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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Samantha at Saratoga, by Marietta Holley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Samantha at Saratoga
+
+Author: Marietta Holley
+
+Release Date: April 26, 2001 [eBook #3425]
+[Most recently updated: February 21, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: an anonymous volunteer
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Samantha at Saratoga
+
+by Marietta Holley
+
+Marietta Holley (1836-1926) has been called America’s first female
+humorist. She was an extremely popular author and a well-known suffragette.
+Holley, who never married, published her first books as Josiah Allen’s
+Wife, only adding her own name after her success was established. She lived in
+an 18 room home she built in Jefferson County, New York and drove a
+Pierce-Arrow. Her legacy of more than 20 books has mostly been forgotten today
+but they are still very good reading.
+
+I have no information about the illustrator.
+
+
+          Josiah
+
+          TO THE GREAT ARMY OF SUMMER TRAMPS
+
+            THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
+
+            BY THEIR COMRADE AND FELLOW WANDERER
+            THE AUTHOR
+
+            * * * * * * * * * * *
+
+          Samantha
+
+
+Contents
+
+ PREFACE
+ CHAPTER I. SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA
+ CHAPTER II. ARDELIA TUTT AND HER MOTHER
+ CHAPTER III. THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS
+ CHAPTER IV. ARDELIA AND ABRAM GEE
+ CHAPTER V. WE ARRIVE AT SARATOGA
+ CHAPTER VI. SARATOGA BY DAYLIGHT
+ CHAPTER VII. SEEING THE DIFFERENT SPRINGS
+ CHAPTER VIII. JOSIAH AND SAMANTHA TAKE A LONG WALK
+ CHAPTER IX. JOSIAH’S FLIRTATIONS
+ CHAPTER X. MISS G. WASHINGTON FLAMM
+ CHAPTER XI. VISIT TO THE INDIAN ENCAMPMENT
+ CHAPTER XII. A DRIVE TO SARATOGA LAKE
+ CHAPTER XIII. VISITS TO NOTABLE PLACES
+ CHAPTER XIV. LAKE GEORGE AND MOUNT McGREGOR
+ HAPTER XV. ADVENTURES AT VARIOUS SPRINGS
+ CHAPTER XVI. AT A LAWN PARTY
+ CHAPTER XVII. A TRIP TO SCHUYLERVILLE
+ CHAPTER XVIII. THE SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETING
+ CHAPTER XIX. ST. CHRISTINA’S HOME
+ CHAPTER XX. AN ACCIDENT WITH RESULTS	
+
+
+
+
+A SORT OF PREFACE.
+WHICH IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO READ.
+
+
+When Josiah read my dedication he said “it wuz a shame to dedicate a
+book that it had took most a hull bottle of ink to write, to a lot of
+creeters that he wouldn’t have in the back door yard.”
+
+But I explained it to him, that I didn’t mean tramps with broken hats,
+variegated pantaloons, ventilated shirt-sleeves, and barefooted. But I
+meant tramps with diamond ear-rings, and cuff-buttons, and Saratoga
+trunks, and big accounts at their bankers.
+
+And he said, “Oh, shaw!”
+
+But I went on nobly, onmindful of that shaw, as female pardners have to
+be, if they accomplish all the talkin’ they want to.
+
+And sez I, “It duz seem sort o’ pitiful, don’t it, to think how sort o’
+homeless the Americans are a gettin’? How the posys that blow under the
+winders of Home are left to waste their sweet breaths amongst the
+weeds, while them that used to love ’em are a climbin’ mountain tops
+after strange nosegays.”
+
+The smoke that curled up from the chimbleys, a wreathin’ its way up to
+the heavens—all dead and gone. The bright light that shone out of the
+winder through the dark a tellin’ everybody that there wuz a Home, and
+some one a waitin’ for somebody—all dark and lonesome.
+
+Yes, the waiter and the waited for are all a rushin’ round somewhere,
+on the cars, mebby, or a yot, a chasin’ Pleasure, that like as not
+settled right down on the eves of the old house they left, and stayed
+there.
+
+I wonder if they will find her there when they go back again. Mebby
+they will, and then agin, mebby they won’t. For Happiness haint one to
+set round and lame herself a waitin’ for folks to make up their minds.
+
+Sometimes she looks folks full in the face, sort o’ solemn like and
+heart-searchin’, and gives ’em a fair chance what they will chuse. And
+then if they chuse wrong, shee’ll turn her back to ’em, for always.
+I’ve hearn of jest such cases.
+
+But it duz seem sort o’ solemn to think—how the sweet restful felin’s
+that clings like ivy round the old familier door steps—where old 4
+fathers feet stopped, and stayed there, and baby feet touched and then
+went away—I declare for’t, it almost brings tears, to think how that
+sweet clingin’ vine of affection, and domestic repose, and content—how
+soon that vine gets tore up nowadays.
+
+It is a sort of a runnin’ vine anyway, and folks use it as sech, they
+run with it. Jest as it puts its tendrils out to cling round some fence
+post, or lilock bush, they pull it up, and start off with it. And then
+its roots get dry, and it is some time before it will begin to put out
+little shoots and clingin’ leaves agin round some petickular mountain
+top, or bureau or human bein’. And then it is yanked up agin, poor
+little runnin’ vine, and run with—and so on—and so on—and so on.
+
+Why sometimes it makes me fairly heart-sick to think on’t. And I fairly
+envy our old 4 fathers, who used to set down for several hundred years
+in one spot. They used to get real rested, it must be they did.
+
+Jacob now, settin’ right by that well of his’n for pretty nigh two
+hundred years. How much store he must have set by it during the last
+hundred years of ’em! How attached he must have been to it!
+
+Good land! Where is there a well that one of our rich old American
+patriarks will set down by for two years, leavin’ off the orts. There
+haint none, there haint no such a well. Our patriarks haint fond of
+well water, anyway.
+
+And old Miss Abraham now, and Miss Isaac—what stay to home wimmen they
+wuz, and equinomical!
+
+What a good contented creeter Sarah Abraham wuz. How settled down, and
+stiddy, stayin’ right to home for hundreds of years. Not gettin’
+rampent for a wider spear, not a coaxin’ old Mr. Abraham nights to take
+her to summer resorts, and winter hants of fashion.
+
+No, old Mr. Abraham went to bed, and went to sleep for all of her.
+
+And when they did once in a hundred years, or so, make up their minds
+to move on a mile or so, how easy they traveled. Mr. Abraham didn’t
+have to lug off ten or twelve wagon loads of furniture to the Safe
+Deposit Company, and spend weeks and weeks a settlin’ his bisness, in
+Western lands, and Northern mines, Southern railroads, and Eastern
+wildcat stocks, to get ready to go. And Miss Abraham didn’t have to
+have a dozen dress-makers in the house for a month or two, and
+messenger boys, and dry goods clerks, and have to stand and be fitted
+for basks and polenays, and back drapery, and front drapery, and tea
+gowns, and dinner gowns, and drivin’ gowns, and mornin’ gowns, and
+evenin’ gowns, and etectery, etcetery, etcetery.
+
+No, all the preperations she had to make wuz to wrop her mantilly a
+little closter round her, and all Mr. Abraham had to do wuz to gird up
+his lions. That is what it sez. And I don’t believe it would take much
+time to gird up a few lions, it don’t seem to me as if it would.
+
+And when these few simple preperations had been made, they jest histed
+up their tent and laid it acrost a camel, and moved on a mild or two,
+walkin’ afoot.
+
+Why jest imagine if Miss Abraham had to travel with eight or ten big
+Saratoga trunks, how could they have been got up onto that camel? It
+couldn’t lave been done. The camel would have died, and old Mr. Abraham
+would also have expired a tryin’ to lift ’em up. No, it was all for the
+best.
+
+And jest think on’t, for all of these simple, stay to home ways, they
+called themselves Pilgrims and Sojourners. Good land! What would they
+have thought nowadays to see folks make nothin’ of settin’ off for
+China, or Japan or Jerusalem before breakfast.
+
+And what did they know of the hardships of civilization? Now to sposen
+the case, sposen Miss Abraham had to live in New York winters, and go
+to two or three big receptions every day, and to dinner parties, and
+theatre parties, and operas and such like, evenin’s, and receive and
+return about three thousand calls, and be on more ’n a dozen charitable
+boards (hard boards they be too, some on ’em) and lots of other
+projects and enterprizes—be on the go the hull winter, with a dress so
+tight she couldn’t breathe instead of her good loose robes, and instead
+of her good comfortable sandals have her feet upon high-heeled shoes
+pinchin’ her corns almost unto distraction. And then to Washington to
+go all through it agin, and more too, and Florida, and Cuba; and then
+to the sea-shore and have it all over agin with sea bathin’ added.
+
+And then to the mountains, and all over agin with climbin’ round added.
+Then to Europe, with seas sickness, picture galleries, etc., added. And
+so on home agin in the fall to begin it all over agin.
+
+Why Miss Abraham would be so tuckered out before she went half through
+with one season, that she would be a dead 4 mother.
+
+And Mr. Abraham—why one half hour down at the stock exchange would have
+been too much for that good old creeter. The yells and cries, and
+distracted movements of the crowd of Luker Gatherers there, would have
+skairt him to death. He never would have lived to follow Miss Abraham
+round from pillow to post through summer and winter seasons—he wouldn’t
+have lived to waltz, or toboggen, or suffer other civilized agonies.
+No, he would have been a dead patriark. And better off so, I almost
+think.
+
+Not but what I realize that civilization has its advantages. Not but
+what I know that if Mr. Abraham wanted Miss Abraham to part his hair
+straight, or clean off his phylackrity when she happened to be out a
+pickin’ up manny, he couldn’t stand on one side of his tent and
+telephone to bring her back, but had to yell at her.
+
+And I realize fully that if one of his herd got strayed off into
+another county, they hadn’t no telegraf to head it off, but the old man
+had to poke off through rain or sun, and hunt it up himself. And he
+couldn’t set down cross-legged in front of his tent in the mornin’, and
+read what happened on the other side of the world, the evenin’ before.
+
+And I know that if he wanted to set down some news, they had to kill a
+sheep, and spend several years a dressin’ off the hide into
+parchment—and kill a goose, or chase it up till they wuz beat out, for
+a goose-quill.
+
+And then after about 20 years or so, they could put it down that Miss
+Isaac had got a boy—the boy, probably bein’ a married man himself and a
+father when the news of his birth wuz set down.
+
+I realize this, and also the great fundimental fact that underlies all
+philosophies, that you can’t set down and stand up at the same time—and
+that no man, however pure and lofty his motives may be, can’t lean up
+against a barn door, and walk off simultanious. And if he don’t walk
+off, then the great question comes in, How will he get there? And he
+feels lots of times that he must stand up so’s to bring his head up
+above the mullien and burdock stalks, amongst which he is a settin’,
+and get a wider view-a broader horizeon. And he feels lots of time,
+that he must get there.
+
+This is a sort of a curius world, and it makes me feel curius a good
+deal of the time as we go through it. But we have to make allowances
+for it, for the old world is on a tramp, too. It can’t seem to stop a
+minute to oil up its old axeltrys—it moves on, and takes us with it. It
+seems to be in a hurry.
+
+Everything seems to be in a hurry here below. And some say Heaven is a
+place of continual sailin’ round and goin’ up and up all the time. But
+while risin’ up and soarin’ is a sweet thought to me, still sometimes I
+love to think that Heaven is a place where I can set down, and set for
+some time.
+
+I told Josiah so (waked him up, for he wuz asleep), and he said he sot
+more store on the golden streets, and the wavin’ palms, and the
+procession of angels. (And then he went to sleep agin.)
+
+But I don’t feel so. I’d love, as I say, to jest set down for quite a
+spell, and set there, to be kinder settled down and to home with them
+whose presence makes a home anywhere. I wouldn’t give a cent to sail
+round unless I wuz made to know it wuz my duty to sail. Josiah wants
+to.
+
+But, as I say, everybody is in a hurry. Husbands can’t hardly find time
+to keep up a acquaintance with their wives. Fathers don’t have no time
+to get up a intimate acquaintance with their children. Mothers are in
+such a hurry—babys are in such a hurry—that they can’t scarcely find
+time to be born. And I declare for’t, it seems sometimes as if folks
+don’t want to take time to die.
+
+The old folks at home wait with faithful, tired old eyes for the letter
+that don’t come, for the busy son or daughter hasn’t time to write
+it—no, they are too busy a tearin’ up the running vine of affection and
+home love, and a runnin’ with it.
+
+Yes, the hull nation is in a hurry to get somewhere else, to go on, it
+can’t wait. It is a trampin’ on over the Western slopes, a trampin’
+over red men, and black men, and some white men a hurryin’ on to the
+West—hurryin’ on to the sea. And what then?
+
+Is there a tide of restfulness a layin’ before it? Some cool waters of
+repose where it will bathe its tired forward, and its stun-bruised
+feet, and set there for some time?
+
+I don’t s’pose so. I don’t s’pose it is in its nater to. I s’pose it
+will look off longingly onto the far off somewhere that lays over the
+waters—beyend the sunset.
+
+JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE.
+
+
+NEW YORK, June, 1887.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA.
+
+
+The idee on’t come to me one day about sundown, or a little before
+sundown. I wuz a settin’ in calm peace, and a big rockin’ chair covered
+with a handsome copperplate, a readin’ what the Sammist sez about
+“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” The words struck deep, and as I said,
+it was jest that very minute that the idee struck me about goin’ to
+Saratoga. Why I should have had the idee at jest that minute, I can’t
+tell, nor Josiah can’t. We have talked about it sense.
+
+But good land! such creeters as thoughts be never wuz, nor never will
+be. They will creep in, and round, and over anything, and get inside of
+your mind (entirely unbeknown to you) at any time. Curious, haint
+it?—How you may try to hedge ’em out, and shet the doors and
+everything. But they will creep up into your mind, climb up and draw up
+their ladders, and there they will be, and stalk round independent as
+if they owned your hull head; curious!
+
+Well, there the idee wuz—I never knew nothin’ about it, nor how it got
+there. But there it wuz, lookin’ me right in the face of my soul,
+kinder pert and saucy, sayin’, “You’d better go to Saratoga next
+summer; you and Josiah.”
+
+But I argued with it. Sez I, “What should we go to Saratoga for? None
+of the relations live there on my side, or on hison; why should we go?”
+
+But still that idee kep’ a hantin me; “You’d better go to Saratoga next
+summer, you and Josiah.” And it whispered, “Mebby it will help Josiah’s
+corns.” (He is dretful troubled with corns.) And so the idee kep’ a
+naggin’ me, it nagged me for three days and three nights before I
+mentioned it to my Josiah. And when I did, he scorfed at the idee. He
+said, “The idee of water curing them dumb corns—“
+
+Sez I, “Josiah Allen, stranger things have been done;” sez I, “that
+water is very strong. It does wonders.”
+
+And he scorfed agin and sez, “Don’t you believe faith could cure em?”
+
+Josiah in woodlot
+
+Sez I, “If it wuz strong enough it could.”
+
+But the thought kep a naggin’ me stiddy, and then—here is the curious
+part of it—the thought nagged me, and I nagged Josiah, or not exactly
+nagged; not a clear nag; I despise them, and always did. But I kinder
+kep’ it before his mind from day to day, and from hour to hour. And the
+idee would keep a tellin’ me things and I would keep a tellin’ ’em to
+my companion. The idee would keep a sayin’ to me, “It is one of the
+most beautiful places in our native land. The waters will help you, the
+inspirin’ music, and elegance and gay enjoyment you will find there,
+will sort a uplift you. You had better go there on a tower;” and agin
+it sez, “Mebby it will help Josiah’s corns.”
+
+And old Dr. Gale a happenin’ in at about that time, I asked him about
+it (he doctored me when I wuz a baby, and I have helped ’em for years.
+Good old creetur, he don’t get along as well as he ort to. Loontown is
+a healthy place.) I told him about my strong desire to go to Saratoga,
+and I asked him plain if he thought the water would help my pardner’s
+corns. And he looked dreadful wise and he riz up and walked across the
+floor 2 and fro several times, probably 3 times to, and the same number
+of times fro, with his arms crossed back under the skirt of his coat
+and his eyebrows knit in deep thought, before he answered me. Finely he
+said, that modern science had not fully demonstrated yet the direct
+bearing of water on corn. In some cases it might and probably did
+stimulate ’em to greater luxuriance, and then again a great flow of
+water might retard their growth.
+
+Sez I, anxiously, “Then you’d advise me to go there with him?”
+
+“Yes,” sez he, “on the hull, I advise you to go.”
+
+Samantha and Dr. Gale
+
+Them words I reported to Josiah, and sez I in anxious axents, “Dr. Gale
+advises us to go.”
+
+And Josiah sez, “I guess I shan’t mind what that old fool sez.”
+
+Them wuz my pardner’s words, much as I hate to tell on ’em. But from
+day to day I kep’ it stiddy before him, how dang’r’us it wuz to go
+ag’inst a doctor’s advice. And from day to day he would scorf at the
+plan. And I, ev’ry now and then, and mebby oftener, would get him a
+extra good meal, and attack him on the subject immegatly afterwards.
+But all in vain. And I see that when he had that immovible sotness onto
+him, one extra meal wouldn’t soften or molify him. No, I see plain I
+must make a more voyalent effort. And I made it. For three stiddy days
+I put before that man the best vittles that these hands could make, or
+this brain could plan.
+
+And at the end of the 3d day I gently tackled him agin on the subject,
+and his state wuz such, bland, serene, happified, that he consented
+without a parlay. And so it wuz settled that the next summer we wuz to
+go to Saratoga. And he began to count on it and make preparation in a
+way that I hated to see.
+
+Yes, from the very minute that our two minds wuz made up to go to
+Saratoga Josiah Allen wuz set on havin’ sunthin new and uneek in the
+way of dress and whiskers. I looked coldly on the idee of puttin’ a gay
+stripe down the legs of the new pantaloons I made for him, and broke it
+up, also a figured vest. I went through them two crisises and came out
+triumphent.
+
+Then he went and bought a new bright pink necktie with broad long ends
+which he intended to have float out, down the front of his vest. And I
+immegatly took it for the light-colored blocks in my silk log-cabin
+bedquilt. Yes, I settled the matter of that pink neck-gear with a high
+hand and a pair of shears. And Josiah sez now that he bought it for
+that purpose, for the bedquilt, because he loves to see a dressy
+quilt,—sez he always enjoys seein’ a cabin look sort o’ gay. But good
+land! he didn’t. He intended and calculated to wear that neck-tie into
+Saratoga,—a sight for men and angels, if I hadn’t broke it up.
+
+But in the matter of whiskers, there I was powerless. He trimmed ’em
+(unbeknow to me) all off the side of his face, them good honerable side
+whiskers of hisen, that had stood by him for years in solemnity and
+decency, and begun to cultivate a little patch on the end of his chin.
+I argued with him, and talked well on the subject, eloquent, but it wuz
+of no use, I might as well have argued with the wind in March.
+
+He said, he wuz bound on goin’ into Saratoga with a fashionable
+whisker, come what would.
+
+And then I sithed, and he sez,—“ You have broke up my pantaloons, my
+vest, and my neck-tie, you have ground me down onto plain broadcloth,
+but in the matter of whiskers I am firm! Yes!” sez he “on these
+whiskers I take my stand!”
+
+And agin I sithed heavy, and I sez in a dretful impressive way, as I
+looked on ’em, “Josiah Allen, remember you are a father and a
+grandfather!”
+
+And he sez firmly, “If I wuz a great-grandfather I would trim my
+whiskers in jest this way, that is if I wuz a goin’ to set up to be
+fashionable and a goin’ to Saratoga for my health.”
+
+And I groaned kinder low to myself, and kep’ hopin’ that mebby they
+wouldn’t grow very fast, or that some axident would happen to ’em, that
+they would get afire or sunthin’. But they didn’t. And they grew from
+day to day luxurient in length, but thin. And his watchful care kep’
+’em from axident, and I wuz too high princepled to set fire to ’em when
+he wuz asleep, though sometimes, on a moonlight night, I was tempted
+to, sorely tempted.
+
+But I didn’t, and they grew from day to day, till they wuz the
+curiusest lookin’ patch o’ whiskers that I ever see. And when we sot
+out for Saratoga, they wuz jest about as long as a shavin’ brush, and
+looked some like one. There wuz no look of a class-leader, and a
+perfesser about ’em, and I told him so. But he worshiped ’em, and
+gloried in the idee of goin’ afar to show ’em off.
+
+But the neighbors received the news that we wuz goin’ to a waterin’
+place coldly, or with ill-concealed envy.
+
+Uncle Jonas Bently told us he shouldn’t think we would want to go round
+to waterin’ troughs at our age.
+
+And I told him it wuzn’t a waterin’ trough, and if it wuz, I thought
+our age wuz jest as good a one as any, to go to it.
+
+He had the impression that Saratoga wuz a immense waterin’ trough where
+the country all drove themselves summers to be watered. He is deef as a
+Hemlock post, and I yelled up at him jest as loud as I dast for fear of
+breakin’ open my own chest, that the water got into us, instid of our
+gettin’ into the water, but I didn’t make him understand, for I hearn
+afterwards of his sayin’ that, as nigh as he could make out we all got
+into the waterin’ trough and wuz watered.
+
+The school teacher, a young man, with long, small lims, and some
+pimpley on the face, but well meanin’, he sez to me: “Saratoga is a
+beautiful spah.”
+
+Samantha and the school teacher
+
+And I sez warmly, “It aint no such thing, it is a village, for I have
+seen a peddler who went right through it, and watered his horses there,
+and he sez it is a waterin’ place, and a village.”
+
+“Yes,” sez he, “it is a beautiful village, a modest retiren city, and
+at the same time it is the most noted spah on this continent.”
+
+I wouldn’t contend with him for it wuz on the stoop of the meetin’
+house, and I believe in bein’ reverent. But I knew it wuzn’t no
+“spah,”—that had a dreadful flat sound to me. And any way I knew I
+should face its realities soon and know all about it. Lots of wimen
+said that for anybody who lived right on the side of a canal, and had
+two good, cisterns on the place, and a well, they didn’t see why I
+should feel in a sufferin’ condition for any more water; and if I did,
+why didn’t I ketch rain water?
+
+Such wuz some of the deep arguments they brung up aginst my embarkin’
+on this enterprise, they talked about it sights and sights;—why, it
+lasted the neighbors for a stiddy conversation, till along about the
+middle of the winter. Then the Minister’s wife bought a new alpacky
+dress—unbeknown to the church till it wuz made up—and that kind o’
+drawed their minds off o’ me for a spell.
+
+Aunt Polly Pixley wuz the only one who received the intelligence
+gladly. And she thought she would go too. She had been kinder run down
+and most bed rid for years. And she had a idee the water might help
+her. And I encouraged Aunt Polly in the idee, for she wuz well off.
+Yes, Mr. and Miss Pixley wuz very well off though they lived in a
+little mite of a dark, low, lonesome house, with some tall Pollard
+willows in front of the door in a row, and jest acrost the road from a
+grave-yard.
+
+Her husband had been close and wuzn’t willin’ to have any other luxury
+or means of recreation in the house only a bass viol, that had been his
+father’s—he used to play on that for hours and hours. I thought that
+wuz one reason why Polly wuz so nervous. I said to Josiah that it would
+have killed me outright to have that low grumblin’ a goin’ on from day
+to day, and to look at them tall lonesome willows and grave stuns.
+
+But, howsumever, Polly’s husband had died durin’ the summer, and Polly
+parted with the bass viol the day after the funeral. She got out some
+now, and wuz quite wrought up with the idee of goin’ to Saratoga.
+
+But Sister Minkley; sister in the church and sister-in-law by reason of
+Wbitefield, sez to me, that she should think I would think twice before
+I danced and waltzed round waltzes.
+
+And I sez, “I haint thought of doin’ it, I haint thought of dancin’
+round or square or any other shape.”
+
+Sez she, “You have got to, if you go to Saratoga.”
+
+Sez I, “Not while life remains in this frame.”
+
+And old Miss Bobbet came up that minute—it wuz in the store that we
+were a talkin’—and sez she, “It seems to me, Josiah Allen’s wife, that
+you are too old to wear low-necked dresses and short sleeves.”
+
+“And I should think you’d take cold a goin’ bareheaded,” sez Miss Luman
+Spink who wuz with her.
+
+Sez I, lookin’ at ’em coldly, “Are you lunys or has softness begun on
+your brains?”
+
+“Why,” sez they, “you are talking about goin’ to Saratoga, hain’t you?”
+
+“Yes,” sez I.
+
+“Well then you have got to wear ’em,” says Miss Bobbet. “They don’t let
+anybody inside of the incorporation without they have got on a
+low-necked dress and short sleeves.”
+
+“And bare-headed,” sez Miss Spink; “if they have’ got a thing on their
+heads they won’t let ’em in.”
+
+Sez I, “I don’t believe it”
+
+Sez Miss Bobbet, “It is so, for I hearn it, and hearn it straight.
+James Robbets’s wife’s sister had a second cousin who lived neighbor to
+a woman whose niece had been there, been right there on the spot. And
+Celestine Bobbet, Uncle Ephraim’s Celestine, hearn it from James’es
+wife when she wuz up there last spring, it come straight. They all have
+to go in low necks.”
+
+“And not a mite of anything on their heads,” says Miss Spink.
+
+Sez I in sarcastical axents, “Do men have to go in low necks too?”
+
+“No,” says Miss Bobbet. “But they have to have the tails of their coats
+kinder pinted. Why,” sez she, “I hearn of a man that had got clear to
+the incorporation and they wouldn’t let him in because his coat kinder
+rounded off round the bottom, so he went out by the side of the road
+and pinned up his coat tails, into a sort of a pinted shape, and good
+land the incorporation let him right in, and never said a word.”
+
+I contended that these things wuzn’t so, but I found it wuz the
+prevailin’ opinion. For when I went to see the dressmaker about makin’
+me a dress for the occasion, I see she felt just like the rest about
+it. My dress wuz a good black alpacky. I thought I would have it begun
+along in the edge of the winter, when she didn’t have so much to do,
+and also to have it done on time. We laid out to start on the follerin’
+July, and I felt that I wanted everything ready.
+
+I bought the dress the 7th day of November early in the forenoon, the
+next day after my pardner consented to go, and give 65 cents a yard for
+it, double wedth. I thought I could get it done on time, dressmakers
+are drove a good deal. But I felt that a dressmaker could commence a
+dress in November and get it done the follerin’ July, without no great
+strain bein’ put onto her; and I am fur from bein’ the one to put
+strains onto wimmen, and hurry ’em beyend their strength. But I felt
+Almily had time to make it on honor and with good buttonholes.
+
+“Well,” she sez, the first thing after she had unrolled the alpacky,
+and held it up to the light to see if it was firm—sez she:
+
+“I s’pose you are goin’ to have it made with a long train, and low neck
+and short sleeves, and the waist all girted down to a taper?”
+
+I wuz agast at the idee, and to think Alminy should broach it to me,
+and I give her a piece of my mind that must have lasted her for days
+and days. It wuz a long piece, and firm as iron. But she is a woman who
+likes to have the last word and carry out her own idees, and she
+insisted that nobody was allowed in Saratoga—that they wuz outlawed,
+and laughed at if they didn’t have trains and low necks, and little
+mites of waists no bigger than pipe-stems.
+
+Sez I, “Alminy Hagidone, do you s’pose that I, a woman of my age, and a
+member of the meetin’ house, am a goin’ to wear a low-necked dress?”
+
+“Why not?,” sez she, “it is all the fashion and wimmen as old agin as
+you be wear ’em.”
+
+Well, sez I, “It is a shame and a disgrace if they do, to say nothin’
+of the wickedness of it. Who do you s’pose wants to see their old skin
+and bones? It haint nothin’ pretty anyway. And as fer the waists bein’
+all girted up and drawed in, that is nothin’ but crushed bones and
+flesh and vitals, that is just crowdin’ down your insides into a state
+o’ disease and deformity, torturin’ your heart down so’s the blood
+can’t circulate, and your lungs so’s you can’t breathe, it is nothin’
+but slow murder anyway, and if I ever take it into my head to kill
+myself, Alminy Hagidone, I haint a goin’ to do it in a way of perfect
+torture and torment to me, I’d ruther be drownded.”
+
+She quailed, and I sez, “I am one that is goin’ to take good long
+breaths to the very last.” She see I wuz like iron aginst the idee of
+bein’ drawed in, and tapered, and she desisted. I s’pose I did look
+skairful. But she seemed still to cling to the idee of low necks and
+trains, and she sez sort a rebukingly:
+
+“You ortn’t to go to Saratoga if you haint willin’ to do as the rest
+do. I spose,” sez she dreamily, “the streets are full of wimmen a
+walkin’ up and down with long trains a hangin’ down and sweepin’ the
+streets, and ev’ry one on ’em with low necks and short sleeves, and all
+on ’em a flirting with some man”
+
+“Truly,” sez I, “if that is so, that is why the idee come to me. I am
+_needed_ there. I have a high mission to perform about. But I don’t
+believe it is so.”
+
+“Then you won’t have it made with a long train?” sez she, a holdin’ up
+a breadth of the alpacky in front of me, to measure the skirt.
+
+“No mom!” sez I, and there wuz both dignity and deep resolve in that
+“mom.” It wuz as firm and stern principled a “mom” as I ever see,
+though I say it that shouldn’t. And I see it skairt her. She measured
+off the breadths kinder trembly, and seemed so anxious to pacify me
+that she got it a leetle shorter in the back than it wuz in the front.
+And (for the same reason) it fairly clicked me in the neck it wuz so
+high, and the sleeves wuz that long that I told Josiah Allen (in
+confidence) I was tempted to knit some loops across the bottom of ’em
+and wear ’em for mits.
+
+But I didn’t, and I didn’t change the dress neither. Thinkses I, mebby
+it will have a good moral effect on them other old wimmen there.
+Thinkses I, when they see another woman melted and shortened and choked
+fur principle’s sake, mebby they will pause in their wild careers.
+
+Wall, this wuz in November, and I wuz to have the dress, if it wuz a
+possible thing, by the middle of April, so’s to get it home in time to
+sew some lace in the neck. And so havin’ everything settled about goin’
+I wuz calm in my frame most all the time, and so wuz my pardner.
+
+And right here, let me insert this one word of wisdom for the special
+comfort of my sect and yet it is one that may well be laid to heart by
+the more opposite one. If your pardner gets restless and oneasy and
+middlin’ cross, as pardners will be anon, or even oftener—start them
+off on a tower. A tower will in 9 cases out of 10 lift ’em out of their
+oneasiness, their restlessness and their crossness.
