aristocratic look. And as for the childern,” says she, “we shall go off
feelin’ jest as safe and happy about ’em as if they was with us, they
love dear Mr. Allen so.” And says she with a sweet smile, “I have lived
on more places than I can think of hardly—we never have lived but a
little while in a place, somehow the climates didn’t agree with us long
at a time. But never, in all the places we have lived in, have we ever
had such neighbors, never, never did we take such solid comfort
a-neighborin’, as we do here.”

Josiah jumped right upon his feet, and shook his fist at her, and says
he, in a more skareful tone than he had used as yet:

“You have got to stop it. If you don’t stop neighberin’ with me, I’ll
know the reason why.”

Miss Spink looked skairt, and agitated awful, but I laid hands on him,
and says I, “Be calm, Josiah Allen, and compose yourself down.”

“I won’t be calm!” says he; “I won’t be composed down.”

Says I, firmly, still a-keepin’ between him and her, and still a-layin’
holt of him, “You must, Josiah!”

“I tell you I _won’t_, Samantha! I’ll let you know,” says he, a-shakin’
his fist at her powerful, “I’ll let you know that you have run me over
with twin for the last time; I’ll let you know that I have been trampled
over, and eat up by cows, and roosted on, and slept with for the last
time,” says he, shakin’ both fists at at her. “You have neighbored your
last neighbor with me, and I’ll let you know you have.”

Says I, “Josiah Allen, I tell you to compose yourself down.”

“And I tell you again, Samantha, that I _won’t_!”

But I could see that his voice was sort ’o lowerin’ down, and I knew the
worst was over. I spoke sort ’o soothin’ly to him, and told him, in
tender axents, that he shouldn’t be neighbored with another mite; and
finally, I got him quieted down. But he looked bad in the face, and his
sithes was fearful.

My feelin’s for that man give me strength to give Miss Spink a piece of
my mind. My talk was calm, but to the purpose, and very smart. It was a
very little on the allegory way. I told her jest how I felt about mejum
courses; how sweet and happyfyin’ it was to pursue ’em.

Says I, “Fire is first-rate, dretful comfortin’ for warmin’ and cookin’
purposes; too much fire is bad, and leads to conflagrations, martyrs,
and etcetery. Water is good; too much leads to drowndin’, dropsy,
and-so-forth. Neighborin’ is good, first-rate, if follered mejumly. Too
much neighborin’ leads to weariness, anarky, kicks, black and blue
pardners, and almost delerious Josiahs.”

As quick as I mentioned the word kick, I see a change in Josiah’s face;
he begun to shake his fist, and act; I see he was a-growin’ wild agin;
Miss Spink see it too, and she and her sister fled.

That very afternoon Josiah went to Jonesville and served some papers
onto ’em. They hadn’t made no bargain, for any certain time, so by
losin’ all his rent, he got rid of ’em before the next afternoon. And
says he to me that night, as he sot by the fire rubbin’ some linement
onto his legs where he had been kicked, says he to me:

“Samantha, if any human bein’ ever comes to rent that house of me, I’ll
shoot ’em down, jest as I would a mushrat.”

[Illustration: JOSIAH’S VOW.]

I knew he had lost over two hundred dollars by ’em, and been kicked so
lame that he couldn’t stand on his feet hardly. I knew that man had been
neighbored almost into his grave, but I couldn’t set by calmly and hear
him talk no such wickedness, and so says I:

“Josiah Allen, can’t you ever learn to take a mejum course? You needn’t
go round huntin’ up renters, or murder ’em if they come nigh you.” Says
I, “You must learn to be more moderate and mejum.”

But he kep’ right on, a-pourin’ out the linement on his hand, and
rubbin’ it onto his legs, and stuck to it to the last. Says he, “I’d
shoot him down, jest as I would a mushrat; and there hain’t a law in the
land but what would bear me out in it.”

                       MORALIZIN’ AND EPISODIN’.

Anybody would have thought that this episode (Spink episode) would have
sickened Josiah Allen of launchin’ out into any more headwork, and
tryin’ to made money on a speck. But if you’ll believe it, Jonathan
Spink’ses folks hadn’t been gone three weeks—for Kitty come back the day
after Spink’ses folks left, and she only stayed with us two weeks that
time, havin’ promised to stay a spell to Thomas Jefferson’s, and it was
only a few days after she went—and then I knew by Josiah’s legs—the
black-and-blue spots hadn’t begun to wear off; they had just begun to
turn yaller—and then I knew by my head-dress, too—when that man come
home from Jonesville one night, cross as a bear.

I said I knew by my new head-dress. I well remember I had wore it that
afternoon for the first time, some expectin’ very genteel company, and
wantin’ to look well. But the company didn’t come, and Kellup Cobb did.
He come to bring home a cent he had borrowed the night before at the
missionary meetin’ to send for his annual gift to the heathens. And he
noticed my new cap in a minute. He looked witherin’ and overbearin’ at
it, and in a sort of a back-handed, underground way, that I can’t bear,
nor never could, he begun to throw hints at me about it. About married
women and members of meetin’-housen spendin’ their money in such
extravagance, when they might spend it in spreadin’ the Gospel in
benighted lands—and about how awful wicked it was to be so dressy—and et
cetery, et cetery.

My cap _wuz_ middlin’-foamin’ lookin’. I couldn’t deny it, and didn’t
try to. It wuzn’t what you might call over and above dressy, but it was
handsome, and _very_ nice. The ribbin on it cost me 18 pence per yard,
and the cap contained two yards and a half; it was _very_ nice. But none
too good for me, my Josiah said.

He is what you may call a close man at a bargain. (Tight, would perhaps
be a better word to express his situation.) But he loves dearly to see
me look beautiful. And he is very gay in his tastes; red is his favorite
color, and the more fiery shades of yellow; he would be glad to see me
dressed in these tints all the time. But I don’t encourage him in the
idee. Not that I think one color is wickeder than another, but they
don’t seem to be becomin’ to my style and age.

Now this new head dress, I had picked it out and selected it with my
pardner by my side, and he whispered to me loud, as I was a-selectin’ of
it: “If you have _got_ to have a new cap, Samantha, for mercy’s sake get
a red one.”

But I whispered to him that I should look like a fool with a red cap on,
and to keep still.

[Illustration: THE NEW HEAD-DRESS.]

And then he whispered agin, in a more anxious tone: “Wall then, for
pity’s sake do get yeller, or sunthin’ that has got a little color to
it. Black! black! the whole of the time; you look jest like a mourner.”

I had a black one on my hand at that time, admirin’ of it, and most
settled on it. But Josiah’s mean was such as I was a-settlin’, that I,
as a devoted pardner, and a woman of principle, compromised the matter
with Josiah and Duty, by purchasin’ one trimmed with a sort of a pinky,
lilock color. It was very becomin’ to me. But I won’t deny, as a woman
who is bred to tellin’ the truth, and not gin to deceit and coverin’
up,—I won’t deny that the first time I tried that head-dress on after I
got home, I had my curious feelin’s. I thought mebby it was wrong for me
to buy such costly ribbin, and so much of it. And then I worried about
the color, too. Thinkses I, mebby it is too young for me; too young for
a woman who owns a bald-headed pardner and a grandchild, and who has but
few teeth left in her head.

My conscience is a perfect old tyrent, and jest drives me round more’n
half the time. I am willin’ to be drove by her as fur as I ort to be.
But sometimes, I declare for’t, I get so tuckered out with her drivin’s,
that I get fairly puzzled, and wonderin’ whether she knows herself all
the time jest what she is about; whether she is certain that she is
always a drivin’ me in the right road; and how fur I ort to be drove by
her, and when, and where to; and whether I ort to let my intellect and
common sense lay holt and help her drive. As I say, she run me
considerable of a run on this head-dress. I had a awful time of it, and
won’t deny it, and I was on the very pint several times of carryin’ it
back. But when Kellup come right out, and gin such powerful hints about
it; about extravagance, and wickedness, and vanity; and about married
wimmen settin’ sinful patterns to them outside of meetin’-housen, and
that it didn’t look likely, and et cetery, et cetery, and so forth.

[Illustration: APPLE BLOSSOMS.]

Why, as he went on a hintin’ so powerful strong, and givin’ such burnin’
glances onto that head-dress, why, I sort o’ sprunted up, and begun to
see things on the other side plainer than I had seen ’em.

Then says I, as the eyes of my specks rested upon the apple-boughs that
filled the north kitchen winder with a glow of rosiness and sweetness:

“The Lord don’t seem to think as you do, Kellup. Jest see how He has
dressed up that old apple-tree.” Says I: “No fashionable belle in New
York or Paris village can ever hope to wear garments so daintily fine
and sweet. No queen nor empress ever wore or ever will wear for their
coronation robes such splendid and gorgeous raiment as the common spring
suit of that old apple-tree.”

[Illustration: HOW IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.]

Says Kellup, holdin’ his head well up in the air, and drawin’ his lips
down with a very self-righteous drawin’, that I knew meant head-dress,
though he didn’t come right out and say it:

“I despise and detest the foolishness of display. There is more
important and serious business on earth than dressin’ up to look nice.”

“That is so,” says I, “that is jest as true as you live. Now that old
apple tree’s stiddy business and theme is to make sweet, juicy apples;
but at the same time that don’t hender her from dressin’ up, and lookin’
well. The Lord might have made the apples grow in rows right round the
trunk from top to bottom, with no ‘foolishness of display’ of the rosy
coloring and perfume—but He didn’t. He chose in His wisdom, which it is
not for you or me to doubt, to make it a glory and a delight to every
beholder. So beautiful that the birds sail and sing with very joy in and
out of the sweet branches, and the happy bees hum delightedly about the
honey-laden cells, and she whose name was once Smith, has been made
happy as a queen all day long, by jest lookin’ out of that window down
into the fragrant, rosy depths of sweetness and light.”

“Wall,” says Kellup, lookin’ keen at my head-dress, “I don’t consider it
likely, anyway, to spend so much time a dressin’ up—it is a shiftless
waste of time, anyway.”

“Why,” says I; for the more he scolded me, the plainer I see the other
side of things. So curious are human bein’s constituted and sot.

[Illustration: HARD AT IT.]

“Nater has always been considered likely—I never heard a word against
her character, and she is stiddy minded, too, and hard workin’. She
works hard, Nater does. She works almost beyond her strength sometimes.
She has sights of work on her hands all the hull time, and she has a
remarkable knack of turnin’ off tremendous day’s works. And I never in
my hull life heard her called shiftless or slack. But what a case she is
to orniment herself off; to rag out and show herself in so many
different colors. And if she feels better to be dressed up and fixed off
kinder pretty while she’s to work, I don’t know whose business it is. I
never was no case myself to dress up in white book muslin, or pink silk,
or bobonet lace, or anything of that kind, when I was a doin’ hard jobs,
such as makin’ soap, and runnin’ candles, and cleanin’ house, and
etcetery. And when I have got to be out in the rain when it is all
drabbly and muddy, why I jest wrap up and look like fury. But she don’t.
No! I have known her time and agin to tie the most gorgeous and shinin’
rainbow round her old waist and jest lay herself out to look foamin’ and
dressy, right there in the rain.

“It beats all how she does fix herself up. But it don’t hurt my feelin’s
at all. I never was a mite jealous of other females lookin’ better than
I did. The better they look, the better I enjoy lookin’ at ’em. And if
Nater can dress up better and look better while she is a doin’ her
spring work and all her other hard jobs than I can, good land! how
simple it would be in me to blame her. There is where I use such
cast-iron reason. You don’t ketch me a blamin’ other folks for their
little personal ways and habits that don’t do nobody no hurt. She is
well off, Nater is, and able to do as she is a mind to; she has got
plenty to do with; she don’t have to scrimp herself to buy flowers, and
tossels, and rainbows. If she did, I shouldn’t approve of it in her, not
at all. I despise folks goin’ beyond their means to look pretty. I think
it is wicked, and the height of dretfulness. But if them that are
abundantly able and willin’ want to look nice, I say, let ’em look.”

And I cast a conscious and sort of a modest glance up into the
lookin’-glass that hung over the table. I could jest ketch a glimpse of
my head-dress, and I see that its strings floated out noble, and I see
at the same glance that he was still lookin’ witherin’ at it. But I
didn’t care a mite for it. I was jest filled with my subject (that side
of it, for every subject has got more’n a dozen sides to it), and the
more he cast them witherin’ looks onto me the more I wuzn’t withered—but
soared up in mind, and grew eloquent.

And I went on fearfully eloquent about Nater, and the way she fixed
herself up perfectly beautiful—right when she was a workin’ the hardest.

“Why,” says I, “when she goes way down into the depths of the under
world to make iron, and coal, and salt, and things that has got to be
made, and she has got to make ’em—why, she can’t be contented way down
there in the dark, all alone by herself, without deckin’ herself off
with diamonds, and all sorts of precious gems, and holdin’ up wreaths of
shinin’ crystal, enameled fern fronds, and hangin’ clusters snowy white,
and those shinin’ with every dazzlin’ hue.

“And way down on the ocean floor, fifteen miles or so down below, where
she would naturally expect nobody would come a visatin’—why, way down
there, where she must know that there hain’t no company liable to drop
in on her onexpected, yet every minute of the time she is all ornimented
off with pearls, and opal-tinted shells, daintest green and crimson
seagrass, gem-like purple astreas, wonderful pink and white coral
wreaths—all strange and lovely blossoms of the sea.

“What tongue can tell the wonders of the beauty she arrays herself with
way down there in the dark alone. How every little bud of beauty is
wreathed around with other marvels of loveliness—how all about one tiny
little bit of a blossom will be twined other wonderful little flowerin’
vines, starred with crystal bells.

“No tongue can ever describe it—not mine, certainly, for I say but
little myself, and that little is far too small to express these wonders
of beauty.

[Illustration: NATURE’S OCEAN BOUDOIR.]

“And then right round here, when she is to work right here in our
fields, doin’ her common run of hard work—such as makin’ wheat, and
oats, and other grain. No matter how hot the weather is, or muggy; no
matter whether she is behindhand with her work, and in a awful hurry—she
always finds time to scatter along in the orderly ranks of the grain,
wild red poppies and blue-eyed asters. And I never in my life, and
Josiah never did, see her ever make a solid ear of corn without she hung
on top of it a long silk tossel. And I don’t believe she ever made a ton
of hay in the world, if she had her own way about it, but what she made
it perfectly gay with white daisies and butter-cups.

[Illustration: NATURE’S WORK.]

“And all the gardens of the world she glorifies, and all the roads, and
hedges, and lanes, and by-ways. No matter how long and crooked they are,
or how tejus, she scatters blossoms of brightness and beauty over them
all.

