on her good looks, and wished right before me that Fidelia could look more like Minnie, and Minnie bridled up and looked tickled, and Fidelia’s head drooped like a droopin’ dove’s. And I don’t know when I have been madder, both as a friend and as a woman.

And I spoke right up, and sez, “Mebby if Minnie had been in the kitchen over a hot stove, and br’iled the steak and creamed the potatoes and made the coffee, and if Fidelia had been out on the piazza part of the time, mebby she would have looked more fresh.” I had seen Minnie there half of the time she wuz a-settin’ the table, a-leanin’ over the railin’, actin’ lazy and uppish.

“But,” sez Alcander coolly, “Fidelia prefers to do the cookin’.”

“Yes,” sez Fidelia faintly—for she wuz wore out—“yes, I prefer to.”

“Well,” sez I, “if you do, it is the least we can do, who enjoys your delicious supper, to be thankful to you, and sorry that you have wore yourself out for our enjoyment.” Fidelia’s cheeks flushed and her eyes brightened at the unusual thing of a word of praise bein’ gin to her; and the hired girl looked mad and black; and Alcander looked on with perfect wonder at the turn things had took, and spoke quite soft to Fidelia, and she brightened up still more.

Sez he, “Nobody can cook a steak equal to Fidelia.”

And my Josiah looked real tempersome, and as if he wuz a-goin’ in to combat for my rights as a stak’ist. But I spoke right up and sez:

“That is so, Alcander. Fidelia is one of the most splendid cooks in the county, and you must be proud of her, and do all you can to make her rest and recreate between meals, jest out of gratitude to the one that furnishes such delicious food.”

He looked kinder cheap; and Fidelia looked troubled, for she mistrusted that there wuz a shadder of blame bein’ cast onto Alcander; but I changed the subject, like a good mistress of ticktacks.

“I spoze, Elinor, you have read the last great book of——?” and I named a book very upliftin’, and beloved by young wimmen.

“No,” she said; she hadn’t much time for readin’, she wuz so busy makin’ Christmas gifts.

Sez Fidelia, proudly, “Elinor has hem-stitched twenty-two fine linen han’kerchiefs for the aunts and cousins on both sides, and made home-made lace to trim them with out of one-hundred-and-twenty thread.”

And I sez, “I don’t know that there wuz any thread so fine.”

“Yes,” sez Fidelia; “it looks like a cobweb; and out of that same thread she has made twenty yards of that lace to trim underclothes for her two sister-in-laws.”

“Isn’t it bad for her eyes, Fidelia?” sez I, lookin’ at the worn, red eyelids of Elinor.

“Yes,” sez Fidelia, “it wuz very hard on her; but she wanted to do it, for she thought they would prize ’em higher; and then,” sez Fidelia, “she has made two dozen doilies for Louis’ mother out of that same thread.”

“How long did it take you to do it?” sez I dryly.

“Oh,” sez she, “I had them for work all summer; I begun ’em the 1st of June, so I could be sure to get them done for Christmas. I think that I could have done them in two months if I had worked all the time.”

And I sez to myself, all these long golden summer hours, sweet with bird-song, fragrant with flowers and beauty, she had sot over her one-hundred-and-twenty thread patiently weavin’ cobwebs, hopin’ mebby to ketch Happiness in it; but ’tennyrate doin’ this slow work, stitch by stitch, and lettin’ all the beauty and glory of summer and life go by. For I begun to see plainer than ever why Louis Arnold wuz a defaulter in the bank of love.

“Afterwards in her room,” sez Fidelia, “I want you to see the slippers she has embroidered for Louis—I never see the beat of it; they are so fine you can’t tell where the stitches are put; each one took her three weeks of stiddy work; they are a design of pink roses on a sky-blue ground.”

Sez I, “She could have bought a pair for five dollars that would have done jest as well, and I would have loved to have seen some of the pink roses on her cheeks, and some of the bright sky-blue in her eyes. They used to look like bits of the sky peeping out of rosy clouds.” (Them wuz her cheeks in metafor.) “But they look faded now, Fidelia,” sez I—“dretful faded and wore out.”

“Yes,” sez she, “she has injured her eyesight this summer—injured it a sight. She has sot up till midnight, night after night, workin’, for fear she wouldn’t git ’em done in time. And then,” sez she, bustin’ out into a confidential tone, “she has cried a good deal. Oh, Samantha,” sez she, “you don’t know how much that girl is a-sufferin’. There she is, jest the same as engaged, and she jest as faithful as the north star to the pole, and he growin’ cool all the time and indifferent.”

“Well,” sez I, “the stiddy faithfulness of the star can’t be changed, Fidelia, nor the coldness of the north pole, for it is the nater of that pole to be frigid, and we can’t do anything to warm it up. But,” sez I, “as for this matter of Elinor and Louis Arnold, I believe my soul that I could make a change in their doin’s if I had my way.”

“Oh, dear Samantha! Could you, could you?” sez Fidelia, a-wipin’ up her tears and lookin’ some brighter.

“But,” sez I, sort of lookin’ off mentally some distance, “it hain’t no ways likely that she would do what I would want her to.”

“Oh, she would!” sez Fidelia.

“I would, I would!” cried Elinor, advancin’ from behind the porchair. “Forgive me; I wuz behind the curtain a-catchin’ the last daylight on these slippers, and I overheard your talk. I will do jest as you say, for my heart is breakin’, Aunt Samantha,” sez she. They always auntied and uncled us, our children did, Fidelia’s and mine. “I will do jest what you tell me to,” sez she, standin’ before me, tears streamin’ down her white cheeks, her work-box in one hand, and the oncompleted slipper a-danglin’ in the other.

“Well,” sez I, “the first thing to do is to put them aside,” sez I, motionin’ to the slippers, two-thirds of which wuz not done; “and them, too,” sez I, p’intin’ to the delicate cobweb-work hangin’ over the sides of her work-basket.

“Lay them aside!” sez she, in wonderin’, horrer-struck axents; “these Christmas gifts?”

And I leaned back in my chair and looked indifferent, and sez I, “I knew you wouldn’t do what I wanted you to.”

“Oh, I will, I will!” sez she. “I will do it.” And she went to a side table and laid the work-basket on it and throwed a scarf over it. I see she meant bizness, and she come back and sot down on a low stool at my feet and leaned her pretty head against my knee, and I smoothed down the clusterin’ curls on her pale forward and went on.

“Now,” sez I, “the first thing you do, you go to the book-store and buy a handsome copy of ‘Is Marriage a Failure?’ for Louis Arnold, and some other nice book or piece of useful silver-ware for his mother. Wrop these oncompleted gifts up in silk paper and put them in the draw; and as you shet that draw up, shet up in it all your cares and anxieties for Christmas; keep in your mind only the beauty and blessedness of the day, and its holy and hallowed meanin’. Keep this cobweb-work you have done for yourself as a motto that means ‘I will never do it agin,’ and buy of some poor girl that wants the money some of this hem-stitchin’ and tattin’ and drawn-work you want for your relations, and do them up, ready to send away, and put them in draws; and when you shet up them draws, shet up all anxieties for them. Then,” sez I, “all this off your mind, bathe your wore-out eyes and pale face in some good pure water, go to bed at nine, and get up in the early mornin’ fresh and vigorous, and go out into the sunlight and drink down the sweet air like a healin’ cordial.”

The weather wuz wonderful for October; Injun summer had made the country beautiful; the roads wuz hard and smooth as summer roads. Sez I, “Forgit all your cares, put on the pretty short dress you used to wear, and go out for a long ride.”

“Oh,” sez she, “I don’t ride the wheel any more.”

“Why?” sez I wonderin’ly.

“Oh, Louis don’t like to have me. He thinks it is old-fashioned and unladylike and unwomanly.”

“Don’t he ride?” sez I.

“Oh, yes—he has to for his nerves. He has an auto, but he thinks that ridin’ a wheel almost cured him. He used to be dretful nervous and weak. He can’t bear bein’ shut up in the house all the time.”

“Well,” sez I, “didn’t you think that it helped you to ride? Your Ma told me that you felt like a new creature after you had had your wheel for a month.”

“Oh, yes, Aunt Samantha,” sez she, “it did help me more than I can tell, and you don’t know how I have missed it; I have felt that it would have been such a help to me while I was makin’ these Christmas gifts.”

“Well, why under the sun and moon, to say nothin’ of the stars and meteors, haven’t you kept on with what you knew helped you so?”

“Oh, Louis doesn’t approve of my ridin’, and he wuz bitterly opposed to my wearin’ short skirts; he considered it immodest, and I had jest about as soon not go at all as to go in my long skirts. The last time I rode, to please Louis I wore my long dress, and right in the middle of the village my dress wound round the wheel, and it wound my dress right up offen me, and I fell over onto my head.”

“I suppose he considered that more modest?” sez I, dry as a chip.

“He is dretful opposed to short skirts,” sez she; “he talked awful to me about ’em.”

“Why don’t you insist on his wearin’ his bath-robe on his wheel? Let him try it once, and then see. Why didn’t you say that you wuz shocked at the sight of his long limbs, and favored the Eastern garb for men? Your dress wuz modest and mejum, it come to the tops of your shoes, and you wore a divided skirt of the same cloth; you can tell him, from me, your dress wuz jest twice as modest as his’n.”

“Oh,” sez she, “I wouldn’t think of criticisin’ his dress.”

“Why not, as long as he criticises yours? But as for your dress and his’n, they’re both all right. And now do you, within the next fifteen minutes, don that garb, and go out on that wheel and take a good long ride.”

“Oh, I don’t feel as though I could go right against his wishes. I have done everything I could to hold his love.”

“You have done too much,” sez I coolly. “And now, Elinor Pogram, do you brace up and have a little gumption. Get right onto your wheel and go out into the sweet air and sunlight; and if you meet Louis Arnold, jest nod at him cool as a cowcumber, and go right on and foller it up next day and next, or as long as good weather lasts.

“I believe you rusted and tired out your faculties bendin’ over your fine work from day to day, and he didn’t find your companionship exhilaratin’ and inspirin’ at all. He is a bright chap,” sez I, “you know, and he will seek bright, inspirin’ company.”

She looked up gratefully as I abused her and excused Louis, in a real womanly way, and left the room to put on her short bicycle rig. It wuz dark blue braided with white, and a coquettish little white cap with some black feathers stuck up real cute on one side, and she looked as pretty as a pink—a white pink—and real cunnin’ as she sot off. Well, she come back lookin’ perter considerable; she hadn’t met Louis, but she had met the sunshine and soft autumn air, and they had invigorated her.

The next mornin’ I went with her, at her request, to git the books and presents I had named, and, at my request, they wuz locked up at 12 M., and backaches and eye-smarts and fevered anxieties and pricked finger-ends with ’em. And at 3 P. M. she sot off agin on her wheel. This time she come back lookin’ considerable white around her lips, but her eyes bright and cheeks rosy, after all; she had met Louis and done what I told her, and left him in such a state of complete stupefication she wuz alarmed about him. Sez she anxiously, “His looks wuz so wonder-struck and alarmed that I fear for his safety; I fear that he may be led to extreme lengths,” sez she.

“Wuz he on his wheel?” sez I.

“Yes,” she replied, “he wuz on his wheel, and the picture of health and strength.”

“And so will you be,” sez I, “now you have laid aside your eye-harrowin’, nerve-destroyin’ needle-work; and when I say this, understand distinctly that I might applaud, though I pitied, your work if it earned you your livelihood. But in your case it is needless, and so I have said lay it aside; there is no fear but that you will perform all the domestic duties you ort to, for it is in your nater, and you will resoom your music and books, for you will want to get brightness from them; but be out, care-free, under the blue heavens all you can. Respect yourself, and insist on bein’ respected. Be thoughtful of Louis’ rights, and insist on his bein’ thoughtful of yours; respect his opinions so fur as you can consistently; but as for his selfishness and whims, git onto your wheel and ride right through ’em. If you are to walk through life together, stand up straight by his side; don’t crouch at his feet doin’ drawn-work and tattin’ all your days; he will like you enough sight better. If you find him worthy, and you are to be his wife, make his home the most delightful place on earth—a clean, sweet restin’-place from the toils of life and a shelter from its storms; but don’t burn up your own individuality as incense before him; keep it to make his home more charmin’ than any other. Make him love you for your sweet love and care for him; make him admire you for your thought and care for yourself; use a lot of common sense in the receipt of married life, and mejumness, use that lavish, and you’ll git along first rate.”

Well, they urged me to stay a week or so; and Josiah havin’ bizness to ’tend to right there, we gin consent. Elinor kep’ on jest as I had planned, and stimulated by the example of plain common sense right before her eyes, Fidelia braced up and began to use some common sense and some mejumness herself. She spoke out of her own accord one afternoon, and sez she:

“I have three night-shirts done, embroidered for Alcander, and I am not goin’ to make any more of them for Christmas; and you, Minnie,” sez she, turnin’ to the pert-faced domestic, “you may wash them and do them up the next time you wash.”

“Why,” sez Minnie, “I can’t do the washin’ and ironin’ as well as you can, Mis’ Pogram. Mr. Pogram won’t like my ironin’, I am sure.”

“Well, he will have to stand it,” sez Fidelia, lookin’ some pale, but real decided; “and when you broil the steak for supper, Minnie, be sure you don’t burn it; have a hot platter ready for it, and put on the butter and pepper and salt even, and bring it to the table pipin’ hot.”

The girl’s hauty feathers seemed to droop, and she spoke more respectful to Fidelia than I had hearn her speak, and sez she, “I will do my best, mom.”

And sez Fidelia, “If Mr. Pogram comes here before we do, tell him that Josiah Allen’s wife and I have gone out for a long drive.”

In my inmost heart I said, “Bravo, Fidelia! bravo!” But outside I only said, “I shall be real glad to have a good long drive with you, Fidelia; it will put me in mind of old times.”

So Fidelia ordered her pony and low phaeton brought to the door and we sot off. It wuz a very comfortable carriage, cushioned with blue. I see that Alcander did his part by Fidelia in furnishin’ comforts and luxuries for her, only, bein’ so much engaged in incense-burnin’ and embroidery, she couldn’t take advantage of ’em. As I lay back on the soft cushions my mind roved off on the strange turn things had took, and I wondered if it wuz the atmosphere of my strong desire and goodwill to help her that had stimulated Fidelia to use a little common-sense; for I had not said a word to her about her affairs and Alcanderses. I knew that high, clear mountain air would do wonders for sick folks in a short time, and I knew that my will to help her towered up perfectly mountainous and high, and I spoze mebby it braced her up. We mortals are such strange creeters anyway that we can’t really understand how things be thus and so. But, ’tennyrate, as we rolled along the pleasant country roads, under trees orange and scarlet and gold-colored, sweet with the birds’ late songs, out into sunny stretches of open country roads, sun-glorified, and further embellished on either side by cozy homesteads and loftier mansions, and anon long green meadows stretchin’ away to green woods and tree-covered hills, with a tender haze hangin’ about ’em—as our phaeton rolled noiselessly on through the soft, sweet Injun-summer air, Fidelia’s cheeks got to lookin’ considerable pink, and her faded eyes brightened up considerable, and her faculties seemed to sort o’ wake up, and she acted brighter than I had seen her act for upwards of ten years.

Well, supper wuz all ready when we got home. Fidelia had only jest time to go to her room and pin a pink bow onto the bosom of her dress, but I don’t know when I have seen her look so well. Alcander noticed it in a minute. He looked quite admirin’ at her; and though the steak might not have been so delicious as Fidelia’s, yet her directions had been carried out, and it wuz good enough. ’Tennyrate, Alcander seemed to enjoy his supper the best that ever wuz, for he and Fidelia wuz talkin’ together in a way I hadn’t hearn ’em for years. And take Fidelia when she wuzn’t so wore out burnin’ incense, and br’ilin’ steaks and chops and chickens, and drawin’ threads out of fine linen and workin’ ’em in agin, she wuz a smart woman and very agreeable companion.

Minnie, I noticed, had retired more into the background, as it were; she waited on the table with a different air, less as if she wuz the mistress of ceremonies, and more as if she wuz the helper instead of the giver of the feast.

Well, it wuz on the fifth day, as Alcander and Fidelia and I wuz a-drivin’ along through the soft air in the luxurious easy carriage, behind two prancin’ horses, real happy and contented, and talkin’ good-naturedly, who should we meet but two young folks in a runabout? The young man wuz bendin’ fondly over the young woman, so engrossed in conversation that they didn’t notice our presence till we got almost up to them. Then they looked up, and we see that it wuz Elinor and Louis Arnold. But wuz it Elinor? Yes, it wuz. But what a change from the pale, hollow-eyed drawn-work stitcher! Her cheeks were pink, and happiness sparkled in her soft blue eyes like two bright stars becalmed in the June heavens. They had made up, and Louis Arnold looked handsome and happy and contented.

Well, I told Fidelia, the next day, that as Josiah had got his business done, I guessed I wouldn’t stay any longer, and she bust right out a-cryin’ onto my shoulder (it wuz a gray outin’-cloth, and I knew that it would wash, so I didn’t care).

And sez she, “My preserver, how can I have you go?”

And Elinor, who wuz in the room, throwed herself onto my other shoulder, and her tears drizzled down onto my shoulder-blade (but agin the thought calmed me that the colors wuz fast).

Sez Elinor, “You have preserved my happiness; you have dragged me back from the very brinks of ruin.”

“And me, too!” sez Fidelia.

And I sez gently, extricatin’ myself from the four encirclin’ arms: “Oh, shaw! you have preserved yourselves, and drawed yourselves back by the cords of common-sense and mejumness. And now,” sez I, in confidence, “ere we part, let me adjure you to cling to them two strings, and cling hard. Use common-sense day by day, be good and true to them you love, and be good and true to yourselves; brace up, have gumption, and may Heaven bless you!” sez I, and I turned away and begun to pack my nightgown and barred-muslin night-cap into my satchel-bag.

CHAPTER V

Josiah wuz in a hurry to git home, but I persuaded him to stop for a day at Dr. Phillip Rhode’s, who married she that wuz Dora Peak, daughter of my cousin on my own side.

I think everything of Dora and she of me, visey versey, for, if I say it that shouldn’t, I helped her more’n considerable to her present state of health, happiness, and common sense, and I spoze mebby you’d like to know about it. It’s quite a long story, but I can tell it if it’s best. It wuz about a year ago that Albina Peak, Dora’s mother, come to Jonesville on a errent, a important one.

I wuz standin’ before the winder washin’ my dishes and lookin’ out on the great waves of pink and green that wuz spread out in front of me (the orchard wuz in full bloom and promisin’ a grand fruit year), and I seemed to sort o’ float away on them waves into the past, layin’ firm holt of the present, too, and my clean linen dish-cloth, as folks can in their most romantick moods, if they’ve got any gumption—when all of a sudden Albina Ann Peak arrived. We hadn’t seen each other much of late years, for she lived in the city, but she wuz a third cousin of mine, and we used to go to school together up in the old Rizley schoolhouse, and she sort o’ leaned on me for strength and help in long division. She wuz dretful romantick and dreamy in them days, and devoured pickles and poetry enormously. But she sot store by me, and in the time of trouble I spoze she thought on me and kinder wanted to lean agin, her husband, who wuz a man of common sense and some property, havin’ passed away some years before.

Albina Ann said that the doctor said her daughter, Dora, couldn’t possibly live only a few months unless she got help, and it wuz a mysterious inward disorder she had, though the doctor had named it a strange, strange name that seemed to scare Albina Ann most to death, she couldn’t remember what it wuz, she said it sounded some like Constantinople-Andronopolis, but wuzn’t that, but wuz worse and more skairful, but I told her I shouldn’t let any doctor’s names skair me, they didn’t make nothin’ of usin’ names that wuz fearful. Then she told me that with all this sickness wuz love-sickness added, and for a poor dissipated chap, but good lookin’ and fascinating, and I said:

“This is worse than Constantinople-Andronopolis enough sight.”

And Albina sez, “That hain’t the name, but sounds like it.”

And I sez, “Well, it is worse than anything that sounds like anything.”

And she sez, “Well, I want to have it broke up, it has got to be broke up.” And she resoomed, “I’ve got to go and see my son Henry’s wife, who is dyin’ with fever at Denver, with twins added to it, and he sick abed, too.” And she sez, “It seems as if my troubles all fall on me to once. Both my children liable to die off at any time, and my daughter-in-law and the twins, too.”

And I looked sympathizin’ on her and sez jest for all the world as I used to at school, “I wish I could help you out, Albina Ann.”

“That’s jest what I’ve come for,” sez she; “I’ve got to go to Henry’s for a spell, anyway,” and would I for the sake of old times, to say nothin’ of the ties of third cousin, would I let her poor sick girl come down into the country and see if the country air and my care would recuperate her up a little mite, or if she couldn’t be helped, make the poor dear, dyin’ girl as comfortable as I could? She said money wuz no object to her. And I said it wuzn’t no object to me. And then she said she thought it wuz a mysterious Providential affliction to have her beautiful only daughter so delicate and liable to expire any minute, still she felt that it wuz tough on her, and she bespoke my sympathy, jest as she used to git help in her old Ruger and Olney’s gography. And she asked me pintedly if I didn’t think it wuz a strange, strange dispensation of Providence that when she wuz so abundantly able to care for her only daughter, so many poor girls wuz spared healthy and happy, and her only girl seemed about to be took, and sez she, “She wuz a healthy baby, weighed ten pounds at first, but,” she added, “she is so sweet and pure that probable the angels feel that they can’t do without her society much longer.”

And I sot up on the fence, mentally, as it were pretty straight, and didn’t say yea or nay, knowin’ that many things wuz laid on Providence He wuzn’t to blame for.

Well, I told Albina Ann, after thinkin’ it over and consultin’ Josiah out in the hoss barn, that she might send her girl down for a spell and I’d do the best I could for her. She seemed to be real relieved when I told her, and then bime-bye we got to talkin’ about Le Flam agin, for that wuz the name of the dissipated young chap she had mentioned, and I told her I approved of her stand, for if a man couldn’t reform durin’ the enchanted days of courtship what could you expect when married life and its disillusions should take place, late dinners, cleanin’ house, etcetery, etcetery, and inflamatory rumatiz, ulcerated teeth and colick?

But I sez to Albina Ann, “Why under the sun did you let him come to your house in the first place, if you knew what he wuz?”

And she said she always knew that he wuz a poor, miserable creature, but she felt that it would be breakin’ up the sweet, heavenly atmosphere of confidence that had always existed between her and her only daughter if she said anything against Le Flam to her.

“You hain’t spoke to her about him?” sez I, in wondering axents.