+
+_Why_ this is so I cannot tell, no more than I can explain other
+mysteries of creation, but I know it is so. I know they will come home
+more placider, more serener, and more settled-downer. Why I have known
+a short tower to Slab City or Loontown act like a charm on my pardner,
+when crossness wuz in his mean and snappishness wuz present with him. I
+have known him to set off with the mean of a lion and come back with
+the liniment of a lamb. Curious, haint it?
+
+And jest the prospect of a tower ahead is a great help to a woman in
+rulin’ and keepin’ a pardner straight and right in his liniments and
+his acts. Somehow jest the thought of a tower sort a lifts him up in
+mind, and happifys him, and makes him easier to quell, and pardners
+_must_ be quelled at times, else there would be no livin’ with ’em.
+This is known to all wimmen companions and and men too. Great great is
+the mystery of pardners.
+
+Josiah mad and happy
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+ARDELLA TUTT AND HER MOTHER.
+
+
+But to resoom and continue on. I was a settin’ one day, after it wuz
+all decided, and plans laid on; I wuz a settin’ by the fire a mendin’
+one of Josiah’s socks. I wuz a settin’ there, as soft and pliable in my
+temper as the woosted I wuz a darnin’ ’em with, my Josiah at the same
+time a peacefelly sawin’ wood in the wood-house, when I heard a rap at
+the door and I riz up and opened it, and there stood two perfect
+strangers, females. I, with a perfect dignity and grace (and with the
+sock still in my left hand) asked ’em to set down, and consequently
+they sot. Then ensued a slight pause durin’ which my two gray eyes
+roamed over the females before me.
+
+The oldest one wuz very sharp in her face and had a pair of small round
+eyes that seemed when they were sot onto you to sort a bore into you
+like two gimlets. Her nose was very sharp and defient, as if it wuz
+constantly sayin’ to itself, “I am a nose to be looked up to, I am a
+nose to be respected, and feared if necessary.” Her chin said the same
+thing, and her lips which wuz very thin, and her elbow, which wuz very
+sharp.
+
+Her dress was a stiff sort of a shinin’ poplin, made tight acrost the
+chest and elboes. And her hat had some stiff feathers in it that stood
+up straight and sort a sharp lookin’. She had a long sharp breast-pin
+sort a stabbed in through the front of her stiff standin’ collar, and
+her knuckles sot out through her firm lisle thread gloves, her umberell
+wuz long and wound up hard, to that extent I have never seen before nor
+sense. She wuz, take it all in all, a hard sight, and skairful.
+
+The other one wuzn’t no more like her in looks than a soft fat young
+cabbage head is like the sharp bean pole that it grows up by the side
+on, in the same garden. She wuz soft in her complexion, her lips, her
+cheeks, her hands, and as I mistrusted at that first minute, and found
+out afterwards, soft in her head too. Her dress wuz a loose-wove
+parmetty, full in the waist and sort a drabbly round the bottom. Her
+hat wuz drab-colored felt with some loose ribbon bows a hangin’ down on
+it, and some soft ostridge tips. She had silk mits on and her hands wuz
+fat and kinder moist-lookin’. Her eyes wuz very large and round, and
+blue, and looked sort o’ dreamy and wanderin’ and there wuz a kind of a
+wrapped smile on her face all the time. She had a roll of paper in her
+hand and I didn’t dislike her looks a mite.
+
+Finally the oldest female opened her lips, some as a steel trap would
+open sudden and kinder sharp, and sez she: “I am Miss Deacon Tutt, of
+Tuttville, and this is my second daughter Ardelia. Cordelia is my
+oldest, and I have 4 younger than Ardelia.”
+
+I bowed real polite and said, “I wuz glad to make the acquaintance of
+the hull 7 on ’em.” I can be very genteel when I set out, almost
+stylish.
+
+“I s’pose,” says she, “I am talkin’ to Josiah Allen’s wife?”
+
+I gin her to understand that that wuz my name and my station, and she
+went on, and sez she: “I have hearn on you through my husband’s 2d
+cousin, Cephas Tutt.”
+
+“Cephas,” sez she, “bein’ wrote to by me on the subject of Ardelia, the
+same letter containin’ seven poems of hern, and on bein’ asked to point
+out the quickest way to make her name and fame known to the world at
+large, wrote back that he havin’ always dealt in butter and lard,
+wuzn’t up to the market price in poetry, and that you would be a good
+one to go to for advice. And so,” sez she a pointin’ to a bag she
+carried on her arm (a hard lookin’ bag made of crash with little
+bullets and knobs of embroidery on it), “and so we took this bag full
+of Ardelia’s poetry and come on the mornin’ train, Cephas’es letter
+havin’ reached us at nine o’clock last night. I am a woman of
+business.”
+
+The bag would hold about 4 quarts and it wuz full. I looked at it and
+sithed.
+
+“I see,” sez she, “that you are sorry that we didn’t bring more poetry
+with us. But we thought that this little batch would give you a idee of
+what a mind she has, what a glorious, soarin’ genus wuz in front of
+you, and we could bring more the next time we come.”
+
+I sithed agin, three times, but Miss Tutt didn’t notice ’em a mite no
+more’n they’d been giggles or titters. She wouldn’t have took no notice
+of them. She wuz firm and decided doin’ her own errent, and not payin’
+no attention to anything, nor anybody else.
+
+“Ardelia, read the poem you have got under your arm to Miss Allen! The
+bag wuz full of her longer ones,” sez she, “but I felt that I _must_
+let you hear her poem on Spring. It is a gem. I felt it would be
+wrongin’ you, not to give you that treat. Read it Ardelia.”
+
+I see Ardelia wuz used to obeyin’ her ma. She opened the sheet to once,
+and begun. It wuz as follows:
+
+“ARDELIA TUTT ON SPRING.”
+
+“Oh spring, sweet spring, thou comest in the spring;
+Thou comest in the spring time of the year.
+We fain would have thee come in Autumn; fling-
+est thou so sad a shade, oh Spring, so dear?
+
+“So dear the hopes thou draggest in thy rear,
+So mournful, and so wan, and not so sweet;
+So weird thou art, and oh, all! all! too dear
+Art thou, alas! oh mournful spring; my ear—
+
+“My ear that long did lay at gate of hope,
+Prone at the gate while years glided by—
+I fain would lift that ear, alas, why cope
+With cruel wrong, it must lie there so heavy ’tis my eye—
+
+“My eye, I fling o’er buried ruins long,
+I flung it there, regardless of the loss;
+That eye, I fain would gather in with song;
+In vain! ’tis gone, I bow and own the cross.
+
+“Dear ear, lone eye, sweet buried hopes, alas,
+I give thee to the proud inexorable main;
+Deep calls to deep, and it doth not reply,
+But sayeth my heart, they will not be mine own again.”
+
+
+Ardelia reads
+
+Jest the minute Ardelia stopped readin’ Miss Tatt says proudly: “There!
+haint that a remarkable poem,?”
+
+Sez I, calmly, “Yes it is a remarkable one.”
+
+“Did you ever hear anything like it?” says she, triumphly.
+
+“No,” sez I honestly, “I never did.”
+
+“Ardelia, read the poem on Little Ardelia Cordelia; give Miss Allen the
+treat of hearin’ that beautiful thing.”
+
+I sort a sithed low to myself; it wuz more of a groan than a common
+sithe, but Miss Tutt didn’t heed it, she kep’ right on—
+
+“I have always brought up my children to make other folks happy, all
+they can, and in rehearsin’ this lovely and remarkable poem, Ardelia
+will be not only makin’ you perfectly happy, givin’ you a rich
+intellectual feast, that you can’t often have, way out here in the
+country, fur from Tuttville; but she will also be attendin’ to the
+business that brought us here. I have always fetched my children up to
+combine joy and business; weld ’em together like brass and steel.
+Ardelia, begin!”
+
+So Ardelia commenced agin’. It wuz wrote on a big sheet of paper and a
+runnin’ vine wuz a runnin’ all ’round the edge of the paper, made with
+a pen, it was as follows:
+
+“STANZAS ENTITLED
+“SWEET LITTLE THING.
+
+“Wrote on the death of Ardelia Cordelia, who died at the age of seven
+days and seven hours.”
+
+“Sweet little thing, that erst so soon did bloom,
+And didest but fade, as falls the mystic flower!
+Sweet little thing, we did but erst low croon
+To thee a plaintive lay, and lo! for hour and hour—
+Sweet little thing.
+
+“For hours we sang to thee of high emprise, the songs of hope
+Though aged but week (and seven hours) thou laughested in thy sleep;
+We cling to that in peace, though mope
+The dullard knave, and biddest us go and weep—
+Sweet little thing.
+
+“Thou laughested at high emprise, and yet, in sooth,
+’Twere craven to say thou couldst not rise
+To scale the mounts! to soar the cliffs! if worth
+Were the test, twice worthy thou, in that the merit lies—
+Sweet little thing.
+
+“Thy words that might have shook the breathless world with might;
+Alas! I catchested not on any earthly ground,
+That voice that might have guided nations high aright,
+Congealed within thy tiny windpipe ’twas, it did not steal around—
+Sweet little thing.
+
+“Sweet little thing, so soon thy wings unfurled
+A wing, a feather lone low floated up the yard;
+A world might weep, a world might stand appalled,
+To hear it low rehearsed by tearful female bard—
+Sweet little thing.”
+
+
+Jest as soon as Ardelia stopped rehearsin’ the verses, Miss Tutt sez
+agin to me:
+
+“Haint that a most remarkable poem?”
+
+And agin I sez calmly, and trutbfully, “Yes, it is a very remarkable
+one!”
+
+“And now,” sez Miss Tutt, plungin’ her hand in the bag, and drawin’ out
+a sheet of paper, “to convince you that Ardelia has always had this
+divine gift of poesy—that it is not, all the effect of culture and high
+education—let me read to you a poem she wrote when she wuz only a mere
+child,” and Miss Tutt read:
+
+“LINES ON A CAT
+
+“WRITTEN BY ARDELIA TUTT,
+
+
+“At the age of fourteen years, two months and eight days.
+
+
+“Oh Cat! Sweet Tabby cat of mine;
+6 months of age has passed o’er thee,
+And I would not resign, resign
+The pleasure that I find in you.
+Dear old cat!”
+
+
+“Don’t you think,” sez Miss Tutt, “that this poem shows a fund of
+passion, a reserve power of passion and constancy, remarkable in one so
+young?”
+
+“Yes,” sez I reasonably, “no doubt she liked the cat. And,” sez I,
+wantin’ to say somethin’ pleasant and agreeable to her, “no doubt it
+was a likely cat.”
+
+“Oh the cat itself is of miner importance,” sez Miss Tutt. “We will
+fling the cat to the winds. It’s of my daughter I would speak. I simply
+handled the cat to show the rare precocious intellect. Oh! how it
+gushed out in the last line in the unconquerable burst of repressed
+passion—’Dear old cat!’ Shakespeare might have wrote that line, do you
+not think so?”
+
+“No doubt he might,” sez I, calmly, “but he didn’t.”
+
+I see she looked mad and I hastened to say: “He wuzn’t aquainted with
+the cat.”
+
+She looked kinder mollyfied and continued:
+
+“Ardelia dashes off things with a speed that would astonish a mere
+common writer. Why she dashed off thirty-nine verses once while she wuz
+waitin’ for the dish water to bile, and sent ’em right off to the
+printer, without glancin’ at ’em agin.’
+
+“I dare say so,” sez I, “I should judge so by the sound on ’em.”
+
+“Out of envy and jealousy, the rankest envy, and the shearest jealousy,
+them verses wuz sent back with the infamous request that she should use
+’em for curl papers. But she sot right down and wrote forty-eight
+verses on a ‘Cruel Request,’ wrote ’em inside of eighteen minutes. She
+throws off things, Ardelia does, in half an hour, that it would take
+other poets, weeks and weeks to write.”
+
+At the printers
+
+“I persume so,” sez I, “I dare persume to say, they _never_ could write
+’em.”
+
+“And now,” sez Miss Tutt, “the question is, will you put Ardelia on the
+back of that horse that poets ride to glory on? Will you lift her onto
+the back of that horse, and do it _at once?_ I require nothin’ hard of
+you,” sez she, a borin’ me through and through with her eyes. “It must
+be a joy to you, Josiah Allen’s wife, a rare joy, to be the means of
+bringin’ this rare genius before the public. I ask nothin’ hard of you,
+I only ask that you demand, _demand_ is the right word, not ask; that
+would be grovelin’ trucklin’ folly, but _demand_ that the public that
+has long ignored my daugther Ardelia’s claim to a seat amongst the
+immortal poets, demand them, _compel_ them to pause, to listen, and
+then seat her there, up, up on the highest, most perpendiciler pinnacle
+of fame’s pillow. Will you do this?”
+
+I sat in deep dejection and my rockin’ chair, and knew not what to
+say—and Miss Tutt went on:
+
+“We demand more than fame, deathless, immortal fame for ’em. We want
+money, wealth for ’em, and want it at once! We want it for extra
+household expenses, luxuries, clothing, jewelry, charity, etc. If we
+enrich the world with this rare genius, the world must enrich us with
+its richest emmolients. Will you see that we have it! Will you _at
+once_ do as I asked you to? Will you seat her immegately where I want
+her sot?
+
+Sez I, considerin’, “I can’t get her up there alone, I haint strong
+enough.” Sez I, sort a mekanikly, “I have got the rheumatez.”
+
+“So you scoff me do you? I came to you to get bread, am I to get worse
+than a stun—a scoff?”
+
+“I haint gin you no scoff,” sez I, a spunkin’ up a little, “I haint
+thought on it. I like Ardelia and wish her well, but I can’t do
+merikles, I can’t compel the public to like things if they don’t.”
+
+Sez Miss Tutt, “You are jealous of her, you hate her.”
+
+“No, I don’t,” sez I, “I haint jealous of her, and I like her looks
+first-rate. I love a pretty young girl,” sez I candidly, “jest as I
+love a fresh posy with the dew still on it, a dainty rose-bud with the
+sweet fragrance layin’ on its half-folded heart. I love ’em,” sez I, a
+beginnin’ to eppisode a little unbeknown to me, “I love ’em jest as I
+love the soft unbroken silence of the early spring mornin’, the sun all
+palely tinted with rose and blue, and the earth alayin’ calm and
+unwoke-up, fresh and fair. I love such a mornin’ and such a life, for
+itself and for the unwritten prophecis in it. And when I see genius in
+such a sweet, young life, why it makes me feel as it duz to see through
+all the tender prophetic beauty of the mornin’ skies, a big white dove
+a soarin’ up through the blue heavens.”
+
+Sez Miss Tutt, “You see that in Ardelia, but you wont own it, you know
+you do.”
+
+“No!” sez I, “I would love to tell you that I see it in Ardelia; I
+would honest, but I can’t look into them mornin’ skies and say I see a
+white dove there, when I don’t see nothin’ more than a plump pullet, a
+jumpin’ down from the fence or a pickin’ round calmly in the back
+door-yard. Jest as likely the hen is, as the white dove, jest as
+honerable, but you mustn’t confound the two together.”
+
+“A _hen_,” sez Miss Tutt bitterly. “To confound my Ardelia with a
+_hen!_ And I don’t think there wuz ever a more ironieler ‘hen’ than
+that wuz, or a scornfuller one.”
+
+“Why,” sez I reasonably. “Hens are necessary and useful in any
+position, both walkin’ and settin’, and layin’. You can’t get’em in any
+position hardly, but what they are useful and respectable, only jest
+flyin’. Hens can’t fly. Their wings haint shaped for it. They look some
+like a dove’s wings on the outside, the same feathers, the same way of
+stretchin’ ’em out. But there is sunthin lackin’ in ’em, some
+heaven-given capacity for soarin’ an for flight that the hens don’t
+have. And it makes trouble, sights and sights of trouble when hens try
+to fly, try to, and can’t!
+
+“At the same time it is hard for a dove to settle down in a back yard
+and stay there, hard and tegus. She can and duz sometimes, but never
+till after her wings have been clipped in some way. Poor little dove! I
+am always sorry for ’em to see ’em a walkin’ round there, a wantin’ to
+fly—a not forgettin’ how it seemed to have their wings soarin’ up
+through the clear sky, and the rush of the pure liquid windwaves a
+sweepin’ aginst ’em, as they riz up, up, in freedom, and happiness, and
+glory. Poor little creeters.
+
+“Yes, but doves can, if you clip their wings, settle down and walk, but
+hens CAN’T fly, not for any length of time they can’t. No amount of
+stimulatin’ poultices applied to the ends of their tail feathers and
+wings can ever make ’em fly. They can’t; it haint their nater. They can
+make nests, and fill them with pretty downy chicks, they can be happy
+and beautiful in life and mean; they can spend their lives in jest as
+honerable and worthy a way as if they wuz a flyin’ round, and make a
+good honerable appearance from day to day, _till_ they begin to flop
+their wings, and fly—then their mean is not beautiful and inspirin’;
+no, it is fur from it. It is tuff to see ’em, tuff to see the floppin’,
+tuff to see their vain efforts to soar through the air, tuff to see ’em
+fall percepitously down onto the ground agin. For they must come there
+in the end; they are morally certain to.
+
+“Now Ardelia is a sweet pretty lookin’ girl, she can set down in a
+cushioned arm-chair by a happy fireside, with pretty baby faces a
+clusterin’ around her and some man’s face like the sun a reflectin’
+back the light of her happy heart. But she can’t sit up on the pinnacle
+of fame’s pillow. I don’t believe she can ever get up there, I don’t.
+Honestly speakin’, I don’t.”
+
+“Envy!” sez Miss Tutt, “glarin’, shameless envy! You don’t want Ardelia
+to rise! You don’t want her to mount that horse I spoke of; you don’t
+want to own that you see genius in her. But you do, Josiah Allen’s
+wife, you know you do—“
+
+“No,” sez I, “I don’t see it. I see the sweetness of pretty girlhood,
+the beauty and charm of openin’ life, but I don’t see nothin’ else, I
+don’t, honest. I don’t believe she has got genius,” sez I, “seein’ you
+put the question straight to me and depend a answer; seein’ her future
+career depends on her choice now, I must tell you that I believe she
+would succeed better in the millionary trade or the mantilly maker’s
+than she will in tryin’ to mount the horse you speak on.
+
+“Why,” sez I, candidly, “some folks _can’t_ get up on that horse, their
+legs haint strong enough. And if they do manage to get on, it throws
+’em, and they lay under the heels for life. I don’t want to see Ardelia
+there, I don’t want to see her maimed and lamed and stunted so early in
+the mornin’ of life, by a kick from that animal, for she can’t ride
+it,” sez I, “honestly she can’t.
+
+“There is nothin’ so useless in life, and so sort a wearin’ as to be a
+lookin’ for sunthin’ that haint there. And when you pretend it is there
+when it haint, you are addin’ iniquity to uselessness; so if you’ll
+take my advice, the advice of a wellwisher, you will stop lookin’, for
+I tell you plain that it haint there.”
+
+Sez Miss Tutt, “Josiah Allen’s wife, you have for reasens best known to
+your conscience baulked my hopes of a speedy immortality. You have
+willfully tried to break down my hopes of an immense, immediate income
+to flow out of them poems for luxuries, jewelry, charity, etc. But I
+can at least claim this at your hands, I _demand honesty_. Tell me
+honestly what you yourself think of them poems.”
+
+Sez I (gettin’ up sort a quick and goin’ into the buttery, and bringin’
+out a little basket), “Here are some beautiful sweet apples, won’t you
+have one?”
+
+“_Apples_, at such a time as this;” sez Miss Tutt “When the slumberin’
+world trembles before the advancin’ tread of a new poet—When the
+heavens are listenin’ intently to ketch the whispers of an Ardelia’s
+fate—Sweet apples! in such a time as this!” sez she. But she took two.
+
+“I _demand the truth_,” sez she. “And you are a base, trucklin’ coward,
+if you give it not.”
+
+Sez I, tryin’ to carry off the subject and the apples into the buttery;
+“Poetry ort to have pains took with it.”
+
+“Jealousy!” sez Miss Tutt. “Jealousy might well whisper this. Envy,
+rank envy might breathe the suspicion that Ardelia haint been took
+pains with. But I can see through it,” sez she. “I can see through it.”
+
+“Well,” sez I, wore out, “if they belonged to me, and if she wuz my
+girl, I would throw the verses into the fire, and set her to a trade.”
+
+She stood for a minute and bored me through and through with them eyes.
+Why it seemed as if there wuz two holes clear through my very spirit,
+and sole; she partly lifted that fearful lookin’ umberell as if to
+pierce me through and through; it wuz a fearful seen.
+
+At last she turned, and flung the apple she wuz a holdin’ onto the
+floor at my feet—and sez she, “I scorn ’em, and you too.” And she
+kinder stomped her feet and sez, “I fling off the dust I have gethered
+here, at your feet.”
+
+Now my floor wuz clean and looked like yeller glass, almost, it wuz so
+shinin’ and spotless, and I resented the idee of her sayin’ that she
+collected dust off from it. But I didn’t say nothin’ back. She had the
+bag of poetry on her arm, and I didn’t feel like addin’ any more to her
+troubles.
+
+But Ardelia, after her mother had swept out ahead, turned round and
+held out her hand, and smiled a sweet but ruther of a despondent and
+sorrowful smile, and I kissed her warmly. I like Ardelia. And what I
+said, I said for her good, and she knew it. I like Ardelia.
+
+Well, Miss Tutt and Ardelia went from our house to Eben Pixley’s. They
+are distant relatives of hern, and live about 3 quarters of a mile from
+us. The Pixleys think everything of Ardelia but they can’t bear her
+mother. There has been difficulties in the family.
+
+But Ardelia stayed there mor’n two weeks right along. She haint very
+happy to home I believe. And before she went back home it wuz arranged
+that she should teach the winter’s school and board to Miss Pixley’s.
+But Miss Pixley wuz took sick with the tyfus before she had been there
+two weeks—and, for all the world, if the deestrict didn’t want us to
+board her. Josiah hadn’t much to do, so he could carry her back and
+forth in stormy weather, and it wuz her wish to come. And it wuz
+Josiah’s wish too, for the pay wuz good, and the work light—for _him_.
+And so I consented after a parlay.
+
+But I didn’t regret it. She is a good little creeter and no more like
+her mother than a feather bed is like a darnin’ needle. I like Ardelia:
+so does Josiah.
+
+The schoolroom
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS.
+
+
+We have been havin’ a pound party here in Jonesville. There wuz a lot
+of children left without any father or mother, nobody only an old
+grandma to take care of ’em, and she wuz half bent with the rheumatiz,
+and had a swelled neck, and lumbago and fits.
+
+They lived in an old tumble-down house jest outside of Jonesville. The
+father wuz, I couldn’t deny, a shiftless sort of a chap, good-natured,
+always ready to obleege a neighbor, but he hadn’nt no faculty. And I
+don’t know, come to think of it, as anybody is any more to blame if
+they are born without a faculty, than if they are born with only one
+eye. Faculty is one of the things that you can’t buy.
+
+He loved to hunt. That is, he loved to hunt some kinds of things. He
+never loved to hunt stiddy, hard work, and foller on the trail of it
+till he evertook success and captured it. No, he druther hunt after
+catamounts and painters, in woods where catamounts haint mounted, and
+painters haint painted sence he wuz born.
+
+He generally killed nothin’ bigger than red squirrels and chipmunks.
+The biggest game he ever brought down wuz himself. He shot himself one
+cold day in the fall of the year. He wuz gettin’ over a brush fence,
+they s’posed the gun hit against somethin’ and went off, for they found
+him a layin’ dead at the bottom of the fence.
+
+I always s’posed that the shock of his death comin’ so awful sudden
+unto her, killed his wife. She had been sick for a long spell, she had
+consumption and dropsy, and so forth, and so forth, for a long time,
+and after he wuz brought in dead, she didn’t live a week. She thought
+her eyes of him, for no earthly reason as I could ever see. How
+strange, how strange a dispensation of Providence it duz seem, that
+some women love some men, and vicy versey and the same.
+
+But she did jest about worship him, and she died whisperin’ his name,
+and reachin’ out her hands as if she see him jest ahead of her. And I
+told Josiah I didn’t know but she did. I shouldn’t wonder a mite if she
+did see him, for there is only the veil of mystery between us and the
+other world at any time, and she had got so nigh to it, that I s’pose
+it got so thin that she could see through it.
+
+Just as you can see through the blue haze that lays before our forest
+in Injun summer. Come nigh up to it and you can see the silvery trunks
+of the maples and the red sumac leaves, and the bright evergreens, and
+the forms of the happy hunters a passin’ along under the glint of the
+sunbeams and the soft shadows.
+
+They died in Injun summer. I made a wreath myself of the bright-colored
+leaves to lay on their coffins. Dead leaves, dead to all use and
+purpose here, and yet with the bright mysterious glow upon them that
+put me in mind of some immortal destiny and blossoming beyond our poor
+dim vision. Jane Smedley wuz a good woman, and so wuz Jim, good but
+shiftless.
+
+But I made the same wreath for her and Jim, and the strange mellow
+light lay on both of ’em, makin’ me think in spite of myself of some
+happy sunrisin’ that haply may dawn on some future huntin’ ground,
+where poor Jim Smedley even, may strike the trail of success and
+happiness, hid now from the sight of Samantha, hid from Josiah.
+
+Wall, they died within a week’s time of each other, and left nine
+children, the oldest one of ’em not quite fifteen. She, the oldest one,
+wuz a good girl, only she had the rickets so that when she walked, she
+seemed to walk off all over the house backwards, and sideways, and
+every way, but when she sot down, she wuz a good stiddy girl, and
+faithful; she took after her mother, and her mother took after her
+grandmother, so there wuz three takin’ after each other, one right
+after the other.
+
+Jane wuz a good, faithful, hard-workin’ creeter when she wuz well,
+brought up her children good as she could, learnt ’em the catechism,
+and took in all kinds of work to earn a little somethin’ towards
+gettin’ a home for ’em; she and her mother both did, her mother lived
+with ’em, and wuz a smart old woman, too, for one that wuz pretty nigh
+ninety. And she wuzn’t worrysome much, only about one thing—she wanted
+a home, wanted a home dretfully. Some wimmen are so; she had moved
+round so much, from one poor old place to another, that she sort o’
+hankered after bein’ settled down into a stiddy home.
+
+Wall, there wuz eight children younger than Marvilla, that wuz the
+oldest young girl’s name. Eight of ’em, countin’ each pair of twins as
+two, as I s’pose they ort. The Town buried the father and mother, which
+wuz likely and clever in it, but after that it wouldn’t give only jest
+so much a week, which wuz very little, because it said, Town did, that
+they could go to the poor-house, they could be supported easier there.
+
+I don’t know as the Town could really be blamed for sayin’ it, and yet
+it seemed kinder mean in it, the Town wuz so big, and the children,
+most of ’em, wuz so little.
+
+But any way, it wuz jest sot on it, and there wuz the end of it, for
+you might jest as well dispute the wind as to dispute the Town when it
+gets sot.
+
+Wall, the old grandma said she would die in the streets before she
+would go to the poor-house. She had come from a good family in the
+first place,
+
+They say she run away and left a good home and got married, and did
+dretful poor in the married state. He waz shiftless and didn’t have
+nothin’ and didn’t lay up any. And she didn’t keep any of her old
+possessions only jest her pride. She kept that, or enough of it to say
+that she would die on the road before she would go to the poor-house.
+And once I see her cry she wanted a home so bad.
+
+And lots of folks blamed her for it, blamed the old woman awfully. They
+said pride wuz so wicked. Wimmen who would run like deers if company
+came when they wuzn’t dressed up slick, they would say the minute they
+got back into the room, all out of breath with hurryin’ into their best
+clothes, they’d say a pantin’ “That old woman ought to be _made_ to go
+to the poorhouse, to take the pride out of her, pride wuz so awfully,
+dretfully wicked, and it wuz a shame that she wuz so ongrateful as to
+want a home of her own.” And then they would set down and rest.
+
+Wall, the family wuz in a sufferin’ state. The Town allowed ’em one
+dollar a week. But how wuz ten human beings to live on a dollar a week.
+The children worked every chance they got, but they couldn’t earn
+enough to keep ’em in shoes, let alone other clothin’ and vittles. And
+the old house wuz too cold for ’em to stay in durin’ the cold weather,
+it wuz for Grandma Smedley, anyway, if the children could stand it she
+couldn’t. And what wuz to be done. A cold winter wuz a cumin’ on, and
+it wouldn’t delay a minute because Jim Smedley had got shot, and his
+wife had follered him, into, let us hope, a happier huntin’ ground than
+he had ever found in earthly forests.
+
+Wall, I proposed to have a pound party for ’em. I said they might have
+it to our house if they wanted it, but if they thought they wanted it
+in a more central place (our house wuz quite a little to one side), why
+we could have it to the schoolhouse.
+
+I proposed to Josiah the first one. He wuz a settin’ by the fire
+relapsed into silence. It wuz a cold night outside, but the red
+curtains wuz down at our sitting-room winders, shettin’ out the cold
+drizzlin’ storm of hail and snow that wuz a deseendin’ onto the earth.
+The fire burned up warm and bright, and we sot there in our comfortable
+home, with the teakettle singin’ on the stove, and the tea-table set
+out cosy and cheerful, for Josiah had been away and I had waited supper
+for him.
+
+As I sot there waitin’ for the tea-kettle to bile (and when I say bile,
+I mean bile, I don’t, mean simmer) the thought of the Smedleys would
+come in. The warm red curtains would keep the storm out, but they
+couldn’t keep the thought of the children, and the feeble old
+grandmother out of the room. They come right in, through the curtains,
+and the firelight, and everything, and sot right down by me and hanted
+me.
+
+And what curious creeters thoughts be, haint they? and oncertain, too.
+You may make all your plans to get away from ’em. You may shet up your
+doors and winders, and set with a veil on and an umbrell up - but good
+land! how easy they jest ontackle the doors and windows, with no sounds
+of ontacklin’ and come right in by you.
+
+First you know there they be right by the side of you, under your
+umbrell, under your veil, under your spectacles, a lookin’ right down
+into your soul, and a hantin’ you.