“And clear up on the highest mountains, under the shadow of the
everlastin’ snows, she will stop to lay a cluster of sweet mountain
anemones and Alpine roses on the old bosom—for she is a gettin’
considerable along in years, Nater is. Not that I say it in a runnin’
way at all, or spiteful, or mean. But I s’pose she is older than we have
any idee of—as old agin as folks call her. But she acts young, and looks
so. She holds her age remarkable, as has been often remarked about a
person whose name was once Smith.

“Why, she acts fairly frisky and girlish sometimes. Way down in the
lowest valleys, down by the most hidden brook-side, she will sit down to
weave together the most lovely and coquetish bunches of fern and
grasses, and scarlet and golden wild flowers, and deck herself up in ’em
like a bride of 16. You never ketched her runnin’ in debt for a lot of
stuff though—her principles are too firm. But she goes on makin’ beauty
and gladness wherever she goes, and lookin’ handsome, and if it had been
wicked the Lord wouldn’t have let her go on in it. He could have stopped
her in a minute if He had wanted to. She does jest as He tells her to,
and always did.

“And,” says I, with considerable of a stern look onto Kellup, “if
Nater—if she who understands the unwritten language of God, that we
can’t speak yet—if she, whose ways seem to us to be a revelation of that
will of the Most High—if she can go on wreathing herself in beauty, I
don’t think we should be afraid of gettin’ holt of all we can of it—of
all lovely things. And I don’t think,” says I, givin’ a sort of a
careless glance up into the lookin’-glass, “that there should be such a
fuss made by the world at large about my head-dress.”

“But,” says Kellup, a groanin’ loud and violent, “it is the wickedness
of it I look at. To follow the vile example of the rich. And oh! how
wicked rich folks be. How hard-hearted, how unprincipled, and vile.” And
agin he groaned, deep.

Says I, “Don’t groan so, Kellup,” for it was truly skairful to hear him.

Says he, “I will groan!” Says he, “The carryin’s on and extravagance of
the rich is enough to make a dog groan.”

I see I couldn’t stop his groanin’, but I went on a talkin’ reasonable,
in hopes I could quell him down.

Says I, “There is two sides to most everything, Kellup, and some have
lots of sides. That is what makes the world such a confusin’ place to
live in. If things and idees didn’t have but one side to ’em, we could
grab holt of that side, hold it close, and be at rest.

“But they do. And you must look on both sides of things before you make
a move. You mustn’t confine yourself to lookin’ on jest one side of a
subject, for it hain’t reasonable.”

“I won’t try to look on both sides,” says he with a bitter look. “That
is what makes folks onsettled and onstabled in their views, and liberal.
But I won’t. I am firm and decided. I am satisfied to look on one side
of a subject—on the good old orthodox side. You won’t ketch me a
whifflin’ round and lookin’ on every side of a idee.”

“Wall,” says I, calmly, for to convince, and not to anger, is ever my
theme and purpose. And knowin’ that to the multitude truth is most often
palatable if presented in a parabolical form, and has been for centuries
often imbibed by them in that way, entirely unbeknown to them. And
knowin’ that the little scenes of daily life are as good to wrap round
morals and cause ’em to be swallowed down unbeknowin’, as peach
preserves are to roll round pills, I went on and says:

“If you won’t look on only one side of a subject, Kellup, you may find
yourself in as curious a place as Melvin Case was last fall. His wife
told it herself to Miss Gansey, and Miss Gansey told the editor of the
Augurs’es wife, and the editor of the Augurs’es wife told Miss Mooney,
and she told the woman’s first husband’s mother-in-law that told me. It
come straight.

“It was a very curious situation, and the way on’t was: Melvin Case, as
you know, married Clarinda Piller of Piller P’int, down on the Lake
Shore road. Wall, they had been married 23 years and never had no
childern, and last fall they had a nice little boy. He was a welcome
child, and weighed over 9 pounds.

“Wall, Malvin thought the world of his wife, and bein’ very tickled
about the boy, and feelin’ very affectionate towards his wife at the
time, he proposed at once that they should call him after her maiden
name—Piller. Of course she give her willin’ consent, and they was both
highly tickled. But you see, bein’ blinded by affection and happiness,
they didn’t look on only one side of the idee, and they never studied on
how the two names was a goin’ to look when they was put together, till
after he had wrote it down in the Bible; and then he paused, with his
pen in his hand, and looked up perfectly horrified at his wife, who was
holdin’ the baby in her arms and lookin’ over his shoulder, and she
looked perfectly dumbfoundered at him, for they see it looked
awful—Piller Case.

[Illustration: BABY PILLER CASE.]

“Now you are lookin’ at one side of the subject, but there is another
side to it, Kellup,—there is as sure as you live and breathe.

“God knows too much cannot be said or sung about the duty the rich owe
to the poor. They cannot study too correctly, and follow too closely the
pattern that He, the loving Elder Brother, set them. He who was so
tender in His compassion; so helpful and thoughtful to the claims of the
poor and humble. But charity is a big word, and it has more than one
side to it. It means charity to the poor, under whose lowly roofs He
once entered, a child of the poor, and so consecrated them honorable for
all time. Those who were His closest friends through His toilsome
earthly life; those whom He loved first, and loved last; cared for even
in that supreme moment of His most triumphant and glorious ignominy.
Shall not His followers forever love and bless those He hallowed by His
tender care in such a moment? Yes, charity to the poor first. But we
mustn’t stop there, Kellup. We may want to set right down in front of
that side of the word, and stay there. But we mustn’t. If we want to
view this heavenly word on every side we must walk round on the other
side of it, and see that it means, too, charity to the rich. A higher,
subtler quality of charity it calls for in us than the other.

“For I can tell you, Kellup, some folks say it is a tough job for one to
keep a sweet, charitable, loving spirit towards them that are richer,
more successful, and happier than they be. Hard for ’em to rejoice over
the good fortune of the great. Hard for ’em to keep from judgin’ them
severely—from feelin’ envious over the good fortune they cannot share.

[Illustration: FEELIN’ CHRISTIAN.]

“We are exhorted to feel sorry for the man who falls down and breaks his
leg. We are exhorted to feel christian toward that humble man. But
though there hain’t much said on the other side of the subject, I think
it is enough sight harder to feel christian towards that man when we are
a layin’ flat on the ice, or slippery sidewalk, and he is a standin’ up
straight.

“It is easy to deceive ourselves; easy to give very big, noble names to
very small emotions. And if we feel uncomfortable to see some one else
who has always stood on the same level with ourselves suddenly lifted
above us,—no matter how worthily he may have earned that more exalted
station,—we may call that uncomfortable feelin’ any name we please. We
may call it a holy horror of worldly-mindedness—a hauntin’ fear lest he
be jeopardizin’ his immortal soul, by settin’ up on that loftier spear.
And mebby it is. I hain’t a goin’ to come right out and say that it
hain’t. But I will say this, for there hain’t no harm in it, and it
can’t make no trouble. I will say that if we feel this uncomfortable
feelin’ we ort to keep a close watch of our symptoms. For though that
gripin’ pain in the left side may be a religious pain, yet there is a
possibility that it may be envy. And if it is, it requires fur different
treatment. And it may be a self-righteous, Pharasaical feelin’ that our
Lord seemed to hate worst of any feelin’ we could feel.

“I tell you it requires the very closest dognosing (to use a high learnt
medical phrase) to get the symptoms exactly right, and see exactly what
aches we are a achin’. For the heart that we imagine is a gripin’ and a
achin’ at sinful worldly-mindedness, may be a achin’ with the consumin’
fever of spite, and envy and revenge,—the heart-burnin’ desire and
determination to bring the loftier and the nobler down in some way on a
level with ourselves, if not by fair means, with the foul ones of malice
and slander and lies.

“I don’t say it is so; but I say, let us be careful, and let us be
charitable to all,—the rich and the poor,—for charity, Kellup, like the
new linen ulsters, covers a multitude of sinners.

“Now,” says I, metaforin’ a little, as I might have known I should
before I got through, “now if I was a woman, and should say that to wear
diamonds was wicked, or to live in a beautiful home full of books and
pictures, and all the means of ease and culture was an abomination to
me, and wicked, when I was hankerin’ in the very depths of my soul to be
wicked in jest that way, if I only had the wherewith to be wicked with,
why, that holy horror I professed would be vain in me; empty as soundin’
brass and tinglin’ symbols. Let us be honest and true first, and then
put on more ornamental christianity afterwards; there hain’t no danger
of our gettin’ any too much of it, that is, of the right kind. Envy and
hypocracy and cant look worse to me than diamonds; and I would wear the
diamonds as quick agin—if I got the chance.”

Kellup didn’t look a mite convinced. But I kep’ right on, for though I
am a woman that says but little, yet when I begin to convince anybody I
always want to finish up the job in a handsome, thorough way, and then I
felt real eloquent; and I tell you it is hard, even for a close-mouthed
woman, it is hard for ’em when they feel as eloquent as I did then to
keep from swingin’ right out and talkin’, and I didn’t try to stop
myself; I kep’ right on, and says I:

“It is a mistake in you and in me if we think that every rich person is
necessarily a hard-hearted one; if we think a tender heart cannot beat
jest as warmly and truly aginst a ermine robe, as a shabby overcoat;
aginst a rich boddist waist, as a calico bask. There are little, stingy,
narrow, contracted souls in every station-house of life, high ones and
low ones; and there are loving, generous ones, visey versey, and the
same. And God bless those tender hearts where-ever they are; those who
in lofty places organize the great charities whose benefactions bless
the nations in famine, in war, and in the calamity of national sickness
and distress. And Heaven bless the lowly toilers of life, whose humble
gifts out of their scanty means are in God’s sight equally as great.

“The little blue potato-blossom laid upon the pillow of the sick by the
child of poverty—we think the perfume of that little odorless flower
will rise to Heaven as sweet as the most royal blossom given by the
children of kings. The blossoms of true charity are all sweet in
Heaven’s sight.”

[Illustration: “BLESSINGS ON THEM ALL!”]

And says I, lookin’ up to the ceilin’ in a almost rapped eloquence of
mean, and a lofty fervency and earnestness of axent:

“Heaven bless all the generous, loving hearts that beat under any and
every colored robe; under the shabby garb of poverty; the somber hue of
some consecrated sisterhood of compassion; under the quaint Quaker garb,
or the bright silks of the Widder Albert’s generous daughters; those who
conscientiously wear sober clothing, and those who jest as innocently
wear brighter apparel. Heaven bless them all; the gray-robed sisterhood
of Mercy, God’s dove-colored angels, who lean over the beds of the sick
and the sorrowing, and whose shadows falling by the beds of pain the
sad-eyed soldiers kiss; Catholic or Protestant, whatever their creed,
they have the divinest gift of the three—the divine gift of Charity. God
made them all—the rose and the gray; the blue sky, the rainbow, and the
soft shadow of the twilight clouds. He made the earth for His beloved;
nothing is too good for them, or too beautiful. And why should one color
boast over another, as being purer-minded, and less wicked?”

[Illustration: A HEAVENLY MESSENGER.]

I had been very eloquent, and felt considerable eloquent still, but
happenin’ to let the eye of my speck fall for a minute on Kellup, I see
by the awful unbelievin’ look on his face that I had got to simplify it
down to his comprehension. I see that he did not understand my soarin’
ideas as I would wish ’em to be understood.

Not that I blamed him for it. Good land! a tow string hain’t to blame
for not bein’ made a iron spike. But at the same time it is bad and
wearisome business for the one who attempts to use that tow string for a
spike—tries to drive it into the solid wall of argument and clinch a
fact with it. I had said a good deal about beauty, but it seemed as if I
wanted to say sunthin’ more, and I went on and said it:

“Some folks seem to be afraid of beauty; as ’fraid of it as if it was a
bear. They seem to be more afraid of lettin’ a little beauty into their
lives than they be of lettin’ the same amount of wickedness in. You
would think a man was awful simple who would spend his hull strength in
puttin’ up coverin’s to his windows to keep out the sunshine and fresh
air, and not pay any attention to the obnoxious creeters, wild-cats,
burglars, and etcetery that was comin’ right into the open front-door.
And it hain’t a mite more simple than it is for them, for they take so
much pains a puttin’ up iron bars (as it were) across the windows of
their souls to keep beauty and brightness and innocent recreation out of
it, that they have no time to see how uncharitableness and envy and
malice and hatred and a hull regiment of just such ugly creeters are
troopin’ right into the front-door unbeknown to them.

[Illustration: The wreathed Spear]

“They seem to take a pride in despisin’ beauty, as if it was a merit in
them to look down upon, and feel hauty and contemptuous toward the
divinest and loveliest thing God ever made. I don’t feel so, Kellup. I
don’t think it is wicked for me to lay holt of all the beauty and
happiness that I can, consistently with my duty to humanity and Josiah.

“There are some things that must be done first of all. We must hold the
spear firm and upright. We must carry our principles stiddy and firm.
But we have a perfect right and privilege to wreath that spear and them
principles with all the blossoms of brightness and innocent happiness we
can possibly lay holt of. Them is my opinions. Howsomever, everybody to
their own mind.”

“Beauty the divinest thing God ever made!” says Kellup in a hauty,
ironical tone. “How dare you be so wicked, Josiah Allen’s wife? I call
it awful wicked to talk so.”

Says I, “I don’t believe anything is wicked that lifts us right up
nearer to Heaven. I don’t mean to be wicked.”

“Wall, you be,” says he, speakin’ up sharp. “Worshipin’ beauty,
worshipin’ the creature instead of the creator.”

Says I, “Can you tell me, Kellup, what that spirit of beauty is, that
you are so sot aginst?” Says I, feelin’ more and more eloquent as I dove
further and further into the depths of the subject than I had doven—and
the more I went on about it the more carried away I wuz and lost, till
before I had gone on 2 minutes I was entirely by the side of myself, and
carried completely out of Kellup Cobb’s presence, out of Josiah Allen’s
kitchen, out into the mighty waste of mystery that floats all round
Jonesville and the world:

“What is this spirit of beauty—there is something, some hidden spirit,
some soul of inspiration, in all beautiful things, pictures, poetry,
melody—a spirit that forever eludes us, flies before us, and yet smiles
down into our souls forever with haunting, glorious eyes. What is this
wonderful spirit, this insperation that thrills us so in all sweetest
and saddest melodies, in lovely landscapes, in the soft song of the
summer wind, and the mournful refrain of ocean waves, in sunset, and the
weird stillness of a starry midnight? That thrills us so in all
glorified legends of heroism—and in that divinest poem of a noble
life.—That haunts us, and so fills our souls with longing that sometimes
we imagine we can catch a glimpse of it in the clear look of some
inspired eye; but almost e’er we behold it, it is gone. Some fleetin’
echo of whose voice we fancy we have caught in the lofty refrain of some
heavenly melody—but, e’er our soul could hardly listen, the sweet strain
was drowned in the discord of human voices. Ah! sometimes the veil has
seemed but thin between us, as we stood for brief, blissful moments on
the mountain tops of our best and noblest emotions, so transparent, and
glowing with inner brightness, that we could almost behold the face of
an angel behind the shining barriers. But the mists swept coldly up, and
the sweet face was lost in the cloudy, earthly vapors.