“No, Cousin Samantha; her heart seems to be so wropped up in him, and the cords that connect her soul to mine are so linked in with her girlish dreams, that I could not bear to ruffle ’em, the harmony between us has always been so heavenly.”

Sez I, “The harmony would be liable to be ruffled a little if you should see her abused by a dissipated brute, and she and her children snaked round by the hair of their heads and turned outdoors, etc.”

“Oh! oh!” sez she, puttin’ up her hands, “don’t pierce my soul with such agonizin’ thoughts!”

“Well,” sez I, coolin’ down a little, “the best way to escape such agony is to use common sense in the first place. Why under the sun didn’t you stop her going with him?”

“Oh, her sweet, tender heart seemed to be set upon him from the first, and I couldn’t bear to break up those sweet dreams.”

I begun to see where the land lay; I looked at Albina Ann sadly. There she sot, a full grown woman, with a waist like a pipe stail and shues with heels half a finger high, and tellin’ she dassent warn her girl from the evil to come.

But I didn’t say anything to add to her agitation, I simply remarked, “Well, I never see the time that I wouldn’t pull Tirzah Ann out of the fire, if I see her blindly blunderin’ into it, or haul back Thomas J. from precipices. But we hain’t all made alike, and our faces all on ’em are but the faces of clay.”

I never meant to give her a cut no more than nothin’ in the world, I wuz talkin’ Bible and feelin’ riz up.

But I see her lift her lace handkerchief in her tight gloved hand, and then I see, her veil bein’ up, that her color wuzn’t nateral and the hull complexion made up. But, good land! I wuzn’t goin’ to try to make over Albina Ann Peak, she’d been made too long—she wuz about my age—but I told her she could send Dora down and I’d do the best I could for her, and she kissed me good-by through her veil (a white one with big, black dots). I thought no wonder Albina Ann’s eyes has gin out, she wuz most as blind as a checkud adder. Why, if you’ll believe it, she sot most all day with that veil over her face. I spoze she thought it wuz becomin’ to her, but I should jest as soon wore blinders.

In about ten days Dora come, Josiah went after her with the democrat and brought her and three trunks and some satchels. When I see them trunks I felt dubersome, and mebby looked so, for thinkses I, “Is it a life job I’ve tackled?” but in a minute I thought, “Why, it’s in her bringin’ up; Albina Ann wuz always changin’ her dress, and ornamentin’ herself, and actin’.” So I met her with cheerfulness and kissed her on both cheeks, while Josiah, a-groanin’, as I could hear, tackled the trunks. I see she wuz naterally a pretty girl, but looked wan and wapeish, and I didn’t wonder a mite at it when I took close note of the way she wuz dressed.

I had a warm supper ready, for I thought she would be tired and hungry. But she couldn’t eat a mite, she said, not a mou’ful, but I see she had a big empty candy box in her hand, and she owned up that she’d eat it all on her journey. And bime-by she told me she had had some pickled stuff that she had brung for an appetite, and they wuz all eat up.

Well, after she’d took her things off I see she wuz a sight to behold. If her waist wuzn’t a cur’os’ty then I never see one. Why, if I do say it, and I’m a Methodist in good standin’, it wuzn’t much bigger than a quill—a goose quill; of course it wuz some bigger, but it is within bounds to use it for a metafor. The heels of her little pinted shoes wuz more’n two and a half inches high and sot right in the palm of her foot, right on them nerves that cause headache and blindness, and fits and things, and I knew by the looks of them pinted toes that no human toes could possibly git into ’em without bein’ all twisted up just like a heathen Chinee’s.

Well, I declare I felt to weep almost when I looked at her. She wuz so weak that I had to take her right up to her room and lay her out on the bed. And I hefted her dress and skirts after I’d helped her off with ’em, and of all the heft you ever see, why, it wuz astonishin’. Her dress wuz tailor-made, and embroidered all over with braid, and fitted her like a glove, but heavy as lead almost, and jest a-draggin’ round her waist—not a shoulder strap, nor a button or string or anything that she could divide the burden with; no, them heavy skirts all a-hangin’ like millstuns round the little, spindlin’ waist, and that so tight bound down by a hard bone-and-steel cosset that it looked like a prisoner of the deepest dye incarcerated in the closest confinement. I see when she lay down, tired almost to death and a-gaspin’, that she didn’t remove her cosset; no, there it wuz, a-holdin’ her in its deathly grip right there on the bed, and I sez, “Don’t you take off your cosset when you lay down?”

“No,” sez she, kinder pantin’ for breath, “Mamma thinks it hurts any one’s form so to lounge round with cossets off that she never allowed me to take them off when I lay down in the daytime, and Aggie le Fleur wears hers all night, so Mamma said, and she said that she meant to have me wear mine all night when I got a little stronger. Mamma sez that it injures one’s form terribly to go without ’em even for an hour. It ruins anybody to go without ’em, so Mamma said and so Aggie le Fleur sez.”

“Is it possible,” sez I; “I never mistrusted before that I wuz ruined, and I’ve gone without ’em since long enough before you and that young Le Fleur woman you speak of wuz anywhere round or thought on, and,” sez I, “if I wuz in your place I’d run the resk of bein’ spilte, and take that thing offen me.”

She wuz a sweet-dispositioned girl, I could see, and she consented, and she sot up and exerted the hull of her strength, and finally onhinged or onjinted it somewhere and peeled it offen her. And such a sithe of relief she gin, as she sank down on the bed. I felt dretfully to find out by a question or two that the cosset left deep marks. But still I knew cryin’ and sympathy wuzn’t what she needed; no, it wuz cast-iron firmness and common sense. So I took up that instrument of agony some as if it wuz a snake and carried it into the closet under the stairs, and hung it up and locked the door, and sez I in a winnin’ way, “Now, my dear, you let that hang there for a spell and see what will come of it.”

She wuz horrified at the idee, I could see, but bein’ of such a good disposition she crumpled down and bore it.

Well, after Josiah and I eat (that man wouldn’t wait a minute for the President) I got her a good wholesome supper and carried it up into her room on a tray. I had a piece of the breast of a chicken broiled and nice, some delicate toast, and sweet graham bread and butter, and ripe strawberries, and a fragrant cup of coffee not too strong, and plenty of cream. It wuz a good supper. I see she looked disappointed in not havin’ rich cake and sweetmeats, but I talked real cheerful to her about the relations and one thing and another, and, though she said she couldn’t eat a mou’ful, yet she did make out quite a meal. Well, after supper she put on a tea-gown, a pretty, white affair, and some slippers, and come downstairs, and I see, though mebby she didn’t think I did, how different she breathed and how different she looked when she had her iron armor off. She wuz a pretty girl, I see plain—just as pretty as a pink rosy.

Well, that first evenin’ about a quarter to nine she began to look perter and sort of brightened up, and I told her so, and she sez, “Yes, Aunt Samantha, this is the hour that mamma begins to help me dress to go out.”

“To go out!” sez I; “do you mean to the barn?”

“Oh, no,” sez she; “to go to parties.”

“To begin at nine o’clock to dress you to go to parties! Why, for the land sakes, what time do you git home?”

“Well, usually before mornin’,” sez she, “along about four.”

“Along about four!” I gasped, “and you don’t git any sleep nights until morning—till it is time to git up! For the land sakes!” sez I. “What time do you gen’rally git up?”

“Well, usually before noon,” sez she.

“Before noon! Why,” sez I, “at noon all my work is done for the day and I’m ready to sit down and rest, and you lose all them golden hours, full of beauty, in bed.”

“Well, Aunt Samantha,” sez she, wantin’ to please me I could see, wantin’ to like a dog, “I’ve tried not going to bed at all, but I’m not strong enough to go entirely without sleep.”

“No, indeed!” sez I. “I should think not. Why, a ox hain’t strong enough, let alone a delicate young girl like you.”

“But,” sez she, liftin’ her sweet, innocent face to mine, “what can I do, then, Aunt Samantha?”

“Go to bed at the proper time,” sez I. And unconsciously, I spoze, I put so much common sense into my axents that they sounded ha’sh; she looked kinder skairt, and sez she:

“But, Aunt Samantha, if I go into society I must do as the rest of ’em do.”

Mekanically I lifted my eyes toward Heaven and sez, “Hain’t there any society, then, but the society of fools and lunys? But even a fool orter know that mornin’ is the time to git up instead of goin’ to bed.”

But she looked real kinder flustrated and helpless, so I desisted from further remarks at that time, and at ten minutes to nine precisely I got up and lighted our chamber lamps and Josiah wound up the clock, and I sez, “Well, dear, I will go with you to your room.”

She looked at the clock and then at me with a look that a female Hottentot might have if I wuz fastening on skates for her to dash out on to a frozen lake. But she didn’t say anything. And I kinder whispered to her on our way upstairs: “It would disturb your Uncle Josiah for us to set up longer, and you try goin’ to bed early and gettin’ up early for a spell and see what it will do for you,” sez I encouragingly. “I believe it will be just the thing to put some color into your white cheeks and some bright sparkles into your eyes.”

Well, she didn’t demur outwardly, but immediately begun to take her hair down to brush it, and I laid my hand fondly on to them long, golden waves that swep’ down below her waist, and sez I, “I want you to be happy here, and to be happy one has to be healthy,” and I repeated partly to myself and partly to her that invaluable bit of advice:

“Early to bed and early to rise

Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

And then I see that the toilet things wuz all right, plenty of water and towels, and I looked at the little covered glass pitcher with fresh drinking water in it, and see that there wuz matches and candles, etc., and then sez I, “Is there anything else you would like, my dear?”

Well, she sort of hesitated and looked as if most afraid to ask, and then sez, “Well, Aunt Samantha, if you’ve got a piece of mince pie or fruit cake I would like to take a bite. I sometimes have a sort of gnawin’ at my stomach, and Mamma always keeps something rich baked up for me; she thinks it’s strengthening to me to eat rich things, and she always brings up a plateful before I retire, with some cheese, or pickles, or dried beef; I have got into the habit of eating something of the kind, but I don’t like to make you any trouble,” sez she.

“Oh, no trouble at all,” sez I; “some folks can sleep better after takin’ a bite.” And I went down into the buttery feelin’ mad as a hen at Albina Ann and sorry as a dog for Dora. And I took a little pink china bowl full of good night’s milk with a little cream in it, and a slice or two of my good, sweet graham bread, and put ’em on a little Japan tray with a pretty fringed tidy on it, and a bright silver spoon, and when it was all fixed I took it up to her.

Her face fell as she noticed the absence of pickles and pastry. But she thanked me and eat a little of it, and it seemed to taste good, and she finished the hull of it before she got through. And she put on a pretty white nightgown and got into bed, and I bent down and sort of tucked in the light white spread and patted the pillows, and I sez, “You feel pretty good, don’t you?”

And she smiled and sez, “Yes, mom.” But she looked real weak, and I bent down and whispered to her:

“You mustn’t forget, my dear, to ask the True Physician to help you.” She lifted up her head and was just about to git out of bed agin, and I sez, “You can ask Him right where you be, for He don’t mind; what He minds is the true reverence of the soul—the dependent call for help from them that need His care and who believes He can help ’em.”

“Yes, mom,” sez she; “I always say my prayers every night.”

“Well,” sez I, “so do.” And I kissed her and couldn’t help it. I wuz beginnin’ to like her the best that ever wuz. But jest as I wuz leavin’ the room she looked up anxiously with her big blue eyes and sez, “Oh, Aunt Samantha, won’t you close the window at the foot of the bed and the one in the next room?” That wuz another little bedroom that opened out of hers and I used it for a clothes-press.

“Why,” sez I, “Honey, the wind couldn’t touch you at all if there wuz any; your bed is out of the range on’t; but,” sez I, goin’ into the next room and bringin’ out a big screen (one I made myself out of the old ironin’ bars and some pretty cretonne), “here,” sez I, “I’ll put this between your bed and the winder, and you couldn’t git cold in a cyclone, much less in this sweet June air that comes up fresh from the heart of Nater and brings a touch of her own healin’ and rest with it.”

But she looked frightened still, most as if she’d faint away, and sez she, “Mamma told me special to have you cork the windows up tight if there wuz any airholes round ’em.”

“Cork ’em up,” sez I mekanically, “I would fur ruther oncork ’em,” sez I, and I went on, “What is the reason for her desire for corkin’?”

“The night air is so deadly,” sez she; “Mamma is so much afraid of it that she never has dared to let a breath of it come to me after I wuz in bed.”

“Why,” sez I reasonably, “what air could you breathe in the night, only night air; and do you spoze,” sez I, “that the Lord would fix things so as to have us breathe deadly pizen half of our time? Why, you don’t have to go into algebra to figger it out; in the night time you’ve got to breathe the night air; you can’t git any other, and it stands to reason that you’d better breathe it fresh from the hand that made it—good oxygen, etc., than to take it pizened with all sorts of pizen risin’ from the prespirin’ skin, weak lungs and stomach, coal gas, etc.”

Well, agin her good disposition come in and fetched her through this crisis. She settled down agin into the bed with a kind of a patient sithe, though I could see that she wuz as afraid of that air as if it wuz wild beasts ready to devour her, yet lookin’ some relieved at the apple-blows and mornin’ glories that twined round all over that screen as if they wuz some protection to her.

I bent down and kissed her agin and she kissed me back, and I went to bed. But I’ll bet I got up most a dozen times and went to her door and listened, and once in a while I could hear her give a kind of a low mourn or sithe. But I didn’t dast to let her know that I wuz there for fear of wakin’ her clear up, and I spozed goin’ to bed at such a different hour and so many new idees bein’ promulgated to her would naterally upset her, but I kinder worried about her all night.

Well, in the mornin’ she wuz bed-sick—too sick to git up—and I can’t say but what I did have a few reflections, mebby two or three, thinkin’ of the night air and the corks I’d refused and the quantities of air I’d let in. But yet I wuz held up a good deal by duty and the thought that her weak feelin’s wuz probable caused by reasons I’ve named and her journey in waist screws and heel tortures, and then her sentimental feelin’s for Le Flam I spozed helped it on some; but anyway and ’tennyrate, she looked like death when I carried up her coffee and toast to her—not strong coffee, but jest right, fresh, and fragrant and plenty of cream, and the toast was delicate, brown, and crispy, and I took up a fresh egg and a little china dish of strawberries. But she couldn’t eat a mou’ful. And I wuz most skairt, she looked so white and tired, and I sez to Josiah when I went downstairs:

“You’ll have to go to Jonesville and git the doctor.” For I, not knowin’ how much wuz sentiment and how much sickness, thought I’d better be on the safe side and git a doctor, and owin’ to a feelin’ that I couldn’t quite explain myself, it come to me so sort of queer and sudden, “Git young Dr. Phillip,” sez I. You see, Dr. Phillip Rhodes, father and son, wuz doctors, and folks called ’em old Dr. Phillip and young Dr. Phillip.

And Josiah sez, “You always have the old doctor, Samantha.”

And I sez, “That don’t make any difference, Josiah; you get young Dr. Phillip.”

And I thought on’t after he went, I didn’t really know why I did insist on havin’ him; I don’t really think that I’d planned out anything in my own mind at that time, but I wuz kinder led to do what I did.

CHAPTER VI

Young Dr. Phillip Rhodes wuz a prime favorite of mine, and had always been. He had as much goodness and common sense and smartness about him as any young man I ever set eyes on. He wuz good lookin’, too, with keen, dark eyes, kinder laughin’ and kinder sad eyes, too, as if he see naterally on both sides of life—the bright side and pathetic side. Tall, broad shouldered, manly lookin’, he wuz, as nigh as I could make out from what I’d hearn, as near the opposite of Dora’s bo as you could find.

Well, young Dr. Phillip took her little slender white wrist in his hand and counted her heart beats by his watch, and mebby he counted ’em by his own heart, too, for Dora did look sweet as a picter as she lay there with her golden hair all kinder curly round her pale face and her big violet-blue eyes, and the waves of white lace about her neck comin’ up round her soft cheeks that wuz jest about as white.

Well, he left her some powders and some tablets and said he would come agin the next day. And she lifted her soft, sad blue eyes to hisen and looked so confidin’ and innocent and sweet at him that I didn’t wonder it took him such a long time to fold up the powders and why he seemed to linger round as if he wuz loth to go.

But at last he did go downstairs, and I follered him, and he turned round in the settin’ room and faced me, and in a honest way that would be invaluable in a doctor if follered up, he sez:

“What is really the matter with her, Aunt Samantha?”

And I sez, “A lack of common sense in her mother, or that is what started the trouble in the first place.” Sez I in a sort of a blind way, “There is mebby other complications now that will have to be tended to.”

And I walked off into the buttery. I wuzn’t goin’ to mention Le Flam to him, no, indeed! and when I come out I brung a plate of cream cookies; he likes my cookies to a extraordinary degree, and these wuz jest out of the oven, and he eat three, and then went away with one in his hand. He appreciates good cookin’, yes, indeed!

Well, the next mornin’ bright and early young Dr. Phillip wuz there agin with a pink rose in his buttonhole (I never see that before), and he made a long call, and so the next day, and the next, and the next, and she a-gainin’ all the while and beginnin’ to talk real bright and chipper to him, and the seventh young Dr. Phillip said it would help her to ride out that very day, for the air wuz jest exactly right.

And I sez, “Well, I don’t know what I can do, for Josiah is away with both horses.”

And he sez dreamily, “Yes, I met him, but,” sez he, “as it happens I took my low, easy phaeton this afternoon, and I can take her for a short ride as well as not.”

And I sez, “Won’t to-morrow do?”

And he sez, “No, for to-day the air is jest exactly right.”

And I, not wantin’ to hurt her, fell in with the idee, and I see she wanted to go.

Now, if I hadn’t trusted him jest as firm as I would any old deacon or pastor I wouldn’t hearn to the idee, but I did trust him implicitly, and so I agreed to it.

And when he brung her back, she with a pretty light in her eyes and a soft color on the white cheeks, he sez:

“As it happens I have got to go up the mountain in the morning a few miles, and I will take Miss Dora out again if you think best.”

And I sez, “Josiah can take her.”

And he sez, “No, Uncle Josiah is busy; don’t bother him.”

“Well,” sez I, kinder laughin’ in the inside of my sleeves, “doctors are most always busy.”

And he sez again, “I have got to go up there, and mountain air is jest what she needs.”

Well, in a few days he said she needed lake air. And when I begun to plan how to git her to it he said it happened jest so that he had got to go down on the lake shore a few milds off, and he could take her jest as well as not, and she seemed glad to go—glad enough; and every single day she seemed to feel better and look better. Early hours to bed and to rise, fresh, pure air, wholesome, nutritious food, and easy, loose clothin’ had all done their healin’ work on her. Why, I had let out her pretty muslin dresses most half a finger under the arms, and she dast as well die as to girt herself in agin, my eye wuz that keen on her and yet lovin’. And I went to Jonesville myself and picked her out a pair of common sense shoes, but pretty ones, russet color; why, good land! she didn’t wear but number three, anyway—they wuz plenty big enough, and I admitted it. And I spoze her freedom from foot sufferin’ helped her a great sight, and her winder wuz always open nights. She had got to likin’ me too well to not do as I said, and when she see me calmly carryin’ the pickle jar down suller and put a stun on it, she knew that ended pickles; and when she asked Josiah to git her some candy and I calmly took it and eat it up myself, makin’ me dead sick, but doin’ it cheerful in a martyr way, she didn’t ask him agin to git her anything sarahuptishously, and it wuzn’t long before her well stomach didn’t crave such trash—rich cake and pickles and pies and such. And she begun to git so plump that she laughed and said I would have to let out her dresses agin.

And I did before she went home—more than a inch on both sides—and her cheeks got pinker and her eyes got brighter and brighter, and I didn’t wonder a mite that the kinds of air she had to ride out to take wuz so various and lay in such different directions, and young Dr. Phillip wuz so willin’ to take her to ’em.

Well, Dora had wanted to surprise her mother when she come to see her so much better, so we hadn’t said nothin’ in our letters about the great improvement and change in her, and the very day that Dr. Phillip and she went out on a two milds walk, two out and two in, I got a letter from Albina Ann sayin’ she had seen a new kind of invalid chair and askin’ me to ask the doctor if he thought it would be a benefit to Dora, and sez she:

“Your evasive remarks about my poor dear invalid makes me fear that I shall never see her agin, and,” sez she, “I drempt last night of attendin’ a funeral, and I lay for more than an hour planning the funeral when she is took from me, I picked out the text ‘Strange are the mysterious ways of Providence,’ and,” sez she, “I wet two handkerchiefs wet as sop with my tears right there in the middle of the night.”

Oh, Albina Ann thought enough of her, I could see that, and kep’ her in her mind day and night. And the day I let her dress out for the second time, that wuz the time she went out with her Uncle Josiah to help rake the meadow and come in laughin’ and rosy on top of the load jest as Dr. Phillip drove into the yard, makin’ her face look rosier than ever.

Well, that day Albina Ann writ to me agin, and sez she, “I write to you, for I know that Dora is too feeble to write to me, and I want you to tell me, and tell me plain, if you think she is going to live until fall, for I must, if she is in immediate danger, I must leave Henry and his wife and the twins, sick as they be, for I must, I must see my darling, my idol! once more.”

Well, I writ her a sort of a comfortin’ letter, that would settle her mind some and stiddy it; all the while I wuz writin’ I wuz hearin’ Dora’s ringin’ laugh out in the front yard, where Dr. Phillip and she stood a-talkin’ and laughin’ with my companion.

Well, Dr. Phillip wuz here about every day, and it wuz plain enough to see what wuz in his mind; he had never paid any attention to a girl before in his life as I ever hearn on, and if I wuz any judge of girls (and I fancy I am a splendid judge) Dora wuz jest as fond of him as he wuz of her. Le Flam, that poor dissipated chap, I felt had only stood in the vestibule of her fancy, but Dr. Phillip I believed had opened the door to her heart and walked in there to stay.

Well, I felt that all I had to do wuz to set down and trust the Lord; that’s all we can do after we’ve done all we can do ourselves. Let mothers take this great truth into consideration and consider on it; surround your young girls with good society, and when I say good I don’t mean necessarily rich, but good, honest, and reliable, then you can set down in your chair and rest, knowin’ that whatever is the Lord’s will to happen won’t bring grief and shame to your heart. If it is His will to have your girl a bachelor maid, thank God and take courage, if it is His will to have her unite her fate to a companion, why accept it as His will and make the best on’t, but ’tennyrate and anyway, don’t, don’t let her marry a shack, and to insure that don’t let a shack come hangin’ round.