+
+And then agin, when you expect to be hanted by ’em, lay out to, why,
+they’ll jest stand off somewhere else, and don’t come nigh you. Don’t
+want to. Oncertain creeters, thoughts be, and curious, curious where
+they come from, and how.
+
+Why, I got to thinkin’ about it the other day, and I got lost, some
+like children settin’ on a log over a creek a ridin’; there they be,
+and there the log is, but they don’t seem to be there, they seem to be
+a floatin’ down the water.
+
+And there I wuz, a settin’ in my rockin’ chair, and I seemed to be a
+floatin’ down deep water, very deep. A thinkin’ and a wonderin’. A
+thinkin’ how all through the ages what secrets God had told to man when
+the time had come, and the reverent soul below was ready to hear the
+low words whispered to his soul, and a wonderin’ what strange
+revelation God held now, ready to reveal when the soul below had fitted
+itself to hear, and comprehend it.
+
+Ah! such mysteries as He will reveal to us if we will listen. If we
+wait for God’s voice. If we did not heed so much the confusing clamor
+of the world’s voices about us. Emulation, envy, anger, strife,
+jealousy; if we turned our heads away from these discords, and in the
+silence which is God’s temple, listened, listened,—who knows the
+secrets He would make known to us?
+
+Secrets of the day, secrets of the night, the sunshine, the lightning,
+the storm. The white glow of that wonderful light that is not like the
+glow of the sun or of the moon, but yet lighteth the world. That
+strange light that has a soul - that reads our thoughts, translates our
+wishes, overleaps distance, carrying our whispered words after holding
+our thoughts for ages, and then unfoldin’ ’em at will. What other
+wondrous mysteries lie concealed, wrapped around by that soft pure
+flame, mysteries that shall lie hidden until some inspired eye shall be
+waiting, looking upward at the moment when God’s hand shall draw back
+the shining veil for an instant, and let him read the glowing secret.
+
+Secrets of language! shall some simple power, some symbol be revealed,
+and the nations speak together?
+
+Secrets of song! shall some serene, harmonious soul catch the note to
+celestial melodies?
+
+Secrets of sight! shall the eyes too dim now, see the faces of the
+silent throngs that surround them, “the great cloud of witnesses”?
+
+Secrets of the green pathways that lead up through the blue silent
+fields of space - shall we float from star to star?
+
+Secrets of holiness! shall earthly faces wear the pure light of the
+immortals?
+
+But oh! who shall be the happy soul that shall be listening when the
+time has fully come and He shall reveal His great secret? The happy
+soul listening so intently that it shall catch the low, clear whisper.
+
+Listening, maybe, through the sweet twilight shadows for the wonderful
+secret, while the silver shallop of the moon is becalmed over the high
+northern mountains, as if a fleet of heavenly guests had floated down
+through the clear ocean waves of the sky to listen too - to hear the
+wonderful heavenly secret revealed to man - and a clear star looks out
+over the glowing rose of the western heavens, looking down like God’s
+eye, searching his soul, searching if it be worthy of the great trust.
+
+Maybe it will be in the fresh dawning of the day, that the great secret
+will grow bright and clear and luminous, as the dawning of the light.
+
+Maybe it will be in the midst of the storm - a mighty voice borne along
+by the breath of the wind and the thunder, clamoring and demanding the
+hearer to listen.
+
+Oh! if we were only good enough, only pure enough, what might not our
+rapt vision discern?
+
+But we know not where or when the time shall be fully come, but who,
+who, shall be the happy soul that shall, at the time, be listening?
+
+Oh! how deep, how strange the waters wuz, and how I floated away on
+’em, and how I didn’t. For there I wuz a settin in my own rockin’ chair
+and there opposite me sot my own Josiah a whittlin’, for the _World_
+hadn’t come, and he wuz restless and ill at ease, and time hung heavy
+on his hands.
+
+There I sot the same Samantha - and the thought of the Smedleys, the
+same old Smedleys, was a hantin’ of me, the same old hant, and I says
+to my Josiah, says I: “Josiah, I can’t help thinkin’ about the
+Smedleys,” says I. “What do you think about havin’ a pound party for
+’em, and will you take holt, and do your part?”
+
+“Good land, Samantha! Are you crazy? Crazy as a loon? What under the
+sun do you want to pound the Smedleys for? I should think they had
+trouble enough without poundin’ ’em. Why,” says he, “the old woman
+couldn’t stand any poundin’ at all, without killin’ her right out and
+out, and the childern haint over tough any of ’em. Why, what has got
+into you? I never knew you to propose anything of that wicked kind
+before. I sha’n’t have anything to do with it. If you want ’em pounded
+you must get your own club and do your own poundin’.”
+
+Says I, “I don’t mean poundin’ ’em with a club, but let folks buy a
+pound of different things to eat and drink and carry it to ’em, and we
+can try and raise a little money to get a warmer horse for ’em to stay
+in the coldest of the weather.”
+
+“Oh!” says he, with a relieved look. “That’s a different thing. I am
+willin’ to do that. I don’t know about givin’ ’em any money towards
+gettin’ ’em a home, but I’ll carry ’em a pound of crackers or a pound
+of flour, and help it along all I can.”
+
+Josiah is a clever creeter (though close), and he never made no more
+objections towards havin’ it.
+
+Wall, the next day I put on my shawl and hood (a new brown hood knit
+out of zephyr worsted, very nice, a present from our daughter Maggie,
+our son Thomas Jefferson’s wife), and sallied out to see what the
+neighbor’s thought about it.
+
+The first woman I called on wuz Miss Beazley, a new neighbor who had
+just moved into the neighborhood. They are rich as they can be, and I
+expected at least to get a pound of tea out of her.
+
+She said it wuz a worthy object, and she would love to help it along,
+but they had so many expenses of their own to grapple with, that she
+didn’t see her way clear to promise to do anything. She said the girls
+had got to have some new velvet suits, and some sealskin sacques this
+winter, and they had got to new furnish the parlors, and send their
+oldest boy to college, and the girls wanted to have some diamond
+lockets, and ought to have ’em but she didn’t know whether they could
+manage to get them or not, if they did, they had got to scrimp along
+every way they could. And then they wuz goin’ to have company from a
+distance, and had got to get another girl to wait on ’em. And though
+she wished the poor well, she felt that she could not dare to promise a
+cent to ’em. She wished the Smedley family well—dretful well—and hoped
+I would get lots of things for ’em. But she didn’t really feel as if it
+would be safe for her to promise’em a pound of anything, though mebby
+she might, by a great effort, raise a pound of flour for ’em, or meal.
+
+Says I dryly (dry as meal ever wuz in its dryest times), “I wouldn’t
+give too much. Though,” says I, “A pound of flour would go a good ways
+if it is used right.” And I thought to myself that she had better keep
+it to make a paste to smooth over things.
+
+Wall, I went from that to Miss Jacob Hess’es, and Miss Jacob Hess
+wouldn’t give anything because the old lady wuz disagreeable, old
+Grandma Smedley, and I said to Miss Jacob Hess that if the Lord didn’t
+send His rain and dew onto anybody only the perfectly agreeable, I
+guessed there would be pretty dry times. It wuz my opinion there would
+be considerable of a drouth.
+
+There wuz a woman there a visitin’ Miss Hess—she wuz a stranger to me
+and I didn’t ask her for anything, but she spoke up of her own accord
+and said she would give, and give liberal, only she wuz hampered. She
+didn’t say why, or who, or when, but she only sez this that “she wuz
+hampered,” and I don’t know to this day what her hamper wuz, or who
+hampered her.
+
+And then I went to Ebin Garven’ses, and Miss Ebin Garven wouldn’t help
+any because she said “Joe Smedley had been right down lazy, and she
+couldn’t call him anything else.”
+
+“But,” says I, “Joe is dead, and why should his children starve because
+their pa wasn’t over and above smart when he wuz alive?” But she
+wouldn’t give.
+
+Wall, Miss Whymper said she didn’t approve of the _manner_ of giving.
+Her face wuz all drawed down into a curious sort of a long expression
+that she called religus and I called somethin’ that begins with
+“h-y-p-o”—and I don’t mean hypoey, either.
+
+No, she couldn’t give, she said, because she always made a practise of
+not lettin’ her right hand know what her left hand give.
+
+And I said, for I wuz kinder took aback, and didn’t think, I said to
+her, a glancin’ at her hands which wuz crossed in front of her, that I
+didn’t see how she managed it, unless she give when her right hand was
+asleep.
+
+And she said she always gave secret.
+
+And I said, “So I have always s’posed—very secret.”
+
+I s’pose my tone was some sarcastic, for she says, “Don’t the Scripter
+command us to do so?”
+
+Says I firmly, “I don’t believe the Scripter means to have us stand
+round talkin’ Bible, and let the Smedleys starve,” says I. “I s’pose it
+means not to boast of our good deeds.”
+
+Says she, “I believe in takin’ the Scripter literal, and if I can’t git
+my stuff there entirely unbeknown to my right hand I sha’n’t give.”
+
+“Wall,” says I, gettin’ up and movin’ towards the door, “you must do as
+you’re a mind to with fear and tremblin’.”
+
+I said it pretty impressive, for I thought I would let her see I could
+quote Scripter as well as she could, if I sot out.
+
+But good land! I knew it wuz a excuse. I knew she wouldn’t give nothin’
+not if her right hand had the num palsy, and you could stick a pin into
+it—no, she wouldn’t give, not if her right hand was cut off and throwed
+away.
+
+Wall, Miss Bombus, old Dr. Bombus’es widow, wouldn’t give—and for all
+the world—I went right there from Miss Whymper’ses. Miss Bombus
+wouldn’t give because I didn’t put the names in the Jonesville _Augur_
+or _Gimlet_, for she said, “Let your good deeds so shine.”
+
+“Why,” says I, “Miss Whymper wouldn’t give because she wanted to give
+secreter, and you won’t give because you want to give publicker, and
+you both quote Scripter, but it don’t seem to help the Smedleys much.”
+
+She said that probably Miss Whymper was wrestin’ the Scripter to her
+own destruction.”
+
+“Wall,” says I, “while you and Miss Whymper are a wrestin’ the
+Scripter, what will become of the Smedleys? It don’t seem right to let
+them ‘freeze to death, and starve to death, while we are a debatin’ on
+the ways of Providence.”
+
+But she didn’t tell, and she wouldn’t give.
+
+A woman wuz there a visitin’, Miss Bombus’es aunt, I think, and she
+spoke up and said that she fully approved of her niece Bombus’es
+decision. And she said, “As for herself, she never give to any subject
+that she hadn’t thoroughly canvassed.”
+
+Says I, “There they all are in that little hut, you can canvass them at
+any time. Though,” says I, thoughtfully, “Marvilla might give you some
+trouble.” And she asked why.
+
+And I told her she had the rickets so she couldn’t stand still to be
+canvassed, but she could probably follow her up and canvass her, if she
+tried hard enough. And says I, “There is old Grandma Smedley, over
+eighty, and five children under eight, you can canvass them easy.”
+
+Says she, “The Bible says, ‘Search the Sperits.’”
+
+And I was so wore out a seein’ how place after place, for three times a
+runnin the Bible was lifted up and held as a shield before stingy
+creeters, to ward off the criticism of the world and their own souls,
+that I says to myself—loud enough so they could hear me, mebbe, “Why is
+it that when anybody wants to do a mean, ungenerous act, they will try
+to quote a verse of Scripter to uphold ’em, jest as a wolf will pull a
+lock of pure white wool over his wolfish foretop, and try to look
+innocent and sheepish.”
+
+I don’t care if they did hear me, I wuz on the step mostly when I
+thought it, pretty loud.
+
+Wall, from Miss Bombus’es I went to Miss Petingill’s.
+
+Miss Petingill is a awful high-headed creeter. She come to the door
+herself and she said, I must excuse her for answerin’ the door herself.
+(I never heard the door say anything and don’t believe she did, it was
+jest one of her ways.) But she said I must excuse her as her girl wuz
+busy at the time.
+
+She never mistrusted that I knew her hired girl had left, and she wuz
+doin’ her work herself. She had ketched off her apron I knew, as she
+come through the hall, for I see it a layin’ behind the door, all
+covered with flour. And after she had took me into the parlor, and we
+had set down, she discovered some spots of flour on her dress, and she
+said she “had been pastin’ some flowers into a scrap book to pass away
+the time.” But I knew she had been bakin’ for she looked tired, tired
+to death almost, and it wuz her bakin’ day. But she would sooner have
+had her head took right off than to own up that she had been doin’
+housework—why, they say that once when she wuz doin’ her work herself,
+and was ketched lookin’ awful, by a strange minister, that she passed
+herself off’ for a hired girl and said, “Miss Petingill wasn’t to home,
+and when pressed hard she said she hadn’t “the least idee where Miss
+Petingill wuz.”
+
+‘Hired’ girl
+
+Jest think on ’t once—and there she wuz herself. The idee!
+
+Wall, the minute I sot down before I begun my business or anything,
+Miss Petingill took me to do about puttin’ in Miss Bibbins President of
+our Missionary Society for the Relief of Indignent Heathens.
+
+The Bibbins’es are good, very good, but poor.
+
+Says Miss Petingill: “It seems to me as if there might be some other
+woman put in, that would have had more influence on the Church.”
+
+Says I, “Haint Miss Bibbins a good Christian sister, and a great
+worker?”
+
+“Why yes, she wuz good, good in her place. But,” she said, “the
+Petingills hadn’t never associated with the Bibbins’es.”
+
+And I asked her if she s’posed that would make any difference with the
+heathen; if the heathen would be apt to think less of Miss Bibbins
+because she hadn’t associated with the Petingills?
+
+And she said, she didn’t s’pose “the heathens would ever know it; it
+might make some difference to ’em if they did,” she thought, “for it
+couldn’t be denied,” she said, “that Miss Bibbins did not move in the
+first circles of Jonesville.”
+
+It had been my doin’s a puttin’ Miss Bibbins in and I took it right to
+home, she meant to have me, and I asked her if she thought the Lord
+would condemn Miss Bibbins on the last day, because she hadn’t moved in
+the first circles of Jonesville?
+
+And Miss Petingill tosted her head a little, but had to own up, that
+she thought “He wouldn’t.”
+
+“Wall, then,” sez I, “do you s’pose the Lord has any objections to her
+working for Him now?”
+
+“Why no, I don’t know as the _Lord_ would object.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “we call this work the Lord’s work, and if He is
+satisfied with Miss Bibbins, we ort to be.”
+
+But she kinder nestled round, and I see she wuzn’t satisfied, but I
+couldn’t stop to argue, and I tackled her then and there about the
+Smedleys. I asked her to give a pound, or pounds, as she felt disposed.
+
+But she answered me firmly that she could’t give one cent to the
+Smedleys, she wuz principled against it.
+
+And I asked her, “Why?”
+
+And she said, because the old lady wuz proud and wanted a home, and she
+thought that pride wuz so wicked, that it ort to be put down.
+
+Wall, Miss Huff, Miss Cephas Huff, wouldn’t give anything because one
+of the little Smedleys had lied to her. She wouldn’t encourage lyin’.
+
+And I told her I didn’t believe she would be half so apt to reform him
+on an empty stomach, as after he wuz fed up. But she wouldn’t yield.
+
+Wall, Miss Daggett said she would give, and give abundant, only she
+didn’t consider it a worthy object.
+
+But it wuzn’t nothin’ only a excuse, for the object has never been
+found yet that she thought wuz a worthy one. Why, she wouldn’t give a
+cent towards painting the Methodist steeple, and if that haint a high
+and worthy object, I don’t know what is. Why, our steeple is over
+seventy feet from the ground. But she wouldn’t help us a mite—not a
+single cent.
+
+Take such folks as them and the object never suits ’em. They won’t come
+right out and tell the truth that they are too stingy and mean to give
+away a cent, but they will always put the excuse onto the object—the
+object don’t suit ’em.
+
+Why, I do believe it is the livin’ truth that if the angel Gabriel wuz
+the object, if he wuz in need and we wuz gittin’ up a pound party for
+him—she would find fault with Gabriel, and wouldn’t give him a ounce of
+provisions.
+
+Yes, I believe it—I believe they would tost their heads and say, they
+always had had their thoughts about anybody that tooted so loud—it
+might be all right but it didn’t _look_ well, and would be apt to make
+talk. Or they would say that he wuz shiftless and extravagant a loafin’
+round in the clouds, when he might go to work—or that he might raise
+the money himself by selling the feathers offen his wings for down
+pillers—or some of the rest of the Gabriel family might help him—or
+something, or other—anyway they would propose some way of gittin’ out
+of givin’ a cent to Gabriel. I believe it as much as I believe I live
+and breathe; and so does Josiah.
+
+Wall, Miss Mooney wouldn’t give anything because she thought Jane
+Smedley wuzn’t so sick as she thought she wuz; she said “she was
+spleeny.”
+
+And I told Miss Mooney that when a woman was sick enough to die, I
+thought she ort to be called sick.
+
+But Miss Mooney wouldn’t give up, and insisted to the very last that
+Miss Smedley wuz hypoey and spleeny—and thought she wuz sicker than she
+really wuz. And she held her head and her nose up in a very
+disagreeable and haughty way, and said as I left, that she never could
+bear to help spleeny people.
+
+Wall, all that forenoon did I traipse through the street and not one
+cent did I get for the Smedleys, only Miss Gowdey said she would bring
+a cabbage and Miss Deacon Peedick and Miss Ingledue partly promised a
+squash apiece. And I mistrusted that they give ’em more to please me
+than anything else.
+
+Wall, I wuz clean discouraged and beat out, and so I told Josiah. But
+he encouraged me some by sayin’:
+
+“Wall, I could have told you jest how it would be,” and, “You would
+have done better, Samantha, to have been to home a cookin’ for your own
+famishin’ family.” And several more jest such inspirin’ remarks as men
+will give to the females of their families when they are engaged in
+charitable enterprises.
+
+But I got a good, a very good dinner, and it made me feel some better,
+and then I haint one to give up to discouragements, anyway.
+
+So I put on a little better dress for after noon, and my best bonnet
+and shawl, and set sail again after dinner.
+
+And if I ever had a lesson in not givin’ up to discouragements in the
+first place I had it then. For whether it wuz on account of the more
+dressy look of my bonnet and shawl—or whether it wuz that folks felt
+cleverer in the afternoon—or whether it wuz that I had gone to the more
+discouragin’ places in the forenoon, and the better ones in the
+afternoon—or whether it wuz that I tackled on the subject in a better
+way than I had tackled ’em—whether it wuz for any of these reasons, or
+all of ’em or somethin’—anyway my luck turned at noon, 12 M., and all
+that afternoon I had one triumph after another—place after place did I
+collect pound or pounds as the case may be (or collected the promises
+of ’em, I mean). I did _splendid_, and wuz prospered perfectly
+amazing—and I went home feelin’ as happy and proud as a king or a zar.
+
+And the next Tuesday evenin’ we had the pound party. They concluded to
+have it to our house. And Thomas Jefferson and Maggie, and Tirzah Ann
+and Whitefield came home early in the afternoon to help trim the parlor
+and setin’ room with evergreens and everlastin’ posies, and fern
+leaves.
+
+They made the room look perfectly beautiful. And they each of ’em, the
+two childern and their companions, brought home a motto framed in nice
+plush and gilt frames, which they put up on each side of the settin’
+room, and left them there as a present to their pa and me. They think a
+sight of us, the childern do—and visey versey, and the same.
+
+One of ’em wuz worked in gold letters on a red back-ground “Bear Ye One
+Another’s Burdens.” And the other wuz “Feed my Lambs.”
+
+They think a sight on us, the childern do—they knew them mottoes would
+highly tickle their pa and me. And they did seem to kinder invigorate
+up all the folks that come to the party.
+
+And they wuz seemingly legions. Why, they come, and they kept a comin’.
+And it did seem as if every one of ’em had tried to see who could bring
+the most. Why, they brought enough to keep the Smedleys comfortable all
+winter long. It wuz a sight to see ’em.
+
+The Pound Party
+
+It wuz a curious sight, too, to set and watch what some of the folks
+said and done as they brought their pounds in.
+
+I had to be to the table all the time a’most, for I wuz appointed a
+committee, or a board—I s’pose it would be more proper to call myself a
+board, more business like. Wall, I wuz the board appointed to lay the
+things on—to see that they wuz all took care of, and put where they
+couldn’t get eat up, or any other casuality happen to ’em.
+
+And I declare if some of the queerest lookin’ creeters didn’t come up
+to the table and talk to me. There wuz lots of ’em there that I didn’t
+know, folks that come from Zoar, Jim Smedley’s old neighborhood.
+
+There wuz a long table stretched acrost one end of the settin’ room,
+and I stood behind it some as if I wuz a dry goods merchant or grocery,
+and some like a preacher.
+
+And the women would come up to me and talk. There wuz one woman who got
+real talkative to me before the evenin’ wuz out. She said her home wuz
+over two miles beyond Zoar.
+
+She had a young babe with her, a dark complexioned babe, with a little
+round black head, that looked some like a cannon ball. She said she had
+shingled the child that day about eight o’clock in the forenoon; she
+talked real confidential to me.
+
+She said the babe had sights of hair, and she told her husband that day
+that if he would shingle the babe she would come to the party and if he
+wouldn’t shingle it she wouldn’t come. It seemed they had had a
+altercation on the subject; she wanted it shingled and he didn’t. But
+it seemed that ruther than stay away from the party—he consented, and
+shingled it. So they come.
+
+They brought a eight pound loaf of maple sugar and two dozen eggs. They
+did well. Then there wuz another woman who would walk her little girl
+into the bedroom every few minutes, and wet her hair, and comb it over,
+and curl it on her fingers. The child had a little blue flannel dress
+on, with a long plain waist, and a long skirt gethered on full all
+round. Her hair lay jest as smooth and slick as glass all the time, but
+five times did she walk her off, and go through with that performance.
+She brought ten yards of factory cloth, and a good woollen petticoat
+for the old grandma. She did first-rate.
+
+And then there wuz another woman who stayed by the table most all the
+evenin’. She would gently but firmly ask everybody who brought
+anything, what the price of the article wuz—and then she would tackle
+the different women who come up to the table for patterns. I do believe
+she got the pattern of every bask waist there wuz there, and every
+mantilly.
+
+And Abram Gee brought twenty-five loaves of bread—of different sizes,
+but all on ’em good. And he looked at Ardelia Tutt every minute of the
+time. And Ardelia brought a lot of verses,—“Stanzas on a Grandmother.”
+I didn’t think they would do Grandma Smedley much good, and then on the
+other hand I didn’t s’pose they would hurt her any.
+
+But we had a splendid good time after the things wuz all brought in—of
+course, bein’ a board the fore part of the evenin’ I naturally had a
+harder time than I did the latter part, after I had got over it.
+
+The children, Thomas J., and Tirzah Ann, and Ardelia Tutt, and Abram
+Gee, and some of the rest of the young folks sung and played some
+beautiful pieces, and they had four tablows, which wuz perfectly
+beautiful.
+
+And then we passed good nice light biscuit and butter, and hot coffee,
+and pop corn and apples. And it did seem, and all the neighbors said
+so, that it wuz the very best party they had ever attended to.
+
+And before they went away they made a motion some of the responsable
+men did—some made the motions and some seconded ’em—that they would
+adjourn till jest one year from that night, when if the Smedleys was
+still alive and in need—we would have jest such a party ag’in.
+
+And at the last on’t Elder Minkley made a prayer—a very thankful and
+good prayer, but short. And then they went home.
+
+Wall, the next mornin’ we started to carry the things to the Smedleys.
+It wuz very early, for Josiah had got to go clear to Loontown on
+business, and I wuz goin’ to stay with the childern till he got back.
+
+It wuz a very cold mornin’. We hadn’t heard from the Smedleys for two
+or three days, because we wanted to surprise ’em, so we didn’t want to
+give ’em a hint beforehand of what we wuz a doin’. So, as I say, it wuz
+a number of days sense we had heard from ’em, and the weather wuz cold.
+
+When we got to the door it seemed to be dretful still there inside. And
+there wuz some white frost on the latch jest as if a icy, white hand
+had onlatched the door, and had laid on it last.
+
+We rapped, but nobody answered. And then we opened the door and went
+in, and there they all lay asleep. The children waked up. But old
+Grandma didn’t.
+
+Nobody answered
+
+There wuzn’t any fire in the room, and you could see by the freezing
+coldness of the air that there hadn’t been any for a day or two.
+
+Grandma Smedley had took the poor old coverin’s all off from herself,
+and put ’em round the youngest baby, little Jim. And he lay there all
+huddled up tight to his Grandma, with his red cheek close to her white
+one, for he loved her.
+
+Josiah cried and wept, and wept and cried onto his bandana—but I
+didn’t.
+
+The tears run down my face some, to see the childern feel so bad when
+Grandma couldn’t speak to ’em.
+
+But I knew that the childern would be took care of now, I knew the
+Jonesvillians would be all rousted up and sorry enough for ’em, and
+would be willin’ to do anything now, when it wuz some too late.
+
+And I felt that I couldn’t cry nor weep (and told Josiah so), the tears
+jest dripped down my face in a stream, but I wouldn’t weep—for as I
+said to myself:
+
+While the Jonesvillians had been a disputin’ back and forth, and
+wrestin’ Scripter, and the meanin’ of Providence in regard to helpin’
+Grandma Smedley and gittin’ her a comfortable place to stay in, and
+somethin’ to eat, the Lord himself had took the case in hand and had
+gin her a home and the bread that satisfies.”
+
+Samantha and Josiah at home
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+ARDELIA AND ABRAM GEE.
+
+
+Wall, I don’t s’pose there had been a teacher in our deestrict for
+years and years that gin’ better satisfaction than Ardelia Tutt. Good
+soft little creeter, the scholars any one of ’em felt above hurtin’ on
+her or plagin’ her any way. She sort a made ’em feel they had to take
+care on her, she wuz so sort a helpless actin’, and good natured, and
+yet her learnin’ wuz good, fust-rate.
+
+Yes, Ardelia was thought a sight on in Jonesville by scholars and
+parents and some that wuzn’t parents. One young chap in perticiler,
+Abram Gee by name, who had just started a baker’s shop in Jonesville,
+he fell so deep in love with her from the very start that I pitied him
+from about the bottom of my heart. It wuz at our house that he fell.
+
+The young folks of our meetin’-house had a sort of a evenin’ meetin’
+there to see about raisin’ some money for the help of the
+steeple—repairin’ of it. Abram is a member, and so is Ardelia, and I
+see the hull thing. I see him totter and I see him fall. And prostrate
+he wuz, from that first night. Never was there a feller that fell in
+love deeper, or lay more helpless. And Ardelia liked him, that wuz
+plain to see; at fust as I watched and see him totter, I thought she
+wuz a sort o’ wobblin’ too, and when he fell deep, deep in love, I
+looked to see her a follerin’ on. But Ardelia, as soft as she wuz, had
+an element of strength. She wuz ambitious. She liked Abram, but she had
+read novels a good deal, and she had for years been lookin’ for a
+prince to come a ridin’ up to their dooryard in disguise with a crown
+on under his hat, and woo her to be his bride.
+
+The Prince
+
+And so she braced herself against the sweet influence of love and it
+wuz tuff—I could see for myself that it wuz, when she had laid out to
+set on a throne by the side of a prince, he a holdin’ his father’s
+scepter in his hand—to descend from that elevation and wed a husband
+who wuz a moulder of bread, with a rollin’ pin in his hand. It wuz tuff
+for Ardelia; I could see right through her mind (it wuzn’t a great
+distance to see), and I could see jest how a conflict wuz a goin’ on
+between love and ambition.
+
+But Abram had my best wishes, for he wuz a boy I had always liked. The
+Gees had lived neighbor to us for years. He wuz a good creeter and his
+bread wuz delicious (milk emptin’s). He wuz a sort of a hard, sound
+lookin’ chap, and she, bein’ so oncommon soft, the contrast kinder sot
+each other off and made ’em look well together.
+
+He had a house and lot all paid for, with no incumbrances only a
+mortgage of 150 dollars and a lame mother. But he laid out to clear off
+the mortgage this year, and I wuz told that mother Gee wuz a goin’ to
+live with her daughter Susan, who had jest come into a big property—as
+much as 700 dollars worth of land, besides cows, 2 heads of cow, and
+one head of a calf.
+
+I knew Mother Gee and she wuz goin’ to stay with Abram till he got
+married and then she wuz goin’ to live with Susan. And I s’pose it is
+so. She is a likely old woman with a milk leg.
+
+Wall, Abram paid Ardelia lots of attention, sech as walkin’ home with
+her from protracted meetin’s nights, and lookin’ at her durin’ the
+meetin’s more protracted than the meetin’s wuz fur. And 3 times he sent
+her a plate of riz biscuit sweetened, sweetened too sweet almost, he
+went too fur in this and I see it.
+
+Yes, he done his part as well as his condition would let him, paralyzed
+by his feelin’s—but she acted kinder offish, and I see that sonthin’
+wuz in the way. I mistrusted at first, it might be Abram’s incumbrance,
+but durin’ a conversation I had with her, I see I wuz in the wrong
+on’t. And I could see plain, though some couldn’t, that she liked Abram
+as she did her eyes. Somebody run him down a little one day before me
+and she sprouted right up and took his part voyalent. I could see her
+feelin’s towards him though she wouldn’t own up to ’em. But one day she
+came out plain to me and lamented his condition in life. Somebody had
+attact her that day before me about marryin’ of him—and she owned up to
+me, that she had laid out to marry somebody to elevate her. Some one
+with a grand pure mission in life.
+
+And I spoke right up and sez, “Why bread is jest as pure and innocent
+as anything can be, you won’t find anything wicked about good yeast
+bread, nor,” sez I, cordially, “in milk risin’, if it is made proper.”
+
+But she said she preferred a occupation that wuz risin’, and noble, and
+that made a man necessary and helpful to the masses.
+
+And I sez agin—“Good land! the masses have got to eat. And I guess you
+starve the masses a spell and they’ll think that good bread is as
+necessary and helpful to ’em as anything can be. And as fer its bein’ a
+risin’ occupation, why,” sez I, “it is stiddy risen’—risin’ in the
+mornin,’ and risin’ at night, and all night, both hop and milk
+emptin’s. Why,” sez I, “I never see a occupation so risin’ as his’n is,
+both milk and hop.” But she wouldn’t seem to give in and encourage him
+much only by spells.
+
+And then Abram didn’t take the right way with her. I see he wuz a goin’
+just the wrong way to win a woman’s love. For his love, his great
+honest love for her made him abject, he groveled at her feet, loved to
+grovel.