“If we could reach it, if we could once reach out our longing arms, and
touch that wonderful, illusive soul of beauty, if we could hold it with
our weak, mortal grasp, and look upon it face to face—can you tell me,
Kellup, what it would be? Can you tell me how pure, and holy, and divine
a shape it would be? The Ideal of Beauty that forever rises before
us—this longing for perfection implanted in our souls? We cannot believe
by bad spirits, but by the Ever Good. This ideal that every poet and
artist soul has longed for, prayed for, but never reached—this ideal of
purity which we strive to mould in clay; poor, crumblin’, imperfect
clay, that will not, however earnestly we toil, take the clear shape of
our dreams. Can you tell me, Kellup, that it is not the longing of the
mortal for the immortal, the deathless cry of the human for the divine?

“To me, it is the surest proof of immortality. For we know that our God
is not cruel, and we cannot think He would hold out to us a lovely gift
only to mock us with glimpses of its glory, and then withdraw it from us
forever.

“And this ideal of perfection that we have so striven and prayed to
realize—perhaps these longings and strivings are perfecting that image
in our lives, unbeknown to us; and when the clay that wraps it round
drops off, shall we behold it in glad wonder in the land of the King?
Shall we see that the dull stroke of care and the keen blow of suffering
helped most to mould it into beauty? Surely, surely, He will one day
give the desire of our souls. Surely there is a land of immortal purity,
immortal beauty, where to the souls of all who truly aspire the dim
shadow light of our hope will be lost in the bright glory of
fulfillment.”

Says Kellup, castin’ the witherin’est look onto my head-dress that he
had cast onto it, and clingin’ close to his old idee, as close as a idee
ever was clung to, says he, comin’ out plain:

“That head-dress is a shame, and a disgrace. You wouldn’t ketch me in no
such extravagance. The money had better have been took and distributed
round amongst the poorer classes in the country.”

I don’t s’pose I ort to, and I don’t know exactly how it happened that I
did, but I won’t deny it, that comin’ down so awful sudden off of the
height of eloquence I had been a soarin’ on, bein’ brought down so awful
short and sort o’ onexpected, it did, and I won’t deny it, it did, for
as much as a minute and a half, make me mad. It sort o’ jarred me all
over, and I spoke up sharp, and says I:

“There are exceptions to every ruler, as scholars have always said. But
as a general thing, the people who deny themselves all the beauty and
brightness of life, are the very ones who deny it to others. Those who
talk the most about others’ extravagance, and what great things they
would do if they was in other folks’es places, are the very ones who, if
they wuz there, wouldn’t do nothin’. It is the tight ones of earth who
talk the most about looseness: how awful loose they would be under
certain circumstances. But I believe, and Josiah duz, that they wouldn’t
under the very loosest circumstances ever be loose, but would always be
tight. And them who says the least often does the most. Them who scold
the least about other folks’es duty, often do their own duty the best.
Curious. But so it is.

[Illustration: A Guiding Hand]

“And those who love to put beauty into their own lives, are often the
ones who love to bless other lives—are the ones whose hearts ache at the
pleading of a sorrowful eye—whose hearts thrill clear to their center at
the voice of a hungry child.

“And if the heart is thrilled in the right way, that thrill always
trembles right down into the portmoney, and trembles it open, and jars
the money right out of it. The money that will make that hungry cry
change into a thankful one, and that wistful look change into a
rejoicin’ one.

“Why,” says I in a earnest, lofty tone, wantin’ to convince him, “look
at that female I have been a talkin’ about; look at Nater. See what she
duz. You have had to give up that no other female ever loved the
beautiful as she duz. And you have got to give up that no other female
was ever so great-hearted, so compassionate and generous.”

And havin’ by this time got all over my little temporary madness, I went
on agin about her, beautiful. Somehow I always do talk eloquent about
Nater. I guess it is because I think so much of her.

Says I: “No tenderer care does she give to the monarch on his throne
than she gives to the little bare-foot peasant child, or the little
foolish sparrer. She takes no greater thought to guide the great ship
freighted with noble lives, and help her plow her way through the
billows, than she takes to guide the way of the sea-bird over the wild
waters, or the flight of the frightened northern birds fleeing southward
through the trackless sky before the snows.

“Good to all, generous, helpful to all, patient to all. And at the last
she just opens her loving arms and gives rest to all, simple and gentle,
serf and monarch; to the prosperous and happy, and to all the
heavy-hearted, all the broken-hearted, all the worn, the defeated, the
despairin’ souls; the saint and the sinner alike, without rebuking or
questioning; she jest reaches out her arms to them all, and gives them
rest.”

Says Kellup: “I guess I’ll go out and look at Josiah’s new stun-bolt. I
don’t know but what I shall want to borry it bimeby to draw some stuns.”

And he started off—and I was glad he did.

                    JOSIAH UNDERTAKES MORE BUSINESS.

Wall that was the very night, as I said, that Josiah Allen come home so
awful cross. And what under the sun ailed him I could not imagine. He
had been clever when he left home,—very; he had had a extra good
breakfast, and he was the picture of happiness; and his morals seemed
stiddy and firm. And comin’ off so sudden onto such fearful
fractiousness, it worried me.

But little did I think he was plannin’ more head-work. If I had I should
have worried fur more. But he wuz. Old Ben Mandagool, a friend of
Josiah’s, was takin’ in boarders, and makin’ money by ’em. And that very
day (unbeknown to me) he had throwed them boarders, six of ’em, into
Josiah’s face, and the pile of money he had made by ’em, and twitted him
that if it wasn’t for his wife he could make jest as much. Old Mandagool
knew well how I felt about takin’ in boarders; he knew I was principled
against it, and sot. Mandagool misuses his wife shamefully; makes a
perfect underlin’ of her; works her down to skin and bone; they don’t
live happy together at all. And he seems to be envious of anybody that
does live agreeable with their pardner, and loves to break it up. And so
it went on for a number of days; he a twittin’ Josiah how if it wuzn’t
for his wife he could have his way, and make money, (and Josiah loves to
have his own way dearly,) and throwin’ them half a dozen boarders into
his face, and it hain’t no wonder that Josiah felt hurt. And it hain’t
no wonder, constituted as men be, that he was exceedingly cross to me.
But knowin’ how cast-iron my mind was when it was made up, he never let
on what ailed him. And I was skairt most to death to see him look so
mauger, and act so restless and oneasy, and crosser’n any bear out of a
circus.

How strange and mysterious things be in this world. Lots and lots of
things we can see the effects of,—powerful effects,—but can’t ketch a
glimpse of the causes. I could see the crossness, and bear it; but what
the cause of it was, was concealed from me by a impenetrable vail. And
I, jest as poor, blind mortal bein’s will do, when they stand in front
of mysteries, and don’t want to own they are puzzled by ’em, would make
up reasons in my own mind, and call ’em facts. Thinkses I to myself: he
is a enjoyin’ poor health, or else he is a gettin’ back-slid. And one
day I says to him, says I:

“Josiah Allen, what is the matter with you? You don’t act like the same
man you did several days ago. I am goin’ to steep up some catnip and
thoroughwort tea, and see if it won’t make you feel better,—and some
boneset.”

“I don’t want none of your boneset and catnip.”

Says I: “You know, Josiah Allen, that you are enjoyin’ very poor health.
You enjoy as bad agin health as you did along in the winter.”

[Illustration: “WHAT’S THE MATTER, JOSIAH?”]

[Illustration: “WHAT’S THE MATTER, JOSIAH?”]

“My health is well enough,” says he sort o’ surly like.

“Wall then,” says I in still more anxious tones, “if it hain’t your
health that is a sufferin’, is it your morals? Do they feel totterin’,
Josiah? Tell your pardner how they feel.”

“Dummit, my morals feel all right.”

Says I sternly: “Stop that swearin’ instantly and to once.” And I went
on in reasonable tones: “If you hain’t enjoyin’ poor health, Josiah, and
your morals are firm, why is there such a change in your mean?” Says I:
“Your mean don’t look no more like your old one than if it belonged to
another man.”

But instead of answerin’ my affectionate and anxious inquiries, he
jumped up and started for the barn. And so it went on for over 4 days; I
a knowin’ sunthin’ ailed him, and couldn’t get him to tell; he a growin’
crosser and crosser, and lookin’ maugerer and maugerer, and I a growin’
alarmed about him to that extent that I knew not what to do. And finally
one mornin’ to the breakfast table, I says to him in tones that would be
answered:

“Josiah Allen, you are carryin’ sunthin’ on your mind.” And says I
firmly: “Your mind hain’t strong enough to carry it alone; your pardner
_must_ and _will_ help you carry it.” He see determination in my
eyebrow, and he finally up and told me. How he was a hankerin’ to take
in summer boarders; how he wanted to get back the money he had lost in
some way, and he knew there was piles and piles of money to be made by
it; and it was such pretty business, too,—nothin’ but fun to take ’em
in; anybody could take such perfect comfort with ’em, besides bein’ so
awful profitable; and knowin’ my principles rose up like cast-iron
against the idee, it was a wearin’ on him.

I didn’t say nothin’. Some wimmen would have throwed Jonathan Spink and
his wife in her pardner’s face, and some wimmen would have throwed the
twin and the hull of the family. But I didn’t. I knew my pardner was a
sufferin’ fearfully, and my affection for him is like a ox’es, as has
been often remarked. No, I only said in a cold, cautious tone: “Will you
pass me the buckwheat-cakes, Josiah, and the syrup?”

But them words, them buckwheat-cakes, was only a vail (as it were) that
I threw over my feelin’s, tryin’ to hide ’em from my pardner. For oh!
what a wild commotion was goin’ on inside of me between my principles
and my affection. And of all the wars that ever devastated the world,
that is the most fearful; though it may be like many others, a silent
warfare. Yes, when love—such a love as my love for Josiah—and principles
strong and hefty as my principles are, get to fightin’ with each other,
and kickin’ back and forth, and ragin’, and as I may say, in a practical
and figurative way, snortin’ and prancin’,—then ensues and follers on a
time long to be remembered.

I was principled against takin’ in summer boarders. I had seen ’em took
in, time and agin, and seen the effects of it, and I had said, and said
calmly, that for people like us boarders was a moth. I had said, and
felt, that when a woman does her own housework it was all she ort to do
to take care of her own men folks, and her house, and housen stuff, and
common run of visitors,—and hired girls I was immovably sot against from
my birth.

[Illustration: A POETICAL SIMELY.]

Home seemed to me to be a peaceful haven, jest large enough for two
barks,—Josiah’s bark and my bark,—and when foreign schooners (to foller
up my poetical simely), when foreign schooners and periogers sailed in,
they generally proved to be ships of war, pirate fleets stealin’
happiness and ease, and runnin’ up the skeliton of our dead joys at
their mast-heads. But I am a episodin’, and wanderin’ off into fields of
poesy, and to resoom and go on:

It would be in vain and only harrow up the reader’s feelin’s to tell how
the long struggle went on inside of my mind. But when I say that my
pardner daily grew before my eyes crosser and more fearfully cross, and
mauger and more awfully mauger, any female woman who has got a beloved
companion, and a heart inside of her breast bones, knows how the
conflict ended. I yielded and gin in, and the very day I gin my consent
Josiah went and engaged ’em. He’d heard of ’em from old Mandagool. He
had boarded ’em the summer before, and he said they wanted to get board
again in Jonesville, though for some reason Mandagool didn’t seem to
want to board ’em himself. I thought to myself that looked squally. I
never liked old Mandagool,—not for a minute,—but I didn’t say a word.
Neither did I say anything when he told me there was 4 childern in the
family that was a comin’. No; I held firm. The job was undertook by me
for the savin’ of my pardner. I had undertook it in a martyr way, and I
wuzn’t goin’ to spile the job by murmerin’s and complainin’s.

But oh! how animated Josiah Allen was the day he come back from engagin’
of ’em. His appetite come back powerfully; he eat a immense dinner. His
crossness had disappeared, his affectionate demeanor all returned; he
would have acted as spoony as my big iron spoon if he had had so much as
a crumb of encouragement from me. But I didn’t encourage him. There was
a loftiness and majesty in my mean (caused by my principles) that almost
awed him. I looked first-rate, and acted so. But oh, how highlarious
Josiah Allen was! He was goin’ to make so much money by ’em. Says he,
with a happy look:

[Illustration: JOSIAH’S IDEE.]

“If a man loses money by one speck, he must launch out into another
speck and get it back again.” Says he: “I have tried to make money easy,
time and agin, and now I have hit the nail on the head; now I can make
up my loss, and get independently rich. Why, besides the pure happiness
we shall enjoy with ’em, the solid comfort, jest think of four dollars a
week for the man and his wife, and two dollars a piece for the childern.
Less see,” says he dreamily:

“Twice 4 is 8, and no orts to carry; 4 times 2 is 8, and 8 and 8 is 16.
Sixteen dollars a week. Why, Samantha,” says he, “that will support us;
there hain’t no need of our liftin’ our fingers agin, if we could only
keep ’em right here with us always.”

“Who is goin’ to cook and wait on ’em?” says I almost coldly. Not real
cold, but sort o’ coolish like. For I hain’t one when I tackle a cross
to go carryin’ it along groanin’ and cryin’ out loud all the way. No! if
I can’t carry it cheerfully, I’ll drop it. So, as I say, my tone wasn’t
frigid, but sort o’ cool like. “Who’ll wait on ’em?”

“Get a girl! get two girls! Think of sixteen dollars a week. You can
keep a variety of hired girls if you want to. Yes,” says he, with a
blissful expression and joyous axent, “besides the sweet rest and
comfort we are a goin’ to take with ’em, we can have everything else we
want. Thank Heaven we have now got a compeatency.”

“Wall,” says I in the same tones, or about the same,—coolish, but not
frigid,—“time will tell.”

[Illustration: EARLY BIRDS.]