Well, everything seemed to be goin’ as I wanted it to go. Considerin’ the Le Flam eppisode, I couldn’t act exactly as I would if I had took her fresh from the cradle. In them latter circumstances I would impress agin and agin on a girl’s mind how many avenoos there wuz to walk in besides the matrimonial one—broad, glorious avenoos full of helpful and grand possibilities. But the Le Flam eppisode had hampered me, and so, as I say, everything seemed to be goin’ as I wanted it to. And yet anon or oftener I had a feelin’ that if Dora couldn’t be broke for good of her foolish ways—foolishness nurtured and fostered by Albina Ann—I didn’t want Dr. Phillip’s life spilte. And then agin a good deal of the time I noticed her sweet disposition and put a long white mark on that; her readiness to fall into better ways, when she found ’em out—another long white mark.

As for his likin’ for her, I felt that I needn’t mark that, for he had done it himself. And if she didn’t know as much as Sappho or Aspasia, that I’ve hearn Thomas J. read about, I knew men never cared any too much about that, and as for Miss Sappho and Miss Aspasia, I never thought any too much of either on ’em, from what I’d hearn; Miss Sappho, with all her smartness, drownded herself; and as for Miss Aspasia, there is sights of talk about her and always wuz.

And then I felt a good deal of the time that Dr. Phillip had smartness enough for ’em both, and Dora wuz nobody’s fool, and I felt that the sun of his strength and love would bring out the colors in her mind and soul jest as the sunlight changes a poor suller kep’ house-plant in the spring of the year.

Well, anyway and ’tennyrate, I had to let it go on. I jest had to, for the stream wuz gittin’ too deep for me to ford or dam (metafor), I meant the stream of deep, pure love that wuz a-flowin’ round Dora and bearin’ her on its deep bosom into happiness, as I trusted and felt, I felt it had got to bear her where it wanted to.

Well, one day Dora and Dr. Phillip had gone up the mountain road, the air wuz balmy as if it blowed off a bed of balm, and I had seen the happy pair set off under the mornin’ sun lookin’ fresh and bright almost as that luminary itself, only of course not so dazzlin’.

And my Josiah had gone into the wood lot after a load of stove wood, and I’d put on a clean gingham dress and sot there in my clean kitchen alone in all my glory, same as Solomon did, or the Queen of Sheba, I’ve most forgot which one on ’em it wuz, when I hearn a rap on the door and I went and opened it, and there stood a chap that I knew by the first look on him wuz Le Flam. He had that same look on him, sort o’ dissipated and yet kinder stylish and handsome, that I felt certain could belong to no other.

I invited him in and sot him a chair, for I felt that he wuz a-goin’ to have a bad enough time without standin’ up, and he sez most the first thing:

“I want to see my affianced.”

And I sez, “Nobody by that name is here or been here.”

Sez he, “My betrothed.”

And then I sez, “I don’t somehow seem to recognize the name.”

And he yelled up a little, “The girl I’m engaged to, Miss Dora Peak; or that is,” sez he, “I’ve considered it the same as an engagement, though perhaps it hasn’t quite reached that point.”

“Oh,” sez I, “you mean Dora; well, she is not here jest now.”

“And,” he sez, his red face growin’ redder and his kinder bloodshot eyes dartin’ angry gleams, “I have heard all about your treacherous conduct, and I’ve come to settle with you.”

“You have, have you!” sez I, and I turned over the sock I wuz a-mendin’ and attackted it in a new place.

“Yes,” sez he, “I’ve heard how you have encouraged the attentions of another man to the girl I wuz as good as engaged to, the girl I have paid attention to for years.”

Sez I calmly, a-lookin’ him over as if he wuz a banty rooster, “Have you paid attention to her exclusively?”

“I have never paid attention to another lady!” he yelled in quite a loud voice and shrill.

“Mebby not,” sez I, and I went on, “Dora can do as she pleases, but if I wuz a young girl,” sez I, “I wouldn’t accept the attentions of a man who divided his attentions between me and saloons, gamblin’ halls and horse races,” sez I.

“What do you mean?” he yelled out.

“Jest what I say,” sez I, a-gittin’ up and puttin’ in another stick of wood and a-seatin’ myself some nigher the wood-box, for I didn’t know what he might be led to do, for I could see as plain as anything that he wuzn’t quite himself, and you never can calculate what such a man may take it into his head to do. But I felt considerable easy when I had a good stout birch stick of wood right at hand, not that I wuz really ’fraid on him: dissipation had told on him so he looked considerable tottlin’ and shaky under all the outside veneer of fashion he’d put on; but how can you tell what a poor, miserable tike will take into his head? Why, dissipation jest onhinges all the moral and spiritual graces, all the manliness and self-respect and will-power, and jest lets ’em all tottle down into ruin, and I don’t believe he had many graces to onjint in the first place.

“What do you mean?” sez he, lookin’ meachin’, meachin’ as a dog.

“Why,” sez I, a-feelin’ it my bounden duty to stand between Dora and trouble, “I mean that it is a shame and a disgrace for such a man as you are to even talk of takin’ a sweet, innocent young girl into a life like yours.”

“She fills my heart,” sez he, “and my life, and has for years.”

“Not full!” sez I, lookin’ at him keenly, “not full! If she did her sweet image would have banished the other vile inmates that have abounded there—wicked companions, evil ways of all kinds. What room is there in that black crew for an innocent young life like Dora’s? Have you got the heart,” sez I, “to try to entice that young girl into such a life as you know the wife of a dissipated man must lead—into woe and wretchedness, and an early grave, most likely?”

“I would reform,” sez he; “I would become a different man for her sake.”

“Why haven’t you, then?” sez I. “Why haven’t you reformed in all these years when you wuz on probation, as you may say, a-tryin’ to win her love? Do you think that you’d do better when you wuz sure of her and she wuz in your power? Now,” sez I, “I don’t want to be hash to you, and I don’t want to hender you from singin’ that

‘While the lamp holds out to burn

The vilest sinner may return,’

but I don’t want you to sing it here; I want you to go away and let Dora alone.”

“I never will,” sez he.

“Well,” sez I, “I will see about that;” and I got up and went to the back door and called out loud: “Josiah, I want you and Ury to come right here!”

Well, my conscience has twitted me about that performance more’n a hundred times sence, if it has once. But, then, I would kinder argy back, when I would git all wore out with that conscience a-proddin’ me, I did want Josiah to come that very minute, and I would have liked to see Ury step in, there hain’t a doubt on’t. And what of it, what if Ury wuz to Three Mile Bay for a load of spruce; and what if Josiah Allen wuz two milds and a half away in our wood-lot, I wanted ’em, there hain’t a doubt of that, and I didn’t lie.

And I spoze I might jest as well tell it right here as anywhere, Josiah has told it more than twenty times in one day by the clock: he sez, and I believe it implicitly, he had jest driv into the woods and had commenced to load the wood in when he sez he hearn me say: “Josiah, I want you.” And he sez there wuz in my voice a certain ring of urgent need and anxiety that made him turn the team right round and come home on the gallop, and consequently he met Le Flam down by the big butnut tree. For after I called to them men, for all the world jest as if they wuz inside the barn door, Le Flam turned on to his heel and went off without biddin’ me “good-by,” or “good-day,” or anythin’. He yanked the lines offen the post (he had hitched by the lines—didn’t know any more—and I spoze he broke sunthin’, somehow, for he seemed to be foolin’ round with the harness for quite a spell; I spoze his hands wuz clumsy and helpless owin’ to his state), and so, as I say, Josiah come a-gallopin’ ’long, and past him down by the butnut tree.

Well, to me that little eppisode always went to show how close the ties be unitin’ two true hearts, and how queer and curious the atmosphere is that surrounds ’em. My voice in need reached the ear that Love had attuned to hear it. Strange, strange is the mysteries of pardners. I’ve always said it and I always will: strange is the pathway on which their sperits can go back and forth and meet each other. It made me feel queer and riz up.

But Josiah looks at it different; he thinks that it wuz my nateral voice that he hearn, and sez he: “Samantha, I always told you that I could hear you two or three milds away, and now I’ve proved it: your voice is shrill,” sez he, “and you don’t realize how loud you holler.”

“Why didn’t Ury hear me?” sez I scornfully.

“Oh, there is a limit to the shrillest voice. You couldn’t expect to talk back and forth with folks clear to the Klondyke.”

Well, there wuzn’t no use argyin’, and he has throwed that eppisode in my face ever sence, and I spoze he always will.

But good land, I don’t care; I know that we got rid of Le Flam for good and all, for he didn’t make much of any move after that eppisode of advice and warnin’ to him. I guess he did write to Dora once or twice, but she never noticed his letters, and it wuzn’t but a few months before he married a rich widder.

Well, it wuz on a bright September day that Albina Ann come to Jonesville, after Dora had had only three months, mind you, of common-sense treatment and reasonable livin’, and I wish that you could have seen her face as it rested on Dora’s for the first time. You see, she come in dretful pimpin’ and pensive lookin’, for Henry’s wife had had a siege and Albina Ann had nursed her faithfully, and Henry, too, and the twins, and they wuz all a-pullin’ through.

But bad and wore out as Albina Ann felt, she didn’t feel too bad to have that white dotted veil over her made-up face, and her dress tight as tight could be, and sot up on wobblin’ heels half a finger from the ground a-pitchin’ her kinder forwards. I pitied her. And her first words was, “She is alive, hain’t she? Do tell me so! Is she in the spare bedroom? Oh,” sez she, “to come from one bed of sickness to another!” and she sithed and kinder groaned, and started for the chamber stairs.

Sez I, “She has gone out for a ride.”

“For a ride!” sez she in amaze, “then she can’t be in immediate danger,” and then she sez, “Oh, how I have dreaded to come from the almost dying bed of my dear ones in Denver to the sick bed of another.”

“Well,” sez I, “Dora hain’t bed-sick,” and, sez I, “you’ll see her in a minute, for I hearn ’em at the gate.”

Well, when that plump, rosy-cheeked girl, with sparkling, laughing eyes, bounded into the room (her Uncle Josiah had told her that her Ma had come) and threw her arms round her neck and kissed her, you could have knocked Albina Ann over with a pin-feather. I felt conscience-struck, and as if I’d ort to told her. Her face turned ghastly pale under the false color, and she looked at Dora and then at me in a stunted, dumfoundered, helpless way, pitiful in the extreme, that most made me ’fraid that she had lost her faculty. But pretty soon she gradually brightened up into a happy, blissful look, and her nateral color returned, and how she did hug and embrace Dora, and she sez to me in a solemn way, “It is a mericle, Samantha!”

“No,” sez I, “no mericle, only a triumph of common sense and common-sense remedies—pure air, early hours, wholesome food, etc., etc.”

And then she noticed her dress, I see—the absence of cosset, the common-sense shoes. But she never lisped a word aginst it, and hain’t to this day, so fur as I know. The shock had been too great: she had seen the dead raised to life, as it were, and it had shook a little common sense and gumption into her. I ketched her myself the next mornin’ a-lettin’ out her travelin’ dress, and she let her cosset out some. I have some hopes of her.

Well, to resoom backwards a spell. Dr. Phillip come in with my pardner, and when Albina Ann see that splendid, noble lookin’ young man, and comprehended how and what it wuz, and that Le Flam wuz only a dark shadder in the past and wouldn’t shade Dora’s future agin, agin she sez to me in them solemn axents out on the back stoop, “Another mericle, Samantha?”

And I sez, “No such thing, Albina Ann; nothing only another triumph of common sense. Do you remember what I said to you about surroundin’ young girls with good society?” And I felt so well that I went on and eppisoded a little right there.

Sez I, “When you let a cat into a cream-dairy what do you expect, or a dog into a bone factory? Will the cat pay any attention to the catechism, or the dog to the doxology? No; you can’t expect them to change their naters all of a sudden. So with young folks: throw young hearts together in the springtime with no warnin’; what is the result? Why, the trees and flowers and everything bloom out under the sun of spring, and young hearts stand ready to blossom out under the sun of love, and you ort to be careful, careful as to the material you surround ’em with.”

But I see she wuzn’t payin’ the attention she ort to, and agin I see her look at Dr. Phillip proudly and happily, and she murmured agin, “It is a mericle, a mericle!”

And I sez agin, bein’ brung down from the mount of eloquence on to the plain of common sense, “It hain’t no such thing: it is nothin’ but siftin’ good wheat from bad and usin’ a little plain horse sense.”

Well, Albina Ann wuz always contrary; she’s never gin in, nor I nuther. She always to this day contends that it wuz a mericle, and sez she gives Providence all the praise for the hull performance, which of course I want her to do, and still——

Well, if I hadn’t acted out what I believed wuz the will of Providence she would have come out pretty slim.

Dora and Dr. Phillip wuz married ’long the next winter, and I went to the weddin’, proud as a peacock of the bright, healthy, happy looks of the bride—sweet as a rose, too, she looked under her white veil. And they have settled down in Loontown, in a pretty cream-colored cottage nigh the old doctor’s. And everybody sez they are the very happiest couple in Loontown.

She knows enough! And he jest worships her, and she him, and they both set store by me, sights of store.

CHAPTER VII

For about two years there has been great doin’s in Hamen Smith’s family, owin’ to Tamer Ann’s wantin’ to make Anna marry a young old chap who come down from New York village to look at some grave-stuns in the buryin’ ground by the old Dutch Reform Church up in Zoar.

There wuz some dretful aged stuns there with old Dutch names on ’em, and the young old feller wuz in hopes he would find some ancestors there. He had piles and piles of ’em before he begun to hunt there, enough for comfort and more, too, but he wanted some more, so sure it is that the more you have the more you want.

And so he come down a purpose. He didn’t find any ancestors, but he found Anna. And he jest stayed along and stayed along. He had only got board at the tarven for two days, but he stayed seven weeks that time and come down agin frequent after that, and the next summer spent the hull of his summer there.

Anna wuz engaged to Tom Willis, a good lookin’ and good actin’ young chap, and Tamer Ann had never lifted her finger or said a word to stop their intimacy or engagement. But when this old young feller come she jest commanded Anna to not think of Tom Willis any more, and ordered her to be polite and sociable with this young old man. Curious how some mothers can act, ain’t it now?

I liked Tom Willis. He wuz studyin’ law under Thomas Jefferson, he had been under him for several years now, and Thomas J. thought everything of him, and said he wuz bound to make his mark in the world. Yes, I liked Tom and Tom liked me. But I had never seen the old young man till the day we went there a-visitin’, bein’ invited special by Tamer.

It wuz a pleasant drive over there, and I got up middlin’ early and got a good breakfast, a very good one, knowin’ that my Josiah’s demeanor for the day depended a good deal on it. And I wanted his liniment to be smooth and placid, for nothin’ gauls a woman more than to have her companion kinder snappish to her when she takes him out in company. She knows the wimmen are all comparin’ his liniment with their own husband’s liniments, and she wants him to show off to good advantage. She has a pride in it.

So I cooked, in addition to my other vittles, a young tender chicken, briled it, and had some nice warm biscuit, and some coffee, rich, yellow, and fragrant, with lots of good cream in it. And I had other good things accordin’. I did well, and Josiah’s liniment paid me; all the way to Hamenses his mean wuz like a babes for softness and reposeful sweetness. He twice murmured words of affection into my right ear, he sez, “Dear Samantha,” twice, such wuz the stimulatin’ and softenin’ effects of that coffee and broiled fowl. Oh! if female wimmen would only heed these words of warnin’ and caution from their sincere friend and well wisher. If they would only spend the strength they take to try to convince their pardners that it is onmanly to snap ’em up and be fraxious and puggecky to ’em, especially before folks and other wimmen, if they would only spend this time in preparin’ food, if they would only accept the great fact that men’s naters are made jest as they be, and the effect of food on their naters is jest what it is, if they would only accept these two great philosofical facts, and not argue and contend and try to understand why it is so, or how, or is it reasonable that it should be so, or anything about it. Simply accept it, dear married sisters, and guide them gently on by this safe and assured way. It will not fail you, no, Samantha has tried it in the balances and has never yet found it wantin, for twenty years and more that has been my safe weepon and my refuge in times of trouble.

I know that I have repeated these words of advice and warnin’ anon or oftener, but it is only because I have such a tender feelin’ for my sister wimmen who are placed in the tryin’ position of pardners. And I want ’em, oh, how I want ’em! to do the best they can with what they have to do with. But I am eppisodin’, and to resoom.

We sot out for Hamenses about half-past ten on that pleasant mornin’. All over the dooryard and about the house hung the soft silence of the early mornin’. The birds wuz singin’ in the lilock bushes by the clean doorstep. The branches of the trees hung low down in the orchard. The sunshine lay in the dooryard in golden patches flecking the green grass between the shade trees and on the clean painted doorway and the winders. And I knew and Josiah knew that we shouldn’t see no such sunshine agin till we see this same light shinin’ in our dooryard and the white curtained winders of home.

Well, we had a pleasant drive, with no eventful events to disturb it till we got near to Hamenses house at about a quarter to twelve. As we wuz a-goin’ down the hill pretty clost to his house I methought I hearn sunthin’ wrong, a rattlin’ sound amongst the iron framework of our conveyance, and I mentioned the fact to my pardner. He then intimated that I had frequently called his attentions to similar things on similar occasions (he didn’t word it in this way, no, it wuz a shorter way and fur terser).

But I knew I wuz in the right on’t, and begged him to git out and see about it. But he vowed he wouldn’t git out, he even made a oath to confirm it. “Dum” wuz the word he used to confirm the fact that he would not git out. But the very next minute one of the wheels come off, and he did git out. Yes, he got out, and I did, too. He got out first, and I kinder got out after him. It wuz sudden!

Everything seemed sort o’ mixed up and sick to the stomach to me for quite a spell. But when conscientiousness returned I found myself layin’ there right in my tracts, and what made it more curious and coincidin’ I had a bundle of tracts that her old pasture, Elder Minkley, had sent to Tamer Ann. He worried over her readin’ dime novels so much, and he had sent her these tracts, “The Truthful Mother and Child; or, The Liar’s Doom,” and one wuz, “The Novel Reader’s Fate; or, The Crazed Parent.”

Well, I lay there feelin’ curious, Josiah tryin’ to keep the horse from tromplin’ on me, and he wuz, I could see, agitated in the extreme about me, though I had said faintly from where I lay:

“I hain’t killed, Josiah,” and, as he seemed by his looks to doubt my assurance and mourn for me as lost, I sez agin:

“I am not dead, Josiah,” and I added in faint axents, “Have I bent my bunnet much?”

And he sez, “Dum the bunnet!” And I didn’t blame him a mite when I come to think it over. How sure it is that sudden reverses of fortune brings out the flower of love in full bloom! As I lay there kinder stunted I felt that I loved my companion and wuz well aware how he worshipped me.

I spoze my remark about the bunnet had took the edge off from his anxiety, and he felt that I wuz alive and considerable comfortable. And at that very minute the mair, bein’ hit on the heel by the thill Josiah wuz liftin’ up, kicked up both of the hind ones (heels) and sot off back to Jonesville, my pardner runnin’ after her as he still had holt of the lines. As I said I laid there feelin’ dretful curious, for I couldn’t for my life git up, I spoze I wuz stunted by my fall.

But as I looked back the way we had come and beheld my pardner disappearin’ round the bend of the road in the wake of the mair, I see comin’ towards me from that direction a queer lookin’ tall chap with long, small limbs and a high collor and cane, and, as he approached me, he stopped and looked down on me through a eyeglass that hung round his neck, in a queer way, though polite, and sez he:

“You got out sudden, you know.”

“Yes, I know it,” sez I faintly, “but if I had a little help I could git up agin.”

But he didn’t offer to help me. He looked at me through that eyeglass and sez he, holdin’ tight to his cane and kinder jabbin’ it into his mouth now and then:

“You fwightened me, you know; I pwespiah now from fwight.”

THE MAIR SOT OFF BACK TO JONESVILLE, MY PARDNER RUNNIN’ AFTER HER, AS HE STILL HAD HOLT OF THE LINES.

Page [110].

“From what?” sez I.

“Fwom feah, you know; feah.”

“Oh,” sez I.

Agin he jabbed that cane of hisen into his mouth, and sez he, not offerin’ to help me a mite, but standin’ off and eyin’ me like a one-eyed owl: “Are you shuah you have not sustained any sewious injuwy?”

“Yes,” sez I, “I hain’t hurt much, I could git up if I had a little mite of help.”

“Youh fouh ahm now, can you waise it?”

I reached out my arm, feelin’ considerable like a horse, or mebby it would be more proper if I should say I felt some like the old mair, she had sunthin’ the matter with her fetlock. And he continued as he stood there with all the willowy grace of a telegraph pole, and as tall as one, so it seemed to me:

“Do you feel any pain like basilah menigitis, you know? Do you feel any uneasiness in youah pewicardium?”

Follerin’ his train of idees almost onbeknown to myself, I sez faintly, “I never knew till this minute that I had one, but I guess it is pretty middlin’ comfortable; I am obleeged to you.”

“Oh, I feel welieved if you haven’t injured youah pewicardium, for that would have been almost suah to bwing on basilah menigitis.”

I give up that I wouldn’t git no help from him, and I sez, “If you would just go to that house ahead and tell Hamen Smith’s folks that I have come I would be glad.”

I did it partly to git help and partly to git him out of my sight, he did look so dog queer standin’ there gnawin’ at that cane of hisen, with his stiff collar holdin’ up his ears, and his clothes that tight that I spozed mebby that wuz one reason he didn’t offer to help me up, the other reason bein’ that he didn’t know enough. But, truly, it would have been a rash and hazardous proceedin’ on his part to bend over much, and I didn’t promulgate any desire for his help after I took a minute’s thought about it. But when I spoke of Hamenses he sez, “I am going there.”

“Are you?” sez I. “Then mebby they will want to see you right off. I’d go on if I wuz in your place and tell them that I have come.”

“Yes, I will go,” sez he. He seemed good natured enough what there wuz of him (his mind, I mean). And he started off lookin’ like a tall, slim fork walkin’ away. But he turned before he’d gone more’n a step or two and come back, and sez he:

“Youah shuah now?”

“Sure of what?” sez I.

“Shuah you have not sustained any sewious injuwia?”

“Yes! yes!” sez I, gittin’ wore out. “And I’d like a little help to git up; I wish you would hurry.”

And then he went on a few more steps and come back agin, and I sez, “For the land’s sake! What do you want now?”

“Youah cahd, you know, you haven’t pwesented me with youah cahd.”

Sez I with dignity, or as much as I could have layin’ most flat in the middle of the road, “This is a pretty place to talk of playin’ cards or any other game, I settin’ flat down here in the road and can’t git up. You had better start on to once and git away from me,” sez I, “and tell Hamenses folks I’ve come.”