+
+I told him, for he confided in me from the first on’t and bewailed her
+coldness to me, I told him to sprout up and act as if he had some will
+of his own and some independent life of his own. Sez I, “Any woman that
+sees a man a layin’ around under her feet will be tempted to step on
+him,” sez I. “I don’t see how she can help it, if she calcerlates to
+get round any, and walk.” Sez I, “Sprout up and be somebody. She is a
+good little creeter, but no better than you are, Abram; be a man.”
+
+Abram
+
+And he would try to be. I could see him try. But one of her soft little
+glances, specially if it wuz kind and tender to him, es it wuz a good
+deal of the time, why it would just overthrow him ag’in. He would
+collapse and become nothin’ ag’in, before her. Why I have hearn him
+sing that old him, a lookin’ right at Ardelia stiddy:
+
+“Oh to be nothin’, nothin’!”
+
+
+And thinks I to myself, “if this keeps on, you are in a fairway to git
+your wish.”
+
+He wuz a good singer, a beartone, and she a secent. They loved to sing
+together. They needed some air, but then they got along without it; and
+it sounded quite well, though rather low and deep.
+
+Wall, it run along for weeks and weeks, he with his hopes a risin’ up
+sometimes like his yeast and then bein’ pounded down ag’in like his
+bread, under the hard knuckles of a woman’s capricious cruelty. For I
+must say that she did, for sech a soft littte creeter, have cold and
+cruel ways to Abram. (But I s’pose it wuz when she got to thinkin’
+about the Prince, or some other genteel lover.)
+
+But her real feelin’s would break out once in a while, and lift him up
+to the 3d heaven of happiness and then he’d have to totter and fall
+down ag’in. Abram Gee had a hard time on’t. I pitied him from nearly
+the bottom of my heart. But I still kep’ a thinkin’ it would turn out
+well in the end. For it wuz jest about this time that I happened to
+find this poetry in a book where she had, I s’posed, left it. And I
+read ’em, almost entirely unbeknown to myself.
+
+It wuz wrote in a dreatful blind way but I recognized it at once. I
+looked right through it, and see what she wuz a writin’ about though
+many wouldn’t, it wuz wrote in sech a deep style.
+
+“STANZAS ON BREAD;
+“ or
+“ A LAY OF A BROKEN HEART.
+
+
+“Oh Bread, dear Bread, that seemest to us so cold,
+Oft’times concealed thee within, may be a sting!
+Sweet buried hopes may in thy crust be rolled;
+A sad, burnt crust of deepest suffering.
+
+“There are some griefs the female soul don’t tell,
+And she may weep, and she may wretched be;
+Though she may like the name of Abram well
+And she may not like dislike the name of G-,
+
+“Oh Fel Ambition, how thou lurest us on,
+How by thy high, bold torch we’re stridin’ led:
+Thou lurest us up, cold mountain top upon,
+And seated by us there, thou scoffest at bread.
+
+“Thou lookest down, Ambition, on the ovens brim;
+Thou brookest not a word of him save with contumalee:
+And yet, wert thou afar, how sweet to set by him
+And cut low slices of sweet joy with G—,
+
+“Oh! Fel Ambition, wert but thou away,
+Could we thy hauntin’ form no more, nor see;
+How sweet ’twould be to linger on with A—,
+How sweet ’twould be to dwell for aye with G—.”
+
+
+Wall, as I say, she gin good satisfaction in the deestrict and I
+declare for it, I got to likin’ her dretful well before the winter wuz
+over. Softer she wuz, and had to be, than any fuz that was ever on any
+cotton flannel fur or near. And more verses she wrote than wuz good for
+her, or for anybody else,—Why she would write “Lines on the Tongs,” or
+“Stanzas on the Salt Suller,” if she couldn’t do any better; it beats
+all! And then she would read ’em to me to get my idees on ’em. Why I
+had to call on every martyr in the hull string of martyrs sometimes to
+keep myself from tellin’ her my full mind about ’em unbeknown to me.
+For, if I had, it would have skairt the soft little creeter out of what
+little wit she had.
+
+So I kep’ middlin’ still, and see it go on. For she wuz a good little
+soul, affectionate and kinder helpful. A good creeter now to find your
+speks. Why she found ’em for me times out of number, and I got real
+attached to her and visey versey. And when she came a visitin’ me in
+the spring (at my request), and I happened to mention that Josiah and
+me laid out to go to Saratoga for the summer, what did the soft little
+creeter want to do but to go too. Her father was well off and wuz able
+to send her, and she had relatives there on her own side, some of the
+Pixleys, so her board wouldn’t cost nothin’. So it didn’t look nothin’
+unreasonable, though whether I could get her there and back without her
+mashin’ all down on my hands, like a over ripe peach, she wuz that
+soft, wuz a question that hanted me, and so I told Josiah.
+
+But Josiah kinder likes young girls (nothin’ light; a calm
+meetin’-house affection), it is kinder nater that he should, and he
+sez: “Better let her go, she won’t make much trouble.”
+
+“No,” sez I, “not to you, but if you had to set for hours and hours and
+hear her verses read to you on every subject—on heaven, and earth, and
+the seas, and see her a measurin’ of it with a stick to get the lines
+the right length; if you had to go through all this, mebby you would
+meditate on the subject before you took it for a summer’s job.”
+
+“ Wall,” sez he, “mebby she won’t write so much when she gets started;
+she will be kinder jogged round and stirred up in body and mebby her
+feelins’ will kinder rest. I shouldn’t wonder a mite if they did,” sez
+he. “And then she can take a good many steps for you, and I love to see
+you favored,” sez he.
+
+He wanted her to go, I see that, and I see that it wuz natur that he
+should, and so I consented in my mind—after a parlay.
+
+She found his specks a sight and his hat. Nothin’ seemed to please her
+better than to be gropin’ round after things to please somebody; her
+disposition wuz such. So it wuz settled that she should accompany and
+go with us. And the mornin’ we started she met us at the Jonesville
+Depot in good sperits and a barege delaine dress, cream color, and a
+hat of the same.
+
+At the depot
+
+I hadn’t seen her for some weeks, and she seemed softly tickled to see
+Josiah and me, and asked a good many questions about Jonesville, kinder
+turnin’ the conversation gradually round onto bread, as I could see. So
+I branched right out, knowin’ what she wanted of me, and told her
+plain, that “Abram Gee wuz a lookin’ kinder mauger. But doin’ his duty
+_stiddy_,” sez I, lookin’ keenly at her, “a doin’ his duty by
+everybody, and beloved by everybody, him and his bread too.”
+
+She turned her head away and kinder sithed, and I guess it wuz as much
+as a quarter of a hour after that, that I see her take out a pencil and
+a piece of paper out of her portmonny, and a little stick, and she went
+to makin’ some verses, a measurin’ ’em careful as she wrote ’em, and
+when she handed ’em to me they wuz named
+
+“A LAY ON A CAR;
+“ or
+“THE LESSON OF A LOCOMOTIVE.”
+
+
+“Oh cars that bearest us on; oh cars that run
+If backward thou didst go, we should not near
+The place we started for at break of sun;
+The place we love, with love devout, sincere.
+
+“Oh! snortin’ Engine, didst thou not so snort
+Thou wouldst not start, and lo! we see—
+Our sorrows’ hidden griefs, they do not come for nort
+They start the Locomotive, Life, with screechin’ agony
+
+“Oh passengers that wail, and dread the screech,
+Wail not; but lift eyes o’er the chimney top
+As they bend over the Locomotive; beach
+Thy hopes on fairer shores, a sweeter crop.”
+
+
+After I had read it and handed it back to her, she sez, “Don’t you
+think I improve on the melody and rhythm of my poetry? I take this
+little stick with me now wherever I go, and measure my lines by it.
+They are jest of a length, I am very particular; you know you advised
+me to be.”
+
+“Yes,” sez I mechaniklly, “but I didn’t mean jest that.” Sez I, “the
+poetry I wuz a thinkin’ on, is measured by the soul, the enraptured
+throb of heart and brain; it don’t need takin’ a stick to it.
+Howsumever,” sez I, for I see she looked sort a disapinted,
+“howsumever, if you have measured ’em, they are probable about the same
+length: it is a good sound stick, I haint no doubt;” and I kinder
+sithed.
+
+And she sez, “What do you think of the first verse? Haint that verse as
+true as fate, or sadness, or anything else you know of?”
+
+“Oh yes,” sez I candidly, “yes; if the cars run backwards we shouldn’t
+go on; that is true as anything can be. But if I wuz in your place,
+Ardelia,” sez I, “I wouldn’t write any more to-day. It is a kind of
+muggy damp day. It is a awfully bad day for poetry to-day. And,” sez I,
+to get her mind offen it, “Have you seen anything of my companion’s
+specks?”
+
+And that took her mind offen poetry and she went a huntin’ for ’em, on
+the seat and under the seat. She hunted truly high and low and at last
+she found ’em on my pardner’s foretop, the last place any of us thought
+of lookin’. And she never said another word about poetry, or any other
+trouble, nor I nuther.
+
+Cupid
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+WE ARRIVE AT SARATOGA.
+
+
+We arrived at Saratoga jest as sunset with a middlin’ gorgeous dress on
+wuz a walkin’ down the west and a biddin’ us and the earth good-bye.
+There wuz every color you could think on almost, in her gown and some
+stars a shinin’ through the floatin’ drapery and a half moon restin’ up
+on her cloudy foretop like a beautiful orniment.
+
+(I s’pose mebby it is proper to describe sunset in this way on goin’ to
+such a dressy place, though it haint my style to do so, I don’t love to
+describe sunset as a female and don’t, much of the time, but I love to
+see things correspond.)
+
+Wall, we descended from the cars and went to the boardin’ place
+provided for us beforehand by the look out of friends. It wuz a good
+place, there haint no doubt of that, good folks; good fare and clean.
+
+Ardelia parted away from us at the depo. She wuz a goin’ to board to a
+smaller boardin’ house kep’ by a second cousin of her father’s
+brother’s wife’s aunt. It wuz her father’s request that she should get
+her board there on account of its bein’ in the family. He loved “to see
+relations hang together;” so he said, and “get their boards of each
+other.” But I thought then, and I think now, that it wuz because they
+asked less for the board. Deacon Tutt is close. But howsumever Ardelia
+went there, and my companion and me arrove at the abode where we wuz to
+abide, with no eppisode only the triflin’ one of the driver bein’
+dretful mistook as to the price he asked to take us there.
+
+I thought, and Josiah thought, that 50 cents wuz the outlay of
+expendatur he required to carry us where we would be; it wuz but a
+short distance. But no! He said that 5 dollars wuz what he said, that
+is, if we heard anything about a 5. But he thought we wuz deef, and
+dident hear him. He thought he spoke plain, and said 4 dollars for the
+trip.
+
+And on that price he sot down immovible. They arged, and Josiah Allen
+even went so far as to use language that grated on my nerve, it wuz so
+voyalent and vergin’ on the profane. But there the man sot, right onto
+that price, and he had to me the appeerance of one who wuz goin’ to sot
+there on it all night. And so rather than to spend the night out doors,
+in conversation with him, he a settin’ on that price, and Josiah a
+shakin’ his fist at it, and a jawin’ at it, I told Josiah that he had
+better pay it. And finally he did, with groanin’s that could hardly be
+uttered.
+
+They argued
+
+Wall, after supper (a good supper and enough on’t), Josiah proposed
+that we should take a short walk, we two alone, for Ardelia wuz afar
+from us, most to the other end of the village, either asleep or a
+writin’ poetry, I didn’t know which, but I knew it wuz one or the other
+of ’em. And I wuz tired enough myself to lay my head down and repose in
+the arms of sleep, and told my companion so, but he said:
+
+“Oh shaw! Let old Morpheus wait for us till we get back, there’ll be
+time enough to rest then.”
+
+Josiah felt so neat, that he wuz fairly beginnin’ to talk high learnt,
+and classical. But I didn’t say nothin’ to break it up, and tied on my
+bonnet with calmness (and a double bow knot) and we sallied out.
+
+Soon, or mebby a little after, for we didn’t walk fast on account of my
+deep tucker, we stood in front of what seemed to be one hull side of a
+long street, all full of orniments and open work, and pillows, and
+flowers, and carvin’s, and scallops, and down between every scollop
+hung a big basket full of posys, of every beautiful color under the
+heavens. And over all, and way back as fur as we could see, wuz
+innumerable lights of every color, gorgeousness a shinin’ down on
+gorgeousness, glory above, a shinin’ down on glory below. And sweet
+strains of music wuz a floatin, out from somewhere, a shinin’
+somewhere, renderin’ the seen fur more beautiful to all 4 of our
+wraptured ears.
+
+And Josiah sez, as we stood there nearly rooted to the place by our
+motions, and a picket fence, sez he dreamily,
+
+“I almost feel as if we had made a mistake, and that this is the land
+of Beuler.” And he murmured to himself some words of the old him:
+
+“Oh Beuler land! Sweet Beuler land!”
+
+
+And I whispered back to him and sez—“Hush they don’t have brass bands
+in Beulah land.”
+
+And he sez, “How do you know what they have in Beuler?”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “’taint likely they do.”
+
+But I don’t know as I felt like blamin’ him, for it did seem to me to
+be the most beautiful place that I ever sot my eyes on. And it did seem
+fairly as if them long glitterin’ chains and links of colored lights, a
+stretchin’ fur back into the distance sort a begoned for us to enter
+into a land of perfect beauty and Pure Delight.
+
+And then them glitterin’ chains of light would jine onto other golden,
+and crimson, and orange, and pink, and blue, and amber links of glory
+and hang there all drippin’ with radiance, and way back as fur as we
+could see. And away down under the shinin’ lanes the white statues
+stood, beautiful snow-white females, a lookin’ as if they enjoyed it
+all. And the lake mirrowed back all of the beauty.
+
+Right out onto the lake stood a fairy-like structure all glowin’ with
+big drops of light and every glitterin’ drop reflected down in the
+water and the fountain a sprayin’ up on each side. Why it sprayed up
+floods of diamonds, and rubys, and sapphires, and topazzes, and
+turkeys, and pearls, and opals, and sparklin’ ’em right back into the
+water agin.
+
+And right while we stood there, neerly rooted to the spot and gazin’
+through extacy and 2 pickets, the band gin a loud burst of melody and
+then stopped, and after a minute of silence, we hearn a voice
+angel-sweet a risin’ up, up, like a lark, a tender-hearted,
+golden-throated lark.
+
+High, high above all the throngs of human folks who wuz cheerin’ her
+down below - up above the sea of glitterin’ light - up above the
+bendin’ trees that clasped their hands together in silent applaudin’
+above her, up, up, into the clear heavens, rose that glorious voice a
+singin’ some song about love, love that wuz deathless, eternal.
+
+Why it seemed as if the very clouds wuz full of shadowy faces a bendin’
+down to hear it, and the new moon, shaped just like a boat, had glided
+down, down the sky to listen.
+
+If the man of the moon was there he wuz a layin’ in the bottom of the
+boat, he wuzn’t in sight. But if he heard that music I’ll bet he would
+say he wuzn’t in the practice of hearin’ any better. And Josiah stood
+stun still till she had got done, and then he sort a sithed out:
+
+“Oh, it seems as if it must be Beuler land! Do you s’pose, Samantha,
+Beuler land is any more beautiful?”
+
+And I sez, “I haint a thinkin’ about Beulah.” I sez it pretty middlin’
+tart, partly to hide my own feelin’s, which wuz perfectly rousted up,
+and partly from principle, and sez I, “Don’t for mercy’s sake call it
+Beuler.”
+
+Josiah always will call it so. I’ve got a 4th cousin, Beulah Smith (my
+own age and unmarried up to date), and he always did and would call her
+Beuler. Truly in some things a pardner’s influence and encouragement
+fails to accomplish the ends aimed at.
+
+Wall, it wuz after some words that I drew Josiah away from that seen of
+enchantment - or he me, I don’t exactly know which way it wuz - and we
+wended onwards in our walk.
+
+The hull broad streets wuz full of folks, full as they could be, all on
+’em perfect strangers to us and who knew what motives or weapons they
+wuz a carryin’ with ’em; but we knew we wuz safe, Josiah and me did,
+for way up over all our heads, stood a big straight soldier, a
+volunteer volunteerin, to see to the hull crew on ’em below, a seein’
+that they behaved themselves. His age wuz seventy-seven as near as I
+could make out but he didn’t look more’n half that. He had kep’ his age
+remarkable.
+
+The soldier
+
+Wall, it wuz, if I remember right, jest about now that we see a
+glitterin’ high up over our heads some writen in flame. I never see
+such brilliant writin, before nor don’t know as I ever shall ag’in.
+
+And Josiah stopped stun still, and stood a lookin’ perfectly
+dumfoundered at it. And finally he sez, “I’d give a dollar bill if I
+could write like that.”
+
+I see he wuz deeply rousted up for 2 cents is as high as he usually
+goes in betted. I see he felt deep and I didn’t blame him. Why,” sez
+he, “jest imagine, Samantha, a hull letter wrote like that! how I’d
+love to send one back to Uncle Nate Gowdey.
+
+“How Uncle Nate’s eyes would open, and he wouldn’t want no spectacles
+nor nothin’ to read it with, would he? I wonder if I could do it,” sez
+he, a beginnin’ to be all rousted up.
+
+But I sez, “Be calm,” for so deep is my mind that I grasped the
+difficuties of the undertaken’ at once. “How could yon send it, Josiah
+Allen? Where would you get a envelop? How could you get it into the
+mail bag?” Sez I, “When anybody would send a letter wrote like that,
+they would want to write it on sheets of lightnin’, and fold it up in
+the envelopin’ clouds of the skies, and it should be received by a
+kneelin’ and reverent soul. Who is Uncle Nate that he should get it? He
+has not a reverent Soul and he has also rheumatiz in his legs.”
+
+And then I thought, so quick and active is my mind when it gets to
+startin’ off on a tower, I thought of what I had hearn a few days
+before, of how the secret had been learnt by somebody who lived right
+there in the village, of floatin’ letters up at sea from one ship to
+another, sigualin’ out in letters of flame -
+
+“Help! I’m a sinkin’!” or “Danger ahead! Look out!”
+
+And I thought what it must be to stand on a dusky night on a lone deck
+and see up on the broad, dark; lonesome sky above, a sudden message, a
+flash of vivid lightnin’, takin’ to itself the form of language. And I
+wondered to myself if in the future we should use the great pages of
+the night-sky to write messages from one city to another, or from sea
+to land, of danger and warnin’; and then I thought to myself, if souls
+clog-bound to earth are able to accomplish so much, who knows but the
+freed soul goin’ outward and onward from height to height of wisdom may
+yet be able to signal down from the Safe Land messages of help and
+warnin’ to the souls it loved below.
+
+The souls a sailin’ and a driftin’ through the dark night of despair -
+a dashin’ along through fog and mist and darkness aginst rocks. What it
+would be to one kneelin’ in the lonesome night watches by a grave, if
+the dark sky could grow luminous and he could read, - “Do not despair!
+I am alive! I love you!”
+
+Or, in the hour of the blackest temptation and dread, when the earth is
+hollow and the sky a black vault, and the only way of happiness on
+God’s earth seems down the dangerous, beautiful way, God-forbidden,
+what would it be to have the empty vault lit up with “Danger ahead! We
+will help you! be patient a little longer!”
+
+Oh how fur my thoughts wuz a travellin’, and at what a good jog, but
+not one trace did my companion see on my forward of these thoughts that
+wuz a passin’ through my foretop: and at that very minute, we came up
+nigh enough to see that right back of the glitterin’ language overhead,
+went a long line of big, glowin’ stars of glory way up over our heads,
+and leadin’ down a gentle declivity and Josiah sez, “Let’s foller on,
+and see what it will lead us to, Samantha.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “light is pretty generally, safe to foller, Josiah
+Allen.” And so we meandered along, keepin’ our 2 heads as nigh as we
+could under that long glitterin’ chain of golden drops that wuz high
+overhead. And on, and on, we follered it dilligently; till for the
+land’s sake! if it didn’t lead us to another one of them openwork
+buildin’s, fixed off beautiful, and we could see inside 2 big wells
+like, with acres of floor seemin’ly on each side of ’em, and crowds of
+folks a walkin’ about and settin’ at little tables and most all of ’em
+a drinkin’.
+
+The water they drinked we could see wuz a bubblin’ up and a runnin’
+over all the time, in big round crystal globes. And up, up on a slender
+pole way up over one of the wells hung another one of them crystal
+bowls, a bubblin’ over with the water and sparklin’.
+
+And ag’in Josiah asked me if I thought Beuler land could compare with
+it?
+
+And I told him ag’in kinder sharp, That I wuzn’t a thinkin’ about
+Beuler, I didn’t know any sech a place or name. I wish he would call
+things right.
+
+Wall, he wuz so dead tired by this time, that we sot sail homewards;
+that is, my feet wuz tired, and my bones, but my mind seemed more
+rousted up than common.
+
+Josiah
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+SARATOGA BY DAYLIGHT.
+
+
+Wall, the next mornin’ Josiah and me sallied out middlin’ early to
+explore still further the beauties and grandness of Saratoga. I had on
+a black straw bonnet, a green vail, and a umbrell. I also have my black
+alpacky, that good moral dress.
+
+My dress bein’ such a high mission one choked me. It wuz so high in the
+neck it held my chin up in a most uncomfortable position, but sort a
+grand and lofty lookin’. My sleeves wuz so long that more’n half the
+time my hand wuz covered up by ’em and I wuz too honerable to wear ’em
+for mits; no, in the name of principle I wore ’em for sleeves, good
+long sleeves, a pattern to other grandmas that I might meet.
+
+I felt that when they see me and see what I wuz a doin’ and endurin’
+fur the cause of female dressin’ they would pause in their wild career,
+and cover up their necks and pull their sleeves down.
+
+Wall, it haint to be expected that I could walk along carryin’ such
+hefty emotions as I wuz a carryin’, and havin’ my neck held high and
+stiddy both by principle and alpacky, and see to every step I wuz a
+takin’. And, first I knew, right while I was enjoyin’ the loftiest of
+these emotions, I ketched my foot in sunthin’, and most fell down.
+Instinctively (such is the power of love) I put out my hand and
+clutched at the arm of my pardner. But he too wuz nearly fallin’ at the
+same time. It wuz a narrow chance that we wuz a runnin’ from having our
+prostrate forms a layin’ there outstretched on the highway.
+
+Instinctively I sez, “Good land!” and Josiah sez—wall, it is fur from
+me to tell what he said, but it ended up with these words, “Dumb them
+dumb sidewalks anyway;” and sez he, “I should think it would pay to
+have a little less gilt paint and spangles and orniments overhead and a
+few more solid bricks unless they want more funerals here, dumb ’em!”
+
+Sez I,”Be calm! who be you a talkin’ about? who do you want to bring
+down your fearful curses on, Josiah Allen?”
+
+“Why, onto the dumb bricks,” sez he.
+
+He wuz agitated and I said no more. But four times in that first walk,
+did I descend almost precipitously into declivities amongst the bricks,
+risin’ simultaneously on similar elevations.
+
+It wuz a fearful ordeel and I felt it so, but upheld by principle and
+Josiah, I moved onwards, through what seemed to be 5 great throngs and
+masses of people, 3 on the ground and 2 hinted up above us on tall
+pillows.
+
+Them immense places overhead long as the streets, wuz kinder scalloped
+out and trimmed off handsum with railin’s, etc. And on it—oh! what a
+vast congregation of heads of all sorts and sizes and colors. And oh!
+what a immense display of parasols; why no parasol store in the land
+could begin with what I see there.
+
+I can truly say that I thought I knew somethin’ about parasols;, havin’
+owned 3 different ones in the course of my life, and havin’ one covered
+over. I thought I knew somethin’ of their nater and habits, which is a
+good deal, so I had always s’posed, like a umbrell’s. But good land! I
+gin up that I knew them not, nor never had.
+
+Why anybody could learn more on ’em through one jerney down that
+street, than from a hull lifetime in Jonesville. Truly travel is very
+upliftin’ and openin’ and spreadin’ out to the mind, both in parasols
+and human nater.
+
+Wall, them 2 masses over our heads wuz 2, then the one in which we wuz
+a strugglin’ and the one opposite to it made 4. For anybody with any
+pretence to learnin’ knows that twice 2 is 4. And then in the middle of
+the broad street was a bigger mass of chariots and horsemen, and carts
+and carriages, and great buggies and little ones, and big loads of
+barrels, and big loads of ladies, and then a load of wood, and then a
+load of hay, and then a pair of young folks pretty as a picture. And
+then came some high big coaches as big as our spare bedroom, and as
+high as the roof on our horse barn, with six horses hitched to e’m, all
+runnin’ over on top with men; and wimmen, and children, and parasols,
+and giggles, and ha ha’s. And a man wuz up behind a soundin’ out on a
+trumpet, a dretful sort of a high, sweet note, not dwindlin’ down to
+the end as some music duz, but kinder crinklin’ round and endin’ up in
+the air every time.
+
+Josiah wuz dretful took with it and he told me in confidence that he
+laid out when he got home to buy a trumpet and blow out jest them
+strains every time he went into Jonesville or out of it. He said it
+would sound so sort a warlike and impressive.
+
+I expostulated aginst the idee. But sez he, “You’ll enjoy it when you
+get used to it.”
+
+“Never!” sez I.
+
+“Yes you will,” sez he, “and while I live I lay out that you shall have
+advantages, and shall enjoy things new and uneek.”
+
+“Yes,” sez I feelin’ly, “I expect to, Josiah Allen, as long as I live
+with you.” And I sithed. But I had little time to enjoy even sithin’,
+for oh! the crowd that wuz a pressin’ onto us and surroundin’ us on
+every side, some on ’em curius and strange lookin’, some on ’em
+beautiful and grand. Pretty young girls lookin’ sweet enough to kiss,
+and right behind ’em a Chinese man with a long dress, and wooden shoes,
+and his hair in a long braid behind, and his eyes sot in sideways. And
+then would come on a hull lot of wimmen in dresses ev’ry color of the
+rainbow, and some men. Then a few childern, lookin’ sweet as roses,
+with their mothers a pushin’ the little carts ahead on ’em. And if
+you’ll believe it, I don’t s’pose you will, but it is true, that lots
+of black ma’s had childern jest as white as snow, and pretty as
+rosebuds, took after their fathers I s’pose. But I don’t believe in a
+mixin’ of the races. And when I see ’em a kissin’ the pretty babys, I
+begun to muse a very little on the feelin’s of the indignent South, at
+havin’ a colered girl set in the same car with ’em, or on a bench in
+the same school room.
+
+Black Ma’s
+
+I mewsed on how they held the white forms clost to their black breasts
+at birth, and in the hour of death—the black lips pressed to the white
+cheeks and lips, in both cases. And all the way between life and death
+they mingle clost as they can, some in some cases like the hill of
+knowledge. Then the contact is too clost, when they sot out to climb up
+by ’em. Truly there are deep conundrums and strange ones, all along
+through life; though the white man may be, and is, cleer up out of his
+way, on the sunshiny brow of the hill, and the black man at the foot,
+way down amongst the shadows and darkness of the low grounds. They
+don’t come very nigh each other. But the arms that have felt the clasp
+and the lips that have felt the kisses of that very same black climber
+all through life, moves ’em and shouts ’em to “go down,” to “go back,”
+
+“The contact is getting too clost, danger is ahead.” Curious, haint it?
+Jest as if any danger is so dangerous as ignorance and brutality.
+Curious, haint it? But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom.
+
+Wall, right after the babies we’d meet a Catholic priest with a calm
+and fur away look on his face, a lookin’ at the crowd as if he wuz in
+it, but not of it. And then a burgler, mebby, anyway a mean lookin’
+creeter, ragged and humble. And then 2 or 3 men foreign lookin’,
+jabberin’ in a tongue I know nothin’ of, nor Josiah either. And then
+some more childern, and wimmen, and dogs, and parasols, and men, and
+babies, and Injuns, and Frenchmen, and old young wimmen, and young old
+ones, and handsome ones, and hombly ones, and parasols, and some sweet
+young girls ag’in, and some black men, and some white men, and some
+more wimmen, and parasols, and silk, and velvet, and lace, and puckers,
+and raffles, and gethers, and gores, and flowers, and feathers, and
+fringes, and frizzles, and then some men, some Southerners from the
+South, some Westerners from the West, some Easterners from the East,
+and some Cubebs from Cuba, and some Chinamen from China.
+
+Oh! what a seen! What a seen! back and forth, passin’ and repassin’, to
+and fro, parasols, and dogs, and wimmen, and men, and babies, and
+parasols, to and fro, to and fro. Why, if I stood there long so crazed
+would I have become at the seen, that I should have felt that Josiah
+wuz a To and I wuz a Fro, or I wuz a parasol and he wuz a dog.
+
+And to prevent that fearful catastrophe, I sez, “If we ever get beyond
+this side of the village that seems all run together, if we ever do get
+beyond it, which seems doubtful, le’s go and sit down, in some quiet
+spot, and try to collect our scattered minds.” Sez I, “I feel curius,
+Josiah Allen!” and sez I, “How do you feel?”
+
+His answer I will not translate; it was neither Biblical nor even
+moral. And I sez agin, “Hain’t it strange that they have the village
+all run together with no streets turnin’ off of it.” Sez I, “It makes
+me feel queer, Josiah Allen, and I am a goin’ to enquire into it.” So
+we wended our way some further on amongst the dense crowd I have spoken
+of, only more crowded and more denser, and anon, if not oftener,
+Josiah’s head would be scooped in by passin’ parasols, and then in low,
+deep tones, Josiah would use words that I wouldn’t repeat for a dollar
+bill, till at last I asked a by bystander a standin’ by, and sez I, “Is
+this village all built together—don’t you have no streets a turnin’ off
+of it?”
+
+“Yes,” sez he, “you’ll find a street jest as soon as you get by this
+hotel.”
+
+I stopped right in my tracts; I wuz dumbfoundered. Sez I, “Do you mean
+to say that this hull side of the street that we have been a traversin’
+anon, or long before anon,—do you say that this is all one buildin’?”
+
+“Yes mom,” sez he.
+
+Sez I, in faint axents, “When shall we get to the end on it?”
+
+Sez he, “You have come jest about half way.”
+
+Josiah gin a deep groan and turned him round in his tracts and sez,
+“Le’s go back this minute.”