Wall, they come on a Monday mornin’, on the six o’clock train. Josiah
had to meet ’em to the depot, and he was so afraid he should miss ’em,
and somebody else would undermine him, and get ’em as boarders, that he
was up about three o’clock, and went out and milked by candle-light,
so’s to be sure and be there in season. And I had to get up and get his
breakfast before daylight, feelin’ like a fool, too, for he kep’ me
awake all night a’most, walkin’ round the house, and fallin’ over chairs
and things,—sort o’ gropin’ round,—lightin’ matches to look at the clock
to see what time it was. And if he said to me once, he said 30 times
durin’ that night: “It would be jest my luck to have somebody get in
ahead of me to the cars, and undermind me at the last minute, and get
’em away from me.”

Says I, in dry tones (not so dry as I had used, but dryish): “I guess
there won’t be no danger, Josiah.”

But the very last thing I heard him say, in fearful and fractious tones,
as he got into that democrat, was: “It would be jest like old Mandagool
to undermind me.”

Wall, about a quarter to 7 he driv up with ’em. A tall, spindlin’,
waspish-lookin’ woman, and 4 childern. The man, they said, wasn’t comin’
till Saturday night. I thought the woman had a singular look to her when
I first see her, and so did the oldest boy, who was about 13 years old.
I thought he looked dretful white in the face, and sort o’ strange like.
He looked like his ma, only he was fleshy,—dretful sort o’
fleshy,—flabby like. And as they walked up from the gate, side by side,
I thought I never in my hull life see a waspisher and spindlener woman,
or a curiouser lookin’ couple. The other 3 childern that come behind
seemed to be pretty much of a age, and looked healthy, and full of the
old Harry, as we found out afterwards they indeed was.

Wall, I had a hard tussle of it through the day to cook and do for ’em.
Their appetites was tremenjous, specially the woman and the oldest boy.
They wasn’t healthy appetites. I could see that in a minute. Their eyes
would look holler and hungry, and they would look voraciously at the
empty deep dishes and tureens, after they had eat ’em all empty,—eat
enough for 4 men. Why, it did beat all. Josiah looked at me in silent
wonder and dismay, as he see the vittles disappeer before that woman and
boy. The other three childern eat about as common healthy childern
do,—each of ’em about twice what Josiah and me did. But there wasn’t
nothin’ mysterious about them. But the woman and boy made me feel
curious, curiouser than I had ever felt, for truly I thought to myself
if their legs and arms hain’t holler, how do they hold it. It was to me
a new and interesting spectacle, to be studied over and filosofied upon.
But to Josiah it was a canker, as I see the very first meal. I could see
by the looks of his mean that them two appetites was sunthin’ he hadn’t
reckoned and calculated upon. And I could see plain, havin’ watched the
changes of my pardner’s mean as close as astronomers watch the moon, I
could see that them two appetites was a wearin’ on him.

Wall, I thought mebby they was kinder starved out, comin’ right from a
city boardin’-house, and a few of my good meals would quell ’em down.

[Illustration: OUR BOARDERS.]

But no, instead of growin’ lighter them two appetites of their’n seemed,
if possible, to grow consuminer and consuminer, though I cooked lavish
and profuse, as I always did. They devoured everything before ’em, and
looked hungry and wistful at the plates and table-cloth. Josiah looked
on in perfect agony I knew, though he didn’t say nothin’ (he is very
close). And it seemed so awfully mysterious to me. I would get so lost
reasonin’ and felosifyin’ on it; whether their legs was holler or not
holler; and if they was holler, how they could walk round on ’em; and if
they wasn’t holler, where the vittles went to. Why, studyin’ so deep
into it, bringin’ all the deep scientific facts I could think on to bear
onto it, I don’t know but I should have gone ravin’ distracted if she
hadn’t herself up and told me what the matter was.

They had got tape-worms—she and the oldest boy; immense ones, so the
doctor said, and they had to eat to satisfy ’em. That explained it, and
I felt relieved. And I told Josiah, for I love that man, and love to
happify him when I possibly can. But if you’ll believe it, that man was
mad; and he vowed he would charge extra for ’em. It was after we went to
bed I told him, and I had to talk low, for their room was right over
our’n. Says I, in a low but firm whisper:

“Don’t you do no such thing, Josiah Allen. Do you realize how it would
look; what a sound it would have to community?”

“Wall,” he hollered out, “do you s’pose I am goin’ to board all the
tape-worms in the world free of expense? Do you s’pose I am goin’ to
have ’em all congregate here, and be boarded on me for nothin’? I took
men and wimmen and childern to board. I didn’t agree to board anything
else, and I won’t, nuther. It wuzn’t in the bill.”

“Do you keep still, Josiah Allen. She’ll hear you,” I whispered.

“I say it wuzn’t in the bill,” he hollered out agin. I s’pose he meant
it wasn’t in the bargain, but he was nearly delirious (he is very
close—nearly tight). But jest that minute,—before I could say a word,—we
heard a awful noise right over our heads; it sounded as if the hull top
of the house had fell in.

Says Josiah: “The old chimbly has fell in.”

Says I: “I think it is the ruff.”

And we both started for up-stairs on the run. I sent him back from the
head of the stairs, for in the awful fright he hadn’t realized his
condition, and wasn’t dressed. I waited for him at the top of the
stairs, for to tell the truth, I dassent go on. He hurried on his
clothes, and went in ahead,—and there she lay; there Miss Danks was on
the floor in a historical fit. Josiah, thinkin’ she was dead, run in and
ketched her up, and went to puttin’ her on the bed; and she, jest as
they will in historicks, clawed right into his hair, and tore out above
half he had on that side. She then struck him a fearful blow in the
eye—made it black and blue for over two weeks. She didn’t know what she
was about; she wuzn’t to blame—though the hair was a great loss to him,
and I won’t deny it.

Wall, we stood over her most all night to keep the breath of life in
her; and the oldest boy, bein’ skairt, it brought on some fits that he
was in the habit of havin’,—a sort of fallin’ fits; he would fall
anywheres; he fell onto Josiah twice that night, and almost knocked him
down. He was awful large for his age; dretful big and fat. It seemed as
if there was sunthin’ wrong about his heft, it was so oncommon hefty for
a boy of his age. He looked bloated. His eyes, which was a pale blue,
seemed to be kinder sot back in his head, and his cheeks stood out
below, some like baloons; and his mouth was kinder open a good deal of
the time, as if it was hard work for him to breathe; he breathed thick
and wheezy,—dretful oncomfortable. His complexion was bad, too; sallow
and sort o’ tallery lookin’. He acted dretful logy and heavy at the best
of times, and in them fits he was as heavy and helpless as lead.

Wall, that was the third night after they got there, and from that
night, as long as they stayed there, she had the historicks frequent and
violent, and Bill had his fallin’ fits. And you wouldn’t believe if you
hadn’t seen ’em, how many things he broke a fallin’ on ’em in them fits.
It beat all how unfortunate he was. They always come onto him
unexpected, and it seemed as if they would always come onto him while he
was in front of sunthin’ to smash all to bits. And I says to Josiah,
says I: “Did you ever see, Josiah Allen, anybody so unfortunate as that
boy in his fits? It seems as if he’ll break everything in the house if
it goes on.”

Says he, “’Tis a pity his cussed neck don’t break!”

[Illustration: A SURPRISED COLT.]

I don’t know as I ever gin Josiah Allen a firmer, eloquenter lecture
against swearin’ than I did then. But in my heart I pitied him, for it
was only the day before that he fell as he was a lookin’ at the colt. It
was only a week old, but Josiah sot his eyes by it, and the boy was
admirin’ of it—there wasn’t nothin’ ugly about him—but a fit come on,
and he fell onto the colt, and the colt not expectin’ of it, and bein’
unprepared, fell flat down, and the boy on it; and the colt jest lived,
that is all. Josiah says it never will be worth any thing; he thinks it
broke sunthin’ inside. As I said, there wasn’t a ugly thing about Bill.
He’d be awful sorry when he broke things, and squshed ’em, and flatted
’em all out a fallin’ on ’em.

All I blamed him for was his prowlin’ round so much. I thought then, and
I think still, seein’ he knew his own heft, and knew he had ’em, and was
liable to have ’em, he’d done better to have kep’ still, and not tried
to got round so much. But his mother said he felt restless and oneasy. I
couldn’t help likin’ the boy; and when he fell right into my bread that
I had a risin’ and spilte the hull batch, and when he fell acrost the
table in the parlor and broke everything that was on it, and when he
fell onto a chicken-coop and broke it down and killed a hull brood of
chickens, and when he fell onto some tomato plants of a extra kind which
Josiah had bought at a great expense and sot out, and broke ’em off
short, I didn’t feel like scoldin’ him. I s’pose it was my hefty
principles that boyed me up; them and the sweet thought that would come
to me—mebby Josiah Allen will hear to me another time, mebby he’ll get
sick of summer boarders and to takin’ of ’em in.

I s’pose it was these lofty feelin’s that kep’ me up; truly if it hadn’t
been I don’t know how I could have lived, cookin’ as much as I had to,
and goin’ through with what I did, historics, and fallin’ fits, and
etcetery, etcetery.

And the 3 smaller children was ugly; there haint no other name made that
will describe their demenors and acts, only jest that word, ugly.

They made me more work than all my housework put together. A handlin’
everything, and a breakin’ everything, and a ridin’ the turkeys, and
actin’, and performin’.

[Illustration: EXERCISING THE GOBBLER.]

I spose they was told more’n a hundred times by me and Josiah to _not_
ride that turkey gobbler. And I don’t spose there was ever any other
children on earth, only jest them 3, that would have dast to gone near
it. Why, I have seen right-minded and moral children time and agin weep
and cry when they seen it comin’ nigh ’em, it was so powerful lookin’,
and high-headed. But good land! first thing I’d know I’d see one on ’em
right on that gobbler, pretendin’ to ride it; they almost killed that
Tom Turkey.

And then all of a sudden we’d hear the fannin’ mill a goin’ full blast,
and Josiah would run to the barn, and there they would be a runnin’ dirt
through it, slates, stuns, or anything. And then I’d hear the wheel a
goin’ up stairs, buzzin’ as if it would break its old band, and up I’d
go, and there they’d be a spinnin’ of my best rolls. And five different
times I took the youngest one out of the flour barrel, where they was a
makin’ a ghost out of him, to appear to the oldest one—they loved to
scare that boy into fits, they loved it dearly.

And they’d lay to and eat between meals all the preserves and jell and
honey they could get holt of, unbeknown to me; they wasted twice over
every day what their board come to. But I kep’ still, and held firm.
Thinkses I the medicine is bitter, but it is goin’ to do good; the
patient is feelin’ the effects of it. For Josiah looked awful as the
days went by. He see he had made a terrible mistake; he see that he’d
done better to have listened to his faithful pardner. He see where he
had missed it. But pride kep’ him silent, only in the little unguarded
speeches that he would make in sudden moments of anger and agony,
unbeknown to him. Such as sayin’ in loud, quick axents:

“Dummit, I can’t stand it so much longer.” Or in low, plaintive tones,
“Did Heaven ever witness such tribulation?”

I’d ketch him a sayin’ that as he would be a bringin’ Bill in, for
Josiah would have to lift him and lug him in when he would fall out
doors. That in itself I could see was a underminin’ my pardner’s
strength and his back bones. And I shall always believe that was the
reason why Danks stayed out of the way. It was underhanded in him; he
knew that boy was heavy as lead, and he knew he would fall when he had
’em, and would have to be fetched in, and so he jest stayed away and let
Josiah do all the luggin’ and lifting’.

It was three weeks before that man come, and Josiah didn’t look like the
same man. What with chasin’ after them three littlest boys, and carryin’
round Bill in his fallin’ fits, and havin’ the care of providin’ more
provisions than was ever devoured on earth before by the same number of
people, and bein’ kep’ awake night after night by Miss Danks’es
historicks, and the oldest boy’s walkin’ in his sleep (I don’t know as I
have mentioned it, but Bill was liable to appear to us any time, and
have to be headed up stairs agin)—take it all together, Josiah looked
like a shadder. And thinkses I to myself, almost wildly, my principles
was hefty, and they are hefty; I have said I would stand firm, and I
have stood firm. But oh, must I, must I see my pardner crumple down and
die before my face and eyes?

[Illustration: A HEAVY BILL.]

It was Josiah’s pride that stood in the way of his startin’ of ’em off.
He couldn’t bear to give in to me that he was in the wrong on it, and I
was in the right on it. He couldn’t bear to come right out openly and
own up to his pardner how deceived, and fooled, and took in he had been.
Men’s pride is high, it towers up like a meetin’-house steeple, and when
it tottles and falls down, great is the fall thereof. I knew this,
divin’ into the mysterious ingregiencies of men’s naters so deep as I
had doven, I knew this great filisofical fact as well as I knew the
dimensions of the nose on my pardner’s face. And so I shuddered to
myself as I thought it over, and pondered on what the end would be. But
I held firm on the outside, and never let on how agonized and burdened
in soul I was. My mind is like a ox’es for strength, and very deep.

This was on a Friday mornin’ that I had this melancholy revery, as I
looked out of the buttery window, as I stood there a washin’ dishes to
the sink, and see Josiah come from the barn a luggin’ Bill in. He had
had a fit, and fell acrost the grin’-stun where Josiah was a grindin’,
and Josiah had to drop everything and come a luggin’ of him in. He broke
some of the runnin’-gear of the grin’-stun that time. Josiah had it
fixed so he could put a pail of water on top of it, and it would water
itself while he was a grindin’, but Bill had fell right acrost it and
flatted it all down. It cost Josiah upwards of seven shillin’s to make
that loss good.

Wall, that night old Danks come. It was most bed-time when he come, and
I didn’t see him much that night. She had the historicks the first part
of the night, Miss Danks did, but we knew he was with her, so we sort o’
gin up the care to him. Bill got up in his sleep, and went to prowlin’
round as usual in the kitchen. But Josiah headed him off up-stairs, and
locked the chamber door onto him, and let his father tussle with him. He
had a fallin’ fit, we both think,—Josiah and me do, that he had,—and
fell onto his father, and knocked him down. We don’t know it for
certain, but we think so. For we heard the awfulest katouse you ever did
hear. It sounded as if the house was a comin’ down, and then we heard
groanin’ and sithin’ and low, very low swearin’.