“I haven’t the pleasuah of knowin’ youah name,” sez he, lookin’ sort of pale round the mouth, and his eyes lookin’ big and round. I spoze I skairt him some by my lofty mean (lofty under difficulties).

“I couldn’t tell, youah know, who had come, youah know.”

“That is so,” sez I, “I forgot. Tell ’em that Josiah Allen’s wife has come.”

“Oh, Josiah Allen’s wife, I have the gweatest pleasuah in meeting you. I have heard of youah, youah know.” And he took off his hat and bowed low to me. I sithed, for I believed then and believe now he would have stood there for an hour holdin’ his hat in his hand and bowin’ to me and actin’, and he looked more’n a mile high, too, I a-settin’ there helpless. But I looked at him that witherin’ that he turned agin and hurried off as fast as his long legs would carry him.

He hadn’t got more’n a few steps away before a light buggy come rollin’ on swift, and who should it be but Tom Willis goin’ on some law bizness for Thomas J. up beyend Zoar. How curious things will turn out, now this wuz jest as curious as it wuz for Crusoe to discover Friday.

I guess I didn’t have to talk to Tom Willis about his helpin’ me. No, he flung the lines to the boy who wuz with him, and he wuz out of that buggy and by my side in less than a minute. And it wuzn’t a minute more when he jest lifted me right up and held me for a minute or so, for I wuz giddy and sort o’ stunted, and then he helped me into his buggy and we drove on to Hamenses and got there long enough before that long legged chap had arrived. He couldn’t walk fast, so he told me afterwards, on account of his “pespiwin,” and then he had “dwopped” his cane, “you know.” And I could see for myself jest what a time he had had pickin’ it up. For the land’s sake! I don’t see how he ever done it, and so I told Josiah.

But, anyway, Tom Willis took me out of the buggy jest as tender and careful as if I had been his own Ma, and, leanin’ on his strong arm, I arrived at Hamenses door and went in, Tom leavin’ me at the doorsteps and not goin’ in, for reasons to be named hereafter. But as I stood on the front stoop, and Tom turned to go away, I see a red, red rose come a-circlin’ through the air from right over our heads and fall at Tom’s feet, and he took it up and kissed it, for I see him, and put it in his bosom. And then he turned and looked up into a window overhead, and no light of the mornin’ sun breakin’ through a cloud wuz ever brighter or more luminous than the glance and smile he gin to somebody overhead. But it wuz all done in a minute, and Tom wuz gone, and in a minute more Anna Smith wuz in my arms, with both her sweet young arms round my neck and her soft pink cheeks pressed clost to mine. I think enough of Anna Smith, and she thinks enough of me.

Well, Hamenses wife come runnin’ in dretful glad to see me, she wuz in the back kitchen givin’ orders to her hired girl, Arabeller, and Hamen come in, too, real cordial actin’, he wuz in the back yard at work, and Jack come boundin’ in and most eat me up, he wuz so glad to see me. And bimeby Cicero come in with his fingers between the pages of a dime novel, and shook hands with me in a absent mekanical way, but he didn’t seem to sense my bein’ there much of any, and what he did sense didn’t seem to be an overagreeable feelin’, real cool and indifferent he acted. I guess Tamer noticed it, for she spoke up and said:

“Cicero wuz such a reader, he had such a great taste for books and literatoor, he wuz so much like his Ma.” And then she patted him on his head, but he didn’t seem to mind that any, he wuz fairly bound up in his book, it wuz “The Brave Bold Young Bandit; or, The Farmer Fool Outwitted.” It had a yeller cover and painted on it wuz a innocent lookin’ young farmer boy, kneelin’ at the feet of a bandit boy with bold flashin’ eyes, embroidered uniform and tall feathers in his hat. I looked at it when he laid it down for a minute that day, and I see that it would be real instructive in learnin’ a boy to despise honest labor and heart merit, and honor dashing wickedness and crime. He had a cigarette in his hand when he met me, and he had one in his hand or his mouth every time I see him almost while we wuz there.

Well, to resoom backwards a little. Josiah come in in about haif an hour. The mair had started back straight for home. That mair has a constant heart under her white hide, and she’d left children there and grandchildren, I didn’t blame the mair, though I pitied my poor Josiah, he wuz beat out. He said that if it hadn’t been for Tom Willis he never should have ketched her at all. But that didn’t surprise me any, for Tom Willis is one of the kind who always will find a way to do anything he sets out to. So he had helped Josiah ketch the mair.

They wuz dretful glad to have us there, it had been more than a year since we had been there to stay any, and now we laid out to stay two days and nights, and they wuz tickled. But as glad as they’d been to see us, when that long, slim feller come walkin’ in, if you’ll believe it, Tamer Ann Allen actually seemed gladder to see him and made more on him than she did of Josiah and me, it wuz a sight to see it go on.

It seemed that when that old young chap come down into that neighborhood he put up to the hotel to Zoar, and then would walk over to Hamenses, and be there day in and day out, and stay jest as long as he could. He liked Anna as well as he could like anything outside of his old bones and ancestors and things, and I didn’t wonder at it, for her fresh young beauty must have been attractive to him, and a sort of a welcome change from his own looks and dry bones and family trees and such.

But I see she didn’t care anything about him, and I didn’t blame her; good land! I thought to myself I could easier git up a sentimental attachment to a good new telegraph pole, for that would be kinder fresh and hemlocky. But Tamer bowed down before him as if he wuz pure gold. His name wuz Von Winklstein Von Crankerstone, or I guess that’s it. I can’t be sure even to this late day that I have got the name down right, all the Vons and Winkles and things in their right places. But I have done the best I could, and no man or woman can do more.

Tamer didn’t like it, because I couldn’t git his name right when she introduced him, and I guess I did stumble round considerable amongst them Dutch syllables. But Tamer didn’t like it, for in apology for my shortcomin’s I mentioned Dutch. And she sez out in the back kitchen, where I followed her, to apologize:

“You speak of his bein’ Dutch; why,” sez she, “Josiah Allen’s wife, he is from one of the oldest families in the country, he is a descendant of the Poltroons who settled on the Hudson in Colonial days.”

“Is that so, Tamer?” sez I. “And is a Poltroon any better for bein’ a old one than a young one?”

And she sez, “I didn’t say Poltroon.” And she went on to explain, but it wuz sunthin’ that sounded jest like it. Well, he stayed till after dinner, and then he went off, much to Anna’s relief, I could see plain. But Tamer acted real disappointed, and urged him warm to come agin soon, which he promised to do ready enough. He wuz comin’ back the next week, I believe; he had found some new old graves somewhere that he wanted to identify and claim, if possible. It beats all how fond he wuz of cemeteries. But, then, he had a good deal the look of a tall slim monument himself.

He bid us all good-by in a real polite way, but agin, when I tried to speak his name in farewell, I struggled round and fell helpless amongst the ruins of them syllables.

Why, it beats all the time I had with ’em, and to eppisode forward a little. A few weeks afterwards, when the Poltroon wuz there on another visit, they wuz to our house to tea. He wanted to look in the Jonesville cemetery, so they stopped to our house on their way back. And Thomas J. and his folks, and Tom Willis and Elder Minkley all happened to be spendin’ the afternoon there, and I shall never forgit the names I called that Poltroon trying to introduce him. Why, I called him by more than forty different names, I’ll bet; I strugglin’ and wrestlin’ as you may say among the Vons and Crinkles and etcetery, tryin’ hard to do my very best by him and the other visitors and myself.

And that decided me; I toilin’ and prespirin’ and sweatin’ in my efforts to git the syllables all straight in a row and drive ’em on in front of me, and he standin’ lookin’ like a martyr. He bore up under it wonderful, I must say that for him, lookin’ bad but speechless. It wuz jest after that last effort of mine to git the name jest right (for I wuz introducin’ him to Elder Minkley, and I always try to do my best by ministers, good creeters, they deserve it), that I wunked Tamer Ann out, she lookin’ mad, and I red and prespirin’ with my efforts, and, sez I, “This must end, Tamer Ann.”

And sez she, “I should think as much!”

“Well,” sez I, “Von Crank or Von Wink is what that young man will be called by me for the rest of my days.”

She demurred, but I stood firm. Sez I, “I may have to speak his name several times while I live, and life is too short for me to go stumblin’ round amongst the syllables of his name and wrastlin’ and bein’ throwed by ’em. Von Crank is my choice, but you may take your pick in the two names.”

She see I wuz firm as adamantine rock, and so she yielded, and Von Crank is what I’ve called him ever since. Tom Willis acted tickled, and so did Thomas J. Thomas J. sets a sight by Tom Willis, and so we all do. He is a likely young feller, light complected, with blue-gray eyes that are keen and flashin’, and soft at the same time, and no beard, only a mustache; a tall, broad-shouldered young chap. And as I say he wuz tickled to see Von Crank stand up straight and stiff and immovable genteel, and I callin’ him by so many awful names and knowin’ by my firm stiddy mean I wuz doin’ my very best by him and myself and the world at large.

It hain’t nateral under the circumstances that Tom should love Von Crank or Von Crank love him. They hain’t attached to each other at all, anybody could see that at the most casual glance. To see Von Crank try to patronize Tom and couldn’t, and to see Tom say the dryest, provokinest things to Von Crank in a polite way and Von Crank writhin’ under ’em, but too genteel to say anything back. It wuz a strange seen. And to see Anna by all her lovin’ looks dotin’ on Tom, and Tom’s silent, stiddy devotion to her, and Tamer Ann’s efforts to git ’em apart and still keep genteel—why, it wuz as good as any performance that wuz ever performed in a circus, and so I told Josiah afterwards.

Tom tried hard to act manly and upright, and that always effects me powerful. To see a young man blowed on by such blasts of passion, such a overmasterin’ love and longin’, and still standin’ up straight and not gittin’ blowed over by ’em, it always affects me, I can’t help it, I wuz made in jest that way.

Now, after Von Crank got to goin’ after Anna, Tamer Ann, as I said before, told Tom Willis to never step his foot in her house agin, and have nothin’ to do at all with Anna.

Well, Tom bowed to her, they say, and took his hat right up and left without a word back to her only “good mornin’,” it wuz in the mornin’ time that she told him. But they say, and I believe it, that his face wuz white as death, even to the lips, and they wuz tremblin’, so they say. And mebby he couldn’t say anything owin’ to the sinkin’ of his heart, and mebby it wuz because he wouldn’t promise to give her up and didn’t want to mad Tamer Ann by contendin’ with her. Anyway, they say he didn’t say nothin’ only jest “good mornin’,” and went out.

He might have said enough. Good land! if I had been there I could have told him lots of things to say.

He might have said, “It is pretty late in the day to ask me to give her up when she is right inside my heart and soul, and I should have to tear ’em both open to git her out. It is pretty late in the day to interfere when you have seen Anna and I playmates from childhood. When you’ve seen us grow up side by side, all through our happy youth to manhood and womanhood. When you’ve encouraged us to be together at all times and all places, trusted her to my care hundreds and hundreds of times all these years. Have looked on calmly and seen, for you must have seen, how our hearts wuz growing together, how our lives wuz gittin’ completely bound up in one another. After you have sot quietly and allowed all this, now because a richer, more fashionable suitor asks for Anna you think you will take her away from me, from the one that holds her by the divine right of love, and give her to one she does not belong to. It shows either a criminal carelessness on your part, a criminal neglect, or worse.”

That’s about the way I should have talked if I had been Tom Willis. But he didn’t, he jest walked out and shet the door, not slammin’ it, or nothin’, and—and kep’ right on livin’. Never made no threats about killin’ himself, never boasted, as might be spozed he would, it is so common under the same circumstances, that he had got sick of her, and, in fact, wuz so popular among the wimmen that he had to slight some on ’em now and then, no, Tom never said anything of all this, but jest kep’ right on with his work in a manly, stiddy way, growin’ kinder pale and still for a spell, but at last sort o’ brightenin’ up and havin’ a new and steadfaster light in his eyes, and a more resolved look on his fine forward.

He see Anna every Sunday in church, and, though he obeyed her mother and didn’t give her any outward attention, yet there is a stiddy attention of the soul that a woman can’t misunderstand when it is wroppin’ her completely round and round. There is a language of the eyes beyend Tamer Ann Smith to parse; it wuzn’t in her grammar at all. And if she couldn’t parse it, it wuzn’t likely that she could stop it. No, she might as well try to stop the vivid language of the skies when the hidden forces of nature speaks out in sheets of flame.

Tom’s eyes, as they met Anna’s in the old meetin’ house, held hull love poems, glowin’ stories of deathless devotion and faith in her. And Anna read ’em, she alone held the key to the divine unwritten language; the love in her own heart could alone translate the love in his.

Well, it had run along so for more than a year, and Anna wuz twenty and Tom wuz twenty-three; Tom workin’ hard and beginnin’ to be spoke of as a young lawyer who would rise in the world. And Anna stayin’ to home and tryin’ to be dutiful (duty made hard by naggin’). Havin’ to use Von Crank well under her mother’s eyes and freezin’ him in lonely moments, froze one minute by Anna and thawed out the next by Tamer Ann, and kep’ kinder soft and sloshy all the time by his love for Anna, Von Crank wuzn’t to be envied much more than Tom.

But Tamer Ann (for he had acted up to his high station as a Poltroon, and kinder relied on Tamer Ann to bring Anna round when he knew in his heart that she detested him) kep’ tellin’ him all the time that she would be all right in time, it wuz only a girl’s shyness, etc., etc. So he kep’ on comin’, and Anna kep’ on shunnin’ him all she could, and Tamer Ann kep’ on naggin’, and so it went on. Hamen and John didn’t seem to pay so much attention to this domestic side show, for all their leisure moments, when they wuz in the house, would be took up foolin’ Jack, tellin’ him strange stories, drawin’ him on to talk strange about ’em, and then laughin’ at him. And Jack would meach off, feelin’ all used up and humiliated, and they snickerin’, the fools! There wuz more sense in Jack’s little finger than in their hull long bodies, and so I told Josiah.

Oh, how it incensed me to see it, and the incense grew stronger every time I went there. Tamer Ann had got holt of a hull chest of old dime novels that had fell to her from a distant relative. He wuz jest sent to prison, bein’ a forger and a arson, and, as it wuz for life, why this chest fell onto his relations, and as the rest didn’t want the novels, why Tamer Ann got ’em.

This relation who owned ’em had had a large family who doted on the novels, but they had most on ’em been transported for life or hung, or sunthin’ of that sort. His wife had long before run away with another man, she had worshipped the novels while she lived in the house with ’em, but she had run clear away out of sight, so Tamer Ann got ’em, as I say, and oh! how she and Cicero gloated over ’em and devoured ’em. Anna didn’t care for them, good land! she had a romance in her own heart that took up all her time and tears, poor thing! Jack wuzn’t old enough for ’em. As for Hamen and his brother, they could tell their own lies, good land! they didn’t need the novels, so Tamer had the hull run on ’em herself, she and Cicero.

CHAPTER VIII

Well, to resoom backwards for a spell. Josiah and I wuzn’t goin’ to stay only two days and one night, but, good land! they wouldn’t hear a word to our goin’ so soon, so we stayed three days right along. But then, as Tamer said, think of the visits that they had made to us that wuz onpaid. Well, I thunk on ’em and thought likely as not it wuz our duty to stay. But I see lots of things there I didn’t like to see. I hate to talk about relations; I don’t think it the right thing to do. But I can’t help sayin’ that I did see lots of things that I wanted changed. Not Anna, she wuzn’t one of the things I wanted changed, no, indeed! she and Jack wuz the flowers of the family in full blow. Anna is jest as different from the rest of her family as light is from darkness, and a good deal the same way, and I believe Jack would come up a good deal like her if he got a chance.

One reason is why Anna is so different from her Ma, she wuz brung up by a aunt of her father’s, brung up by hand by Aunt Judith Smith, who, bein’ a old maid, couldn’t, it stands to reason, bring her up in any other way. For years after Anna wuz born Tamer wuz really sick, and this aunt lived with ’em and took care of Anna and thought all the world of her till her death, which occurred when Anna wuz fourteen. She wuz brought up dretful good, curious, hain’t it, she bein’ a old maid, but old maids are sometimes real religious, with good common horse sense, too, and Aunt Judith wuz. And I have always spozed it wuz her bringin’ up and her precepts and examples that made Anna so different.

You see, the ideals she held up in front of Anna wuzn’t fashion and expediency and outside show and vanity, no, indeed! they wuz truth and honesty and honor and simple living and high thinking. She held ’em up in front of her, and held ’em high, too, and propped ’em up by her own simple, straightforward, noble, self-sacrificin’ life. For it wuzn’t any comfort to her to leave her little quiet, comfortable home to take up her abode in the house of a Tamer or even a Hamen. But she shouldered her crosses wherever she found ’em and marched on with ’em silently and oncomplainin’ly and bravely, and folks didn’t know from her groanin’s how heavy they bore down on her shoulders.

She didn’t want to take the care of this worse than motherless child into her own tired hands. And she had plenty of means and no need to, if she hadn’t felt it to be her duty. But she see the little bark jest settin’ out, swashin’ and dashin’ round on the jagged rocks of life, and she felt it to be her duty to take holt of the hellum. Hamen had always been her favorite nephew, and she wuz dretful sorry for his poor little peaked lookin’ baby. So, as I say, she gin up her comfort and ease and histed this cross onto her tired-out back, and commenced trudgin’ along the road of life with it.

And wuzn’t it queer how things will turn out? This job she had tackled only from a sense of duty and in a real martyr sperit become the greatest comfort and pleasure of her life. For pretty soon Love, the great high priest, come in and sanctified her offerings of comfort and ease, and made her way glorious. How she did love Anna, and how Anna did love her. Of course clouds sometimes dimmed the horizon, shadders from Tamer’s personality and influence dimmed the clear sky that she wanted always to shine down onto her darling, also some lighter shadders from Hamen’s onwisdom.

But take it as a hull, Aunt Judith’s influence and sweet wise teachings carried the day, and Anna grew up a girl of a thousand, and at Aunt Judith’s death (which almost broke her heart) she wuz so headed in the right way that she couldn’t be turned very fur from it either way, not by Pa or Ma or any other onwise influence. The money she left Anna wuz the least of the riches she give her.

She died jest about the time that Tamer recovered her health, or as much of it as she ever did recover, so Tamer had the care of Cicero and poor little Jack. But then Jack had Anna, too, to kinder lean on, for Tamer had another spell for some years after Jack wuz born. But Cicero never would hear a word to Anna, he had got thoroughly headed in his Ma’s ways, and then I spoze it wuz kinder hereditary in him, too; he wuz born that way.

Anna is real good lookin’, her cheeks are as pink as fresh young damask roses, her complexion is clear and white and as smooth as satin, and her eyes are very dark, and soft, and bright, too, her hair is dark and wavy and kinks up in cunnin’ little curls on her forward and neck, she can’t do it up so but what them little curls will escape from the comb and cluster round her white neck and forward as if it loved ’em. Oh, she looks well enough, as I have told her time and agin:

“Anna, if you will only be as good as you look, you will git along first rate.” As I sez to her anon or oftener, “Handsome is that handsome duz.”

And she sez, “That is jest what Aunt Judith always said, Aunt Samantha.”

But I’d look at her all the time with that admirin’, appreciative look on my eyebrow that she knew, the witch, jest how pretty I thought she wuz (and I not helpin’ it to save my life). Yes, Anna liked me dretful well, which wuzn’t so strange when one comes to think how well I liked her. And she told me right out plain and square that her feelin’s towards that young Von Crank wuz almost murderous, and she owned up to me that sometimes when he wuz standin’ up so straight and stiff she wuz tempted to tip him over, and sez she, “I don’t believe he would bend at all, but fall right over straight like a clothes pin or a telegraph pole.”

“Well,” sez I, “don’t try to do that in the parlor, Anna, for if it is so, think of the damage he would do to the furniture on the other side of the room.” And I guess I kinder got her mind offen it. But she sez, “You can’t bear him yourself, Aunt Samantha, and I know it.”

“Well, dear,” sez I, “everybody has their own station house in life to fill, and I spoze he has his, or else why should he have a station house?”

Sez she, “He needn’t come round me with his mouldy old compliments, for I would rather live with Tom Willis on bread and water than with him in a palace.”

Anna loves Tom, loves him as she duz her eyes, and as I say, Hamenses wife had invited him there and let ’em grow up together like a mornin’ glory vine round the pillow of a porch, never sayin’ a word aginst their bein’ together, never noticin’ that under the divine spring of youth and love her heart’s tendrils wuz puttin’ out livin’ branches and twinin’ round the pillow of his steadfast devotion, jest as firmly and jest as onbeknown to her as the vines she had planted wuz twinin’ round their supports in the spring and summer of the year.

She waited, Tamer did, till the heart’s tendrils wuz wropped so completely round the heart of Tom Willis that nothin’ but death could ontwine ’em (and I don’t believe that death can, nor Josiah don’t). But, howsumever, at this time Tamer Ann stepped in and begun to tear ’em off. Just because Tom wuz poor, or that is poor in money, for he wuz rich in all the qualities that go to make a young man wealthy in himself, and there wuzn’t any doubt that he would be rich in money in a few years the way he wuz going on now. But his family wuz poor but pious, and Von Crank wuz rich. And Tamer begun to tell me the very next mornin’ after I got there what a great family he had descended from.

And I sez, “How big!”

And she sez, “One of the greatest families in the State.”

“Well,” sez I, “that don’t raise him in my estimation any. There is a man in Loontown that has had thirty-two children by his different wives, but he is a shiftless creeter, and so are most of his children.”

Sez she, “I don’t mean that; I mean an old family.”

“How old?” sez I calmly. And I went on, “There is a man in Spoon Settlement that has got a grandchild over seventy. And that you know, Tamer Ann, must make the old man pretty old, and, in fact, a pretty old family, for they are all livin’, father, son, and grandson. But, good land! nobody ever thought of lookin’ up to old Father Minkler, why, he is on the town, and has been on it for years, and they say now his son is on it and his grandson is jest thinkin’ of gittin’ on it. Good land! I should never think of lookin’ up to a family because they wuz old.”

“Well,” she sez, “they’ve descended from a long line of ancestors, they have great reason to be proud of it, there is where they have the advantage of us.”

“Oh, shaw!” sez I, “that is jest what we’ve all done, or it stands to reason that we shouldn’t be here. We have had to have ancestors, everybody has. I don’t see that he has any more than we have, so fur as that is concerned. I don’t spoze he has had more’n one father, or any of ’em have had more’n one father apiece, and that is jest what we’ve all had. If he had had several fathers and mothers it might be sunthin’ to boast over, and I don’t know as it would after all, for the text sez ‘every man stands and falls on himself,’ or words to that effect.”