+
+I too thought of the quiet haven from whence we had set out, with a
+deep longin’, but sech is the force and strength of my mind that I
+grasped holt of the situation and held it there tight. If we wuz half
+way across it wouldn’t be no further to go on than it would to go back.
+Such wuz my intellect that I see it to once, but Josiah’s mind couldn’t
+grasp it, and with words murmured in my ears which I will never repeat
+to a livin’ soul he wended on by my side through the same old
+crowd—parasols, and wimmen, and dogs, and babies, and men, and
+parasols, and Injuns, and Spanards, and Creoles, and pretty girls, and
+old wimmen, and puckers, and gethers, and bracelets, and diamonds, and
+lace, and parasols. Several times, if not more, wuz Josiah Allen
+scooped in by a parasol held by a female, and I felt he wuz liable to
+be torn from me. His weight is but small. 3 times his hat fell off in
+the operation and wuz reskued with difficulty, and he spoke words I
+blush to recall as havin’ passed my pardner’s lips.
+
+Wall, in the fullness of time, or a little after, for truly I wuz not
+in a condition to sense things much, we arrove at a street and we
+gladly turned our 2 frames into it, and wended our way on it, goin’ at
+a pretty good jog. The crowd a growin’ less and less and we kep a
+goin’, and kep a goin’, till Josiah sez in weary axents:
+
+“Where be you a goin’, Samantha? Haint you never goin’ to stop? I am
+fairly tuckered out.”
+
+And I sez in faint axents, “I would fain reach a land where parasols
+and puckers are not and dogs and diamonds are no more.”
+
+I wuz middlin’ incoherent from my agitation. But I meant well. I wuz
+truly in hopes I would reach some quiet place where Josiah and me could
+set down alone. Where I could look in quiet and repose upon that dear
+bald head, and recooperate my strength.
+
+We went by beautiful places, grand houses of different colors but every
+one on ’em good lookin’ ones, a settin’ back amongst their green trees,
+with shady grass-covered yards, and fountains and flower beds in front
+of ’em, and more grand handsome houses, and more big beautiful yards,
+green velvet grass and beautiful flowers and fountains, and birds and
+beauty on every side on us.
+
+And though I felt and knew that in them big carriages that was a
+passin’ 2 and fro all the time, though I felt that parasols, and
+puckers, and laces, and dogs, and diamonds, wuz a bein’ borne past me
+all the time, yet sech is the force of my mind that I could withdraw my
+specks from ’em, and look at the beautiful works of nater (assisted by
+man) that wuz about me on every hand.
+
+Finally my long search wuz rewarded, we came to a big open gateway that
+seemed to lead into a large, quiet delightful forest. And in that
+lovely, lonesome place, Josiah and me sot down to recooperate our 2
+energies.
+
+Josiah looked good to me. Men are nice creeters, but you don’t want to
+see too meny of ’em to once, likeways with wimmen. Josiah looked to me
+at that moment some like a calico dress that you have picked out of a
+dense quantity of patterns of calico at a store, it looks better to you
+when you get it away from the rest. Josiah Allen looked good to me.
+
+But anon, after I had bathed my distracted eyes (as you may say) in the
+liniment of my pardner, I began to take in the rare beauty of the seen
+laid out before me and we arose and wended our way onwards peaceful and
+serene, as 2 childern led on by their mother.
+
+Dear Mother Nature! how dost thou rest and soothe thy distracted
+childern when too hardly used by the grindin’, oppressive hands of
+fashion,and the weerisome elements of a too civilized life. Maybe thou
+art a heathen mother, oneducated and ignorant in all but the wisdom of
+love, but thy bosom is soft and restful, and thy arms lovin’ and
+tender. And, heathen if thou art, we love thee first and at last. We
+are glad to slip out of all the vain and gilded supports that have held
+us weerily up, and lay down our tired heads on thy kindly and
+unquestionin’ bosom and rest.
+
+As we rose from the soft turf, on which we had been a restin’, and
+meandered on through that beautiful park, (so tenderly had nature used
+him,) not one trace of the wild commotion that had almost rent Josiah
+Allen’s breast, could be seen save one expirin’ threeoh of agony. As we
+started out ag’in, he looked down onto my faithful umberell, that had
+stiddied me on so many towers of principle, and sez he, in low
+concentrated axents of skern and bitterness, “If that wuz a dumb
+parasol, Samantha, I would crush it to the earth and grind it to
+atoms.”
+
+Truly he could not forget how his bald head had been gethered in like a
+ripe sheaf, by 7 females, during that very walk, hombly ones too, so it
+had happened. But I sez nothin’ in reply to this expirin’ note of the
+crysis he had passed through, knowin’ this was not the time for silver
+speech but for golden silence, and so we meandered onwards.
+
+And it wuz anon that we see in the distance a fair white female a
+standin’ kinder still in the edge of the woods, and Josiah spoke in a
+seemin’ly careless way, and sez he, “She don’t seem to have many
+clothes on, Samantha.”
+
+Sez I, “Hush, Josiah! she has probably overslept herself, and come out
+in a hurry, mebby to look for some herbs or sunthin’. I persoom one of
+her childern are sick, and she sprung right up out of bed, and come out
+to get some weather-wort, or catnip, or sunthin’.”
+
+And as I spoke I drawed Josiah down a side path away from her. But he
+stopped stun still and sez he, “Mebby I ought to go and help her
+Samantha.”
+
+Sez I, “Josiah Allen, sense I lived with you, I don’t think I have been
+shamder of you;” sez I, “it would mortify her to death if she should
+_mistrust_ you had seen her in that condition.”
+
+“Wall,” sez he, still a hangin’ back, “if the child is very sick, and I
+can be any help to her, it is my duty to go.”
+
+His eye had been on her nearly every moment of the time, in spite of my
+almost voyalent protests, and sez he, kinder excited like, “She is
+standin’ stun still, as if she is skarit; mebby there is a snake in
+front of her or sunthin’, or mebby she is took paralysed, I’d better go
+and see.”
+
+Sez I, in low, deep axents, “You stay where you be, Josiah Allen, and I
+will go forward, bein’ 2 females together, it is what it is right to do
+and if we need your help I will holler.”
+
+Woman in the woods
+
+And finally he consented after a parlay.
+
+Wall, as I got up to her I see she wuzn’t a live, meat woman, but a
+statute and so I hastened back to my Josiah and told him there wuzn’t
+no need of his help and he wuz in the right on’t—she wuz stun still.”
+
+He said he guessed we’d better go that way. And I sez, “No, Josiah, I
+want to go round by the other road.”
+
+Wall, we got back to our abode perfectly tuckered out, but perfectly
+happy. And we concluded that after dinner we would set out and see the
+different springs and partake of ’em. Had it not been for our almost
+frenzied haste to get away from parasols and dogs and destraction into
+a place of rest we should have beheld them sooner. And our afternoon’s
+adventures I will relate in another epistol.
+
+crowed street
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+SEEING THE DIFFERENT SPRINGS.
+
+
+Taking a walk
+
+Immegeatly after dinner (a good one) Josiah Allen, Ardelia Tutt and me
+sot out to view and look at the different springs and to partake of the
+same. We hadn’t drinked a drop of it as yet. Ardelia had come over to
+go with us. She had on a kind of a yellowish drab dress and a hat made
+of the same, with some drab and blue bows of ribbon and some pink
+holly-hawks in it, and she had some mits on (her hands prespired
+dretfully, and she sweat easy). As I have said, she is a good lookin’
+girl but soft. And most any dress she puts on kinder falls into the
+same looks. It may be quite a hard lookin’ dress before she puts it on,
+but before she has wore it half a hour it will kinder crease down into
+the softest lookin, thing you ever see. And so with her bonnets, and
+mantillys, and everything.
+
+The down onto a goslin’s breast never looked softer than every rag she
+had on this very afternoon, and no tender goslin’ itself wuz ever
+softer than she wuz on the inside on’t. But that didn’t hinder my
+likin’ her.
+
+Wall, anon, or a little before, we came to that long, long buildin’,
+beautiful and dretful ornimental, but I could see plain by daylight
+what I had mistrusted before, that it wuzn’t built for warmth. It must
+be dretful cold in the winter, and I don’t see how the wimmen folks of
+the home could stand it, unless they hang up bed quilts and blankets
+round the side, and then, I should think they would freeze. They
+couldn’t keep their house plants over winter any way - and I see they
+had sights of ’em - unless they kep’ ’em down suller.
+
+But howsumever, that is none of my lookout. If they want to be so
+fashionable, as to try to live out doors and in the house too, that is
+none of my business. And of course it looked dretful ornimental and
+pretty. But I will say this, it haint bein’ mejum. I should rather live
+either out doors, or in the house, one of the 2. But I am a eppisodin’.
+And to resoom.
+
+Josiah Allen paid the money demanded of him and we went in and advanced
+onwards to where a boy wuz a pullin’ up the water and handin’ of it
+round.
+
+It looked dretful bubblin’ and sparklin’. Why sunthin’ seemed to be a
+sparklin’ up all the time in the water and I thought to myself mebby it
+wuz water thoughts, mebby it wanted to tell sunthin’, mebby it has all
+through these years been a tryin’ to bubble up and sparkle out in
+wisdom but haint found any one yet who could understand its liquid
+language. Who knows now?
+
+I took my glass and looked close - sparkle, sparkle, up came the tiny
+thought sparks! But I wuzn’t wise enough to read the glitterin’
+language. No I wuzn’t deep enough. It would take a deep mind, mebby
+thousands of feet deep, to understand the great glowin’ secret that it
+has been a tryin’ to reveal and couldn’t. Mebby it has been a tryin’ to
+tell of big diamond mines that it has passed through - great cliffs and
+crags of gold sot deep with the crystalized dew of diamonds.
+
+But no, I didn’t believe that wuz it. That wouldn’t help the world,
+only to make it happier, and these seemed to me to be dretful
+inspirin’, upliftin’ thoughts. No, mebby it is a tryin’ to tell a cold
+world about a way to heat it. Mebby it has been a runnin’ over and is
+sparklin’ with bright thoughts about how deep underneath the earth lay
+a big fireplace, that all the cold beggars of mortality could set round
+and warm _their_ frozen fingers by,—a tryin’ to tell how the heat of
+that fire that escapes now up the chimbleys of volcanoes, and sometimes
+in sudden drafts blows out sideways into earthquakes, etc., could be
+utilized by conveyin’ it up on top of the ground, and have it carried
+into the houses like Croton water. Who knows now? Mebby that is it!
+
+Oh! I felt that it would be a happy hour for Samantha when she could
+bile her potatoes by the heat of that large noble fire-place. And more
+than that, far more wuz the thought that heat might become, in the
+future, as cheap as cold. That the little cold hands that freeze every
+winter in the big cities, could be stretched out before the big
+generous warmth of that noble fire-place. And who built that fire in
+the first place? Who laid the first sticks on the handirons, and put
+the match to it? Who wuz it that did it, and how did he look, and when
+wuz he born, and why, and where?
+
+These, and many other thoughts of similar size and shape, filled my
+brane almost full enough to lift up the bunnet, that reposed gracefully
+on my foretop, as I stood and held the sparklin’ glass in my hands.
+
+Sparkle! sparkle! sparkle! what wuz it, it wuz a tryin’ to say to me
+and couldn’t? Good land! I couldn’t tell, and Josiah couldn’t, I knew
+instinctively he couldn’t, though I didn’t ask him.
+
+No, I turned and looked at that beloved man, for truly I had for the
+time bein’ been by the side of myself, and I see that he wuz a drinkin’
+lavishly of the noble water. I see that he wuz a drinkin’ more than wuz
+for his good, his linement showed it, and sez I, for he wuz a liftin’
+another tumbler full onto his lips, sez I, “Pause, Josiah Allen, and
+don’t imbibe too much.”
+
+Taking the water
+
+“Why,” he whispered, “you can drink all you are a mind to for 5 cents.
+I am bound for once, Samantha Allen, to get the worth of my money.”
+
+And he drinked the tumbler full down at one swoller almost, and turned
+to the weary boy for another. He looked bad, and eager, and sez I, “How
+many have you drinked?”
+
+Sez he, in a eager, animated whisper, “9.” And he whispered in the same
+axents, “5 times 9 is 45 ; if it had been to a fair, or Fourth of July,
+or anything, it would have cost me 45 cents, and if it had been to a
+church social - lemme see - 9 times 10 is 90. It would have cost me a
+dollar bill! And here I am a havin’ it all for 5 cents. Why,” sez he,
+“I never see the beat on’t in my life.”
+
+And ag’in he drinked a tumbler full down, and motioned to the
+frightened boy for another.
+
+But I took him by the vest and whispered to him, sez I, “Josiah Allen,
+do you want to die, because you can die cheap? Why,” sez I, “it will
+kill you to drink so much.”
+
+“But think of the cheapness on’t Samantha! The chance I have of getting
+the worth of my money.”
+
+But I whispered back to him in anxus axents and told him, that I
+guessed if funeral expenses wuz added to that 5 cents it wouldn’t come
+so cheap, and sez I, “you wont live through many more glasses, and
+you’ll see you wont. Why,” sez I, “you are a drowndin’ out your
+insides.”
+
+He wuz fairly a gettin’ white round the mouth, and I finally got him to
+withdraw, though he looked back longingly at the tumblers and murmured
+even after I had got him to the door, that it wuz a dumb pity when
+anybody got a chance to get the worth of their money, which wuzn’t
+often, to think they couldn’t take advantage on it.
+
+And I sez back to him in low deep axents, “There is such a thing as
+bein’ too graspin’, Josiah Allen.” Sez I, “The children of Israel used
+to want to lay up more manny than they wanted or needed, and it spilte
+on their hands.” And sez I, “you see if it haint jest so with you; you
+have been in too great haste to enrich yourself, and you’ll be sorry
+for it, you see if you haint.”
+
+And he was. Though he uttered language I wouldn’t wish to repeat, about
+the children of Israel and about me for bringin’ of ’em up. But the man
+wuz dethly sick. Why he had drinked 11 tumblers full, and I trembled to
+think what would have follered on, and ensued, if I hadn’t interfered.
+As it wuz, he wuz confined to our abode for the rest of the day.
+
+But I wouldn’t have Josiah Allen blamed more than is due for this
+little incedent, for it only illustrates a pervailin’ trait in men’s
+nater, and sometimes wimmen’s - a too great desire to amass sudden
+riches, and when opportunity offers, burden themselves with useless and
+wearysome and oft-times painful gear.
+
+They don’t need it but seeing they have a chance to get it cheap, “dog
+cheap “ as the poet observes, why they weight themselves down with it,
+and then groan under the burden of unnecessary and wearin’ wealth. This
+is a deep subject, deep as the well from which my companion drinked,
+and nearly drinked himself into a untimely grave.
+
+Men heap up more riches than they can enjoy and then groan and rithe
+under the taxes, the charity given, the envy, the noteriety, the glare,
+and the glitter, the crowd of fortune-hunters and greedy hangers-on,
+and the care and anxiety. They orniment the high front of their houses
+with the paint, the gildin’, the fashion, and the show of enormous
+wealth, and while the crowd of fashion-seekers and fortune-hunters pour
+in and out of the lofty doorway they set out on the back stoop a
+groanin’ and a sithin’ at the cares and sleepless anxietes of their big
+wealth, and then they git up and go down street and try their best to
+heap up more treasure to groan over.
+
+And wimmen now, when wuz there ever a woman who could resist a good
+bargain? Her upper beauro draws may be a runnin’ over with laces and
+ribbons, but let her see a great bargain sold for nothin’ almost, and
+where is the female woman that can resist addin’ to that already too
+filled up beauro draw.
+
+A baby, be he a male, or be he a female child, when he has got a appel
+in both hands, will try to lay holt of another, if you hold it out to
+him. It is human nater. Josiah must not be considered as one alone in
+layin’ up more riches than he needed. He suffered, and I also, for sech
+is the divine law of love, that if one member of the family suffers,
+the other members suffer also, specially when the sufferin’ member is
+impatient and voyalent is his distress, and talks loud and angry at
+them who truly are not to blame.
+
+Now I didn’t make the springs nor I wuzn’t to blame for their bein’
+discovered in the first place. But Josiah laid it to me. And though I
+tried to make him know that it wuz a Injun that discovered ’em first,
+he wouldn’t gin in and seemed to think they wouldn’t have been there if
+it hadn’t been for me.
+
+I hated to hear him go on so. And in the cause of Duty, I brung up Sir
+William Johnson and others. But he lay there on the lounge, and kep’
+his face turned resolute towards the wall, in a dretful oncomfertable
+position (sech wuz his temper of mind), and said, he never had heard of
+them, nor the springs nuther, and shouldn’t if it hadn’t been for me.
+
+Why, sez I, “A Injun brought Sir William Johnson here on his back.”
+
+“Wall,” sez he, cross as a bear, “that is the way you’ll have to take
+me back, if you go on in this way much longer.”
+
+“In what way, Josiah?” sez I.
+
+“Why a findin’ springs and draggin’ a man off to ’em, and makin’ him
+drink.”
+
+“Why, Josiah Allen,” sez I, “I told you not to drink - don’t you
+remember?”
+
+“No! I don’t remember nuthin’, nor don’t want to. I want to go to
+sleep!” sez he, snappish as anything, so I went out and let him think
+if he wanted to, that I made the Springs, and the Minerals, and the
+Gysers, and the Spoutin’ Rock, and everything. Good land! I knew I
+didn’t; but I had to rest under the unkind insinnuation. Such is some
+of the trials of pardners.
+
+But Josiah waked up real clever. And I brung him up some delicate warm
+toast and some fragrant tea, and his smile on me wuz dretful
+good-natured, almost warm. And I forgot all his former petulence and
+basked in the rays of love and happiness that beamed on me out of the
+blue sky of my companion’s eyes. The clear blue sky that held two
+stars, to which my heart turned.
+
+Such is some of the joys of pardners with which the world don’t meddle
+with, nor can’t destroy.
+
+But to resoom. Ardelia sot down awhile in our room before she went back
+to her boardin’ house. I see she wuz a writin’ for she had a long lead
+pencil in her right hand and occasionally she would lean her forrerd
+down upon it, in deep thought, and before she went, she slipped the
+verses into my hand:
+
+“STANZAS ON A MINERAL SPRING.
+
+
+“Oh! waters that doth bubble up and spout
+Oh, didst thou bubble down insted of up,
+Thou couldest not with all thy minerals get out
+We could not then arise and drink thee in a cup.
+
+“Oh! human waves that float and seeth and tear
+Oh wiltest thou not too a learn to bubble up
+Instead of down, a lesson deep to bear,
+Oh Soul, can here be learned, one smooth, or rough.
+
+“A lesson deep of powerful min-er-als
+That act with power the constitution on,[1]
+And still that softly bubbles up, and tells
+To souls unborn, how sweetly they have ron.
+
+“Oh water that doth mount on slender tip,
+And spoutest up some 30 feet, through pole;
+Oh Hope, learn thou a lesson from the water’s lip,
+Spout out, spout out, in peace from hollow soul.”
+
+
+ [1] As in the case of Mr. Allen, poor dear man.
+
+
+Sez I, a lookin’ over my specks at Ardelia after I had finished readin’
+the verses: “What does ‘ron’ mean? I never heerd of that word before,
+nor knew there wuz sech a one.”
+
+Sez she, “I meant ran, but I s’pose it is a poetical license to say
+‘ron,’ don’t you think so?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” sez I, “I s’pose so, I don’t know much about licenses, nor
+don’t want to, they are suthin’ I never believed in. But,” sez I, for I
+see she looked red and overcasted by my remarks, “I don’t s’pose it
+will make any difference in a 100 years whether you say ran or ron.”
+
+But sez I, “Ardelia, it is a hot day, and I wouldn’t write any more if
+I wuz in your place. If you should heat your bra-, the upper part of
+your head, you might not get over it for some time.”
+
+“But,” sez she, “you have told me sometimes to stop on account of cold
+weather.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “most any kind of weather is hard on some kinds of
+poetry.” Sez I, “Poetry is sunthin’ that takes particular kinds of
+folks and weather to be successful.” Sez I, “It is sunthin’ that can’t
+be tampered with with impunity by Christians or world’s people. It is a
+kind of a resky thing to do, and I wouldn’t write any more to-day,
+Ardelia.”
+
+And she heard to me and after a settin’ a while with us, she went back
+to Mr. Pixley’s.
+
+Samantha tastes the water
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+JOSIAH AND SAMANTHA TAKE A LONG WALK.
+
+
+Wall, we hadn’t been to Saratoga long before Aunt Polly Pixley came
+over to see us, for Aunt Polly had been as good as her word and had
+come to Saratoga, to her 2d cousins, the Mr. Pixley’ses, where Ardelia
+wuz a stopping. Ardelia herself is a distant relation to Aunt Polly,
+quite distant, about 40 or 50 miles distant when they are both to home.
+
+Wall, the change in Aunt Polly is wonderful, perfectly wonderful. She
+don’t look like the same woman.
+
+She took her knittin’ work and come in the forenoon, for a all day’s
+visit, jest as she wuz used to in the country, good old soul - and I
+took her right to my room and done well by her, and we talked
+considerable about other wimmen, not runnin’ talk, but good plain talk.
+
+She thinks a sight of the Saratoga water, and well she may, if that is
+what has brung her up, for she wuz always sick in Jonesville, kinder
+bedrid. And when she sot out for Saratoga she had to have a piller to
+put on the seat behind her to sort a prop her up (hen’s feather).
+
+And now, she told me she got up early every mornin’ and walked down to
+the spring for a drink of the water - walked afoot. And she sez, “It is
+astonishin’ how much good that water is a doin’ me; for,” sez she,
+“when I am to home I don’t stir out of the house from one day’s end to
+the other; and here,” sez she, “I set out doors all day a’most, a
+listenin’ to the music in the park mornin’ and evenin’ I hear every
+strain on’t.”
+
+Aunt Polly is the greatest one for music I ever see, or hearn on. And I
+sez to her, “Don’t you believe that one great thing that is helpin’
+you, is bein’ where you are kep’ gay and cheerful, - by music and good
+company; and bein’ out so much in the sunshine and pure air.” (Better
+air than Saratoga has got never wuz made; that is my opinion and
+Josiah’s too.) And sez I, “I lay a good deal to that air.”
+
+“No,” she said, “it wuz the water.”
+
+Sez I, “The water is good, I don’t make no doubts on’t.” But I
+continued calmly - for though I never dispute, I do most always
+maintain my opinion - and I sez again calmly, “There has been a great
+change in you for the better, sense you come here, Miss Pixley. But
+some on’t I lay to your bein’ where things are so much more cheerful
+and happyfyin’. You say you haint heerd a strain of music except a base
+viol for over 14 years before you come here. And though base viols if
+played right may be melodious, yet Sam Pixley’s base viol wuz a old
+one, and sort a cracked and grumbly in tone, and he wuzn’t much of a
+player anyway, and to me, base viols always sounded kinder base
+anyway.”
+
+And sez I, “Don’t you believe a gettin’ out of your little low dark
+rooms, shaded by Pollard willers and grave stuns, and gettin’ out onto
+a place where you can heer sweet music from mornin’ till night, a
+liftin’ you up and makin’ you happier - don’t you believe that has
+sunthin’ to do with your feelin’ so much better - that and the pure
+sweet air of the mountains comin’ down and bein’ softened and enriched
+by the breath of the valley, and the minerals, makin’ a balmy
+atmosphere most full of balm - I lay a good deal to that.”
+
+“Oh no,” sez she, “it is the water.”
+
+“Yes,” sez I, in a very polite way, - I will be polite, “the water is
+good, first rate.”
+
+But at that very minute, word come to her that she had company, and she
+sot sail homewards immegetly, and to once.
+
+And now I don’t care anything for the last word, some wimmen do, but I
+don’t. But I sez to her, as I watched her a goin’ down the stairway,
+steppin’ out like a girl almost, sez I, “How well you do seem, Aunt
+Polly; and I lay a good deal on’t to that air.”
+
+Now who would have thought she would speak out from the bottom of the
+stairway and say, “No, it is the water?”
+
+Wall, the water is good, there haint no doubt, and anyway, through the
+water and the air, and bein’ took out of her home cares, and old
+surroundin’s onto a brght happy place, the change in Polly Pixley is
+sunthin’ to be wondered at.
+
+Yes, the water is good. And it is dretful smart, knowin’ water too.
+Why, wouldn’t anybody think that when it all comes from the same place,
+or pretty nigh the same place anyway, that they would get kinder
+flustrated and mixed up once in a while?
+
+But they don’t. These hundreds and thousands of years, and I don’t know
+how much longer, they have kep’ themselves separate from each other,
+livin’ nigh neighbors there down under the ground, but never
+neighborin’ with each other, or intermarryin’ in each other’s families.
+No, they have kep’ themselves apart, livin’ exclosive down below and
+bubblin’ up exclosive.
+
+They know how to make each other keep their proper distance, and I
+s’pose through all the centuries to come they will bubble up, right
+side by side, entirely different from each other.
+
+Curius, hain’t it? Dretful smart, knowin’ waters they be, fairly
+sparklin’ and flashin’ with light and brightness, and intelligence.
+They are for the healin’ and refreshin’ of ,the nations, and the
+nations are all here this summer, a bein’ healed by ’em. But still I
+lay a good deal to that air.
+
+Amongst the things that Aunt Polly told me about wimmen that day, wuz
+this, that Ardelia Tutt had got a new Bo, Bial Flamburg, by name.
+
+She said Mr. Flamburg had asked Ardelia’s 3d cousin to introduce him to
+her, and from that time his attentions to her had been unremittent,
+voyalent, and close. She said that to all human appearance he wuz in
+love with her from his hat band down to his boots and she didn’t know
+what the result would be, though she felt that the situation wuz
+dangerus, and more’n probable Abram Gee had more trouble ahead on him.
+(Aunt Polly jest worships Abram Gee, jest as everybody duz that gets to
+know him well.) And I too, felt that the situation wuz dubersome. For
+Ardelia I knew wuz one of the soft little wimmen that has _got_ to have
+men a trailin’ round after ’em; and her bein’ so uncommon tender
+hearted, and Mr. Flamburg so deep in love, I feared the result.
+
+Wall, I wuz jest a thinkin’ of this that day after dinner when Josiah
+proposed a walk, so we sot out. He proposed we should walk through the
+park, so we did. The air wuz heavenly sweet and that park is one of the
+most restful and beautiful places this side of Heaven, or so it seemed
+to us that pleasant afternoon. The music was very soft and sweet that
+day, sweet with a undertone of sadness, some like a great sorrowful
+soul in a beautiful body.
+
+The balmy south wind whispered through the branches of the bendin’
+trees on the hill where we sot. The light was a shinin’ and a siftin’
+down through the green leaves, in a soft golden haze, and the music
+seemed to go right up into them shadowy, shinin’ pathways of golden
+misty light, a climbin’ up on them shadowy steps of mist and gold, and
+amber, up, up into the soft depths of the blue overhead - up to the
+abode of melody and love.
+
+Down the hill in the beautiful little valley, all amongst the fountains
+and windin’ walks and white statutes, and green, green, grass, little
+children wuz a playin’. Sweet little toddlers, jest able to walk about,
+and bolder spirits, though small, a trudgin’ about with little canes,
+and jumpin’ round, and havin’ a good time.
+
+Little boys and little girls (beautiful creeters, the hull on ’em), for
+if their faces, every one on ’em, wuzn’t jest perfect! They all had the
+beauty of childhood and happiness. And crowds of older folks wuz there.
+And some happy young couples, youths and maidens, wuz a settin’ round,
+and a wanderin’ off by themselves, and amongst them we see the form of
+Ardelia, and a young man by her side.
+
+She wuz a leanin’ on the stun railin’ that fences in the trout pond.
+She wuz evidently a lookin’ down pensively at the shinin’ dartin’
+figures of the trout, a movin’ round down in the cool waters.
+
+I wuzn’t nigh enough to ’em to see really how her companion looked, but
+even at that distance I recognized a certain air and atmosphere a
+surroundin’ Ardelia that I knew meant poetry.
+
+And Josiah recognized it too, and he sez to me, “We may as well go
+round the hill and out to the road that way,” sez he, (a pointin’ to
+the way furthest from Ardelia) “and we may as well be a goin’.”
+
+That man abhors poetry.
+
+Wall, we wandered down into the high way and havin’ most the hull
+afternoon before us, we kinder sauntered round amongst the stores that
+wuz pretty nigh to where we wuz. There is some likely good lookin’
+stores kep’ by the natives, as they call the stiddy dwellers in
+Saratoga. Good lookin’ respectable stores full of comfort and
+consolation, for the outer or inner man or woman. (I speak it in a
+mortal sense).
+
+But with the hundred thousand summer dwellers, who flock here with the
+summer birds, and go out before the swallers go south, there comes lots
+of summer stores, and summer shops, and picture studios, etc., etc.
+Like big summer bird’s-nests, all full and a runnin’ over with summer
+wealth, to be blowed down by the autumn winds. These shops are full of
+everything elegant and beautiful and useful. The most gorgeous vases
+and plaks and chiner ware of every description and color, and books,
+and jewelry, and rugs, and fans, and parasols, and embroideries, and
+laces, and etc., etc., etc.
+
+And one shop seemed to be jest full of drops of light, light and
+sunshine, crystalized in golden, clear, tinted amber. There wuz a young
+female statute a standin’ up in the winder of that store with her hands
+outstretched and jest a drippin’ with the great glowin’ amber drops.
+Some wuz a hangin’ over her wings for she was a young flyin’ female.
+And I thought to myself it must be she would fly better with all that
+golden light a drippin’ about her.
+
+Josiah liked her looks first rate. And he liked the looks of some of
+the pictures extremely. There wuz lots of places all full of pictures.
+A big collection of water colors, though as Josiah said and well said,
+How they could get so many colors out of water wuz a mystery to him.
+
+But my choice out of all the pictures I see, wuz a little one called
+“The Sands of Dee.” It wuz “Mary a callin’ the cattle home.” The cruel
+treacherus water wuz a risin’ about her round bare ankles as she stood
+there amongst the rushes with her little milk-bucket on her arm.
+
+Her pretty innocent face wuz a lookin’ off into the shadows, and the
+last ray of sunset was a fallin’ on her. Maybe it wuz the pity on’t
+that struck so hard as I looked at it, to know that the “cruel,
+crawli’n foam” wuz so soon to creep over the sweet young face and round
+limbs. And there seemed to be a shadow of the comin’ fate, a sweepin’
+in on the gray mist behind her.