Of course we couldn’t sleep none while such a rumpus was a goin’ on, and
historicks and everything, and he a tryin’ to quell ’em down, but we lay
and rested, which was a good deal for us. Wall, in the mornin’, if
you’ll believe it, Danks told us (Miss Danks and the childern had gone
down into the orchard to eat some strawberries), and Danks up and told
Josiah and me that he was goin’ off agin that day, on the afternoon
train. He did look bad, I’ll say that for him; his sufferin’s was great.
But he hadn’t ort to shirk ’em off onto somebody else; he hadn’t ort to
throw a historicky wife onto perfect strangers, and bring a lot of
childern, perfect young hyenas, into the world, and then caper off, and
let other folks tussle with ’em.

But I held firm. I knew a crysis was approachin’ and drawin’ nigh, but I
wasn’t goin’ to say nothin’; I held firm; only I says in a mecanical and
sort of wonderin’ way:

“Goin’ away to-day?”

“Yes,” said Danks, “it is a case of life and death; I must go.”

And then all of a sudden Josiah Allen bust right out, and oh! what a
scene of wild excitement rained down for the next several moments.
Josiah riz right up, and hollered out to Danks louder than I most ever
hearn him holler,—loud enough to be hearn for half a mile, though Danks
was within half a foot of him. Says he, in that loud, scareful, wild
tone:

“If you leave this house for half a minute, without takin’ your family
with you, I’ll prosecute you, and throw you into jail, and take the law
to you.”

It skairt Danks dretfully; it come so unexpected onto him, he fairly
jumped. And it started me for a minute, though my principles are so
solid and hefty that they hold down my composure and keep it stiddy
better’n a iron wedge, makin’ my presence of mind like a ox’es for
strength.

Says Josiah, in that awful and almost deafenin’ tone of hisen, and with
a mean as wild and delerious as a mean ever looked on earth:

“I hain’t a wet-nurse, and I’ll let you know I hain’t, and Samantha
hain’t a horsepittle. Here I have,” says he, in a still more agonizin’
tone, “here I have for week after week kep’ stiddy company with fallin’
fits and historicks. I have been broke to pieces a luggin’ boys! and
rode to death by childern! and eat up by tape-worms! And there has got
to be a stop put to it, or somebody is goin’ to get hurt.”

He was perfectly delerious, and I says to him soothin’ly:

“Be calm, Josiah!”

“I won’t be calm, Samantha!”

But Danks had got over bein’ skairt, and begun to look cross,—crosser’n
a bear. And he spoke out, in a pert, hateful tone, old Danks did, and
says he:

“’Tain’t nothin’ to me; I don’t have the fallin’ fits nor the
historicks.” He looked dretful mad, and spoke up as pert and impudent to
my pardner as if it was Josiah’s business to tussle with them fits and
things, instead of hisen.

I had thought I wouldn’t put in my note at all, but I hain’t one to
stand by and see my pardner imposed upon. And then, too, I felt in the
name of principle I ort to speak. I felt a feelin’ that mebby here was a
chance for me to do good. And when he spoke out agin, more impudenter
and hatefuler than before, “that it wasn’t nothin’ to him,” says I:

“It is sunthin’ to you.” And then I went on powerful and eloquent. I can
tell you I talked deep and solemn to that man about what he took onto
himself when he sot out in matrimony; about the responsibility of
marriage, and bringin’ childern into the world; the responsibility to
God and man of usherin’ eternal souls into this world for everlasting
joy or misery; the terrible responsibility to these souls and to God,
the righteous Judge; and the terrible responsibility to the world of
lettin’ loose in it such mighty powers for good or evil,—a set of likely
creeters, blessings and benefactors forever, or shacks and sources of
uncounted misery, made so greatly by early care and culture; influences
that will go on and on for all time, growing and widening out all the
time, till no mind but the Eternal can reckon up or even imagine the
awful consequences for good or evil of one human soul. “How dare
anyone,” says I, “lightly and irreverantly even think on the
subject,—much less tackle it.”

I talked beautiful on the subject, and deep, deeper than I had for some
time. I felt fearfully eloquent, and acted so, and very noble. But Danks
acted mad, mad as a hen. And he snapped out agin:

“Who made any calculations on fallin’ fits and such things? I didn’t.”

Why, that man almost took my head off, he snapped me up so. But I didn’t
care; I knew I was a talkin’ on principle, and that reflection is a high
rock to lean and rest the moral back against. That thought is a thick
umberell to keep off the little hailstuns of impertinence and impudence
that might otherwise hurt one’s self-respect and mortify it. I felt well
and noble in my mind, and acted well, very. I kep’ right on cool and
collected together.

And says I, “That is one great reason why any one ort to consider well
on’t. They ort to know that this is one of them jobs that you can’t
calculate on exactly how it is a comin’ out. You must take the chances.
There is lots of undertakin’s jest so—jest as hard to tell how it is a
comin’ out as some things in Nater. Now the greatest of minds can’t
figger out exactly to a minute what time the butter will come—or how a
marriage is a goin’ to turn out—or jest when it will stop rainin’, or
begin—or when the old hen will lay.

“The world is a curious place, and in lots of undertakin’s you have to
step out blindfold and ketch holt of the consequences, good or bad. The
blinders will be took offen our eyes sometime, probable, but the time is
not yet. And marriage, I take it, is one of the very reskiest
undertakin’s you can undertake. It may lead you into a happiness as pure
and lofty as a certain couple I could mention have enjoyed for the
neighberhood of 20 years. It may, and then again it mayn’t. But there is
one great comfort in this that there hain’t in some things, such as
rain, and thunder storms, and etcetery. You needn’t enlist in this
warfare if you hain’t a mind to—that is a sweet and consolin’ thought—if
you feel scareful over it. But if you do enlist you must take the
chances of war, you must take the resks. And if it wasn’t a resky piece
of business to embark in, why did them old fathers put these words in
the marriage service, ‘for richer, or for poorer.’ They knew what they
was about, them old fathers did. They knew they couldn’t tell whether it
would turn out rich as rich could be with blessings and bliss, or poor
as poverty. Them old fathers knew that, and bein’ likely men and
sound-moraled, they fixed that halter so that folks couldn’t squirm
their necks out of it every time they got oneasy and worrysome.

“Historical fits, and etcetery,” says I, in reasonable tones, “might
come under the head of ‘worse.’ But you can’t slip your head out; that
vow holds you, for better or worse. You no need to have tackled that
vow, but you did, and now you ort to stand up under it; that is law, and
that is gospel too, which don’t always go together.”

“Well, what of it,” says Danks; “what if it duz? What are you goin’ to
do about it?”

Oh, how surly and mad that man did look. His mean would have skairt some
wimmen, but it didn’t me; mebby it would if I hadn’t been talkin’ on
such high principle, but that boyed me up.

“Why,” says I, “as I have said more’n 40 times, folks ort to get it into
their heads that it is a great and serious subject that ort to be
considered and prayed over and meditated upon. They ort to realize that
gettin’ married is a solemn thing; solemner, if anything, than it is not
to, and that has always been considered a very solemn thing, very. But
instead of lookin’ on it in this serious and becomin’ way, folks will
caper and prance off into matrimony in jest as light and highlarious and
triflin’ a way as if they was headin’ a row of fantasticks on the 4th of
July. They don’t consider and filosifize on it that the fantasticks can
take off their uniforms at night, and be themselves agin, but the
matrimourners can’t. They can’t do it nohow; there they be,
matrimourners. No matter how bad they feel, and how disappointed they be
by the looks of the state they have got into, they can’t get out of it.
They are matrimourners, and can’t help themselves.

“The state of wedlock has got a high, slippery wall round it, as high up
as eternity, and as low down as the same. It is a wall that can’t be
stepped acrost and climbed over. It is a wall that a man or a woman
can’t sneak out and creep up on without fallin’ back—it is too slippery.
It is a wall that can’t be broke down, and jumped over only on Bible
grounds. And then when you do take that jump on Bible grounds, oh how
fatiguein’ that leap is. How much happiness and ease of mind the
matrimourner has to drop in the jump, drop forever. And how much trouble
he has to carry with him, and disquietude of mind, and condemnation, and
upbraidin’s, and gossip, and evil speaking, and hateful memories, and
hauntin’ ones, and travel of soul and body. Oh, what a time that
matrimourner duz have.”

“I thought,” says he, with that surly, mad look of hisen, “I thought you
was one that preached up liberty, freedom, and etcetery.”

“So I be,” says I. “Hain’t I jest been a doin’ of it? Hain’t I jest said
that no man or woman ort to be drove into the state of matrimony by
anybody only jest their own selves? But after they lay holt, and drive
themselves in, they ortn’t to complain. But, as I have said frequent,
they’ll find after they have drove themselves in that it is the
curiousest state that ever was made. None of our States of America will
compare with it for curiosity,—and some of our’n are exceedingly
curious, take ’em laws and all, to wit: Havin’ a man in congress to make
laws that imprison a man for havin’ two wives, while he himself, proud
and hauty, a settin’ up a makin’ that law, has four on ’em. Exceedingly
curious that is, and to wit: Fixin’ penalties against crime and vice,
and then sellin’ licenses to encourage and make it respectable. Oh! how
curious, how curious some of our states be! But the state of matrimony
is far curiouser. It is curiouser in the beginning—some like a
conundrum. States have to be admitted into the Union; a union admits you
into that state. And then, it is bounded on every side by divinest
possibilities of happiness, or the most despairin’ ones, and no knowin’
which will break over the frontier, and capture you. Sweetest and most
rapturous joys may cover its soil as thick as blossoms on a summer
prairie, or angry passions and disappointments and cares may crunch ’em
down under foot, and set fire to ’em. Peace and trust and tenderness may
rain over that state, or anarky and sizm.”

“Yes, and fallin’ fits,” says Danks, with a bitter tone, “and
historicks.”

“Yes,” says I calmly, “matrimourners ort to take all the blessings and
enjoyments and comforts with a thankful heart, and they ort to have the
courage and the nobility and the common sense to take all the evils,
fallin’ fits, historicks, and etcetery, and etcetery, with a willin’
mind. You ort,” says I firmly, “you ort to have figured it all out. You
ort to have figured out the hull sum, orts and all, and seen what was to
carry, and got the right answer to it, before you drove yourself into
that state.”

“How could I see to carry historicks? how could I figured ’em out?” says
he bitterly.

But I kep’ right on: “You ort to have studied it out, whether you was
strong enough to stand the climate, with its torrid weather and its
frigid zones, its sweet summery winds and its blasts, its squalls and
hurrycains. But as I have said 40 times, if I have once, after you have
drove yourself into that state, you ort to hist up your moral umberell,
and make the best on’t.”

Danks didn’t look convinced at all. He muttered sunthin’ agin about fits
and other things, and how he hadn’t made no calculations on ’em; and I
felt fairly out of patience, and went to allegorin’, as I might have
known I should before I got through. (It is next to impossible for me to
be so eloquent as I was then without allegorin’ some).

“Why,” says I, “when a man buys a farm, he must be a natural fool, or
else a luny, if he expects and calculates the sun to shine on it every
day the year round. He must make calculations for rain and snow,
sunshine and thunder. He can’t expect it all to be ripe wheat and
apple-sass. He buys it with his eyes open; buys it with all its
possibilities of good or evil; and don’t expect, if he hain’t a fool, to
shirk out of carryin’ of ’em.”

“Who has shirked out of carryin’ of ’em?” says Danks. “I hain’t.”

“You have!” says Josiah, a jumpin’ up and hollerin’ at him agin; and his
face was red as a fire-bran’.

“I hain’t!” says Danks.

“You have!” says Josiah. “And don’t you dispute me agin if you know what
is good for yourself. You have shirked out of carryin’ that dumb boy of
your’n, in his dumb fits. And I let you know that I have broke my back
for the last time a luggin’ him round, or somebody or sunthin’ is goin’
to get hurt, and I can tell you so—dummit!”

I felt as if I should sink. My Josiah was almost doin’ what Miss Job
advised Mr. Job to do when he was smote with agony and biles. He was
almost a swearin’. But here was where I and the late Miss Job differ. I
knew my pardner’s sufferin’s was intense, and them sufferin’s was
terrible to me. But still I says in a reprovin’, but tender and pityin’
tone:

“Be calm, Josiah!”

“I won’t be calm!” says he.

Says I: “Josiah, you must; you are almost delerious.” Says I: “You are a
swearin’, Josiah! be calm!”

“Wall, I tell you agin that I won’t be calm; and I tell you agin,
_dummit_! there now! _dummit_!”

Oh! how my pardner did look, how his axent did sound, as he uttered them
fearful and profane words. And then before I could put in a soothin’
word to soothe him, Danks spoke right out, and says he:

“You promised to take ’em for all summer, and if you don’t I won’t pay
you a cent for their board, and you can’t make me.”

Here Josiah turned as white as a white milk-pail, and groaned to that
extent that I thought he was a goin’ to faint away.

And as it turned out, the law was on Danks’es side. Josiah made ’em all
go that very day, but he couldn’t get a cent from ’em. He hired a lawyer
to prosicute Danks, but Danks, bein’ sharp-witted and ugly (and
sometimes I think that such trials as he underwent, if anybody don’t
take ’em as a means of grace, makes anybody ugly. I can’t help feelin’
sorry for Danks, after all). But as I was a sayin’, Danks worked it in
such a way that Josiah lost the case, and had to pay the costs on both
sides. They was heavy bills,—most as heavy as Bill Danks,—and take it
with what we lost boardin’ of ’em, and what the childern tore to pieces,
and Bill smashed and squshed down, a fallin’ on ’em,—take it all
together, it is a loss that makes Josiah Allen groan now every time he
thinks on it. We don’t either of us think his back will ever feel as it
did before. He strained it beyond its strength.

                      A VISIT FROM MISS RICKERSON.

It was about a week after the Danks’es departure and exodus. It was a
cool day for the time of the year, and very windy. And I was settin’
calm and peaceful, hullin’ some strawberries for dinner. For my
companion, Josiah Allen, had gone to Jonesville, and I wanted to have
dinner ready by the time of his arrival. But I had only jest got my
potatoes pared and over the stove, when I heard the old mare and him
drive into the barn-yard. He had come sooner than I looked for. But it
didn’t excite me; I was prepared. For not knowin’ exactly the time of
his arrival, I had made ready for any emergency. I had drawed the table
out, and put the table-cloth on; and I felt at rest, and peaceful.

Let wimmen whose pardners are wont to rampage round and act, when they
come in and find dinner only jest begun—let ’em not tell any wrong
stories or exagerations or parables, let ’em not bandy words or argue,
but let ’em, jest before he comes in, draw out the table and throw the
table-cloth on, and everything will move on peaceful; their pardners
will think dinner is most ready, and as they glance at that snowy
table-cloth their wrath will leave ’em, and they will demean themselves
like lambs.