And then Tamer Ann sez agin, real hautily, “He is from one of the old Dutch families it makes folks so proud to be descended from. He is a direct descendant of the Poltroons.”

“Well,” sez I calmly, “I shouldn’t wonder a mite if he wuz, but it don’t raise him up any in my estimation, and it wouldn’t if he had had Solomon and Moses for grandfathers. When I gather a white lily I pick it for its beauty and sweetness, and not for the soil it sprung from, good land! what do I care whether it grew on sandy sile or gravelly, or swampy, or anything? I prize it for its own beauty and sweetness that it has drawn by its own life out of the earth. Good land! I should jest as soon take up a handful of this sile and treasure it up and try to see how it come to nourish so sweet a life as I would to grope back amongst the dust of them old Poltroons. Though to be sure it is nateral that a posy should strike some clingin’ roots down into the sile it grew on, it is nater and can’t be helped. You take any posey that is healthy and vigorous, and take any tree or bush whatsumever, and when you pull it out of its home it takes a wrench, a hard wrench to start it, the tendrils strike so deep. God made posies and hearts kinder clingin’ in their nater and they hang onto their old homes. It is nateral for folks to look back with pride upon the noble doin’s of their forefathers if they’ve done ’em, but to boast over a Poltroon jest from the fact of his bein’ a Poltroon—I should never boast over it, never.”

“Patroon,” sez Tamer hautily, “I have corrected you before in this.”

“Well,” sez I mildly, “they sound considerable alike, and when there are so many big words that mean about the same thing it is nateral that folks should sometimes git ’em kinder mixed.”

“They wuz high families,” sez Tamer, “they descended from the Dutch settlers on Manhattan Island, that the grandest families of to-day claim with pride as being their ancestors.”

“Oh,” sez I, “you mean them old market gardeners, them old cabbage raisers, fur hunters, and pumpkin farmers. Why, how you talk,” sez I, “I think more of Von Crank than I did. I had no idee his ancestors wuz good honest farmers, plantin’ and diggin’ their own sile. I spozed from his looks and mean that he had never done anything more useful than to gnaw canes and look through a glass eye onto nothin’, I am glad you told me, Tamer, why his ancestors must be real congenial to Josiah and me, though of course we own more land and live better than them old Dutchmen did. But they wuz likely, though poor, and put to it for things, and a sort of beer guzzlin’, ignorant set, but not to blame for not knowin’ much.”

Tamer didn’t like it, but she turned the subject off onto her resolve to not let Anna have anything to do with Tom Willis, seemin’ly not carin’ a mite what wuz goin’ on in Anna’s heart, no more than if she wuz one of the enchanted females she had read so much about.

But all this time, in spite of Tamer Ann’s perfect indifference to the life happiness of Anna, she didn’t let anything interfere with her riggin’ her up in the latest fashion, she didn’t let any of the “Enchanted Females of the Wild Forest; or, Petrified Dragons of the Dark Prairies,” or the last of the new diseases hender her from seein’ with her own eyes that Anna had the newest and curiousest kind of tattin’ on her underclothin’ and her dresses made in the latest fashion, and all the smaller things about her clothin’ wuz in first rate order.

These Tamer Ann called the essentials of life, and she allowed nothin’ to interfere with ’em, but if she had been one of the Enchanted Princesses or petrified animals she couldn’t been more dumb and deef to the real soul and heart needs of her child. It is pitiful, mighty pitiful, when the door of a child’s heart is blockaded day by day by the stupidity and ignorance of a mother, till at last the doors and winders are all shet up and the mother shot out doors, ornamentin’ the outside with shiffon and jewelry and knowin’ nothin’ of what is goin’ on inside.

It is pitiful, and in ninety cases out of a hundred the mother is the one to blame. Why, good land! she is inside in the first on’t, and there is nothin’ to hender her from keepin’ inside but ignorance, carelessness, neglect, lack of sympathy, or lack of time. In Tamer’s case it wuz mostly lack of time as I have shown. The elopin’ females and Dejected Denizens of the Dungeon Keep kep’ her too busy, them and her basiler menigitis and sinevetus and sangeletus and perinitus and etc., etc., etc., and her domestic duties, some on ’em which she wuz to blame for undertakin’, and I told her so. She had a new hired girl whose real name wuz Hannah, but who thought it would be more romantick to call herself Arabeller, and she made a specialty of the “beller,” she wanted it pronounced Arabeller, and Tamer Ann, thinkin’ that it would be real romantick to have a hired girl by that name, she jined forces with her, and by the time I got there the name Hannah wuz forgot, seemin’ly, and Arabeller wuz the name.

Well, Arabeller wuz a girl I wouldn’t have inside my house. She wuz big and fat, and I never see her face when it wuz what I called clean, and her dirty lookin’ hair, kinder drab color, wuz all covered with hair oil and scented with bergamont. What her complexion would be if it wuz washed clean I didn’t know, and spoze I never shall, but as it wuz it looked muddy and grimy, and wuz all covered with black heads and pimples, and coarse powder. She wore, in the afternoon, her cheap, gaudy dresses in a train draggin’ round the house, and cheap, high-heeled shues, settin’ table and washin’ dishes with them dirty ruffles floppin’ after her, wipin’ up all the dirt and nastiness that she couldn’t seem to git enough of in any other way.

She had girted her waist down into the smallest dimension she could, but bein’ fat and her buttons not to be relied on, there would be dretful gaps on the waist in different places, and between the waist and draggly skirt, and as she wuz one of the girls so common in the country, who won’t work out unless she is one of the family, her clothin’ showed up to good advantage at the table, the dirt on her face and dress bein’ emphasized by blotches of flour and grease, stove blackin’, prespiration, and sweat.

She, too, wuz most always to be seen with a dime novel in her hand. Sometimes she would stop and take up “The Queen of the Haunted Palace” in her hands and foller her fortunes while her dish water got cold. And once I see her myself readin’ the Police Gazette while she wuz fryin’ sassige, and one end of the dirty sheet drizzled down into the fat (I didn’t eat any of the sassige).

She had took music lessons. Her Ma went out washin’ and had to mortgage her cow, the only thing she possessed in the world, to pay for Arabeller’s lessons. And, though there wuz no prospects of her ever havin’ anything to practice on more melogious that the clothes wringer, no earthly prospect or heavenly, either, for I didn’t believe she would ever be good enough to play on the golden harp even if she knew the notes. But she would take lessons, and now when she could escape for a minute from the kitchen we could hear her singin’ and playin’ at the top of her rough, coarse voice, “The Bowery Boy” and the “Beauteous Ballet Girl,” which she pronounced “beauchieus ballet.”

If she had a spark of talent I should have approved of her ambition, but she couldn’t sing no more than a horse can make fried cakes. And I told Tamer that if her Ma had gin the cow music lessons and mortgaged Arabeller to pay for them, she would have got better returns for her money, though who would take the mortgage wuz more than I knew, unless it was Cicero.

Well, as I told Tamer Ann, I couldn’t have such a girl in my house overnight, bold, boastin’, insolent, lyin’, nasty inside and outside, leerin’, brazen, and altogether worthless. But Tamer said she got her real cheap, and she thought by havin’ her instead of a better girl she could save money enough to git a new sealskin cloak and a bracelet out of the household money, so she hired her for a song almost.

“Not one of her songs, I hope,” sez I.

“No,” Tamer said, she said it in a parable way. Well, as nigh as I could make out from what I see myself and from what I hearn, Cicero thought it would be kinder manly and like one of his Bandit Heroes to fall in love with her, and pay her attentions, not in the good open hullsome way of comrades and playmates, in her few hours of leisure, but in the dime novel, pirate way, brigand and burglar, romantick, sentimental way.

There wuz a cave in the woods back of Hamenses, and he used to retire there quite a good deal. And he tried time and agin to run away with her. She wuzn’t likely, so Tamer said, and she knew she would have to watch her when she hired her, but she said she thought she could, with her family’s help. She seemed to specially count on Cicero’s help from her talk to me, but ’tennyrate she owned up that it made her sights of trouble.

And I sez to her in the cause of duty, “Tamer Ann, why did you hire a girl that you thought wuzn’t likely? Why did you bring such a girl into the house with your children? I wuz never much of a hand to wave fire brands round in piles of tow and flax, or light parlor matches in powder magazines. But, howsumever,” sez I, “everybody hain’t alike, and I spoze mebby you thought you would git along.”

“Yes,” sez she, “for I knew we could watch her through the day, and then we always nail her up at night.”

“Nail her up!” sez I, agast at the idee, “what do you mean?”

Sez she, “There hain’t no lock to her door, but we have got an old door that we set aginst hern and nail it up every night.”

“Don’t you feel queer while you are doin’ it?” sez I, for truly it made me feel queer as a dog jest hearin’ it.

“Yes,” sez she, “I do feel queer, and specially when we drag her in by moonlight, for she has often tried to run away with Cicero, but we would some on us hear her, and then we would have to go out and drag her back and nail her up.”

“Wuzn’t it a sight of work?” sez I pityin’ly.

“Yes,” sez she, it wuz a sight of work, for she wuz so mean that she would let her feet drag, and they would have to pull her back by main force.

Sez I, “Tamer Ann, it seems to me that it would be easier to wash the dishes and sweep than to do this, and that is about all Arabeller duz anyway.”

Tamer said it wuz a good deal more work, but it wuz genteel to employ a servant, it give a sort of a air to a house to have a servant in it.

And I sez, “Yes, it duz give considerable air, if you have to be rushin’ round at any time of night to drag her in and nail her up.”

“Yes,” sez Tamer, “of course my family help me, but that has made me sights of worriment agin, for I most know that Cicero has kep’ up a clandestine correspondence with her, and would slip notes into her hand while he wuz helpin’ me drag her back. I have ketched him,” sez she, “leavin’ the nails loose so she could break out while he wuz helpin’ me nail her up.”

“Tamer,” sez I, real earnest, “do hear to me; do git rid of Arabeller, or you will sup sorrer from it in the end.” And I see that all that wuz keepin’ her back from it wuz the idee of style and gentility.

I didn’t dread her influence so much over Anna, for I felt that her nater wuz so healthy and wholesome and well grounded in good actions that it would reject the pizen atmosphere. And little Jack, I hoped and prayed none of her acts would even be known to him by name. But I worried more than considerable over the hull matter, and so did the neighbors, I could see. Why, one night while I wuz there a neighborin’ woman, Miss Presley, walked right into Tamer’s kitchen without knockin’, with an old shawl over her head and a lantern in both hands. Cicero had gone into her paster and took both her horses and gone off somewhere with ’em, he and Arabeller. She wuz a old maid and said she had always been imposed upon, but she demanded help to hunt her horses.

So Tamer and Hamen had to git up and pacify Miss Presley and help hunt, for sure enough when they went to Cicero’s room he wuzn’t there, and when they went to Arabeller’s room there the nails wuz pulled out and she wuz let loose, and we found out afterwards they had both run away to git married. But Hamen started off horseback, he and the hired man, and they catched them jest before they reached the minister’s house down on Stuny Creek.

Well, that broke that up, but Arabeller went about the house real surly, and Cicero, though he didn’t say much, had such mysterious looks that I most knew he wuz meditatin’ rapine or burglarly or sunthin’ or ruther. But, as it come out afterwards, he wuz plannin’ to carry Arabeller off into his cave and keep her there till he could bring a clergyman stealthily to the trysting place to unite them. That all happened after I wuz there. But I worried about him considerable nights after I went to bed, and wondered sadly how it would all come out.

But to resoom backwards. The next mornin’ after we went there Tamer got a good breakfast. She wuz sufferin’ from sinevetus, she said, and wuz dretful afraid of basler menigitus, but they didn’t hender her from gittin’ a first rate meal—good steak, creamed potatoes, hot rolls, coffee, etc., and she did it almost all herself, for Anna had her work to do, and Arabeller couldn’t git a good meal to save her life.

CHAPTER IX

Well, after breakfast Tamer and I wuz in the settin’ room both on us sewin’, for I had took a fine shirt of Josiah’s to finish, and she wuz embroiderin’ some lace ruffles to trim a skirt for Anna.

“Tamer, I should think such work would be hard on your basiler disease, whatever it is. Hain’t it dretful hard to embroider that fine lace?”

“Yes, Josiah Allen’s wife, it is hard, but you know I don’t mind any labor or any care if I can advance my children’s happiness, you know jest how I watch over their interests and am willing to spend and be spent in their service.”

And she bent closter still over the fine complicated stitches of that wearisome lookin’ embroidery, and I thought and couldn’t help it, if you would spend half or a quarter of the time you spend in ornamentin’ the bodies of your children, in lookin’ out for their souls and hearts, and studyin’ their welfare, you would come out better in the end.

And at this very minute little Jack come in lookin’ bright as the mornin’, which wuz very fair. He wuz dressed up slick and clean in a little blue suit, with a deep collar braided painfully by Tamer Ann in fine black braid, and all up and down the side of his little legs that fine embroidery run. And Tamer begun to charge him the minute he got into the room to not run round out doors for fear he would soil that beautiful new suit. “You know,” sez she, “your Ma done that for you when she couldn’t hardly lift her head from the pillow. It almost killed your Ma, that work did.”

I see at this Jack’s little face grew overcast with a couple of shadders. One wuz cast from the martyr’s cloudy brow, no doubt the thought of killin’ his Ma wuz more or less painful to him, and the other and deeper shadder wuz that he couldn’t run round free as the young colts that wuz prancin’ about the medder by the side of the house. His poor little legs wuz jest achin’ to jump and bound and curvit round, and there they wuz doomed to imprisonment in a braided fortress. Oh, my! I wuz sorry for Jack, sorry as I could be. Well, Tamer and I sot there and had quite an agreeable visit, Tamer has her properties, though she is sot and overbearin’, I mean when she is herself, more’n half the time I do believe she imagines herself a Female Amazonian or a African Princess or sunthin’.

We talked about the different relations on both sides, and quite a good deal about my grandchildren; she talked middlin’ agreeable, but what I can’t understand in her is her total lack of good judgment. Why, she said that there had been other little girls that looked jest as well as Tirzah Ann’s youngest, little Anna Thyrza, and she said she didn’t like the name, and if Tirzah had called her after herself she ort to called her Tirzah Ann. Sez I, “We call her Delight, she don’t hardly know she has got any other name, and,” sez I, “our daughter can’t bear the name of Tirzah Ann, she thinks it is so old fashioned and humbly, and so I don’t know that she is so much to blame for naming her in this roundabout way after herself. Whitfield would have the baby named after her Ma,” sez I.

Sez Tamer, “I shall always call the child Tirzah.” And agin I told her this it wuzn’t the child’s name, and agin Tamer sez firmly, “Tirzah is a good name, and I shall call her Tirzah.” And so she did call her through the hull of our conversation in spite of all my explanations.

Well, bein’ a visitor, I thought I wouldn’t contend with her, but I wuz some mad on the inside about it. But jest while we wuz talkin’ Tamer looked out towards the road and said, “If there don’t come Aunt Nabby Barnes! oh, dear me! the sight of her fairly makes me sick, and she will stay all day most likely. Well, we have got to make the best of it, I spoze, she has got lots of money and no heirs, and she thinks a good deal of Jack. Now, Jack,” sez she, to the little boy who wuz lookin’ on with open eyes and ears, “you must be good to her and pay attention to her all day.” And then agin she resoomed her complaints. “Why couldn’t she have stayed away to-day and let us alone? I hope she won’t stay long.” By that time Aunt Nabby had knocked at the door, and Tamer met her with enthosiasm and several kisses, and sez:

“Oh, my dear Aunt Nabby! how glad we all are to see you! Why haven’t you been here before? It seems an age since we have seen you; you have come now to stay a good, long while with us, haven’t you? Jack come right here and kiss dear Aunt Nabby.”

“I won’t,” sez Jack. “I don’t want her here.”

“Do you come this minute, Jack, and kiss dear Aunt Nabby. Jack talks about you so much, Aunt Nabby; he thinks everything of you.”

“I don’t,” sez Jack; “I don’t think anything of her at all.”

“Jack, do you come here this minute and kiss Aunt Nabby, or I will punish you severely.”

Jack dragged himself towards her as if a heavy weight hung to his feet, and put his cheek up against hers. He didn’t kiss her, I don’t believe, but his mother thought he did, and so she let him off.

Well, that afternoon Jack told a fib, and his mother ketched him at it. It wuz what they call a white lie, as for me I have always made a practice of thinkin’ that lies are never white, that they are never any color but black. But this one of Jack’s wuzn’t very black, anyway, it wuz a sort of a small light colored one (if they are ever light colored). But you ort to seen the fuss Tamer Ann made over it, and it wuz jest what ort to be done, he ortn’t to be allowed to fib. But who learnt him to lie? Who sot him the pattern? Them wuz the two questions that wuz hantin’ me as I hearn Tamer Ann whippin’ him and heard Jack cryin’ over it.

Tamer come downstairs completely exhausted, and sez she, “Oh, what a time I have had! What a job it is to bring up children right! My arms ache as if they would come off, but I will bring my children up right if my arms do come off in the job. Lyin’ is sunthin’ I won’t have in this house.”

And Tamer meant what she said, I hain’t no idee but what she did, she thought she abominated lyin’ and never mistrusted she had been lyin’ all the mornin’ herself, about three and a half hours of clear, stiddy lie, black as a coal. She didn’t mistrust it, but in the cause of duty I reminded her of it, for I loved Jack and couldn’t bear to see him spilte, and I sez, “Children are quick to foller patterns.”

And she sez, tostin’ her head, “Nobody ever ketched me in a lie, or Hamen, either.”

Sez I, “Jack heard you groanin’ and dreadin’ Aunt Nabby, and hatin’ to see her, to her back, and then kissin’ and tellin’ her how glad you wuz to see her to her face; what is that, Tamer Ann Allen, what is that?”

She tosted her head agin and sez, “Oh, you have got to do such little things to git along peaceable.” Sez I, “Well, I spoze Jack thought he had got to tell his little lie in order to git along smooth.”

Sez Tamer Ann, “This is entirely different; we older ones have the duties of society restin’ on us——”

“The older ones,” sez I, interruptin’ her, “ort to behave themselves and not set patterns of falsehood before the children.”

“Society, as it is now organized,” sez Tamer Ann, “cannot exist and run smoothly without a little, not exactly falsehood or deceit, I wouldn’t use exactly those words——”

“I would,” sez I firmly, “I would, that is jest what they be, jest what you used this mornin’ and whipped Jack for this afternoon.”

“Society would break in pieces if it were not for the oil of these qualities, which I cannot exactly name——”

“I can,” sez I firmly; “I can name ’em.”

“If it were not for this to soften the friction of the machinery, society would break in pieces.”

“Then let it break into pieces,” sez I, “into a hundred pieces. But surely,” I sez, “there is such a thing as truth and frankness and simplicity and honor in the world, surely there are them that live their lives in a simple, honest way, not hidin’ or coverin’ up, nor pretendin’ to be what they are not, but jest go on from day to day and from year to year doin’ their best, not pretendin’ their best is any better than it is, and not pretendin’ that it is any worse (which is jest as wrong, though we don’t look at it in that light). Not awed by them above ’em in worldly wealth and station, thinkin’ how little one really can own in this life, not lookin’ down on them beneath ’em in worldly knowledge or wealth, thinkin’ how different God looks on different gifts from what we do, and thinkin’ mebby he counts wealth of heart more worthy than wealth of intellect. For that very reason havin’ no contempt for common people or common things, knowing’ well that what we call common He might call oncommon. The beggar mebby with his heart full of prophecy and hope beatin’ under his squalid rags, and the king like as not carryin’ his poor starved heart to a banquet with his royal robes trailin’ about him. We can’t see through these rags and robes always, and see what poverty or wealth they cover. So it is best to carry our heads and minds jest as straight and stiddy as we can, and doin’ our own duty we will have less time to either look up or down on our poor fellow mortals travelin’ along the road with us, we won’t have the time to pretend to like them when we don’t, to be overjoyed to see ’em when we hain’t, but will try to tell the truth with fear and tremblin’.”

Sez Tamer Ann, “Would you tell everybody right out blunt what you think of ’em?”

“No,” sez I firmly, “no, indeed! that would make the world too curious a place, that would make circuses and shows and curosities too common and frequent in our streets. Oh, no,” sez I, lookin’ pensively at Tamer Ann, who had begun to embroider agin fiercely, “I should hate to tell folks what I thought of ’em for even half an hour. And there is no need of it, everybody can mind their own bizness a good deal of the time, it don’t require much of any nack to keep your tongue between your teeth, and not tell what you think, to keep back things when it hain’t necessary to tell ’em.” Sez I reasonable, “It is hard to do oft times, but it is much better than to say a lot of things you don’t mean.”

Sez Tamer Ann, “Folks will git into places in this world where it is impossible to git out peaceable without wigglin’ round and deceivin’ a little.”

“There is always a open place above ’em,” sez I, “let ’em look for help there and they will git it, and,” sez I firmly, “I have always found that truth wuz the best to depend on in the long run even from a worldly point of view, to say nothin’ of right and wrong. It hain’t half so hard to keep kinder still and not talk a lot of trash you don’t mean, and at the same time it saves your breath to talk considerable about what you do like. And that I wuz always quite a case to do. I always seem to have to talk about folks and things that I like. The world is so full of beauty and goodness and glory, and power and grandeur and loveliness, you meet all the time folks so full of good qualities, things to admire and like, that it uses up my breath. I never seem to have any left to praise up things and folks I don’t like and look admirin’ at ’em, I don’t seem to have the time and breath even if I wanted to, which I don’t, Heaven knows.”

“Oh, well,” sez Tamer Ann, sithin’ deep, “it is so hard to know what to do, sometimes I think it is better to use a little deceit, if by doin’ so you can make folks feel agreeable, and make yourself and others happier.”

Sez I dryly, very dry, dry as chips, “I spoze that is how Jack felt, I spoze he felt that it would make you happier if he told you he had done what you sot him to do, and Jack had partly done it, as you know very well. I spoze he felt that it would make you and himself happier and the friction lighter on the wheels of society, and his poor little back, if he told you it wuz all done. But you didn’t seem to like it, and the friction wuz severe judgin’ from the groanin’s and screamin’s I heard from upstairs. But as long as you do the same thing yourself, Tamer Ann Allen, and teach Jack to do it, in the most powerful way, the way of example, you hadn’t ort to whip him. For that is one theme for which I have labored long and feel deeply, to not blame children for what we do ourselves and teach them to do.”

“Well,” sez Tamer, foldin’ up her embroidery, “it is time to put the teakettle on.” And she went out and shot the door middlin’ hard, but I didn’t care if she did, I had leaned against Duty and felt considerable calm in my frame.