+
+I stood for some time, and I don’t know but longer, a lookin’ at it, my
+Josiah a standin’ placidly behind me, a lookin’ over my shoulder and
+enjoyin’ of it too, till the price wuz mentioned. But at that fearful
+moment, my pardner seized me by the arm, and walked me so voyalently
+out of that store and down the walk that I did not find and recover
+myself till we stood at the entrance to Philey street.
+
+At the art gallery
+
+And I wuz so out of breath, by his powerful speed, that she didn’t look
+nateral to me, I hardly recognized Philey. But Josiah hurried me down
+Philey and wanted to get my mind offen Mary Dee I knew, for he says as
+we come under a sign hangin’ down over the road, “Horse Exchange,” sez
+he, “What do you say, Samantha, do you spose I could change off the old
+mair, for a camel or sunthin’? How would you like a camel to ride?”
+
+I looked at him in speechless witherin’ silence, and he went on
+hurridly, “It would make a great show in Jonesville, wouldn’t it, to
+see us comin’ to meetin’ on a camel, or to see us ridin’ in a cutter
+drawed by one. I guess I’ll see about it, some other time.”
+
+And he went on hurridly, and almost incoherently as we see another
+sign, over the road - oh! how vollubly he did talk - “Quick, Livery.”
+
+“I hate to see folks so dumb conceeted! Now I don’t spose that man has
+got any hosses much faster than the old mair.”
+
+“‘Wing’s!’ Shaw! I don’t believe no such thing - a livery on wings. I
+don’t believe a word on’t. And you wouldn’t ketch me on one on ’em, if
+they had!”
+
+“‘Yet Sing!’” sez he, a lookin’ accost the street into a laundry house.
+“What do I care if you do sing? ’Taint of much account if you do any
+way. _I_ sing sometimes, I _yet_ sing,” says he.
+
+“_Sing_,” sez I in neerly witherin’ tone. “I’d love to hear you sing, I
+haint yet and I’ve lived with you agoin’ on 30 years.”
+
+“Wall, if you haint heerd me, it is because you are deef,” sez he.
+
+But that is jest the way he kep’ on, a hurryin’ me along, and a talkin’
+fast to try to get the price of that picture out of my head. Anon, and
+sometimes oftener, we would come to the word in big letters on signs,
+or on the fence, or the sides of barns, “Pray.” And sometimes it would
+read, “Pray for my wife!” And Josiah every time he came to the words
+would stop and reflect on ’em.
+
+“‘Pray!’ What business is it of yourn, whether I pray or not? ‘Pray for
+my wife!’ That haint none of your business.”
+
+Sez he, a shakin’ his fist at the fence, “’Taint likely I should have a
+wife without prayin’ for her. She needs it bad enough,” sez he once, as
+he stood lookin’ at it.
+
+I gin him a strange look, and he sez, “You wouldn’t like it, would you,
+if I didn’t pray for you?”
+
+“No,” sez I, “and truly as you say, the woman who is your wife needs
+prayer, she needs help, morn half the time she duz.”
+
+He looked kinder dissatisfied at the way I turned it, but he sez,
+“‘Plumbin’ done here!’”
+
+“I’d love to know where they are goin’ to plum. I don’t see no sign of
+plum trees, nor no stick to knock ’em off with.” And agin he sez, “You
+would make a great ‘fuss, Samantha, if I should say what is painted up
+right there on that cross piece. You would say I wuz a swearin’.”
+
+Sez I coldly, (or as cold as I could with my blood heated by the
+voyalence and rapidity of the walk he had been a leadin’ me,) “There is
+a Van in front of it. Van Dam haint swearin’.”
+
+“You would say it wuz if _I_ used it,” sez he reproachfully. “If I
+should fall down on the ice, or stub my toe, and trip up on the meetin’
+house steps, and I should happen to mention the name of that street
+about the same time, you would say I wuz a swearin’.”
+
+I did not reply to him; I wouldn’t. And ag’in he hurried me on’ards by
+some good lookin’ bildin’s, and trees, and tavrens, and cottages, and
+etc., etc., and we come to Caroline street, and Jane, and Matilda, and
+lots of wimmen’s names.
+
+And Josiah sez, “I’ll bet the man that named them streets wuz love
+sick!”
+
+But he wuzn’t no such thing. It was a father that owned the land, and
+laid out the streets, and named ’em for his daughters. Good old
+creeter! I wuzn’t goin’ to have him run at this late day, and run down
+his own streets too.
+
+But ag’in Josiah hurried me on’ards. And bimeby we found ourselves a
+standin’ in front of a kind of a lonesome lookin’ house, big and
+square, with tall pillows in front. It wuz a standin’ back as if it wuz
+a kinder a drawin’ back from company, in a square yard all dark and
+shady with tall trees. And it all looked kinder dusky, and solemn like.
+And a bystander a standin’ by told us that it wuz “ha’nted.”
+
+The haunted house
+
+Josiah pawed at it, and shawed at the idee of a gost.
+
+But I sez, “There! that is the only thing Saratoga lacked to make her
+perfectly interestin’, and that is a gost!”
+
+But agin Josiah pawed at the idee, and sez, “There never wuz such a
+thing as a gost! and never will be.” And sez he, “what an extraordenary
+idiot anybody must be to believe in any sech thing.” And ag’in he
+looked very skernful and high-headed, and once ag’in he shawed.
+
+And I kep’ pretty middlin’ calm and serene and asked the bystander,
+when the gost ha’nted, and where?
+
+And he said, it opened doors and blowed out lights mostly, and trampled
+up stairs.
+
+“Openin’, and blowin’, and tramplin’,” sez I dreamily.
+
+“Yes,” sez the man, “that’s what it duz.”
+
+And agin Josiah shawed loud. And agin I kep’ calm, and sez I, “I’d give
+a cent to see it.” And sez I, “Do you suppose it would blow out and
+trample if we should go in?”
+
+But Josiah grasped holt of my arm and sez, “’Taint safe! my dear
+Samantha! don’t le’s go near the house.”
+
+“Why? “ sez I coldly, “you say there haint no sech thing as a gost,
+what are you afraid on?”
+
+His teeth wuz fairly chatterin’. “Oh! there might be spiders there, or
+mice, it haint best to go.”
+
+I turned silently round and started on, for my companion’s looks was
+pitiful in the extreme. But I merely observed this, as we wended
+onwards, “I have always noticed this, Josiah Allen, that them that shaw
+the most at sech things, are the ones whose teeth chatter when they
+come a nigh ’em, showin’ plain that the shawers are really the ones
+that believe in ’em.”
+
+“My teeth chattered,” sez he, “because my gooms ache.”
+
+“Well,” sez I, “the leest said the soonest mended.” And we went on fast
+ag’in by big houses and little, and boardin’ houses, and boardin’
+houses, and boardin’ houses, and tavrens, and tavrens, and he kept me a
+walkin’ till my feet wuz most blistered.
+
+I see what his aim wuz; I had recognized it all the hull time.
+
+But as we went up the stairway into our room, perfectly tuckered out,
+both on us, I sez to him, in weary axents, “That picture wuz cheap
+enough, for the money, wuzn’t it?”
+
+He groaned aloud. And sech is my love for that man, that the minute I
+heard that groan I immegetly added, “Though I hadn’t no idee of buyin’
+it, Josiah.”
+
+Immegetly he smiled warmly, and wuz very affectionate in his demeener
+to me for as much as two hours and a half. Sech is the might of human
+love.
+
+His hurryin’ me over them swelterin’ and blisterin’ streets, and
+showin’ me all the beauty and glory of the world, and his conversation
+had no effect, skercely on my mind. But what them hours of frenzied
+effert could not accomplish, that one still, small groan did. I love
+that man. I almost worship him, and he me, vise versey, and the same.
+
+We found that Ardelia Tutt had been to see us in our absence. She had
+been into our room I see, for she had dropped one of her mits there.
+And the chambermaid said she had been in and waited for us quite a
+spell - the young man a waitin’ below on the piazza, so I s’posed.
+
+I expect Ardelia wanted to show him off to us and I myself wuz quite
+anxus to see him, feelin’ worried and oncomfertable about Abram Gee and
+wantin’ to see if this young chap wuz anywhere nigh as good as Abram.
+
+Well about a hour after we came back, Josiah missed his glasses he
+reads with. And we looked all over the house for ’em, and under the
+bed, and on the ceilin’, and through our trunks and bandboxes, and all
+our pockets, and in the Bible, and Josiah’s boots, and everywhere. And
+finely, after givin’ ’em up as lost, the idee come to us that they
+might possibly have ketched on the fringe of Ardelia’s shawl, and so
+rode home with her on it.
+
+So we sent one of the office-boys home with her mit and asked her if
+she had seen Josiah’s glasses. And word come back by the boy that she
+hadn’t seen ’em, and she sent word to me to look on my pardner’s head
+for ’em, and sure enough there we found ’em, right on his foretop, to
+both of our surprises.
+
+She sent also by the boy a poem she had wrote that afternoon, and sent
+word how sorry she wuz I wuzn’t to home to see Mr. Flamburg. But I see
+him only a day or two after that, and I didn’t like his looks a mite.
+
+But he said, and stuck to it, that his father owned a large bank, that
+he wuz a banker, and a doin’ a heavy business.
+
+Wall, that raised him dretfully in Ardelia’s eyes; she owned up to me
+that it did. She owned to me that she lead always thought she would
+love to be a Banker’s Bride. She thought it sounded rich. She said,
+“banker sounded so different from baker.”
+
+I sez to her coolly, that “it wuz only a difference of one letter, and
+I never wuz much of a one to put the letter N above any of the others,
+or to be haughty on havin’ it added to, or diminished from my name.”
+
+But she kep’ on a goin’ with him. She told me it wuz real romanticle
+the way he got aquanted with her. He see her onbeknown to her one day,
+when she wuz a writin’ a poem on one of the benches in the park.
+
+“A Poem on a Bench!”
+
+She wuz a settin’ on the bench, and a writin’ about it, she was a
+writin’ on the bench in two different ways. Curius, haint it?
+
+But to resoom. He immegetly fell in love with her. And he got a feller
+who wuz a boardin’ to his boardin’ place to interduce him to Ardelia’s
+relative, Mr. Pixley, and Mr. Pixley interduced him to Ardelia. He told
+Ardelia’s relatives the same story - That his father wuz a banker, that
+he owned a bank and wuz doin’ a heavy business.
+
+Wall, I watched that young chap, and watched him close, and I see there
+wuz one thing about him that could be depended on, he wuz truthful.
+
+He seemed almost morbid on the subject, and would dispute himself half
+a hour, to get a thing or a story he wuz tellin’ jest exactly right.
+But he drinked; that I know for I know the symptoms. Coffee can’t blind
+the eyes of her that waz once Smith, nor peppermint cast a mist before
+’em. My nose could have took its oath, if noses wuz ever put onto a bar
+of Justice - my nose would have gin its firm testimony that Bial
+Flamburg drinked.
+
+And there wuz that sort of a air about him, that I can’t describe
+exactly - a sort of a half offish, half familier and wholly
+disagreeable mean, that can be onderstood but not described. No, you
+can’t picture that liniment, but you can be affected by it. Wall, Bial
+had it.
+
+And I kep’ on a not likin’ him, and kep’ stiddy onwards a likin’ Abram
+Gee. I couldn’t help it, nor did’nt want to. And I looked out constant
+to ketch him in some big story that would break him right down in
+Ardelia’s eyes, for I knew if she had been brought up on any one
+commandment more’n another, it wuz the one ag’inst lyin’. She hated
+lyin’.
+
+She had been brought up on the hull of the commandments but on that one
+in particeler; she wuz brung up sharp but good. But not one lie could I
+ketch him in. And he stuck to it, that his father wuz a banker and
+doin’ a heavy business.
+
+Wall, it kep’ on, she a goin’ with him through ambition, for I see
+plain, by signs I knoo, that she didn’t love him half as well as she
+did Abram. And I felt bad, dretful bad, to set still and see Ambition
+ondoin’ of her. For oft and oft she would speak to me of Bial’s
+father’s bank and the heft of the business he wuz a doin’.
+
+And I finally got so worked up in my mind that I gin a sly hint to
+Abram Gee, that if he ever wanted to get Ardelia Tutt, he had better
+make a summer trip to Saratoga. I never told Ardelia what I had done,
+but trusted to a overrulin’ destiny, that seems to enrap babys, and
+lunatiks, and soft little wimmen, when their heads get kinder turned by
+a man, and to Abram’s honest face when she should compare it with Bial
+Flamburg’s, and to Abram’s pure, sweet breath with that mixture of
+stale cigars, tobacco, beer, and peppermint.
+
+But Abram wrote back to me that his mother wuz a lyin’ at the p’int of
+death with a fever - that his sister Susan wuz sick a bed with the same
+fever and couldn’t come a nigh her and he couldn’t leave what might be
+his mother’s death-bed. And he sez, if Ardelia had forgot him in so
+short a time, mebby it wuz the best thing he could do, to try and
+forget her. Anyway, he wouldn’t leave his dying mother for anything or
+anybody.
+
+That wuz Abram Gee all over, a doin’ his duty every time by bread and
+humanity. But he added a postscript and it wuz wrote in a agitated hand
+- that jest as soon as his mother got so he could leave her, he should
+come to Saratoga.
+
+The verses that Ardelia sent over to me wuz as follers:
+
+“A LAY ON A FEMALE TROUT IN CENTRAL PARK.
+“BY ARDELIA TUTT.
+
+“Oh trout, sweet female trout, oh fain would I
+In hottest day, perspirin’ dretfelee
+Desend, and dressed most cool like thee, would lie
+As deep in water, some two feet, or three
+Or even four.
+
+“Who would not dress like thee on summer day?
+How cool thy robes—lo! not one boddice waist
+Or corset stay, to make thee taper small.
+Thou taperest without them, and not then with haste,
+Or Bandaline.
+
+“Thou crimpest not, or bangest up thy hair;
+Thou hast no hair to bang, sweet trout so dear,
+Thou dost not dance round dances, nor repair
+Unto the thronged piazzas, nor appear,
+Sweet modest trout.
+
+“In long and haughty trains thou never dost appear
+And switch them up and down the corredere and hall
+With diamond jewels hanging to thy ear;
+Thou hast not ears to hang them on, no! not at all.
+No, not one ear.
+
+“Thou walkest not in high heeled shoes, thou cannest not
+For reesons it were vain to now relate.
+Ah no! But let us cast one eye adown thy grot
+And see thee sweet and patient wear thy fate,
+And wear it well.
+
+“At Garden parties, Race Course, Music Hall,
+We ne’er have set our weary eyes thy form upon;
+Thou dost not ramble in the crowded maul,
+Thou hast no legs sweet trout to ramble on;
+Ah! no! dear one.
+
+“And so thou seemest well content to saunter not,
+Or waltz about in garments fine and gay;
+Oh. Mortal Man! a lesson learn of Trout
+If thou no legs hast got, why seek to waltz away,
+Or promenade?
+
+“And, beautius female, learn thou of dear trout
+So move and swim in thine own native way;
+Seek not high stations, titles great, and flout
+Not thou at fate, but gently swim away
+On native waves.
+
+“Cool blooded hold thy heart, like female trout;
+Melt not at sweet, false words, that melt and seeth and burn;
+She melteth not, oh no! she cooly turns about
+And nibbles on, so thou, and follow on
+Sweet female one.”
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+JOSIAH’S FLIRTATIONS.
+
+
+They say there is a sight of flirtin’ done at Saratoga. I didn’t hear
+so much about it as Josiah did, naturally there are things that are
+talked of more amongst men than women. Night after night he would come
+home and tell me how fashionable it wuz, and pretty soon I could see
+that he kinder wanted to follow the fashion.
+
+I told him from the first on’t that he’d better let it entirely alone.
+Says I, “Josiah Allen, you wouldn’t never carry it through successful
+if you should undertake it—and then think of the wickedness on’t.”
+
+But he seemed sot. He said “it wuz more fashionable amongst married men
+and wimmen, than the more single ones,” he said “it wuz dretful
+fashionable amongst pardners.”
+
+“Wall,” says I, “I shall have, nothin’ to do with it, and I advise you,
+if you know when you are well off, to let it entirely alone.”
+
+“Of course,” says he, fiercely, “_You_ needn’t have nothin’ to do with
+it. It is nothin’ you would want to foller up. And I would ruther see
+you sunk into the ground, or be sunk myself, than to see you goin’ into
+it. Why,” says he, savagely, “I would tear a man lim from lim, if I see
+him a tryin’ to flirt with you.” (Josiah Allen worships me.) “But,”
+says he, more placider like, “men _have_ to do things sometimes, that
+they know is too hard for their pardners to do—men sometimes feel
+called upon to do things that their pardners don’t care about—that they
+haint strong enough to tackle. Wimmen are fragile creeters anyway.”
+
+No flirting
+
+“Oh, the fallacy of them arguments—and the weakness of ’em.
+
+But I didn’t say nothin’ only to reiterate my utterance, that “if he
+went into it, he would have to foller it up alone, that he musn’t
+expect any help from me.”
+
+“Oh no!” says he. “Oh! certainly not.”
+
+His tone wuz very genteel, but there seemed to be sumthin’ strange in
+it. And I looked at him pityin’ly over my specks. The hull idea on it
+wuz extremely distasteful to me, this talk about flirtin’, and etc., at
+our ages, and with our stations in the Jonesville meetin’ house, and
+with our grandchildren.
+
+But I see from day to day that he wuz a hankerin’ after it, and I
+almost made up my mind that I should have to let him make a trial,
+knowin’ that experience wuz the best teacher, and knowin’ that his
+morals wuz sound, and he wuz devoted to me, and only went into the
+enterprize because he thought it wuz fashionable.
+
+There wuz a young English girl a boardin’ to the same place we did. She
+dressed some like a young man, carried a cane, etc. But she wuz one of
+the upper 10, and wuz as pretty as a picture, and I see Josiah had
+kinder sot his eyes on her as bein’ a good one to try his experiment
+with. He thought she wuz beautiful. But good land! I didn’t care. I
+liked her myself. But I could see, though he couldn’t see it, that she
+wuz one of the girls who would flirt with the town pump, or the meetin’
+house steeple, if she couldn’t get nobody else to flirt with. She wuz
+born so, but I suppose ontirely unbeknown to her when she wuz born.
+
+Wall, Josiah Allen would set and look at her by the hour—dretful
+admirin’. But good land! I didn’t care. I loved to look at her myself.
+And then too I had this feelin’ that his morals wuz sound. But after
+awhile, I could see, and couldn’t help seein’, that he wuz a tryin’ in
+his feeble way to flirt with her. And I told him kindly, but firmly,
+“that it wuz somethin’ that I hated to see a goin’ on.”
+
+Josiah admires
+
+But he says, “Well, dumb it all, Samantha, if anybody goes to a
+fashionable place, they ort to try to be fashionable. ’Taint nothin’ I
+_want_ to do, and you ort to know it.”
+
+And I says in pityin’ axents but firm, “If you don’t want to, Josiah, I
+wouldn’t, fashion or no fashion.”
+
+But I see I couldn’t convince him, and there happened to be a skercity
+of men jest then—and he kep’ it up, and it kep’ me on the _key veav_,
+as Maggie says, when she is on the tenter hooks of suspense.
+
+I felt bad to see it go on, not that I wuz jealous, no, my foretop lay
+smooth from day to day, not a jealous hair in it, not one—but I felt
+sorry for my companion. I see that while the endurin’ of it wuz hard
+and tejus for him (for truly he was not a addep at the business; it
+come tuff, feerful tuff on him), the endin’ wuz sure to be harder. And
+I tried to convince him, from a sense of duty, that she wuz makin’ fun
+of him—he had told me lots of the pretty things she had said to him—and
+out of principle I told him that she didn’t mean one word of ’em. But I
+couldn’t convince him, and as is the way of pardners, after I had sot
+the reasen and the sense before him, and he wouldn’t hear to me, why
+then I had to set down and bear it. Such is some of the trials of
+pardners?
+
+Wall, it kep’ agoin’ on, and a goin’ on, and I kep’ a hatin’ to see it,
+for if anybody has _got_ to flirt, which I am far from approvin’ of,
+but if I have _got_ to see it a goin’ on, I would fain see it well
+done, and Josiah’s efforts to flirt wuz like an effort of our old mair
+to play a tune on the melodian, no grace in it, no system, nor comfort
+to him, nor me.
+
+I s’pose the girl got some fun out of it; I hope she did, for if she
+didn’t it wuz a wearisome job all round.
+
+Wall, a week or so rolled on, and it wuz still in progress. And one day
+an old friend of ours, Miss Ezra Balch, from the east part of
+Jonesville, come to see me. She come to Saratoga for the rheumatiz, and
+wuz gettin’ well fast, and Ezra was gettin’ entirely cured of biles,
+for which he had come, carbunkles.
+
+Wall, she invited Josiah and me to take a ride with ’em, and we both
+accepted of it, and at the appointed time I wuz ready to the minute,
+down on the piazza, with my brown cotton gloves on, and my mantilly
+hung gracefully over my arm. But at the last minute, Josiah Allen said
+“he couldn’t go.”
+
+I says “Why can’t you go?”
+
+“Oh,” he says, kinder drawin’ up his collar, and smoothin’ down his
+vest, “Oh, I have got another engagement.”
+
+He looked real high-headed, and I says to him:
+
+“Josiah Allen didn’t you promise Druzilla Balch that you would go with
+her and Ezra to-day?”
+
+“Wall yes,” says he, “but I can’t.”
+
+“Why not?” says I.
+
+“Wall, Samantha, though they are well meanin’, good people, they haint
+what you may call fashionable, they haint the upper 10.”
+
+Says I, “Josiah Allen you have fell over 15 cents in my estimation,
+sense we have begun talkin’, you won’t go with ’em because they haint
+fashionable. They are good, honest Christian Methodists, and have stood
+by you and me many a time, in times of trouble, and now,” says I, “you
+turn against ’em because they haint fashionable.” Says I, “Josiah Allen
+where do you think you’ll go to?”
+
+“Oh, probable down through Congress Park, and we may walk up as fur as
+the Indian Encampment. I feel kinder mauger to-day, and my corns ache
+feerful.” (His boots wuz that small that they wuz sights to behold,
+sights!) “We probably shan’t walk fur,” says he.
+
+I see how ’twuze in a minute. That English girl had asked him to walk
+with her, and my pardner had broken a solemn engagement with Ezra and
+Druzilla Balch to go a walkin’ with her. I see how ’twuz, but I sot in
+silence and one of the big rockin’ chairs, and didn’t say nothin’.
+
+Finally he says, with a sort of a anxious look onto his foreward:
+
+“You don’t feel bad, do you Samantha? You haint jealous, are you?”
+
+“Jealous!” says I, a lookin’ him calmly over from head to feet—it wuz a
+witherin’ look, and yet pitiful, that took in the hull body and soul,
+and weighed ’em in the balances of common sense, and pity, and justice.
+It wuz a look that seemed to envelop him all to one time, and took him
+all in, his bald head, his vest, and his boots, and his mind (what he
+had), and his efforts to be fashionable, and his trials and
+tribulations at it, and—and everything. I give him that one long look,
+and then I says:
+
+“Jealous? No, I haint jealous.”
+
+Then silence rained again about us, and Josiah spoke out (his
+conscience was a troublin’ him), and he says:
+
+“You know in fashionable life, Samantha, you have to do things which
+seem unkind, and Ezra, though a good, worthy man, can’t understand
+these things as I do.”
+
+Says I: “Josiah Allen, you’ll see the day that you’ll be sorry for your
+treatment of Druzilla Balch, and Ezra.”
+
+“Oh wall,” says he, pullin’ up his collar, “I’m bound to be
+fashionable. While I can go with the upper 10, it is my duty and my
+privilege to go with ’em, and not mingle in the lower classes like the
+Balches.”
+
+Says I firmly, “You look out, or some of them 10 will be the death of
+you, and you may see the day that you will be glad to leave ’em, the
+hull 10 of em, and go back to Druzilla and Ezra Balch.”
+
+But what more words might have passed between us, wuz cut short by the
+arrival of Ezra and Druzilla in a good big carriage, with Miss Balch on
+the back seat, and Ezra acrost from her, and a man up in front a
+drivin’. It wuz a good lookin’ sight, and I hastened down the steps,
+Josiah disappearin’ inside jest as quick as he ketched sight of their
+heads.
+
+They asked me anxiously “where Josiah wuz and why he didn’t come?” And
+I told ’em, “that Josiah had told me that mornin’ that he felt manger,
+and he had some corns that wuz a achin’.”
+
+So much wuz truth, and I told it, and then moved off the subject, and
+they seein’ my looks, didn’t pursue it any further. They proposed to go
+back to their boardin’ place, and take in Deacon Balch, Ezra’s brother
+from Chicago, who wuz stayin’ there a few days to recooperate his
+energies, and get help for tizick. So they did. He wuz a widowed man.
+Yes, he was the widower of Cornelia Balch who I used to know well, a
+good lookin’ and a good actin’ man. And he seemed to like my appeerance
+pretty well, though I am fur from bein’ the one that ort to say it.
+
+And as we rolled on over the broad beautiful road towards Saratoga
+Lake, I begun to feel better in my mind.
+
+The Deacon wuz edifyin’ in conversation, and he thought, and said,
+“that my mind was the heftiest one that he had ever met, and he had met
+hundreds and hundreds of ’em.” He meant it, you could see that, he
+meant every word he said. And it wuz kind of comfortin’ to hear the
+Deacon say so, for I respected the Deacon, and I _knew_ he meant just
+what he said.
+
+He said, and believed, though it haint so, but the Deacon believed it,
+“that I looked younger than I did the day I wuz married.”
+
+I told him “I didn’t feel so young.”
+
+“Wall,” he said, “then my looks deceived me, for I looked as young, if
+not younger.”
+
+Deacon Balch is a good, kind, Christian man.
+
+His conversation was very edifyin’, and he looked kinder good, and
+warm-hearted at me out of his eyes, which wuz blue, some the color of
+my Josiah’s. But alas! I felt that though some comforted and edified by
+his talk, still, my heart was not there, not there in that double buggy
+with 2 seats, but wuz afur off with my pardner. I felt that Josiah
+Allen wuz a carryin’ my heart with him wherever he wuz a goin’.
+Curious, haint it? Now you may set and smile, and talk, and seem to be
+enjoyin’ yourself first-rate, with agreeable personages all around you,
+and you do enjoy yourself with that part of your nater. But with it
+all, down deep under the laughs, and the bright words, the comfort you
+get out of the answerin’ laughs, the gay talk, under it all is the
+steady consciousness that the real self is fur away, the heart, the
+soul is fur away, held by some creeter whether he be high, or whether
+he be low, it don’t matter—there your heart is, a goin’ towards
+happiness, or a travellin’ towards pain as the case may be—curious,
+haint it?
+
+Wall, Ezra and Druzilla wanted to go to the Sulphur Springs way beyend
+Saratoga Lake, and as the Deacon wuz agreeable, and I also, we sot out
+for it, though, as we all said, it wuz goin’ to be a pretty long and
+tegus journey for a hot day. But we went along the broad, beautiful
+highway, by the high, handsome gates of the Racing Park, down, down, by
+handsome houses and shady woods, and fields of bright-colored wild
+flowers on each side of the road, down to the beautiful lake, acrost it
+over the long bridge, and then into the long, cool shadows of the
+bendin’ trees that bend over the road on each side, while through the
+green boughs, jest at our side we could ketch a sight of the blue,
+peaceful waters, a lyin’ calm and beautiful jest by the side of us—on,
+on, through the long, sheltered pathway, out into the sunshine for a
+spell, with peaceful fields a layin’ about us, and peaceful cattle a
+wanderin’ over ’em, and then into the shade agin, till at last we see a
+beautiful mountin’, with its head held kinder high, crowned with ferns
+and hemlocks, and its feet washed by the cool water of the beautiful
+lake.
+
+The shadows of this mountin’, tree crowned, lay on the smooth, placid
+wave, and a white sail boat wuz a comin’ round the side on’t, and
+floatin’ over the green, crystal branches, and golden shadows. It wuz a
+fair seen, seen for a moment, and then away we went into the green
+shadows of the woods again, round a corner, and here we wuz, at the
+Sulphur Springs.
+
+It wuz a quiet peaceful spot. The house looked pleasant, and so did the
+Landlord, and Landlady, and we dismounted and walked through a long
+clean hall, and went out onto a back piazza and sot down. And I thought
+as I sot there, that I would be glad enough to set there, for some
+time. Everything looked so quiet and serene. The paths leadin’ up the
+hills in different directions, out into the green woods, looked quiet;
+the pretty, grassy backyard leadin’ down to the water side looked green
+and peaceable, and around all, and beyond all, wuz the glory of the
+waters. They lay stretched out beautiful and in heavenly calm, and the
+sun, which wuz low in the West, made a gold path acrost ’em, where it
+seemed as if one could walk over only a little ways, into Perfect
+Repose. The Lake somehow looked like a glowin’ pavement, it didn’t look
+like water, but it seemed like broad fields of azure and palest
+lavender, and pinky grey, and pearly white, and every soft and delicate
+color that water could be crystalized into. And over all lay the
+glowin’, tender sunset skies—it wuz a fair seen. And even as I looked
+on in a almost rapped way, the sun come out from behind a soft cloud,
+and lay on the water like a pillow of fire jest as I dream that pillow
+did, that went ahead of my old 4 fathers.
+
+The rest on ’em seemed to be more intent on the lemonade with 2 straws
+in ’em. I didn’t make no fuss. They are nice, clean folks, I make no
+doubt. I wouldn’t make no fuss and tell on the hired man—women of the
+house have enough to worry ’em anyway. But he had dropped some straws
+into our tumblers, every one on ’em, I dare presume to say they had
+been a fillin’ straw ticks. I jest took mine out in a quiet way, and
+throwed ’em to one side. The rest on ’em, I see, and it wuz real good
+in ’em, drinked through ’em, as we used to at school. It wuz real good
+in Druzilla, and Ezra, and also in the Deacon. It kinder ondeared the
+hull on ’em to me. I hope this won’t be told of, it orto be kep—for he
+wuz a goodnatured lookin’ hired man, black, but not to blame for
+that—and good land! what is a straw?—anyway they wuz clean.
+
+There wuz some tents sot up there in the back yard, lookin’ some as I
+s’pose our old 4 fathers tents did, in the pleasant summer times of
+old. And I asked a bystander a standin’ by, whose tents they wuz, and
+he said they wuz Free Thinkers havin’ a convention.