I only tell what I have learnt from experience. And any little crumbs of
wisdom and knowledge that I have gained by hard experience, and through
tribulation, I am willin’ to share freely, without money and without
price, with the female sect; I think so much of ’em, and wish ’em so
well. Now jest this one little receipt,—this table-cloth
performance,—would have been worth dollars and dollars to me if I had
known it when I was first a pardner. But I never found it out till I had
been married over thirteen years, and had been jawed accordingly, when I
was belated and dinner wasn’t ready. Why no woman would have any idee of
its value till they try it. Men are as likely creeters as the earth
affords, if you only know how to get along with ’em. And wimmen has to
try various ways and measures. I learnt this jest by tryin’ it as a
experiment. I have tried a good many experiments—little harmless ones
like this. Some of ’em work, and some don’t.

Wall, I sot there hullin’ my berries, and listenin’ to the wind, which
was a roarin’ round the house. Seems as if I never heard it blow no
harder. It blowed for all the world as if it had been kep’ in through
sickness in its family, or sunthin’, and was out now for the first time,
on a regular spree.

And though it didn’t come right out and sing ’em in plain words, yet it
seemed to be a roarin’ it down the chimbley, and blowin’ it through the
orchard and round the corners of the house, and whistlin’ it through the
open buttery window—the song that other elevated and gay spirits indulge
in, about bein’ fairly determined and sot to not go home till mornin’.

It blowed fearfully. But I was calm and peaceful, knowin’ the
table-cloth was on, and Josiah would act first-rate. And then, when a
tempest is a howlin’ and a actin’ out-doors, it seems as if I enjoy more
than ever the safety and sweet repose and happiness of my own
hearth-stun (which last is a poetical simely, our hearth not bein’ stun
at all, but iron, with a nickel platin’ round it).

Wall, there I sot, feelin’ well and lookin’ well. I had combed my hair
slick, and put on a clean gingham dress,—when Josiah Allen opened the
door and walked in. He glanced at the table-cloth, and a calm, contented
look settled upon his eye-brow, but he left the door open behind him as
composed as if he had been born in a saw-mill; and says I:

“Josiah Allen, if there was a heavy fine to pay for shettin’ up doors,
you wouldn’t never loose a cent of your property in that way.” And says
I, clutchin’ my pan of strawberries with a firmer grip, for truly it was
a movin’ and onstiddy, and my apron was a flutterin’ like a banner in
the cold breeze: “If you don’t want me to blow away, Josiah Allen, shet
up that door.”

[Illustration: “SHUT THAT DOOR.”]

“Oh shaw! Samantha. You won’t blow away; you are too hefty. It would
take a hurrycane and a simon, too, to tackle you, and lift you.”

“Simon who?” says I, in cold axents, caused partly by my frigid emotions
and the cool blast, and partly by his darin’ to say any man could take
me up and carry me away.

“Oh! the simons they have on the desert. We hearn Thomas J. read about
’em. They’ll blow camels away, and everything.”

Says I dreamily: “Who’d have thought twenty years ago, to have heard
that man a courtin’ me, and callin’ me a zephire and a pink posy and a
angel, that he’d ever live to see the day he’d call me a camel.”

“I hain’t called you a camel. I only meant you was hefty, and camels was
hefty, and it would take a simon or two to lift you round, either on
you.”

“Wall,” says I, in frigid tones, “what I want to know is, are you a
goin’ to shet that door?”

“Yes, I be, jest as quick as I change my clothes. I don’t want to fodder
in these new briches.”

I rose with dignity,—or as much dignity as I could lay holt of, half
bent, tryin’ to keep five or six quarts of strawberries from spillin’
all over the floor,—and went and shet the door myself, which I might
have known enough to done in the first place, and saved time and breath.
For shettin’ up doors is a accomplishment that Josiah Allen never will
master. I have tutored him up on lots of things since we was married,
but in this branch of education he has been too much for me. Experiments
have been vain; I have about gin up.

In the course of ten or fifteen minutes, Josiah come out of the bedroom
lookin’ as pleasant and peaceful as you please, with his hands in his
pantaloons pockets, seemin’ly searchin’ their remotest depths, and says
he in a off-hand, careless way:

“I’ll be hanged if there hain’t a letter for you, Samantha.”

“How many weeks have you carried it ’round, Josiah Allen?” says I. “It
would scare me if you should give me a letter before you had carried it
round in your pockets a month or so.”

“Oh! I guess I only got this two or three days ago. I meant to handed it
to you the first thing when I got home. But I hain’t had on these old
breeches sence that day I went to mill.”

“Three weeks ago to-day,” says I, in almost frosty axents, as I opened
my letter.

“Wall,” says Josiah cheerfully, as he hunted round in the bedroom for
his old hat, “I knew it wuzn’t long, anyway.”

I glanced my gray eye down the letter, and says I in agitated tones:

“Come out here, Josiah Allen, and let me look at you, and wither you!
She that was Alzina Ann Allen is comin’ here a visatin’. She wrote me
three weeks ahead, so’s to have me prepared. And here she is liable to
come in on us any minute, now, and find us all unprepared.” Says I, “I
wouldn’t have had it happen for a ten-cent bill to had one of the
relation on your side come and ketch me in such a condition. There the
curtains are all down in the spare room. Bill Danks fell and dragged ’em
down onto the floor under him, and mussed ’em all up, and I washed ’em
yesterday, and they hain’t ironed. And the carpet in the settin’-room up
to mend, where he fell onto it with a lighted candle in his hand and sot
it afire. And not a mite of fruit-cake in the house, and she a comin’
here to-day. I am mortified most to death, Josiah Allen. And if you had
give me that letter, I should have hired help and got everything done. I
should think your conscience would smart like a burn, if you have got a
conscience, Josiah Allen.”

“Wall, less have a little sunthin’ to eat, Samantha, and I’ll help
round.”

“Help! What’ll you do, Josiah Allen?”

“Oh! I’ll do the barn chores, and help all I can. I guess you’d better
cook a little of that canned sammen I got to Jonesville.”

Says I coldly, “I believe, Josiah Allen, if you was on your way to the
gallus, you’d make ’em stop and get vittles for you—meat vittles, if you
could.”

I didn’t say nothin’ more, for, as the greatest poets have sung, “the
least said, the soonest mended.” But I rose, and with outward calmness
opened the can of salmon, and jest as I put that over the stove, with
some sweet cream and butter, if you’ll believe it, that very minute she
that was Alzina Ann Allen drove right up to the door, and come in. You
could have knocked me down with a hen’s feather (as it were), my
feelin’s was such; but I concealed ’em as well as I could, and advanced
to the door, and says I:

“How do you do, Miss Rickerson?” She is married to Bildad Rickerson, old
Dan Rickerson’s oldest boy.

[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF MISS RICKERSON.]

She is a tall, bony woman, light-complected, sandy-haired, and with big,
light-blue eyes. I hadn’t seen her for nineteen years, but she seemed
dretful tickled to see me, and says she:

“You look younger, Samantha, than you did the first time I ever seen
you.”

“Oh, no!” says I, “that can’t be, Alzina Ann, for that is in the
neighberhood of thirty years ago.”

Says she, “It is true as I live and breathe, you look younger and
handsomer than I ever see you look.”

I didn’t believe it, but I thought it wouldn’t look well to dispute her
any more; so I let it go; and mebby she thought she had convinced me
that I did look younger than I did when I was eighteen or twenty. But I
only said “That I didn’t feel so young any way. I had spells of feelin’
mauger.”

She took off her things, or “wrappers,” as Tirzah Ann says it is more
genteel to call ’em. She was dressed up awful slick, and Josiah helped
the driver bring in her trunk. And I told her jest how mortified I wuz
about Josiah’s forgettin’ her letter, and her ketchin’ me unprepared.
But good land! she told me that “she never in her hull life see a house
in such beautiful order as mine was, and she had seen thousands and
thousands of different houses.”

Says I, “I feel worked up and almost mortified about my settin’-room
carpet bein’ up.”

But she held up both hands—they was white as snow, and all covered with
rings—and says she, “If there is one thing that I love to see more than
another it is to see a settin’-room carpet up, it gives such a sort of a
free, noble look to a room.”

Says I, “The curtains are down in the spare bedroom, and I am almost
entirely out of cookin’.”

Says she, “If I had my way, I never would have a curtain up to a window.
The sky always looks so pure and innocent somehow. It is so beautiful to
set and look up into the calm heavens, with no worldly obstructions
between, such as curtains. It is so sweet to sit in your chair, and knit
tattin’, and commune with holy nature. And cookin’,” says she, with a
look of complete disgust on her face, “why I fairly despise cookin’.
What’s the use of it?” says she, with a sweet smile.

“Why,” says I, reasonably, “if it wasn’t for cookin’ vittles and eatin’
em, I guess we shouldn’t stand it a great while, none of us.”

I didn’t really like the way she went on. Never, never, through my hull
life, was I praised up by anybody as I was by her durin’ the three days
that she stayed with us. She praised everything fur beyond what they
would bear.

I believe in praisin’ things that will stand praisin’. Nothin’ does any
one more good than appreciation. Honest admiration, sympathy, and
good-will put into words are more inspirin’ and stimulatin’ than tongue
can tell. They are truly refreshin’. I think as a rule we New Englanders
are too cold in our means. Mebby it is settin’ on Plymouth Rock so much,
or leanin’ up against Bunker Hill Monument; or mebby we took it from our
old Puriten four-fathers, and mebby them four old men ketched cold in
their demeaniers from settin’ under the chilly blue light of their old
laws, or took the trait from the savages. Any way, we are too
undemonstrative and reticent (them are very hefty words, and it is
seldom indeed that I harness up a span of such a size to carry my idees.

As a general thing I don’t have idees so hefty but what I can draw ’em
along with considerable small words. And I prefer ’em always, as bein’
easier reined in, and held up, and governed. Why, I have seen such awful
big words harnessed in front of such weak little idees that they run
away with ’em, kicked in the harness, got all tangled up, and made a
perfect wrack and ruin of the little idee. Hence, I am cautious, and if
I owned droves of ’em, I should be on the safe side, and handle ’em
careful and not drive ’em hardly any. But these two I have heard Thomas
J. use in jest this place, and hain’t a doubt but they are safe and
stiddy as any ever was of their size.)

Thomas J. said, and I believe, that we are too bashful, or shy, or
sunthin’, too afraid of expressin’ our hearty appreciation, the honest,
friendly admiration and regard we entertain for our friends. But if my
friends like me, or my work, I want ’em to tell me of it, to give me the
help, and encouragement, and insperation this knowledge will bring. A
few sympathetic, cheerin’ words and a warm smile and hand-clasp will do
more good than to wait and cut the praise on marble, when the heart they
would have cheered and lightened is beyond the touch of joy or pain. I
think it is not only silly, but unchristian, to be so afraid of tellin’
our friends frankly how pleasant and admirable we think them, _if we do
think so_. But let us not lie. Let us not praise what won’t stand
praisin’. Now when Alzina Ann Rickerson told me that I was as pretty as
any wax doll she ever see in her life—and if my intellect and
Shakespeare’s intellect was laid side by side, Shakespeare’s would look
weak and shiftless compared with mine—and when she said that my old
winter bunnet that I had wore on and off for thirteen years was the most
genteel and fashionable, and the loveliest piece of millionary she ever
sot her eyes on, she was goin’ too fur. Why, that old bunnet wouldn’t
hardly hold together to stand her praisin’. And she praised up
everything. She flattered Kellup Cobb so, when he happened to come in
there one mornin’, that it skairt him most to death.

He had been up by on his father’s business, and as he come along back he
stopped the hearse and come in to see when Kitty was a comin’ back, and
to see if he could borrow Josiah’s stun-bolt that afternoon to draw some
stuns. He was goin’ to wait till Josiah come back from the factory to
see about it, but Alzina Ann praised him up so, and looked so admiringly
at him, that he dassent. As a general thing I think Kellup is afraider
than he need to be of doin’ hurt and gettin’ wimmen in love with him,
but now I’ll be hanged if I blame him for thinkin’ he was doin’ damage.
Why, she praised him up to the very skies.

She pretended to think that his hair and whiskers and eyebrows was the
natural color. They was a sort of a greenish color that mornin’—he had
been a tamperin’ with ’em agin, and tryin’ experements. He had been a
usin’ smartweed and sage, as I found out afterwards, and they bein’
yellow before, the two colors together made ’em a sort of a dark
bottle-green—made him look as curious as a dog, and curiouser than any
dog I ever laid eyes on.

But oh, how Alzina Ann did praise ’em up. You’d have thought, to heard
her go on, that she had all her hull life been longin’ to ketch a
glimpse of jest such colored hair and whiskers. She said they looked so
strikin’, and she never had seen anything like ’em in her life before,
which last I don’t doubt at all. And then she would glance out at the
hearse, and tell him he looked so noble and impressive on it, it give
him such a lofty, majestic look, so becomin’ to his style. And then she
would branch off again and praise up his looks.

Why, I don’t wonder a mite that Kellup thought he was ensnarin’ her
affections and doin’ harm.

He follered me out onto the back stoop, where I was feedin’ a chicken
that the old hen had forsook, and I was bringin’ up as a corset. He
follered me out there, and whispered, with a anxious look, that he was
goin’ to start for home that minute, that he dassent wait another minute
to see Josiah about the stun-bolt; and, says he; with a awful anxious
look:

“I am afraid I have done hurt as it is, but Heaven knows I didn’t mean
to.”

I threw the corset another handful of dough, and told him, in a
encouragin’ tone, that “I guessed he hadn’t done much harm.”

“Why,” says he, “don’t you s’pose I could see for myself what I was a
doin’? She was a gettin’ head over heels in love with me. And,” says he,
frownin’ and knittin’ up his eyebrows:

“What good will it do to have another married woman a droopin’ round
after me?”

[Illustration: KELLUP’S CONUNDRUM.]

Says I, mechanically, as I put some fresh water on the corset’s dish:

“I thought you wanted to see Josiah about the stun-bolt, you said you
needed it.”

“Yes, I need the stun-bolt, but I need a easy conscience more. I had
ruther lug the stuns in my arms, and crack my back, and bruise my
stomach, than crack the commandments and strain my principles. I see
from her actions that I have got to leave at once, or no knowin’ what
the consequences will be to her. I am afraid she will suffer now, suffer
intensely. But what can a man do?” says he, frownin’ heavily. “They have
got to go around some, and do errants. And if wimmen lay traps for ’em
on every side, and make fools of themselves, what is a man to do? But I
don’t want to do harm, Heaven knows I don’t.”