She got a real good supper, and I a-settin’ out on the porch could hear her walk to and fro settin’ the table in the dining room, Arabeller bein’ out in the kitchen cookin’ sunthin’. And then it wuz I see that my talk to Tamer hadn’t struck in as I wanted it to, but I pacified myself by turnin’ my thoughts onto the needecessity of watchin’ after the seed is sown, and not be discouraged because it won’t spring up the same hour you put it into the soil. No, I felt (some of the time) that Tamer’s nater wuz kinder sandy soil, bein’ drained by her different diseases, and beat down on by the lurid glare of the climate she dwelt in most of the time, namely them foamin’, blood-curdlin’ novels of hern, and I ort to wait in patience, and as the Sam sez be willin’ to sow in season and out of season, hopin’ that some of it would spring up and bear good fruit.

Well, the reason of this simely wuz the eppisode I witnessed through the open winder between Tamer and poor little Jack. She wuz learnin’ him a lesson in Gography every day, and as he had run looser on account of company bein’ there, his lesson wuz belated and he wuz tired, but she had sent him after his little Gography and set him at it while she wuz settin’ the table. She told him to bound Bolivia. Jack wuz in one of his wild moods, he had ’em sometimes, restless, obstropulous moods, jest as we all have. Jack wuz standin’ up on two chairs in front of his Ma some like the Colossial Roads, I have heard Thomas J. read about.

In some things Hamen’s wife is real lax, laxer than I would be. I should have made Jack stand up in front of me, or set. But she didn’t mind, so he stood up with his feet on two chairs real defiant lookin’ and uppish. And he spoke out loud and firm, and sez he:

“I don’t like the word, Bolivia, Boliver is a good word, I will bound Boliver,” and he stood up firmer than ever and the chairs further apart, seemin’ly.

Sez Tamer, “Do you bound Bolivia.”

“Boliver,” sez Jack, “is bounded on the north by——”

“Bolivia!” sez Hamen’s wife.

“Boliver!” sez Jack firmly; “I like the word, and Boliver it shall be!” And Tamer of course couldn’t stand that, and so she had to whip him again, but I hearn him, as she dragged him upstairs, say kinder low, but jest so she could hear him, “Boliver.”

And she tusseled more than half an hour with him, and supper wuz belated, and she come down hot and wore out with her efforts to make him give up, and sez she, “He is such a hard child to manage, I can’t make him give up and say things right. Now, that child knew that Boliver wuzn’t the right word, but still he wuz bound to have his own way and say it as he wanted to.”

Then Duty gin me a real hard jog, I up and sez to her: “Children are great cases to foller example and do what they see done.”

“What under the sun do you mean?” sez she wonderin’ly.

“Why,” sez I, “this very mornin’ when you wuz bound and determined to call little Delight Tirzah, I told you that wuzn’t her name, but you said that it wuz a good name and you should call her so. I noticed Jack eyin’ us clost as if it wuz a new and agreeable idee, that folks could alter names if they wanted to, and,” sez I firmly, “Delight’s name is no more Tirzah than Bolivia is Boliver!”

“Oh, well,” sez Tamer, “that is of no consequence at all. What I do and what Jack can do is two.”

“Yes,” sez I solemnly, “and it may turn out to be more than two in the end.”

Sez she coldly, “I don’t know what you mean.” And to tell the truth, I don’t really know as I knew myself, but it made a kinder good endin’ to our talk. But as anybody can see Jack wuzn’t a mite to blame in the Boliver affair, he is naturally very conscientious, if they only knew enough to appreciate it, he always wants to fix things jest right even in his play. I remember one time when I wuz stayin’ there over Sunday he gin a remarkable instance of it.

Tamer wuz strict, I must say, about not lettin’ Jack play games on Sunday, and he wuz good about mindin’, but I spoze he hankered after playin’ sunthin’ when the time hung too heavy on his hands, and, like older folks, he wanted a change. He had one Bible game that Tamer let him play, but I spoze he had got tired of it, and then the names wuz dretful tegus to keep the run on—Nebuchadnezer, Melchizedec, Mephilboseth—good land! they wuz hard for grown folks to git right. Hamen and his brother, John, wuz great cases to play cards evenin’s, and Jack had a game that he played with ’em some like authors. I had played it myself with him sometimes week-day evenin’s, and Jack come to me that Sunday evenin’ and sez: “Aunt Samantha, why can’t we play a Bible game with cards?”

And I sez, “I don’t see how you could fix it so as to play a Bible game with ’em.”

And he sez, “Well, you can call the two spot Jacob, and I can call for it, and we can call the ten spot Paul, or the Jack, and you can call for him.”

And I sez, “I would hate to call such a good man as Paul the Jack.”

“Well,” sez he, “we could call the king Paul, and the queen Mary.”

But I talked him offen the idee, it didn’t seem right to me somehow. But he wuz honest and likely about it and didn’t mean no harm, and at the best it wuz only tryin’ to reconcile science and religion, or religion and fashion, as so many do, holdin’ the world in one hand and religion in the other, and tryin’ to carry ’em both stiddy. But Hamen and John laughed like two big gump heads about it, and the next evenin’ when they wuz playin’ they would call the two spot “Jacob” every time, and look at Jack and laugh till I felt that it wuz enough to make him swing right out and play cards Sunday, and not try to reconcile it with goodness and religion. But Tamer, when she found out about it, whipped him severe, she said it wuz irreverent and she wouldn’t have it. And that wuz jest the way it wuz the hull durin’ time.

Well, we didn’t stay but a day or two after the Boliver affair. Josiah felt that he must be to home, so we went, Tamer promisin’ Jack, who cried hard when we started, that he might come down and stay several days with us in a week or so, when she went to see Aunt Mary John she would leave him there and then stop and git him on her way home.

CHAPTER X

Little Delight burnt up the world a week ago last Wednesday, somewhere along about the middle of the forenoon.

She stayed here three days and four nights, while her Pa and Ma went to North Scriba to his folkses on a visit. Diphtheria wuz ragin’ there among the little children, and we none of us wuz willin’ to let Delight go. And they thought that they must go, for Barzilly Minkley, who hadn’t been in this part of the country for years and years, had come home to his folkses on a visit (Barzilly is Whitfield’s own cousin on his father’s side), and all the Minkleys wuz invited to the old Minkley homestead to visit with him.

Whitfield wanted to go, but didn’t want to unless Tirzah Ann went. I approved of their goin’, and told Tirzah Ann I would help her all I could. I helped her make a new cashmere dress and a blue wool travelin’ dress, and told her she could wear my new waterproof in welcome, hern wuz a old one. And I told her I would take care of little Delight and take it as a privelige. So they started early on a Tuesday mornin’, and we went after the child Monday night, so’s not to belate ’em on their journey. And it wuz on the Wednesday follerin’ about ten o’clock in the forenoon that she burnt up the world.

She wuz dretful willin’ to come home with us, and we wuz dretful willin’ she should come, which made it willin’ all round, and agreeable. She thinks as much of Josiah and me as she duz of her Pa and Ma. And I made her a bed on the lounge in our room, and it did seem good to have her there. We took sights of comfort.

Her little appetite wuz excellent, and it wuz a great comfort to me to cook things she called for. I can tell you it brought back old times when her Ma and uncle, Thomas J., wuz little children, every time I baked turnovers for her. And when I fried cakes it did seem so good to fry men and wimmen and children and every livin’ animal I could think on for her. And it seemed as if I couldn’t hardly satisfy her on the animals. I do believe I fried every critter I ever hearn on, unless it wuz a hyena, and it kinder seems as if I fried one of them one day, but I won’t say for certain, maybe it wuz a catamount, they look some alike, anyway.

But we did enjoy havin’ her there the best that ever wuz. When she got up in the mornin’ and come to us with her great bright eyes dancin’, and the mornin’ light shinin’ on her wavin’ hair, it almost seemed as if it wuz our lost youth comin’ back towards us with immortal hope and gladness in its glances. We loved her so, she wuz so much a part of our own hearts and lives that it seemed as if our love for her and our tender pride and happiness in her, carried us back into the Long Ago. And we could almost fancy she wuz one of our youthful dreams gin back to us and made real.

Oh, we took sights and sights of comfort with her, I don’t think we love her any better than we did her Ma and Uncle, Thomas J., I know we don’t, and I don’t think the neighbors are doin’ right when they say we do. And I think it is very unkind and unreasonable of ’em to say that we humor her to death and make a perfect fool of her. It is not so.

But we have more time to spend with her than we did with our children when they wuz little. Then we had to work hard to git along and pay for the place. And Josiah didn’t have no time to take Tirzah Ann or Thomas J. onto the plough handle in front of him and let ’em ride round the field with him, and etcetery. And I didn’t have time to stop sweepin’ and washin’ dishes and let ’em play they wuz washin’ dishes and sweepin’, and so forth and so on.

And we didn’t have time, Josiah and me, to let ’em take holt of our hands, one of us on each side of ’em, like the Babes in the Woods, and lead us all over jest where they wuz a mind to—into the woodshed and all over the dooryard, and the barn. But now when Delight is here we are jest the Babes, Josiah and me, to be led off anywhere she wants to lead us.

For things are different now. The farm is paid for, the children are brung up, and well brung up (everybody admits that). And if little Delight wants to lead round her Grandpa and me she is goin’ to lead us, and there hain’t nobody goin’ to break it up. Good land! we enjoy it as much as she duz. And if she should take it into her little head to lead us off into the woods and cover us up with leaves, it wouldn’t be any of the neighbor’s bizness, if Josiah and me wuz willin’ to be led and covered, as we most probable should be.

I think it is very unkind of the neighbors to say we let her have her own way all of the time, and don’t correct her at all. It is not anyways likely it is so, but spozen it wuz, if her way wuz the right way why not let her have it?

It’s very seldom that she duz a thing that is the least mite out of the way. I don’t know that I could exactly approve of her burnin’ up the world—that might not been exactly the fair thing to do, but it is very, very seldom she duz a thing a minister would be ashamed of doing. She is a oncommon child for goodness. I don’t say it because she is my grandchild, not at all. But truth will out. She has a remarkable sweet, even disposition, and as to morals—well! I would like to see the child that would go ahead of her in morals. Why, we couldn’t tempt her to touch a penny that didn’t belong to her. And burglary, or arson, or rapine, why, nothin’ would tempt her into it. She is a wonderful child.

And she is jest as truthful as the day is long, that is, what she calls truth. Everything is new to her and strange. The thoughts in her little brain jest wakin’ up, and to a imaginative child the dreams and fancies that fill her little mind, the child’s world within, must seem as strange as the new strange things of the world about her.

It is all a untried mystery to her, and it stands to reason that she can’t separate things all to once and put the right names to ’em all. The gay romances of the child’s fairy world within from the colder reasonin’ of the world without. The child’s world is purer than ourn, it is the only land of innocence and truth we know in this dreary life. And it seems as if we would let our souls listen to catch any whispers from that land, so sweet, so evanescent.

For there is the only perfect faith, unbounded, uncalculating, so soon to be displaced by doubt. The only perfect innocence, the blessed ignorance of wrong, so soon, so surely to be stained by the knowledge of sin. The divine faith in other’s goodness so soon to be dimmed by distrust. The gay, onthinkin’ happiness, so soon to be darkened by sorrow and anxiety—the rosy hopes so soon to fade away to the gray ashes of disappointment. Fair land! sunny time! so bright, so fleetin’—it seems as if we should treat its broken language, its strange fancies tenderly and reverently, rememberin’ the lost time when we, too, were wandering in its enchanted gardens. Rememberin’ that the gate of death must swing back before we can again enter a world of such purity, such beauty.

But we do not, we meet its pure and sweet unwisdom with our grim, rebukin’ knowledge which we gained as Eve did, its innocent, guileless ways with the intolerance of our dry old customs, its broken fancies, its sweet romancin’ with cold derision or the cruelty of punishment. It makes me fairly out of patience to think on’t.

It stands to reason, when everything under the sun is new and strange to ’em, they can’t git all to once the meanin’ of every big word in the Dictionary, and mebby they will git things a little mixed sometimes. But how can they help it? Why, what if we should be dropped right down into a strange country where we had never sot our feet before and told to walk straight, and wuz punished every time we meandered, when we didn’t know a step before us, or on each side on us, how could we help meanderin’ a little, how could we help sometimes talkin’ about the inhabitants of the world we wuz accustomed to, usin’ its language?

What we would need would be to be sot in the right way agin, with patience, and over and over agin, and time and time agin. Patience and long sufferin’ and reason is what we should need, and not punishment, and that is what children need.

Many a child is skairt and whipped into bein’ a hippocrite and liar, when, if they had been encouraged to tell the truth—own up their little faults and meanderin’s—and treated justly, patiently, and kindly, they would have been as truthful and transparent as rain water. Children have sharp eyes and are quick to see injustice, and things sink deep into their little souls. They are whipped if they don’t tell the truth, skaired dark nights with the lurid passage—“Liars shall have their portion in the lake of fire and brimstone.”

And then they see their mother smile into some disagreeable visitor’s face and groan at her back. How can the baby wisdom part the smile from the groan, and find truth under ’em? How can we? They are taught under fear of severest punishment to be honest—“Thou shalt not steal.” And then, with their earliest knowledge, they hear their mother boast of some advantage she has gained over the shopkeeper, and their father congratulating himself on how he got the better of his neighbor in a horse trade. And if she be the child of a business man, happy for her if she does not wonder at that sight strange to men and gods, to see her father lose all his wealth one day, to rise up rich the next, rise up from a crowd of poor men and wimmen he has cheated and ruined.

She is taught that deceit is an abomination to the Lord. And then she stands with her little eyes on a level with the washstand, and sees her big sister paint and powder her face, darken her eyebrows, and pad her lean form into roundness. She is taught the exceeding sinfulness of envy, strife, and emulation. And then, in the same breath, urged to commit to memory more Bible verses than little Molly Smith has learned, and consulted about the number of ruffles on her dress with the firm resolve to have one more than she has, so as to be cleverer and look dressier than she duz.

She is taught that God loves good children, and to flee from evil communications, and then counseled to never by any means associate with the washerwoman’s little girl, who is very good, but to play with the banker’s little boy, who is very bad.

She is taught by precept to be studious, industrious, and that Heaven smiles on contented labor, and industry and independence are honorable and to be desired, she hears her mother say solemnly, “Wealth is a snare.” And then she sees that mother bow low at the feet of the rich, stupid, idle wife of the millionaire, lose all her dignity and self-respect in the wild effort to become her friend, sees her refuse to recognize in public the honest, intelligent sewing girl.

She is taught that if she duz not learn the catechism and follow its teachings, she is lost indeed, and she learns from that that the chief end of man (and presumably wimmen) is to fear God and enjoy Him forever. And then taught by the louder teaching of maternal anxiety and counsel that the chief end of wimmen is to be married, to get an establishment and a rich husband to support her. How is the child to learn good from evil? God help the dear little souls! and if they keep one iota of the sweet, oncalculatin’ trust, the divine innocence of childhood, it is by the direct grace of God, and no thanks to the poor worldlings and sinners by whom they are surrounded.

Amongst the marvelous wonders of God’s universe to me one of the greatest mysteries is this, how a good God, a just, pitiful God, should send into such hands as He duz such little white souls.

Some frivolous young girl, whose highest thought and ambition has never soared above her hair ribbon, some brainless boy, whose deepest desire and highest aim has been to wear as small a boot as he could, and contract hopeless debts for hair oil and cheap cigars and whiskey. In some unhappy season, when circuses were not possible, and wishing for a kindred excitement, they rush into matrimony. And into these hands, joined by lowest links, these hands defiled by sin, and weak with the utter weakness of unreasonin’ selfishness and folly, is sent a little pure soul out of Paradise.

And this little child must grope in the dark shadows caused by the denseness of their ignorance. Suffer forever physically, morally, mentally from the evil, the total depravity of their hereditary and teachings. Suffer herself and grow up in the black shadow to transmit its hopeless darkness and guilt down to other generations. Strange, strange, most marvelous of mysteries, why this should be so. But I can’t bear to even look on this dretful picture even in hours of eppisodin’, it is bad enough and strange enough to look in Christian homes, amongst meetin’ house brothers and sisters, and see how the little ones are maltreated.

It looks dretful disagreeable to me, to see a young child whipped for what we do ourselves. Now, I wuz at one of our neighbors’ the other day (one of them that complains the most of our treatment of little Delight), and she has got a young child of her own, some four, or half-past four years of age. And when I went in she wuz whippin’ little Kate with a stick, her face all swelled up with what she called religious principle (I called it anger), but, howsumever, it hain’t no matter what the name on’t wuz, her face wuz all red and inflamed. And she, weighin’ from two to three hundred pounds, wuz standin’ over that little mite of humanity, that she herself brought into the world, for better or worse, stood over it, grippin’ with one hard, red hand the little tender arm, leavin’ great red marks with her voyalence, and layin’ on the stick with the other, for she said she had lied.

SHE WUZ WHIPPIN’ LITTLE KATE, HER FACE ALL SWELLED UP WITH WHAT SHE CALLED RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE.

Page [157].

“And lyin’,” sez she, with her face redder than ever with what she called principle (and I called madness and revenge), “is sunthin’ I won’t have goin’ on in this house!”

Sez I calmly, for I see it wuzn’t my place to interfere, “What has she been lyin’ about?” And she said she had told her to not stay but a hour to Miss Bobbettses playin’ with her little girl, and she had stayed two, had lied about it. She had promised to come back in a hour and didn’t. “She said she forgot all about the time, till the two hours wuz up, and I know she didn’t forgit!”

Sez I, “How do you know she didn’t forgit?”

“Why,” sez she, “how could she forgit when there wuz a clock right in the room? She didn’t come back because she wanted to stay, and she must own it up to me!”

“But,” sez I calmly, “if the child did forgit you are whippin’ her into lyin’ instead of out of it.” I didn’t say no more, for I never interfere, and she took her out into the back room and finished up there, and I heard Kate own up that she had stayed three hours and meant to, and wuz sorry.

And then her mother had to whip her agin because she had owned up too much; finally she got her to own jest enough, and then Miss Gowdey come back into the room triumphant and happy and give the child a big piece of cake and jell. She said she always give the child sunthin’ nice when she owned up to tellin’ a story. And so she felt real good natered to think she had come off conqueror. And we had a good visit.

My bizness there wuz to ask her in a friendly way if she didn’t want to run in with me to see Miss Patten. Miss Patten had got a young child, and we hadn’t either on us seen it. And she said in a agreeable way that she would, and she told her husband when we went out she shouldn’t be gone only “jest an hour,” and told him to hang on the teakettle at five, and she would be there to help set the table. And she told little Kate to look at the clock, and when the pinter stood at jest five her Ma would certain sure be there. Well, Miss Patten wuz dretful agreeable, and so wuz Sam, that is her husband, and so wuz old Miss Patten, who wuz there takin’ care of Susan. And nothin’ to do but we had got to take our things off and stay to supper. We hung back, for we had told our companions we would be home to git supper in good season.

Sez I, “I don’t like to disappoint Josiah.”

“And I can’t disappoint my folks,” sez Miss Gowdey.

“Oh, well,” sez old Miss Patten, “if they go through the world without meetin’ a worse disappointment than that, I guess they’ll git along. They can eat their suppers a little later.”

“Oh,” sez I, “there is everything cooked in the house, all Josiah would have to do would be to make a cup of tea.”

And sez Miss Gowdey, “I have got everything all ready for supper, and Mr. Gowdey can make a better cup of tea any day than I can, he puts it in by the handful, he never uses a teaspoon.”

“Then do stay!” sez Susan.

And sez old Miss Patten, comin’ in from the kitchen (Nabby wuz sick in the settin’ room bedroom), “you needn’t say another word, the table is all sot for you. We have got stewed oysters and warm biscuits and honey, and you have got to stay.”

And she took our bunnets right off and galanted us into the dinin’ room, and we did have a splendid supper. And there it wuz—we two wimmen, both on us weighin’ most two hundred, and with half a century’s experience—there we wuz doin’ jest what Miss Gowdey had whipped little Kate for. That delicate creeter with her little mite of judgment and her easiness to be led astray, and not weighin’ over forty pounds. Well, the supper sort o’ took up our minds, and we set at the table a good long while. And we didn’t want to start off the minute we got through eatin’. But I did feel strange in my mind thinkin’ it over, and, though they wuz dretful agreeable, I sot round in my chair and looked at the clock, and Miss Gowdey turned round and looked, and sez she:

“Good land! if it hain’t eight o’clock. What will our folks say?”

And sez I, “What will Josiah say?” And we started home a pretty good jog. And Miss Gowdey sez, when we had got most to her house:

“For the land’s sake! if we hain’t stayed away three hours.”

And sez I in a cursory way, for I will not hint or meddle, “You whipped little Kate for staying one hour beyend her time, and we have stayed three.”

“Well,” sez she, “I told her to be home in an hour.”

“That is jest what she told you to do,” sez I.

“And,” sez she, “she promised.”

“So did you promise sacred.”

Sez she, “A child is under greater obligations to her parents than the parents are to her.”

“I think they hain’t under half so much obligations, for it is the parents doin’s gittin’ ’em here, the children didn’t git the parents here, it is right the other way.”

“Oh, well, it is different, anyway. Kate is a child, and we are grown folks.”

“So much more the reason for us that we should behave ourselves and not go to lyin’ and bein’ led off into temptation as we have to-night, Sister Gowdey. We are both Methodists.”

The words sunk deep, I see they did, though she only sez:

“I do hope Mr. Gowdey hain’t got supper, a man tears up things so and wastes. I would as soon have a tornado sweep through my buttery as to have a man sweep through it.”

CHAPTER XI.

Well, the next mornin’ Josiah come upstairs where I wuz makin’ up the spare bed, I had had it open airin’ it, and sez he, comin’ into the room excited and agitated:

“Samantha, Delight has burnt up the world!”

I had heard her cryin’ down below, but knew she wuz with him, so didn’t worry about her, and the next thing I knew, ontirely onexpected, he told me what had took place. The Babe had burnt up the world. It wuz thrillin’ and agitatin’ news, very. But I didn’t git excited and skairt as some wimmen would, I only sez coolly:

“When did she burn it up, Josiah?”

“Since you have been up here.”

Sez I calmly, wantin’ to come to the bottom of the matter. “Did you see her, Josiah Allen? Did you see Delight burn up the world?”

“Yes, I see her. I ketched her at it. How should I know,” sez he, in a surly tone, “that she had burnt it up, if I hadn’t seen her do it?”