+
+And I says, “How free?”
+
+And he said “they wuz great cases to doubt everything, they doubted
+whether they wuz or not, and if they wuz or when, and if so, why?”
+
+And he says, “won’t you stay to-night over and attend the meetin’?”
+
+And I says, “What are they goin’ to teach tonight?”
+
+And he says, “The Whyness of the What”
+
+I says, “I guess that is too deep a subject for me to tackle,” and says
+I, “Don’t they believe anything easier than that?”
+
+And he says, “They don’t believe anything. That is their belief—to
+believe nothin’.”
+
+“Nothin’!” says I.
+
+“Yes,” says he, “Nothin’.” And, says he, “to-morrer they are goin’ to
+prove beyond any question, that there haint any God, nor anything, and
+never wuz anything.”
+
+“Be they?” sez I.
+
+“Yes,” says he, “and won’t you come and be convinced?”
+
+I looked off onto the peaceful waters, onto the hills that lay as the
+mountains did about Jerusalem, onto the pillow of fire that seemed to
+hold in it the flames of that light that had lighted the old world onto
+the mornin’ of the new day,—and one star had come out, and stood
+tremblin’ over the brow of the mountain and I thought of that star that
+had riz so long time ago, and had guided the three wise men, guided ’em
+jest alike from their three different homes, entirely unbeknown to each
+other, guidin’ ’em to the cradle where lay the infant Redeemer of the
+world, so long foretold by bard and prophet. I looked out onto the
+heavenly glory of the day, and then inside into my heart, that held a
+faith jest as bright and undyin’ as the light of that star—and I says,
+“No, I guess I won’t go and be convinced.”
+
+Wall, we riz up to go most immediately afterwerds, and the Deacon (he
+is very smart) observed:
+
+“How highly tickled and even highlarious the man seemed in talkin’
+about there not bein’ any future.” And he says, “It wuz a good deal
+like a man laughin’ and clappin’ his hands to see his house burn down”
+
+And I sez, “it wuz far wurse, for his home wouldn’t stand more’n a 100
+years or so, and this home he wuz a tryin’ to destroy, wuz one that
+would last through eternity.” “But,” says I, “it hain’t built by hands,
+and I guess their hands hain’t strong enough to tear it down, nor high
+enough to set fire to it.”
+
+And the Deacon says, “Jest so, Miss Allen, you spoke truthfully, and
+eloquent.” (The Deacon is very smart.)
+
+When we got into the buggy to start, the Deacon says, “I would like to
+resoom the conversation with you, Josiah Allen’s wife, a goin’ back.”
+
+And Druzilla spoke right out and says, “I will set on the front seat by
+Ezra.” I says, “Oh no, Druzilla, I can hear the Deacon from where I sot
+before.”
+
+But the Deacon says, Talkin’ loud towards night always offected his
+voice onpleasantly, mebby Druzilla and he had better change seats.
+
+Again I demurred. And then Druzilla said she must set by Ezra, she
+wanted to tell him sumthin’ in confidence.
+
+And so it wuz arraigned, for I felt that I wuz not the one to come
+between pardners, no indeed. The road laid peacefuller and beautifuller
+than ever, or so it seemed under the sunset glory that sort o’ hung
+round it. Jest about half way through the woods we met the English
+girl, a stridin’ along alone, each step more’n 3 feet long, or so it
+seemed to me. There wuz a look of health, and happy determination on
+her forwerd as she strided rapidly by.
+
+I would have fain questioned her concernin’ my pardner, as she strode
+by, but before I could call out, or begon to her she wuz far in the
+rearwerd, and goin’ in a full pressure and in a knot of several miles
+an hour.
+
+Wall, from that minute I felt strange and curious. And though Druzilla
+and Ezra was agreeable and the Deacon edifyin’, I didn’t seem to feel
+edified, and the most warm-hearted looks didn’t seem to warm my heart
+none, it wuz oppressed with gloomy forebodings of, Where wuz my
+pardner? They had laid out to set out together. Had they sot? This
+question was a goverin’ me, and the follerin’ one: If they had sot out
+together, where wuz my pardner, Josiah Allen, now? As I thought these
+feerful thoughts, instinctively I turned around to see if I could see a
+trace of his companion in the distance. Yes, I could ketch a faint
+glimpse of her as she wuz mountin’ a diclivity, and stood for an
+instant in sight, but long before even, she disopeered agin, for her
+gait wuz tremendous, and at a rate of a good many knots she wuz a
+goin’, that I knew. And the fearful thought would rise, Josiah Allen
+could not go more than half a knot, if he could that. He wuz a slow
+predestinatur any way, and then his corns was feerful, and never could
+be told—and his boots had in ’em the elements of feerful sufferin’. It
+wuz all he could do when he had ’em on to hobble down to the spring,
+and post-office. Where? where wuz he? And she a goin’ at the rate of so
+many knots.
+
+Oh! the agony of them several minutes, while these thoughts wuz
+rampagin through my destracted brain.
+
+Oh! if pardners only knew the agony they bring onto their devoted
+companions, by their onguarded and thoughtless acts, and attentions to
+other females, gin without proper reseerch and precautions, it would
+draw their liniments down into expressions of shame and remorse. Josiah
+wouldn’t have gone with her if he had known the number of knots she wuz
+a goin’, no, not one step—then why couldn’t he have found out the
+number of them knots—why couldn’t he? Why can’t pardners look ahead and
+see to where their gay attentions, their flirtations that they call
+mild and innercent, will lead ’em to? Why can’t they realize that it
+haint only themselves they are injurin’, but them that are bound to ’em
+by the most sacred ties that folks can be twisted up in? Why can’t they
+realize that a end must come to it, and it may be a fearful and a
+shameful one, and if it is a happiness that stops, it will leave in the
+heart when happiness gets out, a emptiness, a holler place, where like
+as not onhappiness will get in, and mebby stay there for some time,
+gaulin’ and heart-breakin’ to the opposite pardner to see it go on?
+
+If it is indifference, or fashion, or anything of that sort, why it
+don’t pay none of the time, it don’t seem to me it duz, and the end
+will be emptier and hollerer then the beginnin’.
+
+In the case of my pardner it wuz fashion, nothing but the butterfly of
+fashion he wuz after, to act in a high-toned, fashionable manner, like
+other fashionable men. And jest see the end on’t why he had brought
+sufferin’ of the deepest dye onto his companion, and _what_, _what_ hed
+he brought onto himself—onto his feet?
+
+Oh! the agony of them several moments while them thoughts was a rackin’
+at me. The moments swelled out into a half hour, it must have been a
+long half hour, before I see far ahead, for the eyes of love is keen -
+a form a settin’ on the grass by the wayside, that I re_cog_nized as
+the form of my pardner. As we drew nearer we all re_cog_nized the
+figure—but Josiah Allen didn’t seem to notice us. His boots was off,
+and his stockin’s, and even in that first look I could see the agony
+that was a rendin’ them toes almost to burstin’. Oh, how sorry I felt
+for them toes! He was a restin’ in a most dejected and melancholy
+manner on his hand, as if it wuz more than sufferin’ that ailed him—he
+looked a sufferer from remorse, and regret, and also had the air of one
+whom mortification has stricken.
+
+He never seemed to sense a thing that wuz passin’ by him, till the
+driver pulled up his horses clost by him, and then he looked up and see
+us. And far be it from me to describe the way he looked in his lowly
+place on the grass. There wuz a good stun by him on which he might have
+sot, but no, he seemed to feel too mean to get up onto that stun;
+grass, lowly, unassumin’ grass, wuz what seemed to suit him best, and
+on it he sot with one of his feet stretched out in front of him.
+
+Oh! the pitifulness of that look he gin us, oh! the meakinness of it.
+And even, when his eye fell on the Deacon a settin’ by my side, oh! the
+wild gleam of hatred, and sullen anger that glowed within his orb, and
+revenge! He looked at the Deacon, and then at his boots, and I see the
+wild thought wuz a enterin’ his sole, to throw that boot at him. But I
+says out of that buggy the very first thing the words I have so oft
+spoke to him in hours of danger:
+
+“Joisiah, be calm!”
+
+His eye fell onto the peaceful grass agin, and he says: “Who hain’t a
+bein’ calm? I should say I wuz calm enough, if that is what you want.”
+
+But, oh, the sullenness of that love.
+
+Says Ezra, good man—he see right through it all in a minute, and so did
+Druzilla and the Deacon—says Ezra, “Get up on the seat with the driver,
+Josiah Allen, and drive back with us.”
+
+“No,” says Josiah, “I have no occasion, I am a settin’ here,” (looking
+round in perfect agony) “I am a settin’ here to admire the scenery.”
+
+Then I leaned over the side of the buggy, and says I, “Josiah Allen, do
+you get in and ride, it will kill you to walk back; put on your boots
+if you can, and ride, seein’ Ezra is so perlite as to ask you.”
+
+“Yes, I see he is very perlite, I see you have set amongst very perlite
+folks, Samantha,” says he, a glarin’ at Deacon Balch as if he would
+rend him from lim to lim, “But as I said, I have no occasion to ride, I
+took off my boots and stockin’s merely—merely to pass away time. You
+know at fashionable resorts,” says he, “it is sometimes hard for men to
+pass away time.”
+
+Says I in low, deep accents, “Do put on your stockin’s, and your boots,
+if you can get ’em on, which I doubt, but put your stockin’s on this
+minute, and get in, and ride.”
+
+“Yes,” says Ezra, “hurry up and get in, Josiah Allen, it must be
+dretful oncomfortabe a settin’ down there in the grass.”
+
+“Oh, no!” says Josiah, and he kinder whistled a few bars of no tune
+that wuz ever heard on, or ever will be heard on agin, so wild and
+meloncholy it wuz—“I sot down here kind o’ careless. I thought seein’ I
+hadn’t much on hand to do at this time o’ year, I thought I would like
+to look at my feet—we hain’t got a very big lookin’ glass in our room.”
+
+Oh, how incoherent and over-crazed he was a becomin’! Who ever heard of
+seein’ anybody’s feet in a lookin’ glass—of dependin’ on a lookin’
+glass for a sight on ’em? Oh, how I pitied that man! and I bent down
+and says to him in soothin’ axents: “Josiah Allen, to please your
+pardner you put on your stockin’s and get into this buggy. Take your
+boots in your hand, Josiah, I know you can’t get ’em on, you have
+walked too far for them corns. Corns that are trampled on, Josiah
+Allen, rise up and rends you, or me, or anybody else who owns ’em or
+tramples on ’em. It hain’t your fault, nobody blames you. Now get right
+in.”
+
+“Yes, do,” says the Deacon.
+
+Oh! the look that Josiah Allen gin him. I see the voyolence of that
+look, that rested first on the Deacon, and then on that, boot.
+
+And agin I says, “Josiah Allen.” And agin the thought of his own
+feerful acts, and my warnin’s came over him, and again mortification
+seemed to envelop him like a mantilly, the tabs goin’ down and coverin’
+his lims—and agin he didn’t throw that boot. Agin Deacon Balch escaped
+oninjured, saved by my voice, and Josiah’s inward conscience, inside of
+him.
+
+Wall, suffice it to say, that after a long parley, Josiah Allen wuz a
+settin’ on the high seat with the driver, a holdin’ his boots in his
+hand, for truly no power on earth could have placed them boots on
+Josiah Allen’s feet in the condition they then wuz.
+
+And so he rode on howewards, occasionally a lookin’ down on the Deacon
+with looks that I hope the recordin’ angel didn’t photograph, so dire,
+and so revengeful, and jealous, and—and everything, they wuz. And ever,
+after ketchin’ the look in my eye, the look in his’n would change to a
+heart-rendin’ one of remorse, and sorrow, and shame for what he had
+done. And the Deacon, wantin’ to be dretful perlite to him, would ask
+him questions, and I could see the side of Josiah’s face, all glarin’
+like a hyena at the sound of his voice, and then he would turn round
+and ossume a perlite genteel look as he answered him, and then he glare
+at me in a mad way every time I spoke to the Deacon, and then his mad
+look would change, even to one of shame and meakinness. And he in his
+stockin’ feet, and a pertendin’ that he didn’t put his boots on,
+because it wuzn’t wuth while to put ’em on agin so near bed-time. And
+he that sot out that afternoon a feelin’ so haughty, and lookin’ down
+on Ezra and Druzilla, and bein’ brung back by ’em, in that
+condition—and bein’ goured all the time by thoughts of the ignominious
+way his flirtin’ had ended, by her droppin’ him by the side of the
+road, like a weed she had trampled on too hardly. And a bein’ gourded
+deeper than all the rest of his agonies, by a senseless jealousy of
+Deacon Balch—and a thinkin’ for the first time in his life, what it
+would be, if her affections, that had been like a divine beacon to him
+all his life, if that flame should ever go out, or ever flicker in its
+earthly socket—oh, those thoughts that he had seemed to consider in his
+own mad race for fashion—oh, how that sass that had seemed sweet to him
+as a gander, oh how bitter and poisonous it wuz to partake of as a
+goose.
+
+Oh! the agony of that ride. We went middlin’ slow back—and before we
+got to Saratoga the English girl went past us, she had been to the
+Sulphur Springs and back agin. She didn’t pay no attention to us, for
+she wuz alayin’ on a plan in her own mind, for a moonlight pedestrian
+excursion on foot, that evenin’, out to the old battle ground of
+Saratoga.
+
+Josiah never looked to the right hand or the left, as she passed him,
+at many, many a knot an hour. And I felt that my pardner’s sufferin
+from that cause was over, and mine too, but oh! by what agony wuz it
+gained. For 3 days and 3 nights he never stood on any of his feet for a
+consecutive minute and a half, and I bathed him with anarky, and bathed
+his very soul with many a sweet moral lesson at the same time. And when
+at last Josiah Allen emerged from that chamber, he wuz a changed man in
+his demeanor and liniment, such is the power of love and womanly
+devotion.
+
+Sore feet
+
+He never looked at a woman durin’ our hull stay at Saratoga, save with
+the eye of a philosopher and a Methodist.
+
+Changed man
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+MISS G. WASHINGTON FLAMM.
+
+
+Miss G. Washington Flamm is a very fashionable woman. Thomas Jefferson
+carried her through a law-suit, and carried her stiddy and safe. (She
+wuz in the right on’t, there haint no doubt of that.)
+
+She had come to Jonesville for the summer to board, her husband bein’
+to home at the time in New York village, down on Wall street. He had to
+stay there, so she said. I don’t know why, but s’pose sunthin’ wuz the
+matter with the wall; anyway he couldn’t leave it. And she went round
+to different places a good deal for her health. There didn’t seem to be
+much health round where her husband wuz, so she had to go away after
+it, go a huntin’ for it, way over to Europe and back ag’in; and away
+off to California, and Colorado, and Long Branch, and Newport, and
+Saratoga, and into the Country. It made it real bad for Miss Flamm.
+
+Now I always found it healthier where Josiah wuz than in any other
+place. Difference in folks I s’pose. But they say there is sights and
+sights of husbands and wives jest like Miss Flamm. Can’t find a mite of
+health anywhere near where their families is, and have to poke off
+alone after it. It makes it real bad for ’em.
+
+But anyway she came to Jonesville for her health. And she hearn of
+Thomas Jefferson and employed him. It wuz money that fell onto her from
+her father, or that should have fell, that she wuz a tryin’ to git it
+to fall. And he won the case. It fell. She wuz rich as a Jew before she
+got this money, but she acted as tickled over it as if she wuzn’t worth
+a cent. (Human nater.) She paid Thomas J. well and she and Maggie and
+he got to be quite good friends.
+
+She is a well-meanin’, fat little creeter, what there is of her. I have
+seen folks smaller than she is, and then ag’in we seen them that wuzn’t
+so small. She is middlin’ good lookin’, not old by any means, but there
+is a deep wrinkle plowed right into her forward, and down each side of
+her mouth. They are plowed deep. And I have always wondered to myself
+who held the plow.
+
+It wuz’nt age, for she haint old enough. Wuz it Worry? That will do as
+good a day’s work a plowin’ as any creeter I ever see, and work as
+stiddy after it gits to doin’ day’s works in a female’s face.
+
+Waz it Dissatisfaction and Disappointment? They, too, will plow deep
+furrows and a sight of ’em. I don’t know what it wuz. Mebby it wuz her
+waist and sleeves. Her sleeves wuz so tight that they kep’ her hands
+lookin’ a kinder bloated and swelled all the time, and must have been
+dretful painful. And her waist—it wuz drawed in so at the bottom, that
+to tell the livin’ truth it wuzn’t much bigger’n a pipe’s tail. It beat
+all to see the size immegatly above and below, why it looked perfectly
+meraculous. She couldn’t get her hands up to her head to save her life;
+if she felt her head a tottlin’ off her shoulders she couldn’t have
+lifted her hands to have stiddied it, and, of course, she couldn’t get
+a long breath, or short ones with any comfort.
+
+Mebby that worried her, and then ag’in, mebby it wuz dogs. I know it
+would wear me out to take such stiddy care on one, day and night. I
+never seemed to feel no drawin’s to take care of animals, wash ’em, and
+bathe ’em, and exercise ’em, etc., etc., never havin’ been in the
+menagery line and Josiah always keepin’ a boy to take care of the
+animals when he wuzn’t well. Mebby it wuz dogs. Anyway she took
+splendid care of hern, jest wore herself out a doin’ for it stiddy day
+and night and bein’ trampled on, and barked at almost all the time she
+wuz a bringin’ on it up.
+
+Yes, she took perfectly wonderful care on’t, for a woman in her health.
+She never had been able to take any care of her children, bein’ _very_
+delicate. Never had been well enough to have any of ’em in the room
+with her nights, or in the day time either. They tired her so, and she
+wuz one of the wimmen who felt it wuz her _duty_ to preserve her health
+for her family’s sake. Though _when_ they wuz a goin’ to get the
+benefit of her health I don’t know.
+
+But howsumever she never could take a mite of care of her children,
+they wuz brought up on wet nurses, and bottles, etc., etc., and wuz
+rather weakly, some on ’em. The nurses, wet and dry ones both, used to
+gin ’em things to make ’em sleep, and kinder yank ’em round and scare
+’em nights to keep ’em in the bed, and neglect ’em a good deal, and
+keep ’em out in the brilin’ sun when they wanted to see their bows; and
+for the same reeson keepin’ em out in their little thin dresses in the
+cold, and pinch their little arms black and blue if they went to tell
+any of their tricks. And they learnt the older ones to be deceitful and
+sly and cowerdly. Learnt ’em to use jest the same slang phrases and low
+language that they did; tell the same lies, and so they wuz a spilin’
+’em in every way; spilin’ their brains with narcotics, their bodies by
+neglect and bad usage, and their minds and morals by evil examples.
+
+You see some nurses are dretful good. But Miss Flamm’s health bein’ so
+poor and her mind bein’ so took up with fashion, dogs, etc., that she
+couldn’t take the trouble to find out about their characters and they
+wuz dretful poor unbeknown to her. She had dretful bad luck with ’em,
+and the last one drinked, so I have been told.
+
+Yes, it made it dretful bad for Miss Flamm that her health was so poor,
+and her fashionable engagements so many and arduous that she didn’t
+have the time to take a little care of her children and the dog too.
+For you could see plain, by the care that she took of that dog, what a
+splendid hand she would be with the children, if she only had the time
+and health.
+
+Why, I don’t believe there wuz another dog in America, either the upper
+or lower continent, that had more lovin’, anxus, intelligent, devoted
+attention than that dog had, day and night, from Miss Flamm. She took 2
+dog papers, so they say, to get the latest information on the subject;
+she compared notes with other dog wimmen, I don’t say it in a runnin’
+way at all. I mean wimmen who have gin their hull minds to dog, havin’,
+some on ’em, renounced husbands, and mothers, and children for dog
+sake.
+
+You know there are sich wimmen, and Miss Flamm read up and studied with
+constant and absorbed attention all the latest things on dog. Their
+habits, their diet, their baths, their robes, their ribbons, and bells,
+and collars, their barks—nothin’ escaped her; she put the best things
+she learned into practice, and studied out new ones for herself. She
+said she had reduced the subject to a science, and she boasted proudly
+that her dog, the last one she had, went ahead of any dog in the
+country. And I don’t know but it did. I knew it had a good healthy
+bark. A loud strong bark that must have made it bad for her in the
+night. It always slept with her, for she didn’t dast to trust it out of
+her sight nights. It had had some spells in the night, kinder chills,
+or spuzzums like, and she didn’t dast to be away from it for a minute.
+
+She wouldn’t let the wet nurse tech it, for her youngest child, little
+G. Washington Flamm, Jr., wuzn’t very healthy, and Miss Flamm thought
+that mebby the dog might ketch his weakness if the nurse handled it
+right after she had been nursin’ the baby. And then she objected to the
+nurse, so I hearn, on account of her bein’ wet. She wanted to keep the
+dog dry. I hearn this; I don’t know as it wuz so. But I hearn these
+things long enough before I ever see her. And when I did see her I see
+that they didn’t tell me no lies about her devotion to the dog, for she
+jest worshiped it, that was plain to be seen.
+
+Wall, she has got a splendid place at Saratoga; a cottage she calls it.
+_I_, myself, should call it a house, for it is big as our house and
+Deacon Peddick’ses and Mr. Bobbett’ses all put together, and I don’t
+know but bigger.
+
+Wall, she invited Josiah and me to drive with her, and so her dog and
+she stopped for us. (I put the dog first, for truly she seemed to put
+him forward on every occasion in front of herself, and so did her
+high-toned relatives, who wuz with her.)
+
+Or I s’pose they wuz her relatives for they sot up straight, and wuz
+dretful dressed up, and acted awful big-feelin’ and never took no
+notice of Josiah and me, no more than if we hadn’t been there. But good
+land! I didn’t care for that. What if they didn’t pay any attention to
+us? But Josiah, on account of his tryin’ to be so fashionable, felt it
+deeply, and he sez to me while Miss Flamm wuz a bendin’ down over the
+dog, a talkin’ to him, for truly it wuz tired completely out a barkin’
+at Josiah, it had barked at him every single minute sense we had
+started, and she wuz a talkin’ earnest to it a tryin’ to soothe it, and
+Josiah whispered to me, “I’ll tell you, Samantha, why them fellers feel
+above me; it is because I haint dressed up in sech a dressy fashion.
+Let me once have on a suit like their’n, white legs and yellow
+trimmin’s, and big shinin’ buttons sot on in rows, and white gloves,
+and rosettes in my hat—why I could appear in jest as good company as
+they go in.”
+
+In the Carriage
+
+Sez I, “You are too old to be dressed up so gay, Josiah Allen. There is
+a time for all things. Gay buttons and rosettes look well with brown
+hair and sound teeth, but they ort to gently pass away when they do.
+Don’t talk any more about it, Josiah, for I tell you plain, you are too
+old to dress like them, they are young men.”
+
+“Wall,” he whispered, in deep resolve, “I will have a white rosette in
+my hat, Samantha. I will go so far, old or not old. What a sensation it
+will create in the Jonesville meetin’-house to see me come a walkin’
+proudly in, with a white rosette in my hat.”
+
+“You are goin’ to walk into meetin’ with your hat on, are you?” sez I
+coldly.
+
+“Oh, ketch a feller up. You know what I mean. And don’t you think I’ll
+make a show? Won’t it create a sensation in Jonesville?”
+
+Sez I: “Most probable it would. But you haint a goin’ to wear no bows
+on your hat at your age, not if I can break it up,” sez I.
+
+He looked almost black at me, and sez he, “Don’t go too fur, Samantha!
+I’ll own you’ve been a good wife and mother and all that, but there is
+a line that you must stop at. You _mustn’t_ go too fur. There is some
+things in which a man must be footloose, and that is in the matter of
+dress. I shall have a white rosette on my hat, and some big white
+buttons up and down the back of my overcoat! That is my aim, Samantha,
+and I shall reach it if I walk through goar.”
+
+He uttered them fearful words in a loud fierce whisper which made the
+dog bark at him for more’n ten minutes stiddy, at the top of its voice,
+and in quick short yelps.
+
+If it had been her young child that wuz yellin’ at a visitor in that
+way and ketchin’ holt of him, and tearin’ at his clothes, the child
+would have been consigned to banishment out of the room, and mebby
+punishment. But it wuzn’t her babe and so it remained, and it dug its
+feet down into the satin and laces and beads of Miss Flamm’s dress, and
+barked to that extent that we couldn’t hear ourselves think.
+
+And she called it “sweet little angel,” and told it it might “bark its
+little cunnin’ bark.” The idee of a angel barkin’; jest think on’t. And
+we endured it as best we could with shakin’ nerves and achin’ earpans.
+
+It wuz a curius time. The dog harrowin’ our nerve, and snappin’ at
+Josiah anon, if not oftener, and ketchin’ holt of him anywhere, and she
+a callin’ it a angel; and Josiah a lookin’ so voyalent at it, that it
+seemed almost as if that glance could stun it.
+
+It wuz a curius seen. But truly worse wuz to come, for Miss Flamm in an
+interval of silence, sez, “We will go first to the Gizer Spring, and
+then, afterwards, to the Moon.”
+
+Or, that is what I understand her to say. And though I kep’ still, I
+wuz determined to keep my eyes out, and if I see her goin’ into
+anything dangerus, I wuz goin’ to reject her overtures to take us. But
+thinkses I to myself, “We always said I believed we should travel to
+the stars some time, but I little thought it would be to-day, or that I
+should go in a buggy.”
+
+Josiah shared my feelin’s I could see, for he whispered to me, “Don’t
+le’s go, Samantha, it must be dangerus!”
+
+But I whispered back, “Le’s wait, Josiah, and see. We won’t do nothin’
+percipitate, but,” sez I, “this is a chance that we most probable never
+will have ag’in. Don’t le’s be hasty.” We talked these things in
+secret, while Miss Flamm wuz a bendin’ over, and conversin’ with the
+dog. For Josiah would ruther have died than not be s’pozed to be “Oh
+Fay,” as Maggie would say, in everything fashionable. And it has always
+been my way to wait and see, and count 10, or even 20, before speakin’.
+
+And then Miss Flamin sez sunthin’ about what beautiful fried potatoes
+you could get there in the moon, and you could always get them, any
+time you wanted ’em.
+
+And the very next time she went to kissin’ the dog so voyalently as not
+to notice us, my Josiah whispered to me and sez, “Did you have any idee
+that wuz what the old man wuz a doin’? I knew he wuz always a settin’
+up there in the moon, but it never passed my mind that he wuz a fryin’
+potatoes.”
+
+But I sez, “Keep still, Josiah. It is a deep subject, a great
+undertakin’, and it requires caution and deliberation.”
+
+But he sez,”I haint a goin’, Samantha! Nor I haint a goin’ to let you
+go. It is dangerus.”
+
+But I kinder nudged him, for she had the dog down on her lap, and was
+ready to resoom conversation. And about that time we got to the
+entrance of the spring, and one of her relatives got down and opened
+the carriage door.
+
+I wondered ag’in that she didn’t introduce us. But I didn’t care if she
+didn’t. I felt that I wuz jest as good as they wuz, if they wuz so
+haughty. But Josiah wantin’ to make himself agreeable to ’em (he
+hankers after gettin’ into high society), he took off his hat and bowed
+low to ’em, before he got out, and sez he, “I am proud to know you,
+sir,” and tried to shake hands with him. But the man rejected his
+overtoors and looked perfectly wooden, and oninterested. A big-feelin’,
+high-headed creeter. Josiah Allen is as good as he is any day. And I
+whispered to him and sez, “Don’t demean yourself by tryin’ to force
+your company onto them any more.”
+
+“Wall,” he whispered back, “I do love to move in high circles.”
+
+Sez I, “Then I shouldn’t think you would be so afraid of the
+undertakin’ ahead on us. If neighborin’ with the old man in the moon,
+and eatin’ supper with him, haint movin’ in high circles, then I don’t
+know what is.”
+
+“But I don’t want to go into anything dangerus,” sez he.
+
+But jest then Miss Flamm.spoke to me, and I moved forward by her side
+and into a middlin’ big room, and in the middle wuz a great sort of a
+well like, with the water a bubblin’ up into a clear crystal globe, and
+a sprayin’ up out of it, in a slender misty sparklin’ spray. It wuz a
+pretty sight. And we drinked a glass full of it a piece, and then we
+wandered out of the back door-way, and went down into the pretty;
+old-fashioned garden back of the house.
+
+Josiah and me and Miss Flamm went. The dog and the two relatives didn’t
+seem to want to go. The relatives sot up there straight as two sticks,
+one of ’em holdin’ the dog, and they didn’t even look round at us.
+
+“Felt too big to go with us,” sez Josiah, bitterly, as we went down the
+steps. “They won’t associate with me.”
+
+“Wall, I wouldn’t care if I wuz in your place, Josiah Allen,” sez I,
+“you are jest as good as they be, and I know it.”
+
+“You couldn’t make ’em think so, dumb ’em,” sez he.
+
+I liked the looks of it down there. It seems sometimes as if Happiness
+gets kinder homesick, in the big dusty fashionable places, and so goes
+back to the wild, green wood, and kinder wanders off, and loafs round,
+amongst the pine trees, and cool sparklin’ brooks and wild flowers and
+long shinin’ grasses and slate stuns, and etc., etc.
+
+I don’t believe she likes it half so well up in the big hotel gardens
+or Courtin’ yards, as she does down there. You see it seems as if
+Happiness would have to be more dressed up, up there, and girted down,
+and stiff actin’, and on her good behavior, and afraid of actin’ or
+lookin’ onfashionable. But down here by the side of the quiet little
+brook, amongst the cool, green grasses, fur away from diamonds, and
+satins, and big words, and dogs, and parasols, and so many, many that
+are a chasin’ of her and a follerin’ of her up, it seemed more as if
+she loved to get away from it all, and get where she could take her
+crown off, lay down her septer, onhook her corset, and put on a long
+loose gown, and lounge round and enjoy herself (metafor).
+
+We had a happy time there. We went over the little rustick bridges
+which would have been spilte in my eyes if they had been rounded off on
+the edges, or a mite of paint on ’em. Truly, I felt that I had seen
+enough of paint and gildin’ to last me through a long life, and it did
+seem such a treat to me to see a board ag’in, jest a plain rough
+bass-wood board, and some stuns a lyin’ in the road, and some deep tall
+grass that you had to sort a wade through.