And he started for the gate almost on the run. And I was jest a goin’ in
when Alzina Ann come out to the back door herself, and happenin’ to see
the corset, she said “she should rather have it for a pet, and it was
far handsomer and more valuable than any mockin’-bird, or canary, or
parrot she ever laid eyes on.” And so she kep’ on in jest that way. And
one mornin’ when she had been goin’ on dretfully that way, I took Josiah
out one side and told him “I couldn’t bear to hear her go on so, and I
believed there was sunthin’ wrong about it.”

“Oh, no,” says he, “she means every word she says. She is one of the
loveliest creeters on earth. She is most a angel. Oh!” says he,
dreamily, “What a sound mind she has got. How fur she can see into
things.”

Says I, “I heard her a tellin’ you this mornin’ that you was one of the
handsomest men she ever laid eyes on, and didn’t look a day over
twenty-one.”

“Wall,” says he, with the doggy firmness of his sect, “she thinks so;
she says jest exactly what she thinks.” And says he, in firm axents, “I
am a good-lookin’ feller, Samantha—a crackin’ good-lookin’ chap; but I
never could make you own up to it.”

I didn’t say nothin’, but my gray eye wandered up, and lighted on his
bald head. It rested there searchin’ly and very coldly for a moment or
two, and then says I sternly, “Bald heads and beauty don’t go together
worth a cent. But you was always vain, Josiah Allen.”

Says he, “What if I wuz?” And says he, “She thinks different from what
you do about my looks. She has got a keen eye in her head for beauty.
She is very smart, very. And what she says, she means.”

“Wall,” says I, “I am glad you are so happy in your mind. But mark my
words, you won’t always feel so neat about it, Josiah Allen, as you do
now.”

Says he in a cross, surly way, “I guess I know what I do know.”

I hain’t a jealous hair in the hull of my foretop or back hair, but I
thought to myself, I’d love to see Josiah Allen’s eyes opened; for I
knew as well as I knew my name was Josiah Allen’s wife, that that woman
didn’t think Josiah was so pretty and beautiful. But I didn’t see how I
was goin’ to convince him, for he wouldn’t believe me when I told him
she was a makin’ of it; and I knew she would stick to what she had said,
and so there it was. But I held firm, and cooked good vittles, and done
well by her.

                         CASSANDRA’S TEA PARTY.

That very afternoon we was all invited to take tea with she that was
Cassandra Allen, Miss Nathan Spooner, that now is. And we all went,
Alzina Ann, Josiah, and me.

Cassandra didn’t use to be likely. She had a misfortune when she was a
girl. It is six years old now. But all of a sudden she took a turn, and
went to behavin’. She learnt the dress-maker’s trade, experienced
religion, and jined the Methodist Church. And folks begun to make of
her. I didn’t use to associate with her at all, Josiah didn’t want me
to, though she is his 2nd cousin on his father’s side. But jist as quick
as she went to behavin’, we went to makin’ of her. And the more she
behaved, the more we made; till we make as much of her now as we do of
any of the relation on my side, or on hisen. And last fall she was
married to Nathan Spooner. She got acquainted with him about two years
ago.

Nathan is a likely feller, all that ails him is he is bashful, too
bashful for any sort of comfort. But Cassandra is proud-spirited, and
holds him up, and I tell Cassandra “I dare say he’ll get over it by the
time he gets to be a old man. I tell her “I shouldn’t wonder at all if
by the time he got to be seventy or eighty, he would talk up quite
well.” I try to make her feel well, and encourage her all I can.

[Illustration: NATHAN SPOONER.]

But bein’ proud-spirited, it works her up awfully to have Nathan get
over the fence, rather than meet a strange woman, and walk in the lot
till he gets by her. And it mortified her dretfully, I s’pose, when she
introduced him to our new minister and his wife, to have him instead of
bowin’ to ’em, and speakin’, turn his back to ’em, and snicker.

[Illustration: NATHAN SNICKERS.]

But he couldn’t help it, I told her he couldn’t. I was present at the
time, and I could see, his mouth bein’ a little open, that his tongue
was dry, and parched, and his eyes wild and sot in his head.

He has the worst of it, as I told Cassandra—it don’t hurt nobody else so
bad as it does him. But I s’pose it has been almost the means of his
death, time and agin—through his not dastin’ to call for anything to eat
when he is away from home, and not dastin’ to eat it when it is on the
table. And then again, sometimes, through his not dastin’ to stop eatin’
when he gets at it.

He went to Bobbets’ one day in the fall of the year,—it was a year ago
this present fall. Cassandra was a sewin’ for Miss Bobbet. They had jest
had some new corn ground, and they had a new corn puddin’ and milk for
dinner.

Nathan had been to dinner jest before he went in there. His mother had
had a boiled dinner, and mince pie, and etcetery—he had eat a awful
dinner, and was so full he felt fairly uncomfortable. But Miss Bobbet
urged him to set down and eat, and wouldn’t take no refusal. She thought
he was refusin’ because he was bashful, and she urged him out of his
way, telling him he _must_ eat, and he, not dastin’ to refuse any
longer, thought he would set down and eat a few mouthfuls, if he could,
though it seemed to him as if he couldn’t get down another mouthful.

[Illustration: PUDDING AND MILK.]

But when he stopped, Cassandra, thinkin’ it was bashfulness that made
him stop, and thinkin’ a good deal of him then—and wantin him to eat all
the puddin’ he wanted, she told him she shouldn’t think he showed good
manners at all, if he didn’t eat as much as she did, anyway. So he
dassent do anything else then, only jest eat as long as they wanted him
to, and he did. Miss Bobbet would press him to have his bowl filled up
again with milk, and Cassandra would urge him to have a little more
puddin’, and he not dastin’ to stop, after she had said what she had, I
spose he eat pretty nigh three quarts. It almost killed him. He vomited
all the way home, and was laid up bed-sick for more’n two weeks.

And he has destroyed his clothes dretfully. Now hats,—I spose it took
pretty nigh all he could earn to keep himself in hats. When he would go
to any new place, or evenin’ meetings or anything, he would muss ’em so,
rub ’em, and everything—why, he couldn’t keep no nap on a hat at all,
not for any length of time—he would rub ’em so, and poke at ’em, and jab
’em, and wring ’em when he was feelin’ the worst. Why, he got holt of
Josiah’s hat, thinkin’ it was hisen, one night at a church social; they
appointed Nathan to some office, and he wrung that hat till there wasn’t
no shape of a hat to it. When Josiah put it on to go home, it was a
sight to behold. Anybody would have thought that it was the fashion in
the Allen family to wear hats for night-caps, and this had been the
family hat to sleep in for years. Josiah was for makin’ him pay for the
wear and tear of it. But I wouldn’t hear a word to it. I told him
breakin’ bruised reeds, or smokin’ flax, would be tender-hearted
business compared to makin’ anybody pay for such sufferin’s as Nathan
Spooner had suffered that night. Says I, “if he wrung one mite of
comfort out o’ that hat, for pity sake don’t begrech it to him.”

[Illustration: THE FAMILY NIGHT-CAP.]

Why, I have been so sorry for that feller that I didn’t know what to do.
Now when he was a courtin’ Cassandra (and how he ever got up spunk
enough to court a mouse, is a mystery to me), Cassandra used to sew for
me, and he would come there evenin’s to see her, and set the hull
evenin’ long and not say nothin’, but jest look at her, and twirl his
thumbs one over the other. And I told Josiah “I felt bad for him, and it
seemed as if his thumbs must give out after a while, and it looked
fairly solemn to me, to see ’em a goin’ so, for evenin’ after evenin’,
and week after week, without any change.”

And Josiah said there was a change. He said about the middle of the
evenin’ he changed thumbs, and twirled ’em the other way.

I don’t know whether it was so or not. I couldn’t see no change; and I
told Josiah I couldn’t.

How under the sun he ever got up courage to ask her to marry him, is
another deep and mysterious mystery, and always has been. But there are
strange things in this world that there hain’t no use tryin’ to pry into
and explain. But in his feeble way, he courted her a good deal, and
thought everything of her, anybody could see that. And he popped the
question to her, or she to him, or it popped itself,—anyway it was
popped, and they was married.

They said he suffered dretfully the day he was married, and acted
strange and bad. They said he seemed to act sort o’ paralyzed and blind.
And she had to take the lead, and take holt of his hand, and lead him up
to the minister, instead of his leadin’ her.

Some made fun of it, but I didn’t. I told ’em I presumed he was fairly
blind for the time bein’, and sort o’ numb, and didn’t sense what was
passin’ round him.

[Illustration: NATHAN SOT DOWN.]

It made it as bad agin for him, to think he fell jest after they was
married. You see he sort ’o backed off to set down, for he needed rest.
And feelin’ so weak and wobblin’ and sort o’ tottlin’, he didn’t back
quite fur enough, and sot right down on the floor. It hurt him awfully,
I s’pose, from their tell. He was tall, and they say he struck hard. But
he was too bashful to have a doctor, or make any fuss, only jest set
there where he wuz. Some think he would have sot there all night, and
not tried to make a move towards gettin’ up at all. But Cassandra was
proud-spirited, and helped him up onto his feet. But they said he acted
jest exactly like a fool.

And I told ’em in reasonable axents “that I presumed he wuz a fool for
the time bein’.” Says I, “When anybody’s senses are gone, they are a
fool.” Says I, “It is jest as bad to be skairt out of ’em, as be born
without ’em, as long as it lasts.”

But says I, “He knows enough when he hain’t skairt to death.” And he
does. He is industrious, and so is she, and I shouldn’t wonder if they
got along first-rate, and done well.

Wall, when we got there, Nathan was settin’ by the stove in the
settin’-room. He was afraid of Alzina Ann, and was too bashful to set
down, or stand up, or speak, or anything. And when she asked him “how
his health was,” he didn’t say nothin’, but looked down on the floor,
and under his chair, and into his hat, as if he was tryin’ to find his
health, and drive it out, and make it tell how it was.

But she asked him over agin—she was perfectly heartless, or else she
didn’t notice his sufferin’s. And the second time she asked him, he sort
o’ looked under his chair agin, and into his coat pocket, and seemed to
give up findin’ his health and makin’ it speak for him, so he said, sort
o’ dry and husky, sunthin’ about bein’ “comfortable.”

Which was one of the biggest stories Nathan Spooner had told sence he
j’ined the meetin’-house, for he wuzn’t comfortable; far from it. His
face was red as blood, and he was more than half blind, I could see that
by the looks of his mean. But after awhile he seemed to revive up a
little. He wuzn’t afraid of me and Josiah, not very. And after Alzina
Ann and Cassandra got engaged in talkin, he said quite a number of words
to us, as rational and straight as anybody. But Alzina Ann had to bring
back his sufferin’s agin, and worse than he had suffered.

I hadn’t said a word to Alzina Ann about Cassandra’s misfortune; I
hadn’t mentioned the child to her. He is a dretful humbly child, about
the humbliest boy I ever see in my life. He looks fairly pitiful he is
so humbly, and he hain’t more than half-witted, I think. But Alzina Ann
couldn’t keep still; she had to flatter somebody, or sunthin’, so she
had to begin agin:

“How much! how much! that beautiful little boy looks like his pa! Don’t
you think so?” says she to Cassandra.

And then she would look at Nathan, and then at the boy, in that rapt,
enthusiastic way of her’n. And says she to Cassandra:

“Hain’t it a comfort to you to think he looks so much like his pa?”

[Illustration: CASSANDRA’S MISFORTUNE.]

And Cassandra’s face would get red as blood, and I could see by her
looks that she hadn’t the least idee what to say, or do, she was so
awful wretched, and feerfully uncomfortable. And truly if Nathan Spooner
could have sunk right down through the floor into the suller, right into
the potato-ben, or pork-barrell, it would have been one of the most
blessed reliefs to him that he ever enjoyed.

If she had said what she had to say, and then left off; but Alzina Ann
never’ll do that; she has to enlarge on her idees. And so she would keep
a-askin’ Cassandra in that rapturous, admirin’ way of her’n, if she
didn’t think her boy had the same noble, handsome look and manners that
his father had. And Cassandra’s face and Nathan’s would be as red as two
red woolen shirts. And then Alzina Ann would look at the child’s pug
nose, and then at Nathan’s, which is a sort of a Roman one, and the best
feature on his face, as Josiah says. She would look from one nose to the
other as if she admired both of ’em so she couldn’t hardly stop lookin’
at ’em, and would ask Nathan “if folks hadn’t told him before how much
his little boy resembled his pa?”

And Nathan didn’t say nothin’ but jest set there red as blood, his eyes
fixed and glarin’ on the opposite wall, a watchin’ it as close and
wishful as if he expected to see a relief party set out from it to
befriend him, and shoot him down where he sot, or drag him off into
captivity. Anything that would relieve him of his present sufferin’s he
would have hailed gladly. I could see that by his mean.

But at supper-time worse was in store for him. Her supper was good—good
enough for anybody. She haint got a great deal to do with, but bein’ a
little afraid of Alzina Ann, and bein’ proud-spirited and wantin to make
a good appearance, Cassandra had sent over and borrowed her
mother-in-laws’s white-handled knives, and entirely unbeknown to Alzina
Ann I had carried her over some tea-spoons and other things for her
comfort, for if Cassandra means to do better, and try to get along and
be respectable, I want to encourage her all I can, so I carried her the
spoons.

But all the time Cassandra was a settin’ the table, Nathan looked worse
and worse; he looked so bad it didn’t seem as if we _could_ keep him out
of the suller. He realized what was in front of him.

You see Cassandra, bein’ so determined to do better, and start right in
the married life, made a practice of makin’ Nathan ask a blessin’. But
he bein’ so uncommon bashful, it made it awful hard for him when they
had company. He wuzn’t a professor, nor nothin’, and it come tough on
him. He looked more and more as if he would sink all the while she was a
gettin’ the supper onto the table. And when she was a settin’ the chairs
round the table he looked so bad that I didn’t know but what he would
have to have help to get to the table. And he would give the most
pitiful and beseechin’ looks onto Cassandra that ever was, but she would
shake her head at him, and look decided, and then he would look as if he
would wilt right down agin.

So, when we got set down to the table, Cassandra give him a real firm
look, and he give a kind of a low groan, and shet up his eyes, and
Cassandra, and me, and Josiah put on a becomin’ look for the occasion,
and shet up our’n, when, all of a sudden, Alzina Ann—she never asked a
blessin’ in her own house, and forgot that other folks did—she spoke out
in a real loud, admirin’ tone, and says she:

“There! I will say it, I never see such beautiful knives as them be, in
my hull life. White-handled knives, with a gilt of sun-flowers on ’em,
is something I always wanted to own, and always thought I would own. But
never, never did I see any that was so perfectly beautiful as these
are.”