“Oh,” sez I, “I didn’t know but you missed the world, and mistrusted she had burnt it up.”

“No, I see her at it, I see her burn it up.”

Sez I calmly, bein’ determined to find out the truth, “How come she to burn up the world?”

“She did it to be mean and ort to be spanked for it.”

Sez I firmly, “I don’t believe she did it to be mean. I believe if she did it she did by axident.”

“She didn’t do it by axident, she done it a purpose, and her burnin’ up the world wuzn’t the worst of it, she wuz sassy about it, and ort to be spanked for sass.” I gin him a stern look and kind o’ shot up my lips clost together and tossted my head a very little, but didn’t say a word. But he resented it for all the world as if I had spoke, and there I hadn’t said a word.

“Well, I say she had! she ort to be spanked for burnin’ up the world, and she ort to be spanked for sass. But you can uphold her if you want to.”

“I hain’t said a word of upholdin’.”

“Well, you encourage her in it, and you know you do.”

“Encourage her! Josiah Allen!”

“Yes, you uphold her in burnin’ up the world, and you uphold her in sass.”

“Have I said a word, Josiah Allen?”

“You tossted your head, you know you did.”

“Well,” sez I mildly, “things have got to a strange pass if pardners can’t crook their necks a little when they are makin’ up spare beds. And,” sez I in still more gentle axents, as I patted the mattress and spread a light-colored comfortable over it, under the sheets, “tell me all about it, Josiah.”

“Well, I stepped out into the back kitchen to look for a file, and when I come back she wuz jest burnin’ up the world, jest puttin’ it into the stove.”

“She see me start the fire with an old World yesterday mornin’, and she thought she wuz follerin’ her Grandma’s doin’s and doin’ right.”

“Uphold her if you want to! and uphold her for sass!”

“What wuz the sass?” sez I mildly.

“Well, I snapped her little fingers for puttin’ the paper into the fire, and she cried, and drawed ’em back sudden, and I wuz so afraid she would burn her that I put my hand sudden between her and the fire and jest jammed my hand through the isinglass in the stove and broke it all to smash and she stopped cryin’ and sez, ‘I am glad Gappa broke the issac glass.’”

I laughed a little, a very little, and couldn’t help it. She always will call it “issac glass,” and if I try to make her say micas she will call it “michols,” she is so cunning and cute. He didn’t like my laughin’, I see he didn’t.

Sez he, “I’d laugh if I wuz in your place, sunthin’ ort to be done with her. I couldn’t git her to say she wuz sorry, do the best I could. She will have to be punished.”

“Punished for what?” sez I, as I shook up a piller and put a clean piller bier on it.

“Why, to make her say she is sorry.”

Sez I, as I laid the shams on smooth and pinned ’em up agin the head board, “Mebby she hain’t sorry.”

“Hain’t sorry!” sez he, savage-like, “well, she ort to be, there I ain’t hardly looked at it, and there is lots of news in it I know. As many as seven or eight murders, most probable, and some suicides, and hangin’s and such like, she ort to be sorry, and she has got to say she is.”

“Well,” sez I, a-smoothin’ the things out on the toilet table, “I don’t think she ort to be made to say she is sorry if she hain’t sorry. I believe lots of liars are made in jest that way; probable she told you the truth when she said she wuzn’t sorry, and you want to make her lie,” sez I dryly, “and whip her if she won’t. She see me put a whole paper into the stove this mornin’, and how could she tell the difference between this week’s paper and last? If anybody is to blame we are, we ort to told her to not touch the papers, and we must tell her to not touch the fire. And if I wuz goin’ to punish her for anything it would be for meddlin’ with the stove. I shouldn’t whip her for tellin’ the truth, that wouldn’t be my way.”

“Well, she ort to be punished for sass.”

“I don’t believe she meant it for sass,” sez I, “I wouldn’t interfere if you wuz correctin’ her. But I do not think she meant it for sass.”

“What did she mean it for, then?”

“Why,” sez I, “I believe she said she wuz glad because she wuz glad.”

“Well, she hadn’t no bizness to said it, anyway, it didn’t sound very good.”

Sez I, “Josiah Allen, didn’t you ever speak out when you had hurt you and wuz in pain, and say things that didn’t sound good, and that you would like to take back if you could?”

“No,” sez he, “I never did.”

“Josiah Allen,” sez I, “can you say that with a clear conscience?”

“Yes, I can, clear as a crystal fountain. I hain’t one of the kind that fly all to pieces if I happen to bruise my thumb, or cut me, or pound my fingers, some men do,” he admitted, “but I don’t, I never say a word I don’t mean, I never say a word I would wish to take back, no matter how severe the pain is.”

Sez I firmly, “Josiah Allen you do, you prance round and act lots of times.”

“Oh, well, encourage her in burnin’ up the world if you want to, and encourage her in sass. I spoze I can let it go.” He wuz fairly dyin’ to let it go, I knew, he jest worships her. But I continued, for I wuz rousted up in my mind. Sez I:

“Little Delight is in our power, we are physically stronger than she is. We can whip her all day if we want to. But duz it look noble and honorable in us to punish that little mite of a thing for what we do ourselves?”

“I don’t do it,” sez he.

Sez I, “She is only three years old, she has got everything to learn, she can’t endure pain as she can when she is older. She didn’t know she had done wrong, and you, instead of reasonin’ with her, and settin’ her right, skairt her, and hurt her hands, and she wuz actually glad I’ve no doubt to think that you broke the stove. She thought you wuz unjust, and wuz indignant at that, and surprised and frightened to think you wanted to hurt her, you who had always been so good to her, and loved her so well, and she spoke out quick and impatient, jest as you and I do sometimes, Josiah Allen, and we have had a lifetime to learn patience and endurance.”

I see he wuz some convinced, but wouldn’t own it, and he sez agin, in a cross tone (about as cross as a cross gut saw, his tone had been like a bayinet or spear), sez he, “She no need to burnt up the world.”

Sez I over agin, “She hadn’t no idee what she wuz doing, she thought she wuz follerin’ her Grandma’s doin’s and doin’ right. But because it hurt your own comfort a little mite——”

“A little mite!” sez he, groanin’, “and there it wuz full of tragedies, I dare presume to say, and salts and butteries, and burglaries.”

“Because she did sunthin’ that interfered with your comfort when she hadn’t the least idee of its bein’ wrong you pounced at her and hurt her, and want her whipped. And the other day, Josiah Allen, when she did do a little sunthin’ we had told her not to, because she did it in such a cunnin’ way, you laughed, and wuz mad because I spoke of punishin’ her for it.”

“Well, I spoze you want me to say that I think it is right for her to burn up the world, but you won’t git me to.” But his axent wuz gittin’ smoother, it wuz about as smooth as a gimlet hole now.

Sez I, “I believe in punishin’ children when they persist in wrongdoin’. But I always believe in findin’ out whether they have done wrong or not, and then in the next place try to punish ’em, not for revenge and to satisfy our own feelin’s, but to do them good, break ’em of wrongdoin’. And if you can talk them out of it it seems so much more noble and dignified than it duz to pound ’em. It duz somehow look so disagreeable to see a great strong man or woman weighin’ two hundred or so standin’ over a little mite of a thing that can’t help itself anyway, whippin’ it.”

“Solomon sez,” sez Josiah, “spare the rod and spile the child.”

“Well,” sez I, “if I wuz in Solomon’s place——” And then thinkses I the least said the soonest mended, and I thought I wouldn’t say anything agin Solomon and his havin’ so many wives, and actin’, and shet my lips up tight.

“Solomon what?” sez Josiah.

“Nothin’,” sez I.

And again he sez, “What? Solomon what?”

And again I sez, “Nothin’, Solomon nothin’.” And havin’ got all through upstairs, I went down and went to sweepin’ out the parlor, and jest as quick as I got that done, I went to gittin’ dinner (at Josiah’s request, who said he hadn’t eat much breakfast, though I didn’t know it and told him so). But he built a fire in the kitchen for that purpose, and I got an excellent dinner, nice tender steak, and stewed tomatoes, and smashed potatoes, and apple dumplin’s that would melt in your mouth, and lemon sauce to eat on ’em, and delicious coffee.

Josiah wuz happy in his mind, though some in pain owin’ to the last four dumplin’s. And that wuz the last I ever hearn of any anger on his part about the world’s burnin’ up. Well, they come after Delight that very night, and we both hated to have her go, it wuz awful lonesome without her. Though it wuz a great comfort to know that she wuz comin’ up a week from the next Saturday to stay over Sunday with us. We looked forward to it.

The very next day after Delight went home I wuz in the settin’ room mendin’ my Josiah’s best galluses, the buckles had come off, and I wuz settin’ there as cool as the buckles (which wuz nickle) and as collected together as the galluses after I had got ’em mended, when all of a sudden the door bust open with a bang, and in come my companion Josiah from the barn, with a splinter under his thumb nail, jest as mad as a hornet, as a man always is when he gits hurt, and he danced and jumped over the floor like a lunatick and hollered out, “It is all your dumb doin’s, Samantha! if it hadn’t been for you the board wouldn’t been there!”

Sez I calmly, for frequent seens like this had gin me knowledge, “I didn’t put it there, Josiah.”

“No, but if you had any eyes in your head you would seen there wuz splinters in it, and I couldn’t be liftin’ it round without gittin’ ’em under my thumb!”

“I didn’t know you wuz goin’ to lift it, Josiah.”

“You ort to know it! I wuz liftin’ it after hens’ eggs, I thought I would see if there wuz any under the barn before I piled the straw on the floor, and if it wuzn’t for you I wouldn’t keep a dum hen on the place! And if I ever git so I can use this hand agin,” sez he a-wavin’ it out kinder ferocious-like, “I’ll brain every dum one of ’em, there never shall a hen step her dum foot on my farm agin after to-day!”

“Well, well, do keep still, Josiah Allen, how can I git this sliver out and you prancin’ round so?”

“Oh, yes, keep right on, jaw me all you want to, keep right on jawin’ and talkin’, and not let me have a minute’s rest. And let me faint away on your hands. Oh, gracious heavens! can’t you stab a little deeper!”

“Why, you wanted me to prick it out, Josiah.”

In other times I should have rebuked him sharply for swearin’, but truly a woman learns after twenty years experience in married life that there is a time for scoldin’ and a time to refrain from scoldin’. I knew that until that sliver wuz out and the pain eased off there would be no more use reasonin’ with Josiah Allen than there would be with a wild hyena, for when pain enters into a man’s system (a ordinary man) it drives reason out of it, and common sense and decency.

After a while I got the sliver out and did it up in Pond’s extract, he groanin’ and jumpin’ and blamin’ me for it every minute. Why, he told me in one of the worst twinges that if it wuzn’t for me there wouldn’t be a hemlock board on the premises, anyway. And there I never had to my recollection said the word “hemlock” to him. But I knew that jest the minute he got cooled off, his sense would return and his affection for me (he had acted all the while jest as if I wuz prickin’ him a-purpose, and talked to that effect, and seemed mad at me as he could be). But I sot demute, and he didn’t like that, his state wuz such. Sez he:

“Set there and not say a word, will you! I should think if a man lay dead at your door you would speak up and say sunthin’, but no, you don’t care enough about it to say a word. Oh, gracious Peter! did any human bein’ ever suffer what I am sufferin’!”

And then he jumped up and stumbled over a stool and most fell and yelled out at me settin’ there peaceful, “Put that stool in my way, will you! I’ll clear this house of every stool to-morrow if I’m alive! the one that made that man-ketcher is a fool!”

And so it went on for most an hour, but Josiah got over it jest as soon as the pain stopped, he acted like a new man. And he asked me of his own accord before night if I didn’t want to buy a new kind of hens, if I thought best he would buy some Shanghais and Ayrshires. Josiah is a clever critter pretty near half the time, and before he slept he offered to buy me a new stool, or two of ’em, covered with rep. Good land! it all come out jest as I knew it would, I had passed through too many cryses jest like it to be skaired. Why, when I married Josiah Allen I took all these resks, I knew how it would be, my father wuz a man, and so wuz my youngest brother and Uncle John, and I had lived in the house with ’em all. I don’t blame Josiah so very much, I don’t spoze he could help actin’.

Now, wimmen can’t help actin’ in some respects, such as this, if company comes through the front gate onexpected, she can’t help smoothin’ back her front hair if every hair lay as smooth as satin, it is nater for her to go through the motions. And she can’t help jumpin’ if she sees a mouse as if she wuz afraid of her life, though it hain’t reasonable to expect that her life is jeapordized and she will be attackted by it. And it is nater for her to kiss a pretty baby and scold a boy voyalently who is stunnin’ a kitten or a bird. Why, some things come jest as nateral as Nater herself, and can’t be helped no more than she can. Josiah hain’t alone in his actin’ and behavin’.

CHAPTER XII.

Accordin’ to promise Tamer Ann brung Jack to stay a few days with me while she went on to her Aunt Nancy John’s. Her Aunt Nancy don’t like children, bein’ nervous and highstericky, but she is a rich woman and Tamer has expectations from her, and goes there quite a good deal and makes of her. She is Tamer’s great aunt, and is one of two widders of the same name, so to tell ’em apart we call ’em Aunt Nancy John and Aunt Nancy Joe.

Jack wuz awful tickled to git to our house, and I wuz glad enough to see him. And he played round jest as good as a child could all the afternoon, and eat a good supper, and that night before he went to bed he come and leaned his curly head on my shoulder, and talked real confidential to me.

Tamer is a Piscopal, or, that is, what religion she’s got is of that persuasion. I know Piscopals that are perfectly devoted Christians and samplers for any one to foller, but with Tamer I guess it don’t strike in very deep, though she duz go through the motions in meetin’ wonderful for one of her age, and with all the diseases she’s got on her, gittin’ up and kneelin’ down with the best on ’em. And she’s real strict about follerin’ some of the rules and wants her family to; she had told me some time ago about the trouble she had with Jack keepin’ Lent, sez she:

“You know we ort to give up our own wills and do what is pleasin’ to the Lord in Lent, and I have the greatest trouble to make the children see the necessity of it as I do, and I am so particular to keep it,” sez she.

Thinkses I, Tamer Ann Allen, if you should try to do the Lord’s will through one day of Lent you wouldn’t try to make your only girl live a lie the rest of her life, and let your oldest boy go to ruin down the path of dime novels and cigarettes. Why, every one of the troubles she had pinted out to me wuz nothin’ bad in Jack at all, only the sins of ignorance which we read are winked at. But not a wink would Tamer give, not a wink. She had complained awful about his irreverence in prayer time and his utter refusal to give up pie and leave butter offen his bread durin’ Lent. “Why,” sez she, “when I asked him what he would give up he said apples, he guessed, he didn’t love ’em, and he said he would give up bathin’, too, and soap, and havin’ his hair combed, the idee!”

“Did you explain it, Tamer Ann, what Lent wuz for, and why he should make his little sacrifices?”

“No, it is enough for me to tell Jack what to do; he has no right to inquire into my reasons.”

“But,” sez I, “didn’t you inquire into what you called his irreverence at prayer time?”

“I inquired into it with a good switch, that’s what I did, for I will not have irreverence and irreligion goin’ on in my house.”

Well, as I said, Jack come to me that night and laid his head against my shoulder, and I told him he must be a good boy, and I asked him why it wuz that he didn’t want to say his prayers. He had been in real good sperits, but the minute I begun to talk about that he kinder whimpered out, “I don’t want to everykneeshallbow, and I told Ma that I didn’t, I don’t know what it is and don’t want to talk about it, and I told Ma so, and then she said I’d got to, and then I got mad and I told her I won’t everykneeshallbow, and then she whipped me. And what is it, anyway?”

“Say it slower, Jack,” sez I.

“Every-knee-shall-bow,” sez he.

And then it come to me, “Every knee shall bow.” And I went on and told him about the great kind Ruler who made him and all the pleasant things that he had ever enjoyed, and how it is writ down that every knee shall bow to Him.

“Well, I’ll do that,” sez Jack. “I will kneel to Him now, I didn’t know what it meant, and Ma wuz too busy to tell me, and I got mad and wouldn’t ask anybody else. And there is sunthin’ else that I wanted to know awfully, and I wish you would tell me.” That poor little creeter trusted me it seemed more than he did any other person, and I felt greatly complimented by it, as much as if a President or King had paid compliments to me.

“What is the Miz that Ma makes me pray about in church?”

“The Miz?” sez I.

“Yes, the sea and all that in the Miz. I didn’t want to pray about that, for I thought it wuz sunthin’ big and kinder fuzzy. What is it, anyway?”

And then I told him about the same great Ruler, who ruled over the land and sea, and all that in them is. And he went to bed quite happy and promised to say his prayers good, and I believe he did. Poor little creeter!

Well, he stayed two days and had an awful good time, and Josiah and I enjoyed it jest as much as he did, and the next day, accordin’ to promise, I took Jack over to Tirzah Ann’s and Tamer wuz goin’ to stop and visit her and Thomas J. on her way back from Aunt Nancy John’s. I made a good call at Tirzah’s and see a new sass dish she had got and admired it, and a shirt waist, and then I left Jack happy enough to play with Delight, and called at Maggie’s, and Miss Greene Smythe wuz there, she had come to the office to see Thomas Jefferson and wuz waitin’ for him to come home, he wuz expected every minute from Loontown. I inquired in a polite way after her children, and she said that Angenora wuz feelin’ rather nervous to-day, she wuz out to a child’s party the night before and didn’t git home till two o’clock.

“That child,” sez I, “out till two o’clock!”

“Yes,” she said, “Jimmy De Graffe, a boy from the city, gave the party, he lives near us at home and wuz devoted to Angenora; he sent her a valentine last year which wuz a perfect love letter, and one thing that makes Angenora feel so bad to-day, there wuz a little girl there from the city who had on a much prettier dress that hers—Angenora’s wuz white silk with only five ruffles on it, and the little girl’s wuz pink silk with seven ruffles, and Jimmy paid her much more attention than he did Angenora. It almost broke her heart, she is just about sick to-day.”

Sez I to myself, fashion, love-disappointments, jealousies, heartburnings, despair, emotions that child hadn’t ort to know the names on for years and years. Emotions big enough and sad enough to swamp lives well seasoned by years and experience, all being suffered by that baby, who ortn’t to have an anxiety above peanuts and the multiplication table, blind man’s buff and puss-in-the-corner, for years and years, the idee on’t! Why, what heart will that child bring to her lessons, her Elementary Arithmetic all mixed up with problems about flirtin’ and social supremacy, her Gography full of countries that can’t be bounded, realms of jealousy, hatred and strife, her plain readin’ and spellin’ full of readin’ and spellin’ that grown folks can’t read or spell straight to save their lives. What will remain to that child when she gits to be a young woman? All the emotions of youth outgrown and wasted, she will be old at fourteen, a worn-out old young flirt when she enters her teens. The pleasant care-free land of childhood trompled down and destroyed, the lovely playgrounds of youth and happiness turned into campin’ ground for worldly discord and strife, it makes me feel bad to think on’t.

But Miss Greene Smythe went on, “Jimmy De Graffe seemed to think so much of Angenora, she thought it wuz real mean for him to pay all his devoirs to another girl.”

“Devoirs!” sez I, “the idee of them children payin’ devoirs, but it is well named, for these carry-ins on, fashionable midnight parties, child flirtations, etc., do jest devour all that is sweet and lovely in children, all their unconscious grace and artless innocence, and dear little ignorant wise ways, why,” sez I, “Angenora ort to look on boys only as comrades and playfellows for years and years to come, not lookin’ on ’em different from girls only that they are stronger and can run faster and climb trees better.”

Well, I went away pretty soon, for my pardner come from the post office and thought we had better be goin’, but I kep thinkin’ all the way home on that triumphant child flirt, and Angenora sad and melancholy, and the idee of bo’s and flirtin’ that wuz planted in the minds and hearts of babies, destroyin’ the childish mirth and good comradeship that should exist in happy freedom between children of both sects. Pictures of pretty playful hours between Jack and Delight come to my mind some as you see pictures in a magic lantern, and one of the very prettiest ones come to me as I washed and wiped my dishes that night, Josiah doin’ his barn chores at the same time.

It took place the February before, February the fourteenth, the day when Angenora wuz writin’ and receivin’ lover-like epistles from young old men of nine or ten years of age, I thought with satisfaction and happiness of this pretty seen that had took place in our own home. Jack and Delight had been stayin’ a week with me, and I had noticed for a day or two before that the children had had a good deal of mysterious talkin’ between ’em, and there seemed to be a secret they wuz tryin’ to keep from me; I see ’em countin’ their pennies, and once I hearn Jack say, “All together we’ve got leven cents.”

And then Delight sez, “We can get a splendid one for that.” But the minute they ketched sight of me they stopped talkin’ in a dretful elaborate way, put their fingers to their lips, and shook their heads, and nodded towards me and Josiah, and I see it wuz sunthin’ connected with us, and I made a point at once of not seein’ or hearin’ ’em at all. And that is one of the greatest secrets of life and success, the nack of not hearin’ things. It is almost as necessary in order to git along smooth and pleasant to not hear things as it is to hear ’em.

Lots of times if you hear and see things, sass, for instance, from help, I mean, little bits of sass that will spill out of the big dish of daily worry sometimes, why, if you see that sass you have got to pay attention to it, and wipe it up with admonition and reproof, or ruther make them that dropped it there clean it up with apology and atonement, which will take time and strength and nerves, but if you don’t see it, why it will evaporate, and the dish will right itself up of itself, in eight cases out of ten it will.

And children, bless their dear souls! how many times it is a positive boon to not see their little acts or hear their little words. If you see the small feet wanderin’ for a minute from the highway in search of some butterfly, or, ruther, why you’ve got to pull ’em back agin by main strengh. But if you don’t see ’em why they will come back of their own little accords, most always, and save their temper and yours. And so with their outbursts of discontent and annoyance, if you hear it you have got to rebuke and chasten, but if you don’t hear it, why, good land! it is all over in a minute.

And the best way to teach, anyway, is object teachin’. Make yourself the object, try to do right yourself with fear and tremblin’, and make a sampler of yourself for the children to work their poor little pieces of life’s canvas by. That is the best way of teachin’ on earth and the surest (sometimes I do eppisode even in my reveries and have to resoom forwards agin).

Well, this wuz the day but one before Valentine’s day, and the children beset Josiah to take ’em to Jonesville, and Josiah promised he would.

But it turned out to be a turrible stormy day, blowin’, snowin’ too bad for anybody to be out, and Josiah didn’t go. The children wuz fearful disappinted, their little faces wuz sad and overcasted, and I got a extra good dinner, and when I fried cakes I fried every animal I ever hearn on, unless it wuz a Bengal tiger, for ’em, and it seems some as if I fried him, but I won’t be certain. But even this immense menagerie didn’t seem to fill ’em with the joy it ort, but towards night they begun to brighten up some. I see their two curly heads clost together, the light and the dark, talkin’ over some project big to them, and then they’d look at Josiah and me dretful meanin’ and nod their heads to each other in a knowin’ way, their little faces all lighted up agin.

And they seemed to be in full and frequent communication with our hired man, and then the two little heads, the dark lustrous one with threads of gold runnin’ through the dark curls, and the light flaxen one with threads of mornin’ sunshine wove into the long flaxen waves, these heads would nestle clost together agin as if in deep thought and endeavor.

Well, the mornin’ of Saint Valentine’s day wuz bright and sunshiny, the long rays of gold light crept into our room through the white curtain edged with lace of my own knittin’, and through them same curtains I could see the great masses of warm light in the east like a pink and gold carpet spread out for the sun to walk up into the day on as he come up to light the world.

I wuz jest layin’ and thinkin’ how beautiful and glorious it all wuz, and also with one corner of my mind wonderin’ when Josiah laid out to git up, and whether he had got enough kindlin’ wood the night before, when I heard two little taps at the bedroom door and Josiah waked up. And before we could even ask who wuz there, in come Jack and little Delight in their long white nightdresses. Jack slept upstairs in the room with the hired man, and Delight slept in a little room offen ours. But there them two beautiful little creeters stood right in the rays of mornin’ light, hand in hand, with faces as grave and earnest as if the hull weight of the President’s cares lay on their curly heads. And as we looked up and see ’em, they advanced hand in hand and made two bows, the most stupendious and wonderful bows I ever see or hearn on, why their little noses most grazed the floor, they wuz that deep and impressive, and then they repeated both on ’em in their sweet, fresh little voices:

“The rose is red, the vilets blue,

The pink is pretty, and so are you.

My pen is poor, my ink is pale,

My love for you shall never fail.”

And then they made agin them solemn deep bows and walked out of the room still holdin’ hands. And Josiah and I kinder smiled a little after they went out, not before them, no, not for a silver dollar would I laughed before them, and I sez, “This is our valentine, Josiah.”

“Yes,” sez he, “and a prettier one never went through a post office.”

“That’s so,” sez I, “unless it wuz the one you sent me with the roses and forget-me-nots on it the year before we wuz married.” And all the time Josiah wuz buildin’ the fire, and while I wuz gittin’ breakfast I thought of how the blossoms of life are scattered down through all the seasons of the year and of life. The roses that come with that valentine of Josiah’s had faded, the frosts of thirty years had stole the pretty pink tinge offen ’em, and the years had gone by, long years, long years, and youth wuz past.

But, good land! could anything be so sweet and beautiful as the valentine that had come to us on this February morning, when the gray hairs lay thick on my own head, and my poor Josiah’s head wuz bare beneath the touch of Time’s hand, which had been strokin’ him down for so long a time. I told the children at the breakfast table, as they sot in their little high chairs opposite to Josiah and me, and my face wuz jest as earnest and good as I could make it:

“You couldn’t have pleased us so well with any other valentine in the world, there couldn’t be one bought anywhere that we should have liked half so well—could there, Josiah?”

“No,” sez he, “not one; there hain’t a valentine in the hull country that could compare with the one we got this mornin’.”

And then the children bust right out laughin’, they wuz so tickled to think we liked it, and they laughed partly, I think, because I had gin each on ’em a little glass dish of honey as a treat on account of the valentine. Bless their sweet hearts! could any other valentine be tinged with the light of love that gilt ourn? Could any picture match the lustrous tenderness of the soft gray eyes, and soft mornin’ glory blue ones? Could any gold-edged paper equal the glint of the golden hair, could any page equal the pink tinge of the rosy cheeks, and the white forwards and necks, and little pink toes stickin’ out under their nightgowns as our dear little valentines come to us in the fresh morning light, warmin’ up the coldness of a February morning?

Well, a few days after this Josiah told me he had seen Mrs. Greene Smythe to Thomas Jefferson’s office, and she wanted to see me on a little bizness, and wanted me to come in when I wuz up that way, as she understood I wuz quite often, she wanted to consult me about a Charity Bazar. Well, the word charity is always a-takin’ one with me, for in that incomparable chapter I love so well it describes all the graces at full length, and then sez, “The greatest of these is Charity.”

CHAPTER XIII.

It wuzn’t long after this that Josiah had to go over to South Scriba to sell some spruce lumber, he wanted to dicker for some salted white fish, they ketch sights of white fish to the lake, and by goin’ a little round we could go right by the summer hotel where Miss Greene Smythe wuz stayin’. The hotel wuz a big buildin’ standin’ in large, beautiful grounds; it wuz the biggest hotel in the place, and she had the hull floor of one wing, lived there jest as independent as you please with her own servants, and her daughter, Medora, and the young twins, Algernon and Angenora.

Josiah left me there, and, as I wuz waitin’ to be showed up to her room, I hearn the twins fightin’ fiercely at the head of the stairs and kickin’ each other and swearin’ like two young pirates at the top of their voices, and while I wuz lookin’ on in astonishment a girl come runnin’ downstairs and yanked ’em back, one in each hand, and swore at ’em, for I hearn her with my own ears, and scolded ’em like a termagant. I spoze it wuz their French nurse, for her swearin’ had a kinder queer axent. Well, I sot there quite a spell while the man went to see whether Miss Greene Smythe wuz to home; he wuz gone a awful while.

And while I sot there a good lookin’ woman, with a rather sharp chin and nose, come along, and sot down in a chair near me, she come in jest as the girl dragged ’em off, quarrelin’ and usin’ words I wouldn’t speak for a dollar bill. And this woman went on and told me things I hated to hear—I didn’t ask her, she told of her own accord.

Sez she, “Miss Greene Smythe makes a great show, and don’t want to even speak to folks full as good as she is.” And here she tosted her head quite a good deal. “But if she would spend some of the time on her children she spends on fashion and them everlastin’ young men danglin’ round her, she would be less apt to have a gallows rared up in her family.” She said she didn’t believe there ever wuz such a actin’ child in the hull world as Algernon. Angenora, she said, wuz better dispositioned to start with, but wuz bein’ spilte by Algernon’s plaguin’ her so. She had got so she would swear and kick almost as loud and hard as he would while he wuz fightin’ her.

“Well,” sez I, “they’re little things, they don’t know any better.”

“I know it,” sez she, “their nurses are ugly dispositioned, both on ’em, and they’re jest as mean as they can be to the children, though they keep ’em clean enough. But,” she said they wuz ignorant as might be expected, and used so many slang words and low phrases the children had ketched their language and oaths, so their talk wuz more like a pirate’s children or a buckaneer’s than the children of Christian parents. “And fight!” sez she, she didn’t believe there wuz a bigger fighter on earth than Algernon for his age. And lie! why, Algernon’s nurse, she said, wuz such a liar that she fairly seemed to prespire untruth through her pores, and them children wuz with her all the time and breathed her atmosphere, drinkin’ it down with their milk (they wuz both brung up on a bottle, Miss Greene Smythe thinkin’ it more genteel). And Algernon would lie now in such a picturesque, dashin’ way as to fairly stunt anybody to hear it.

And Angenora follered on as fast as her temperament and nateral nater would let her. She said the children wuz with the nurses most all the time, for Miss Greene Smythe and Medora wuz out nights, and when they wuz to home they didn’t seem to have time to pay any attention to the children, and she said little Angenora herself wuz out nights sometimes till one and two o’clock to children’s parties, and eat rich stuff and drunk coffee and champagne at midnight, and that wuz another thing that made her so bad lately.

Sez I, “Our grandchildren have parties, but they invite their little comrades of both sects to come in the afternoon, and they play games, blind man’s buff, and tag, and they have swings, and they play with dolls and balls and marbles jest like the babies they are, and at six o’clock they have a good hullsome supper, sweet bread and butter, and a little briled chicken mebby, and one kind of good plain cake baked and frosted in pretty shapes to please the childish eye, and plenty of ripe fruit, oranges, etc., and a little candy, and good chocolate with cream in it to drink, and they home by sundown, happy and tired, a good, healthy tire, that makes ’em sleep like tops and wake up refreshed to meet the mornin’ greetin’ of the rising sun, ready and willin’ to tackle their lessons or their play agin.”

Well, she said, “That wuzn’t Miss Greene Smythe’s way, and,” sez she, “it is killin’ Angenora, her little head is gittin’ weak, and she is jest on the pint of nervous prostration and heart failure.”

“Heart failure and nervous prostration at nine years of age!” sez I convelsively.

“Yes,” sez she, “and you’ll see I’m right, though her mother wouldn’t pay any attention if I should speak to her about it. She don’t see me half the time,” sez she, “right when I meet her face to face.” She stood ready, I could see, to talk aginst Miss Greene Smythe, but I wuzn’t goin’ to jine in it, but I felt dretful worried about what she had told me, and sez:

“How duz Algernon stand it?”

“Oh, he won’t go,” sez the woman; “he jest swears and throws himself and acts so his Ma has gin up tryin’ to make him go. He sez he hain’t a-goin’ to dance with girls and stay out all night for nobody; and he is so ugly dispositioned they dassent try to make him do what he don’t want to.”

“Well,” sez I, “ugly or not, he shows good sense in that.” But at that minute the man returned and told me Miss Greene Smythe wuz to home, and I followed him upstairs. Medora wuz away for a week or so at some other resort, and Miss Greene Smythe wuz alone, and she seemed quite glad to see me. She give me a big easy chair, and almost to once begun to consult me about the entertainment.

Sez she, “I shall have musicians and elocutionists from the city, there will be a big special train to bring the guests down, but I would like also to please the natives, if I could. I am bound to have the biggest affair of the season, and everybody who comes of course will feel bound to buy something.”

And I sez reasonable, “I don’t believe that there are any natives round here, not more than one, anyway—I hearn there is one old Injun basket maker tentin’ in the woods back of Sylvester Bobbettses, but it hain’t no ways likely he will come.”

She sez, “I mean the folks that live round here.”

“Oh,” sez I, “I guess they will turn out first rate, it is a real charitable place here.”

“I want your help,” sez she; “do help me by talkin’ it up to people, won’t you?”

And I told her I would, “For,” sez I, “Charity never faileth, and,” sez I, “if I wuz not interested in charity I should feel like soundin’ brass and tinklin’ cymbal, not that I know what a cymbal is, but suppose it is a brass horn.”

“Yes,” sez she, “charity for the heathen is the main work of course, but socially I want it to be a great success.”

I had told her, when I first went in, that I couldn’t stay long, and had refused to take off my bunnet, so pretty soon she mentioned she wuz goin’ to a lawn party to a neighborin’ hotel that afternoon, and asked me if I would feel hurt if she went on dressin’ while she talked to me, and I told her no, and I sez, “Josiah is liable to come any minute, he’ll come jest as soon as he makes his dicker.”

So her maid proceeded to put on her shoes, she had got her underclothes all on and wuz in her dressin’ jacket and slippers. She had handsome silk stockin’s on, embroidered beautiful, but she wuz cut out for a big, fat woman, and her feet wuz big, they wuz at the least calculation number five feet, but the shoe that maid tried to get on them feet wuzn’t more than number three. I see the efforts for quite a spell and didn’t say a word, why her feet wuz squooze to that extent that her toes any good excuse for makin’ a lame martyr of herself.

“Oh, they would make light, and say I wuzn’t fashionable.”

And I sez, “I believe I could bear that better than I could what you’re sufferin’ now. But I don’t believe they would notice ’em, I believe you could wear a shoe big enough for your feet, so you could walk and enjoy life, and nobody would find it out, nobody would ever think to look and tell on’t.”

“Oh, yes, they would,” sez she, “they would laugh.”

“Well, mebby you would be in a condition to laugh yourself, which you are fur from bein’ now,” sez I pityin’ly. But I couldn’t convince her, and she stood up on them pinted toes and high, slim heels, and waddled off to the bed where her dress wuz.

And then follered another battle between mind and matter, between too compressed matter, namely a big, fat waist, and a small but firm minded cosset and waist. For a long time the victory seemed to be on the side of the fat body, but it had to gin in, the last button wuz drawed to, the last fortress of flesh, which resisted to the death, wuz overcome and crowded in, and the steel walls of the prison told no tales of the agony within. Heavy skirts wuz adjusted and draped about the achin’ form, the long train lay out on the carpet, and the number six hands crowded into the number four gloves, and Miss Greene Smythe wuz ready to go and enjoy fashionable life. She said she wouldn’t go until dear Mr. Allen come, but we would go and sit down on the balcony, where it would be pleasanter than here.

Well, as we sot there in that upper piazza we could hear plain the voices of Algernon and his nurse, and occasionally the voice of Angenora, enough to show she wuz there, and we heard swear words and nasty words, lots of ’em, words that our grandchildren, in their love-guarded home, had never dremp of and wouldn’t as long as their Pa’s and Ma’s and grandparents had eyes to see and ears to hear. Miss Greene Smythe looked up to me and sez, “I am ashamed of the way that boy talks, but he got it from his nurse, she is good as gold in some things, but has got a voylent temper, and when she is angry she uses awful language, but she don’t have her mad fits often.”

And I sez, “Hain’t you afraid it will ruin the twins to be under such influence now in the most impressionable age?”

And she admitted she had worried some about it, and sez she, “I should got rid of her long ago, but she is a be-a-uti-ful hairdresser, that wuz her father’s bizness, and her mother wuz a dressmaker, and she has natural taste about dress. And you know if hair don’t have proper attention it will lose its gloss and won’t friz as it ought to. And, as for loopin’ up drapery, I have never seen that woman’s equal in my life, my maid is jest nowhere beside her. And goin’ into society as much as I do, you can see how necessary it is I should have some one right in the house that I can depend on, that I can put confidence in as to the hanging of my skirt, and my bangs.”

“Well,” sez I, in a ruther cold axent, “if you don’t see curiouser loopin’s and bangs in the twin’s heads and hearts bime-by than any you ever had in a dress or foretop, then I’ll miss my guess.” And I went on and argued with her for quite a spell for the children’s good.

I tried hard to make her think that the well-doin’ of her children, and the immortal destiny of their souls, wuz of more consequence than the puckerin’s of her dress, or the frizzle of her hair, but I couldn’t seem to make her think as I did, and so I spoze it will have to go on. That girl’s nasty mad swearin’ talk settin’ the example, and the twins follerin’ on and workin’ it out as plain as my grandmother ever worked a blue rose and pink horse from a exampler at school and framed it for us to look at. I knew the sampler the twins wuz workin’ under that woman’s teachin’ wuz goin’ to be framed in a stronger frame than I ever sot eyes on and hung on a higher wall. I felt bad, I knew that the frame wuz as strong as a deathless life, and the wall high as eternity.

Little Angenora’s nurse wuzn’t so fiery dispositioned as Algernon’s. But she give her opiates to make her sleep when she wanted to go out with her bo’s, and hurt her body in that way, and others I don’t want to talk about, but mebby she didn’t hurt her soul so much as she did Algernon’s, ’tennyrate it didn’t show quite so plain now, she didn’t swear so loud as he did, nor throw herself so heavy.

But the opiates made the little creeter look wan and pale and sleepy more’n half the time, and I said to Miss Greene Smythe in this conversation, it seemed a shame to have her little constitution all ruined in that way onbeknown to her, before she wuz old enough to defend it. But she said she guessed she didn’t give Angenora very much, she wuz a pale child naturally.

But I see her attention wuz wanderin’ from what I wuz sayin’ to sunthin she wuz beholdin’ on the inside of her mind, and anon she asked me if I could tell her where she could find a perfectly white Spitz dog with a black ring around its neck.

And I sez in a kind of impatient way, for I didn’t like to be broke up in my high minded, conscientious talk, “I don’t know anything about such a pup.”

Sez she, “I didn’t really suppose you would, but I am so anxious to git one I improve every opportunity to inquire. They are the height of fashion, and, while I am obliged to stay here in the country, waiting the ending of this tedious lawsuit, such a pet would be so much company for me.”

“Company!” sez I, in a deep, impressive voice, “if you want company, where are your own girl and boy, where are the two little immortal souls the Lord gin you to guide and fit for a place with Him bime-by? Them two little white souls you are leavin’ with ignorant, coarse servants to train?”

And I went on real eloquent for as much as four minutes and a half, but she didn’t hear me, for, after I got through with my powerful remarks and wuz kinder waitin’ for a reply, she sez, “I can’t possibly make up my mind which to have.”

And I wuz real encouraged, for I thought I had convinced her and she wuz turnin’ it over in her mind which it wuz best to have, help about her puckers and frizzles or more assured hope about her children’s future, and I sez, “I could tell quick.”

“Well, then, do tell,” sez she, “for I don’t believe I can ever make up my mind alone, there are so many things dependent on it, it is not itself alone that you should take into consideration.”

“That is jest what I have been tryin’ to make you understand,” sez I, “All the mighty consequences hangin’ on it, and I am glad you feel to realize it.”

“Well, then,” sez she, “what color would you have?”

“Color!” sez I.

“Yes,” sez she, “what color would you have for the awnings and trimmings for the big tent where I am to receive? I myself should prefer pink as more becoming to my complexion. Medora wants pale-blue on account of her hair, which she has just dyed a golden color. But Mrs. La Flamme, at her great charity ball, had blue awnings and draperies, and I wouldn’t for the world have her think I copied her or was lacking in originality—what do you think of a delicate shell pink?”

I riz up with a real lot of dignity, and, as I glanced down, I see one of her danglers sot there in a stylish carriage, waiting for her, evidently.

So I sez, “Don’t let me hender you any longer; Josiah will be here in a few minutes, and I have got some bizness of my own to tend to before I go.” I did want to see the landlord about some jars of butter I had sold him, he had made a mistake about sendin’ home the jars. So she went downstairs on that side of the buildin’, and I swep’ through the hall with a sight of dignity, and didn’t finish sweepin’ till I swep over some playthings of Algernon’s, and he swore at me till I got to the bottom of the stairs.

Well, the landlord promised to send home my jars, and I went out on the lower piazza, which wuz most deserted at this hour, and pretty soon Angenora come and found me there. She had got sick of playin’ with Algernon, she said, and, as we sot there, we could hear him swearin’ at his nurse and tearin’ at the cat’s tail. And the cat’s yells of distress and the nurse’s coarse rebukes all come mellowed by the distance, and she leaned up aginst me and we had a good little visit. She knew me quite well, for she had been to our house a number of times, and I had seen her at Thomas J.’s when she’d been there to play with the children.

She wuz a affectionate little thing, or she wouldn’t have worried so over Jimmy De Graffe. Her eyes wuz big and black and solemn lookin’, and her hair curled in little short black curls all over her head, her complexion wuz white and clear, and she looked wan. But I believe it wuz what she had had gin her that made her look so, as well as her late hours and fashionable flirtations. But she wuz very handsome, and I didn’t wonder so much what I had always heard, that of all her children Miss Greene Smythe loved this one best, and wuz proudest of her and bound to have her shine in society even at the age of nine, poor little thing! I don’t doubt but what her Ma loved her, but it wuz a love so covered up and hid underneath fashion and frivolity and show that I thought to myself it might jest about as well not been there at all for all the good it did her.

Though they say Miss Greene Smythe did once in a while, when she had a few minutes’ reprieve from her life work of show and sham, pet little Angenora, and tell her how she loved her, and that she wuz the only comfort of her Ma’s hard, toilsome life. Love begets love, and that is why, I spoze, little Angenora wuz the only livin’ thing on earth that really loved Miss Greene Smythe, she did love her fondly.

She wuz a tender-hearted child, anyway, and had to love somethin’, and wanted to be mothered, wanted to dretfully, but, seein’ her mother wuz engaged in her labor of fashionable display, she didn’t git mothered at all, and that gin her the wistful, longin’ look in her eyes, that and her late hours and the stuff her nurse gin her. And she had a sort of pitiful, skairful look in her eyes, and that come, I found out, from her nurse skairin’ her nights ever sence she wuz a baby to make her lay still, tellin’ her that somebody would jump at her, or that there wuz great green eyes lookin’ out at her from different places, and there wuz wicked men ready to appear to her, and ghosts and everything, and as the nurse had always told her that she would eat her up alive, if she told anything about it, why, it had gin her a dretful subdued look and afraid to say her little soul wuz her own. But I spoze the deep, silent, constant love of this little thing wuz a rock of support for her Ma to think on in her fashionable career, I spoze so.

Well, I put my arm round her, and she laid her little cheek up aginst me real confidin’ and sweet, and I told her stories and mothered her jest as well as I could till my Josiah appeared drivin’ up the long avenoo with the mair and colt. And I told her to have her Ma let her come down and stay a week with us, and she brightened up real bright and said she would.

Josiah had made the dicker, so he told me, as we drove home, and had swapped five hundred feet of spruce lumber for white fish put down in sweet pickle. And I sez, “For mercy sake! what do you want of so many fish!”

And he sez, “I love ’em dearly, Samantha.”

“But,” sez I, “you may love anything and not want to be swamped by it, run over and drownded in it.”

“Well,” he said, fish agreed with his stomach and wuz nourishin’ to the brain.

And I, takin’ a second thought on his last proposition, sez, “Mebby you hain’t got any too many, Josiah, I guess you had better eat all you can.” I knew if he couldn’t git down four or five kags of ’em we could give ’em to the children.

CHAPTER XIV.

I always did kinder like to have onexpected company, it seems as though I always have a better visit with ’em, and I felt as pleasant as the day, which wuz a beautiful one, when two loads of company driv up entirely onexpected about an hour before noon, Tamer Ann Allen and Jack and Tirzah Ann and little Delight, all happenin’ to come at almost the same time, and we had a real good visit. Tamer had concluded to stop a day longer so’s to visit me. I had got my work all done and a good dinner started, and wuz standin’ on the porch lookin’ onto the environin’ seen when they all driv up most together, though comin’ from two different ways.

I wuz jest noticin’ how sweet the posies wuz that grew by the back porch, and how full the hearts of the roses wuz with perfume, and how the pink and pale-blue bells of the mornin’ glories seemed fairly swingin’ to onseen music, to show their delight at openin’ their eyes onto such a fair world. The far-off hills towered up clad in deathless green and leaned aginst the sky as if real contented and glad to be there. The blue sky, flecked with little snowy clouds, looked down sweet and smilin’ on Jonesville and the world. The meadows and pastures smiled up at the bendin’ sky, the trees, all washed off by the shower of the night before, glistened and shook out their velvet and shinin’ foliage, and the grass wuz flecked with sunshine embroidered with daisies.