And she held her knife out at arm’s length, and looked at it admirin’ly,
and almost rapturusly.

Nathan looked bad, dretful bad, for he see by Cassandra’s looks that she
wuzn’t goin’ to set him free from the blessin’. And he sort o’ nestled
round, and looked under the table, a wishful and melancholy look, as if
he had hopes of findin’ a blessin’ there; as if he thought mebby there
might be one a layin’ round loose on the floor that he could get holt
of, and so be sot free himself. But we didn’t none on us reply to Alzina
Ann, and she seemed to kind o’ quiet down, and Cassandra give Nathan
another look, and he bent his head, and shet up his eyes agin, and she,
and me, and Josiah shet up our’n. And Nathan was jest beginnin’ agin,
when Alzina Ann broke out afresh, and says:

“What wouldn’t I give if I owned some knives like them? What a proud and
happy woman it would make me.”

[Illustration: BAD FOR NATHAN.]

That rousted us all up agin, and never did I see—unless it was on a
funeral occasion—a face look as Nathan’s face looked. Nobody could have
blamed him a mite if he had gin up then, and not made another effort.
But Cassandra bein’ so awful determined to do jest right, and start
right in the married life, she winked to Nathan agin, as firm and
decided a wink as I ever see wunk, and shet up her eyes, and Josiah and
I done as she done, and shet up our’n.

And Nathan (feelin’ as if he _must_ sink), got all ready to begin agin.
He had jest got his mouth opened, when says Alzina Ann, in that rapturus
way of her’n:

“Do tell me, Cassandra, how much did you give for these knives, and
where did you get ’em?”

Then it was Cassandra’s turn to feel as if she must sink, for, bein’ so
proud-spirited, it was like pullin’ out a sound tooth to tell Alzina Ann
they was borrowed. But bein’ so sot in tryin’ to do right she would have
up and told her. But I, feelin’ sorry for her, branched right off, and
asked Nathan “if he layed out to vote republican or democrat.”

Cassandra sithed, and went to pourin’ out the tea. And Nathan, feelin’
so relieved, brightened up, and spoke up like a man, the first words he
spoke out loud and plain, like a human bein’, that day—says he:

“If things turn out with me as I hope they will, I calc’late to vote for
old Peter Cooper.”

I could see by the looks of Josiah’s mean that he was a gettin’ kinder
sick of Alzina Ann, and (though I haint got a jealous hair in the hull
of my back-hair and foretop) I didn’t care a mite if he wuz. But truly
worse wuz to come.

After supper Josiah and me was a settin’ in the spare room close to the
window, a lookin’ through Cassandra’s album, when we heard Alzina Ann
and Cassandra out under the window a-lookin’ at the posy beds, when
Alzina Ann says:

“You must excuse my lookin’ at you so much, Cassandra, but you are so
lovely and fair-lookin’ that I can’t keep my eyes offen you. And what a
noble-appearin’ husband you have got—perfectly splendid! And how
pleasant it is here to your house—perfectly beautiful! Seein’ we are
such friends to her, I feel free to tell you what a awful state I find
Josiah Allen’s wife’s house in. Not a mite of a carpet on her
settin’-room floor, and nothin’ gives a room such a awful look as that.
She said it was up to mend, but, between you and me, I don’t believe a
word of it. I believe it was up for some other purpose, somethin’ she
didn’t want to tell.

“And the curtains was down in my room, and I had to sleep all the first
night in that condition. I might jest as well set up, for I could not
sleep, it looked so. And when she got ’em up the next mornin’, they
wuzn’t nothin’ but plain, white muslin. I should think she could afford
something a little more decent than that for her spare room. And she
hadn’t a mite of fruit cake in the house, only two kinds of
common-lookin’ cake. She said Josiah forgot to give her my letter, and
she didn’t get word I was comin’ till about ten minutes before I got
there; but, between you and me, I never believed that for a minute. I
believe they got up that story between ’em to excuse it off, things
lookin’ so. If I wuzn’t such a friend of hern, and didn’t think such a
sight of her, I wouldn’t mention it for the world. But I think
everything of her, and everybody knows I do, so I feel free to talk
about her.

“How humbly she has growed! Don’t you think so? And her mind seems to be
kind o’ runnin’ down. For how under the sun she can think so much of
that simple old husband of hern is a mystery to me, unless she is
growin’ foolish. If it was your husband, Cassandra, nobody would wonder
at it, such a splendid, noble-appearin’ gentleman as he is. But Josiah
Allen was always a poor, insignificant-lookin’ creeter; and now he is
the humbliest, and foolishest, and meachin’est-lookin’ creeter I ever
see in human shape. And he looks as old as Grandfather Rickerson, every
mite as old, and he is most ninety. And he is vain as a peahen.”

I jest glanced round at Josiah, and then instinctively I looked away
agin. His countenance was perfectly awful. Truly, the higher we are up
the worse it hurts us to fall down. Bein’ lifted up on such a height of
vanity and vain-glory, and fallin’ down from it so sudden, it most broke
his neck (speakin’ in a poetical and figurative way). I, myself, havin’
had doubts of her all the time, didn’t feel nigh so worked up and
curious, it more sort o’ madded me, it kind o’ operated in that way on
me. And so, when she begun agin to run Josiah and me down to the lowest
notch, called us all to naught, made out we wuzn’t hardly fit to live,
and was most fools, and then says agin:

“I wouldn’t say a word aginst ’em for the world if I wuzn’t such a
friend to ’em—”

[Illustration: FACE TO FACE.]

Then I riz right up, and stood in the open window; and it come up in
front of me some like a pulpit, and I s’pose my mean looked considerable
like a preacher’s when they get carried away with the subject, and
almost by the side of themselves.

Alzina Ann quailed the minute she sot her eyes on me, as much or more
than any minister ever made a congregation quail, and, says she, in
tremblin’ tones:

“You know anybody will take liberties with a friend that they wouldn’t
with anybody else.”

Says I, in deep, awful tones, “I never believed in knockin’ folks down
to show off that we are intimate with ’em.”

“Wall,” says she, “you know I do think everything in the world of you.
You know I shouldn’t have said a word aginst you if I wuzn’t such a warm
friend of yourn.”

“Friend!” says I, in awful axents, “friend! Alzina Ann Rickerson, you
don’t know no more about that word than if you never see a dictionary.
You don’t know the true meanin’ of that word no more than a African babe
knows about slidin’ down hill.”

Says I, “The Bible gives a pretty good idee of what it means: it speaks
of a man layin’ down his life for his friend. Dearer to him than his own
life. Do you s’pose such a friendship as that would be a mistrustin’
round, a tryin’ to rake up every little fault they could lay holt of,
and talk ’em over with everybody? Do you s’pose it would creep round
under windows and backbite and slander a Josiah?”

I entirely forgot for the moment that she had been a talkin’ about me,
for truly abuse heaped upon my pardner seems ten times as hard to bear
up under as if it was heaped upon me.

Josiah whispered to me: “That is right, Samantha! give it to her!” and,
upheld by duty and that dear man, I went on, and says I:

“My friends, those I love and who love me, are sacred to me. Their
well-being and their interest is as dear to me as my own. I love to have
others praise them, prize them as I do; and I should jest as soon think
of goin’ round tryin’ to rake and scrape sunthin’ to say aginst myself
as aginst them.”

Agin I paused for breath, and agin Josiah whispered:

“That is right, Samantha! give it to her!”

Worshipin’ that man as I do, his words was far more inspirin’ and
stimulatin’ to me than root beer. Agin I went on, and says I:

“Maybe it hain’t exactly accordin’ to Scripture, but there is somethin’
respectable in open enmity—in beginnin’ your remarks about anybody
honestly, in this way: ‘Now I detest and despise that man, and I am
goin’ to try to relieve my mind by talkin’ about him jest as bad as I
can;’ and then proceed and tear him to pieces in a straightforward,
manly way. I don’t s’pose such a course would be upheld by the ’postles.
But there is a element of boldness and courage in it amountin’ almost to
grandeur, when compared to this kind of talk: ‘I think everything in the
world of that man. I think he is jest as good as he can be, and he
hain’t got a better friend in the world than I am;’ and then go on, and
say all you can to injure him.

“Why, a pirate runs up his skeleton and cross-bars when he is goin’ to
rob and pillage. I think, Alzina Ann, if I was in your place I would
make a great effort, and try and be as noble and magnanimous as a
pirate.”

Alzina Ann looked like a white hollyhawk that had been withered by a
untimely frost. But Cassandra looked tickled (she hadn’t forgot her
sufferin’s, and the sufferin’s of Nathan Spooner). And my Josiah looked
proud and triumphant in mean. And he told me in confidence, a goin’ home
(and I wouldn’t wish it spoke of agin, for folks might think it was
foolish in me to tell such little admirin’ speeches that a companion
will make in moments of harmony and confidence). But he said that he
hadn’t seen me look so good to him as I did when I stood there in the
winder, not for much as thirteen years. Says he:

“Samantha, you looked almost perfectly beautiful.”

That man worships the ground I walk on, and I do hisen.

                         THE LORDS OF CREATION.

Josiah Allen is awful tickled to think he is a man. He has said so to
me, time and agin. And I don’t wonder a mite at it. Men are first-rate
creeters, and considerable good-lookin’. I have always said so. And they
have such glorious chances to be noble and grand, and to _work_ for the
true and the right, that I don’t wonder a mite that Josiah feels just as
he duz feel.

And when Josiah tells me how highly tickled he is he is a man—when he
says it in a sort of a pensive and dreamy way, kinder miselanious like—I
don’t resent it in him but on the contrary approve of it in him, highly.
But once in a while he will get to feelin’ kind o’ cross and uppish, and
say it to me in a sort of a twittin’ way, and boastin’.

Mebby he will begin by readin’ out loud to me sunthin’ against wimmen’s
rights, in the _World_ or almanac, or some other high-toned periodical;
sometimes it will be awful cuttin’ arguments aginst wimmen. And after he
gets through readin’ it he will speak out in such a sort of a
humiliatin’ way about how awful tickled he is, he is a man, so he can
vote, and help keep the glorious old state of New York on its firm basis
of nobility, morality, and wise economy.

Why, says he to me the other afternoon (feelin’ fractious was the cause
of his sayin’ it at the time), says he: “Wimmen are dretful simple
creeters; gossipin’, weak, weak-minded, frivolous bein’s; extravagant,
given to foolish display. They don’t mind the cost of things if they can
only make a big show. So different from men, they be. Why,” says he
proudly and boastfully, “you never in your life ketched a man gossipin’
over their neighbors’ affairs. You never see ’em meddlin’ the least mite
with scandal and evil talkin’. Men are economical, sound-minded. They
spend only jest what they need, what is useful—nothin’ more, not a cent
more. Why,” says he, “take it with wimmen’s foolish extravagance and
love of display, what would the glorious old state of New York come to
if it was sot under her rain? And they are so weak, too,—wimmen be. Why,
old Error would take ’em by the nose” (Josiah, I think, is a practicin’
allegory. He uses flowery rhetoricks and simelys as much agin as he used
to use ’em.) And he repeated agin, with a haughty look: “Old Error would
take ’em by the nose, as it were, and lead ’em into all sorts of
indiscretions, and weakness, and wickedness, before they knew it.

“Why, if we men of New York state had a woman’s incapability of
grapplin’ with wrong, and overthrowin’ of it: if we had her love of
scandal and gossip; if we had her extravagance and love of display,
where would the glorious old state of New York be to-day? Where would
her morals be? Where would her finankle and money affairs be?”

And Josiah leaned back in his chair, and crossed his legs over each
other, as satisfied and contented a crossin’ as I ever see, and says
agin:

“If I was ever proud and tickled about anything in my life, Samantha
Allen, I am tickled to think I am a man.”

He had been readin’ a witherin’ piece out of the almanac to me—an awful
deep, skareful piece aginst wimmen’s suffrage. And feelin’ cross and
fractious, he did look so awful overbearin’ and humiliatin’ onto me, on
account of my bein’ a woman, that I sprunted right up and freed my mind
to him. I am very close-mouthed naturally, and say but very little, but
I can’t stand everything.

While he was talkin’ I had been a fixin’ a new tow mop that I had been a
spinnin’ into my patented mop-stick, and had jest got it done. And I riz
right up and pinted with it at a picture of the new capitol at Albany
that hung over the sink. It was a noble and commandin’ gesture (though
hard to the wrist). It impressed him dretfully, I could see it did. I
had that sort of a lofty way with me as I gestured, and went on in awful
tones to say:

[Illustration: A MONUMENT OF MEN’S ECONOMY.]

“When you look at that buildin’, Josiah Allen, no wonder you talk about
wimmen’s extravagance and foolish love of display, and the econimy and
firm common sense of the male voters of the state of New York, and their
wise expenditure of public money. When you and a passel of other men get
together and vote to build a house costin’ nine or ten millions of
dollars to make laws in so small that wimmen might well be excused for
thinkin’ they was made in a wood-shed or behind a barn-door.”

Says I, lowerin’ down my mop-stick, for truly my arm was weary—gesturin’
in eloquence with a mop-stick is awful fatiguin’—says I, “As long as
that monument of man’s wisdom and econimy stands there, no man need to
be afraid that a woman will ever dast to speak about wantin’ to have any
voice in public affairs, any voice in the expenditure of her own
property and income tax. No, she won’t dast to do it, for man’s thrifty,
prudent common sense and superior econimy has been shown in that
buildin’ to a extent that is fairly skareful.”

It is a damper onto anybody when they have been a talkin’ sarcastical
and ironical, to have to come out and explain what you are a doin’. But
I see that I had got to, for ever sense I had lowered my mop-stick and
axent, Josiah had looked chirker and chirker, and now he sot there,
lookin’ down at his almanac, as satisfied and important as a gander
walkin’ along in front of nineteen new goslin’s. He thought I was a
praisin’ men. And says I, comin’ out plain, “Look up here, Josiah Allen,
and let me wither you with my glance! I am a talkin’ sarcastical, and
would wish to be so understood!”

But I was so excited that before I had fairly got out of that ironical
tone, I fell into it agin deeper than ever (though entirely unbeknown to
me), and says I:

“As to woman’s love of gossip and scandal, and man’s utter aversion to
it, let your mind fall back four years, Josiah Allen, if you think it is
strong enough to bear the fall.”

And I went on in a still more ironicler tone. I don’t know as I ever see