+
+Miss Flamm seemed to enjoy it some down there, though she spoke of the
+dog, which she had left up with her relatives.
+
+“3 big-feelin’ ones together,” I whispered to Josiah.
+
+And he sez, “Yes, that dog is a big-feelin’ little cuss-tomer. And if I
+wuz a chipmunk he couldn’t bark at me no more than he duz.”
+
+And I looked severe at Josiah and sez I, “If you don’t jine your
+syllables closer together you will see trouble, Josiah Allen. You’ll
+find yourself swearin’ before you know it.”
+
+“Oh shaw, sez he, “customer haint a swearin’ word; ministers use it.
+I’ve hearn ’em many a time.”
+
+“Yes,” sez I, “but they don’t draw it out as you did, Josiah Allen.”
+
+“Oh! wall! Folks can’t always speak up pert and quick when they are off
+on pleasure exertions and have been barked at as long as I have been.
+But now I’ve got a minutes chance,” sez he, “let me tell you ag’in,
+don’t you make no arraingments to go to the Moon. It is dangerus, and I
+won’t go myself, nor let you go.”
+
+“_Let_,” sez I to myself. “That is rather of a gaulin’ word to me.
+Won’t _let_ me go.” But then I thought ag’in, and thought how love and
+tenderness wuz a dictatin’ the term, and I thought to myself, it has a
+good sound to me, I _like_ the word. I love to hear him say he won’t
+_let_ me go.
+
+And truly to me it looked hazerdus. But Miss Flamm seemed ready to go
+on, and onwillin’ly I followed on after her footsteps. But I looked
+’round, and said “Good-bye” in my heart, to the fine trees, and cleer,
+brown waters of the brook, the grass, and the wild flowers, and the
+sweet peace that wuz over all.
+
+“Good-bye,” sez I. “If I don’t see you ag’in, you’ll find some other
+lover that will appreciate you, though I am fur away.”
+
+They didn’t answer me back, none on ’em, but I felt that they
+understood me. The pines whispered sunthin’ to each other, and the
+brook put its moist lips up to the pebbly shore and whispered sunthin’
+to the grasses that bent down to hear it. I don’t know exactly what it
+wuz, but it wuz sunthin’ friendly I know, for I felt it speak right
+through the soft, summer sunshine into my heart. They couldn’t exactly
+tell what they felt towards me, and I couldn’t exactly tell what I felt
+towards them, yet we understood each other; curi’us, haint it?
+
+Wall, we got into the carriage ag’in, one of her relatives gettin’ down
+to open the door. They knew what good manners is; I’ll say that for
+’em. And Miss Flamm took her dog into her arms seemin’ly glad to get
+holt of him ag’in, and kissed it several times with a deep love and
+devotedness. She takes good care of that dog. And what makes it harder
+for her to handle him is, her dress is so tight, and her sleeves. I
+s’pose that is why she can’t breathe any better, and what makes her
+face and hands red, and kinder swelled up. She can’t get her hands to
+her head to save her, and if a assassin should strike her, she couldn’t
+raise her arm to ward off the blow if he killed her. I s’pose it worrys
+her.
+
+And she has to put her bunnet on jest as quick as she gets her
+petticoats on, for she can’t lift he arms to save her life after she
+gets her corsets on. She owned up to me once that it made her feel
+queer to be a walkin’ ’round her room with not much on only her bunnet
+all trimmed off with high feathers and artificial flowers.
+
+But she said she wuz willing to do anythin’ _necessary_, and she felt
+that she _must_ have her waist taper, no matter what stood in the way
+on’t. She loves the looks of a waist that tapers. That wuz all the
+fault she found with the Goddus of Liberty enlightenin’ the world in
+New York Harber. We got to talkin’ about it and she said, “If that
+Goddus only had corsets on, and sleeves that wuz skin tight, and her
+overskirt looped back over a bustle, it would be perfect!”
+
+But I told her I liked her looks as well ag’in as she wuz. “Why,” sez
+I, “How could she lift her torch above her head? And how could she ever
+enlighten the world, if she wuz so held down by her corsets and sleeves
+that she couldn’t wave her torch?”
+
+She see in a minute that it couldn’t be done. She owned up that she
+couldn’t enlighten the world in that condition, but as fur as looks
+went, it would be perfectly beautiful.
+
+But I don’t think so at all. But, as I say, Miss Flamm has a real hard
+time on’t, all bard down as she is, and takin’ all the care of that
+dog, day and night. She is jest devoted to it.
+
+Why jest before we started a little lame girl with a shabby dress, but
+a face angel sweet, came to the side of the carriage to sell some water
+lilies. Her face looked patient, and wistful, and she jest held out her
+flowers silently, and stood with her bare feet on the wet ground and
+her pretty eyes lookin’ pitifully into our’n. She wanted to sell ’em
+awfully, I could see. And I should have bought the hull of ’em
+immegitly, my feelin’s was sech, but onfortionably I had left my
+port-money in my other pocket, and Josiah said he had left his (mebby
+he had). But Miss Flamm would have bought ’em in a minute, I knew, the
+child’s face looked so mournful and appealin’; she would have bought
+’em, but she wuz so engrossed by the dog; she wuz a holdin’ him up in
+front of her a admirin’ and carressin’ of him, so’s she never ketched
+sight of the lame child.
+
+No body, not the best natured creeter in the world, can see through a
+dog when it is held clost up to the eye, closer than anything else.
+
+Wall, we drove down to what they called Vichy Spring and there on a
+pretty pond clost to the springhouse, we see a boat with a bycycle on
+it, and a boy a ridin’ it. The boat wuz rigged out to look like a swan
+with its wings a comin’ up each side of the boy. And down on the water,
+a sailin’ along closely and silently wuz another swan, a shadow swan, a
+follerin’ it right along. It wuz a fair seen.
+
+And Josiah sez to me, “He should ride that boat before he left
+Saratoga; he said that wuz a undertakin’ that a man might be proud to
+accomplish.”
+
+Sez I, “Josiah Allen, don’t you do anything of the kind.”
+
+“I _must_, Samantha,” sez he. And then he got all animated about fixin’
+up a boat like it at home. Sez he, “Don’t you think it would be
+splendid to have one on the canal jest beyond the orchard?” And sez he,
+“Mebby, bein’ on a farm, it would be more appropriate to have a big
+goose sculptured out on it; don’t you think so?”
+
+Sez I, “Yes, it would be fur more appropriate, and a goose a ridin’ on
+it. But,” sez I, “you will never go into that undertakin’ with my
+consent, Josiah Allen.”
+
+“Why,” sez he, “it would be a beautiful recreation; so uneek.”
+
+But at that minute Miss Flamm gin the order to turn round and start for
+the Moon, or that is how I understood her, and I whispered to Josiah
+and sez, “She means to go in the buggy, for the land’s sake!”
+
+And Josiah sez, “Wall, I haint a goin’ and you haint. I won’t let you
+go into anythin’ so dangerus. She will probably drive into a baloon
+before long, and go up in that way, but jest before she drives in, you
+and I will get out, Samantha, if we have to walk back.”
+
+“I never heard of anybody goin’ up in a baloon with two horses and a
+buggy,” sez I.
+
+“Wall, new things are a happenin’ all the time, Samantha. And I heard a
+feller a talkin’ about it yesterday. You know they are a havin’ the big
+political convention here, and he said, (he wuz a real cute chap too,)
+he said, ‘if the wind wasted in that convention could be utilized by
+pipes goin’ up out of the ruff of that buildin’ where it is held,’ he
+said, ‘it would take a man up to the moon.’ I heerd him say it. And
+now, who knows but they have got it all fixed. There wuz dretful windy
+speeches there this mornin’. I hearn ’em, and I’ll bet that is her
+idee, of bein’ the first one to try it; she is so fashionable. But I
+haint a goin’ up in no sech a way.”
+
+“No,” sez I. “Nor I nuther. It would be fur from my wishes to be
+carried up to the skies on the wind of a political convention.
+“Though,” sez I reasonably, “I haint a doubt that there wuz sights, and
+sights of it used there.”
+
+But jest at this minute Miss Flamm got through talkin’ with her
+relatives about the road, and settled down to caressin’ the dog ag’in,
+and Josiah hadn’t time to remark any further, only to say, “Watch me,
+Samantha, and when I say jump, jump.”
+
+And then we sot still but watchful. And Miss Flamm kissed the dog
+several times and pressed him to her heart that throbbed full of such a
+boundless love for him. And he lifted his head and snapped at a fly,
+and barked at my companion with a renewed energy, and showed his
+intellect and delightful qualities in sech remarkable ways, that filled
+Miss Flamm’s soul deep with a proud joy in him. And then he went to
+sleep a layin, down in her lap, a mashin’ down the delicate lace and
+embroidery and beads. He had been a eating the beads, I see him gnaw
+off more than two dozen of ’em, and I called her attention to it, but
+she said, “The dear little darlin’ had to have some such recreation.”
+And she let him go on with it, a mowin’ ’em down, as long as he seemed
+to have a appetite for ’em. And ag’in she called him “angel.” The idee
+of a angel a gnawin’ off beads and a yelpin’!
+
+And I asked her, and I couldn’t help it. How her baby wuz that
+afternoon, and if she ever took it out to drive?
+
+And she said she didn’t really know how it wuz this afternoon; it
+wuzn’t very well in the mornin’. The nurse had it out somewhere, she
+didn’t really know just where. And she said, no, she didn’t take it out
+with her at all—fur she didn’t feel equal to the care of it, in this
+hot weather.
+
+Miss Flamm haint very well I could see that. The care of that dog is
+jest a killin’ her, a carryin’ it round with her all the time daytimes,
+and a bein’ up with it so much nights. She said it had a dretful chill
+the night before, and she had to get up to warm blankets to put round
+it; “its nerves wuz so weak,” she said, “and it wuz so sensative that
+she could not trust it to a nurse.” She has a hard time of it; there
+haint a doubt of it.
+
+Wall, it wuz anon, or jest about anon, that Miss Flamm turned to me and
+sez, “Moon’s is one of the pleasantest places on the lake. I want you
+to see it; folks drive out there a sight from Saratoga.”
+
+And then I looked at Josiah, and Josiah looked at me, and peace and
+happiness settled down ag’in onto our hearts.
+
+Wall, we got there considerably before anon and we found that Moon’s
+insted of bein’ up in another planet wuz a big, long sort a low
+buildin’ settled right down onto this old earth, with a immense piazza
+stretchin’ along the side on’t.
+
+And Miss Flamm and Josiah and me disembarked from the carriage right
+onto the end of it. But the dog and her relatives stayed back in the
+buggy and Josiah spoke bitterly to me ag’in but low, “They think it
+would hurt ’em to associate with me a little, dumb ’m; but I am jest as
+good as they be any day of the week, if I haint dressed up so fancy.”
+
+“That’s so,” sez I, whisperin’ back to him, “and don’t let it worry you
+a mite. Don’t try to act like Haman,” sez I. “You are havin’ lots of
+the good things of this world, and are goin’ to have some fried
+potatoes. Don’t let them two Mordecais at the gate, poison all your
+happiness, or you may get come up with jest as Haman wuz.”
+
+“I’d love to hang’em,” sez he, “as high as Haman’s gallows would let
+’em hang.”
+
+“Why,” sez I, “they haint injured you in any way. They seem to eat like
+perfect gentlemen. A little too exclusive and aristocratic, mebby, but
+they haint done nothin’ to you.”
+
+“No,” sez he, “that is the stick on it, here we be, three men with a
+lot of wimmen. And they can’t associate with me as man with man, but
+set off by themselves too dumb proud to say a word to me, that is the
+dumb of it.”
+
+But at this very minute, before I could rebuke him for his feerful
+profanity, Miss Flamm motioned to us to come and take a seat round a
+little table, and consequently we sot.
+
+It was a long broad piazza with sights and sights of folks on it a
+settin’ round little tables like our’n, and all a lookin’ happy, and a
+laughin’, and a talkin’ and a drinkin’ different drinks, sech as
+lemonade, etc., and eatin’ fried potatoes and sech.
+
+The Piazza
+
+And out in the road by which we had come, wuz sights and sights of
+vehicles and conveyances of all kinds from big Tally Ho coaches with
+four horses on ’em, down to a little two wheeled buggy. The road wuz
+full on’em.
+
+In front of us, down at the bottom of a steep though beautiful hill,
+lay stretched out the clear blue waters of the lake. Smooth and
+tranquil it looked in the light of that pleasant afternoon, and fur
+off, over the shinin’ waves, lay the island. And white-sailed boats wuz
+a sailin’ slowly by, and the shadow of their white sails lay down in
+the water a floatin’ on by the side of the boats, lookin’ some like the
+wings of that white dove that used to watch over Lake Saratoga.
+
+And as I looked down on the peaceful seen, the feelin’s I had down in
+the wild wood, back of the Gizer Spring come back to me. The waves
+rolled in softly from fur off, fur off, bringin’ a greetin’ to me
+unbeknown to anybody, unbeknown to me. It come into my heart unbidden,
+unsought, from afur, afur.
+
+Where did it come from that news of lands more beautiful than any that
+lay round Mr. Moons’es, beautiful as it wuz.
+
+Echoes of music sweeter fur than wuz a soundin’ from the band down by
+the shore, music heard by some finer sense than heard that, heavenly
+sweet, heavenly sad, throbbin’ through the remoteness of that country,
+through the nearness of it, and fillin’ my eyes with tears. Not sad
+tears, not happy ones, but tears that come only to them that shet their
+eyes and behold the country, and love it. The waves softly lappin’ the
+shore brought a message to me; my soul hearn it. Who sent it? And
+where, and when, and why?
+
+Not a trace of these emotions could be read on my countenance as I sot
+there calmly a eatin’ fried potatoes. And they _did_ go beyond anything
+I ever see in the line of potatoes, and I thought I could fry potatoes
+with any one: Yes, such wuz my feelin’s when I sot out for Mr.
+Moons’es. But I went back a thinkin’ that potatoes had never been fried
+by me, sech is the power of a grand achievment over a inferior one, and
+so easy is the sails taken down out of the swellin’ barge of egotism.
+
+No, them potatoes you could carry in your pocket for weeks right by the
+side of the finest lace, and the lace would be improved by the purity
+of ’em. Fried potatoes in that condition, you could eat ’em with the
+lightest silk gloves one and the tips of the fingers would be improved
+by ’em; _fried_ potatoes, jest think on’t!
+
+Wall, we had some lemonade too, and if you’ll believe it,—I don’t
+s’pose you will but it is the truth,—there wuz straws in them glasses
+too. But you may as well believe it for I tell the truth at all times,
+and if I wuz a goin’ to lie, I wouldn’t lie about lemons. And then I’ve
+always noticed it, that if things git to happenin’ to you, lots of
+things jest like it will happen. That made twice in one week or so,
+that I had found straws in my tumbler. But then I have had company
+three days a runnin’, rainy days too sometimes. It haint nothin’ to
+wonder at too much. Any way it is the truth.
+
+Wall, we drinked our lemonade, I a quietly takin’ out the straws and
+droppin’ ’em on the floor at my side in a quiet ladylike manner, and
+Josiah, a bein’ wunk at by me, doin’ the same thing.
+
+And anon, our carriage drove up to the end of the piazza agin and we
+sot sail homewards. And the dog barked at Josiah almost every step of
+the way back, and when we got to our boardin’ place, Miss Flamm shook
+hands with us both, and her relatives never took a mite of notice of
+us, further than to jump down and open the carriage door for us as we
+got out. (They are genteel in their manners, and Josiah had to admit
+that they wuz, much as his feelin’s wuz hurt by their haughtiness
+towards him.)
+
+And then the dog, and Miss Flamm and Miss Flamm’s relatives drove off.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+VISIT TO THE INDIAN ENCAMPMENT.
+
+
+It wuz a fair sunshiny mornin’ (and it duz seem to me that the fairness
+of a Saratoga mornin’ seems fairer, and the sunshine more sunshiny than
+it duz anywhere else), that Josiah and Ardelia and me sot sail for the
+Indian Encampment, which wuz encamped on a little rise of ground to the
+eastward of where we wuz.
+
+Ardelia wuz to come to our boardin’ place at halfpast 9 A. M.,
+forenoon, and we wuz to set out together from there. And punctual to
+the very half minute I wuz down on the piazza, with my mantilly hung
+over my arm and my umberel in my left hand. Josiah Allen was on the
+right side on me. And as Ardelia hadn’t come yet we sot down in a
+middlin’ quiet part of the piazza, and waited for her. And as we sot
+there, I sez to Josiah, as I looked out on the fair pleasant mornin’
+and the fair pleasant faces environin’ of us round, sez I, “Saratoga is
+a good-natured place, haint it, Josiah?”
+
+And he said (I mistrust his corns ached worse than common, or
+sunthin’), he said, he didn’t see as it wuz any better-natured than
+Jonesville or Loontown.
+
+And I sez, “Yes it is, Josiah Allen.” Sez I, folks are happier here and
+more generous, the rich ones seem inclined to help them that need help
+to a little comfort and happiness. Jest as I have always said, Josiah
+Allen. When folks are happy, they are more inclined to do good.”
+
+“Oh shaw!” sez Josiah. “That never made no difference with me.”
+
+“What didn’t?” sez I.
+
+“I’m always good,” sez he, and he snapped out the words real snappish,
+and loud.
+
+And I sez mildly, “Wall, you needn’t bring the ruff down to prove your
+goodness.”
+
+And he went on: “I don’t see as they are so pesky good here; I haint
+seen nothin’ of it.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “when I look over Yaddo, and Hilton Park, it makes me
+reconciled, Josiah, to have men get rich; it makes me willin’, Josiah.”
+
+And he sez (cross), He guessed men would get rich whether I wuz willin’
+or not; he guessed they wouldn’t ask me.
+
+“Wall, you needn’t snap my head off, Josiah Allen,” sez I, “because I
+love to see folks use their wealth to make pleasant places for poor
+folks to wander round in, and forget their own narrow rocky roads for a
+spell. It is a noble thing to do, Josiah Allen; they might have built
+high walls round ’em if they had been a mind to, and locked the gates
+and shet out all the poor and tired-out ones, But they didn’t, and I am
+highly tickled at the thought on’t, Josiah Allen.”
+
+“Wall, I don’t shet up our sugar lot, do I? and I have never heerd you
+say one word a praisin’ me up for that.”
+
+“That is far different, Josiah Allen,” sez I, “there is nothin’ there
+that can git hurt, only stumps. And you have never laid out a cent of
+money on it. And they have spent thousands and thousands of dollars;
+and the poorest little child in Saratoga, if it has beauty-lovin’ eyes,
+can go in and enjoy these places jest as much as the owners can. And it
+is a sweet thought to me, Josiah Allen.”
+
+“Oh wall,” sez he, “you have probable said enough about it.”
+
+Now I never care for the last word, some wimmen do, but I never do. But
+still I wuzn’t goih’ to be shet right eff from talkin’ about these
+places, and I intimated as much to him, and he said, “Dumb it all! I
+could talk about ’em all day, if I wanted to, and about Demorist’s
+Woods too.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “that is another place, Josiah Allen, that is a likely
+well-meanin’ spot. Middlin’ curius to look at,” sez I, reesonably. “It
+makes one’s head feel sort a strange to see them criss-cross, curius
+poles, and floors up in trees, and ladders, and teterin’ boards, and
+springs, etc., etc., etc. But it is a well-meanin’ spot, Josiah Allen.
+And it highly tickled me to think that the little fresh air children
+wuz brung up there by the owner of the woods and the poor little
+creeters, out of their dingy dirty homes, and filthy air, wandered
+round for one happy day in the green woods, in the fresh air and
+sunshine. That wuz a likely thing to do, Josiah Allen, and it raises a
+man more in my estimation when he’s doin’ sech things as that, than to
+set up in a political high chair, and have a lot of dirty hands
+clapped, and beery breaths a cheerin’ him on up the political arena.”
+
+“Oh wall,” sez Josiah, “the doin’s in them woods is enough to make
+anybody a dumb lunatick. The crazyest lookin’ lot of stuff I ever set
+eyes on.”
+
+“Wall, anyway,” sez I, “it is a _good_ crazy, if it is, and a
+well-meanin’ one.”
+
+“Oh, how cross Josiah Allen did look as he heered me say these words.
+That man can’t bear to hear me say one word a praisin’ up another man,
+and it grows on him.
+
+But good land! I am a goin’ to speak out my mind as long as my breath
+is spared. And I said quite a number of words more about the deep
+enjoyment it gin’ me to see these broad, pleasure grounds free for all,
+rich and poor, bond and free, hombly and handsome, etc., etc.
+
+And I spoke about the charitable houses, St. Christiana’s home, and the
+Home for Old Female Wimmen, and mentioned the fact in warm tones of how
+a good, noble-hearted woman had started that charity in the first on’t.
+
+And Josiah, while I wuz talkin’ about these wimmen, became meak as a
+lamb. They seemed to quiet him. He looked real mollyfied by the time
+Ardelia got there, which wuz anon. And then we sot sail for the
+Encampment.
+
+The Encampment is encamped on one end of a big, square, wild-lookin’
+lot right back of one of the biggest tarvens in Saratoga. It is jest as
+wild lookin’ and appeerin’ a field as there is in the outskirts of
+Loontown or Jonesville. Why Uncle Grant Hozzleton’s stunny pasture
+don’t look no more sort a broke up and rural than that duz. I wondered
+some why they had it there, and then I thought mebby they kep’ it to
+remember Nater by, old Nater herself, that runs a pretty small chance
+to be thought on in sech a place as this.
+
+You know there is so much orniment and gildin’ and art in the landscape
+and folks, that mebby they might forget the great mother of us all,
+that is, right in the thickest of the crowd they might, but they have
+only to take these few steps and they will see Ma Nater with her
+every-day dress on, not fixed up a mite. And I s’pose she looks good to
+’em.
+
+I myself think that Mother Nater might smooth herself out a little
+there with no hurt to herself or her children. I don’t believe in Mas
+goin’ round with their dresses onhooked, and slip-shod, and their hair
+all stragglin’ out of their combs. (I say this in metafor. I don’t
+spose Ma Nater ever wore a back comb or had hooks and eyes on her gown;
+I say it for oritory, and would wish to be took in a oritorius way.
+
+And I don’t say right out, that the reeson I have named is the one why
+they keep that place a lookin’ so like furey, I said, _mebby_. But I
+will say this, that it is a wild-lookin’ spot, and hombly.
+
+Wall, on the upper end on’t, standin’ up on the top of a sort of a
+hill, the Indian Encampment is encamped. There is a hull row of little
+stores, and there is swings, and public diversions of different kinds,
+krokay grounds, etc., etc., etc.
+
+Wall, Ardelia stopped at one of these stores kep’ by a Injun, not a
+West, but a East one, and began to price some wooden bracelets, and try
+’em on, and Josiah and me wandered on.
+
+And anon, we came to a tent with some good verses of Scripter on it;
+good solid Bible it wuz; and so I see it wuz a good creeter in there
+anyway. And I asked a bystander a standin’ by, Who wuz in there, and
+Why, and When?
+
+And he said it wuz a fortune-teller who would look in the pamm of my
+hand, and tell me all my fortune that wuz a passin’ by. And I said I
+guessed I would go in, for I would love to know how the children wuz
+that mornin’ and whether the baby had got over her cold. I hadn’t heerd
+from ’em in over two days.
+
+Josiah kinder hung ’round outside though he wuz willin’ to have me go
+in. He jest worships the children and the baby. And he sees the texts
+from Job on it, with his own eyes.
+
+So I bid him a affectionate farewell, and we see the woman a lookin’
+out of the tent and witnessin’ on’t. But I didn’t care. If a pair of
+companions and a pair of grandparents can’t act affectionate, who can?
+And the world and the Social Science meetin’ might try in vain to bring
+up any reeson why they shouldn’t.
+
+So I went in, with my mind all took up with the grandchildern. But the
+first words she sez to me wuz, as she looked close at the pamm of my
+hand, “Keep up good spirits, Mom; you will get him in spite of all
+opposition.”
+
+“Get who?” sez I, “And what?”
+
+“A man you want to marry. A small baldheaded man, a amiable-lookin’,
+slender man. His heart is sot on you. And all the efferts of the
+light-complected woman in the blue hat will be in vain to break it up.
+Keep up good courage, you will marry him in spite of all,” sez she,
+porin’ over my pamm and studyin’ it as if it wuz a jography.
+
+The Fortuneteller
+
+“For the land’s sake!” sez I, bein’ fairly stunted with the idees she
+promulgated.
+
+“Yes, you will marry him, and be happy. But you have had a sickness in
+the past and your line of happiness has been broken once or twice.”
+
+Sez I, “I should think as much; let a woman live with a man, the best
+man in the world for 20 years, and if her line of happiness haint broke
+more than once or twice, why it speaks well for the line, that is all.
+It is a good, strong line.”
+
+“Then you have been married?” says she.
+
+“Yes, Mom,” sez I.
+
+“Oh, I see, down in the corner of your hand is a coffin, you are a
+widow, you have seen trouble. But you will be happy. The mild, bald
+gentleman will make you happy. He will lead you to the altar in spite
+of the light-complected woman with the blue bat on.”
+
+Ardelia Tutt had on a blue hat, the idee! But I let her go on. Thinkses
+I, “I have paid my money and now it stands me in hand to get the worth
+on’t.” So she comferted me up with the hope of gettin’ my Josiah for
+quite a spell.
+
+Gettin’ my pardner! Gettin’ the father of my childern, and the
+grandparent of my grandchildren! Jest think on’t, will you?
+
+But then she branched off and told me things that wuz truly wonderful.
+Where and how she got ’em wuz and is a mistery to me. True things, and
+strange.
+
+Why it seemed same as if them tall pines, that wuz a whisperin’
+together over the Encampment wuz a peerin’ over into my past, and a
+whisperin’ it down to her. Or, in some way or other, the truth wuz a
+bein’ filtered down to her comprehension through some avenue beyond our
+sense or sight.
+
+It is a curious thing, so I think, and so Josiah thinks. We talked it
+over after I came out, and we wuz a wanderin’ on about the Encampment.
+I told him some of the wonderful things she had told me and he didn’t
+believe it. “For,” sez he, “I’ll be hanged if I can understand and I
+won’t believe anything that I can’t understand!”
+
+And I pointed with the top of my umberel at a weed growin’ by the side
+of the road, and sez I, “When you tell me jest how that weed draws out
+of the back ground jest the ingredients she needs to make her blue
+foretop, and her green gown, then I’ll tell you all about this secret
+that Nater holds back from us a spell, but will reveel to us when the
+time comes.”
+
+“Oh shaw!” sez Josiah, “I guess I know all about a jimson weed. Why
+they _grow;_ that is all there is about them. They grow, dumb ’em. I
+guess if you’d broke your back as many times as I have a pullin’ ’em
+up, yon would know all about’ em. Dumb their dumb picters,” sez he, a
+scowlin’ at ’em.
+
+It wuz the same kind of weed that growed in our onion beds. I
+re_cog_nized it. Them and white daisies, our garden wuz overrun by ’em
+both.
+
+But I sez, “Can you tell how the little seed of this weed goes down
+into the earth and _selects_ jest what she wants out of the great
+storehouse below? She never comes out in a pink head-dress or a yellow
+gown. No, she always selects what will make the blue. It shows that it
+has life, intelligence, or else it couldn’t think, way down under the
+ground, and grope in the dark, but always gropin’ jest right, always a
+thinkin’ the right thing, never, never in the hundreds and thousands of
+years makin’ a mistake. Why, you couldn’t do it, Josiah Allen, nor I
+couldn’t.
+
+“And we set and see these silent mysteries a goin’ on right at our
+door-step day by day, and year by year, and think nothin’ of it,
+because it is so common. But if anything else, some new law, some new
+wonder we don’t understand comes in our way, we are ready to reject it
+and say it is a lie. But you know, Josiah Allen,” sez I, jest ready to
+go on eloquent -
+
+But I wuz interrupted jest here by my companion hollerin’ up in a loud
+voice to a boy, “Here! you stop that, you young scamp! Don’t you let me
+see you a doin’ that agin!”
+
+Sez I, “What is it, Josiah Allen?”
+
+“Why look at them young imps, a throwin’ sticks at that feeble old
+woman, over there.”
+
+I looked, and my own heart wuz rousted up with indignation. I stood
+where I couldn’t see her face, but I see she wuz old, feeble, and bent,
+a withered poor old creeter, and they had marked up over her, her name,
+Aunt Sally.
+
+I too wuz burnin’ indignant to see a lot of young creeters a throwin’
+sticks at her, and I cried out loud, “Do you let Sarah be.”
+
+They turned round and laughed in our faces, and I went on: “I’d be
+ashamed of myself if I wuz in your places to be a throwin’ sticks at
+that feeble old woman. Why don’t you spend your strengths a tryin’ to
+do sunthin’ for her? Git her a home, and sunthin’ to eat, and a better
+dress. Before I’d do what you are a doin’ now, I’d growvel in the dust.
+Why, if you wuz my boys I’d give you as good a spankin’ as you ever
+had.”
+
+But they jest laughed at us, the impudent Greeters. And one of the boys
+at that minute took up a stick and threw it, and hit Sarah right on her
+poor old head.
+
+Sez Josiah, “Don’t you hit Sarah agin.”
+
+Aunt Sally
+
+Sez the boys, “We will,” and two of ’em hit her at one time. And one of
+’em knocked the pipe right out of her mouth. She wuz a smokin’, poor
+old creeter. I s’pose that wuz all the comfort she took. But did them
+little imps care? They knocked her as if they hated the sight of her.
+And my Josiah (I wuz proud of that man) jest advanced onto ’em, and
+took ’em one in each hand, and gin ’em sech a shakin’, that I most
+expected to see their bones drop out, and sez he between each shake,
+“Will you let Sarah alone now?”
+
+I wuz proud of my Josiah, but fearful of the effect of so much
+voyalence onto his constitution, and also onto the boys’ frames. And I
+advanced onto the seen of carnage and besought him to be calm. Sez he,
+“I won’t be calm!” sez he, “I haint the man, Samantha, to stand by and
+see one of your sect throwed at, as I have seen Sarah throwed at,
+without avengin’ of it.”
+
+And agin he shook them boys with a vehemence. The pennies and marbles
+in their pockets rattled and their bones seemed ready to part asunder.
+I wuz proud of that noble man, my pardner. But still I knew that if
+their bones was shattered my pardner would be avenged upon by incensed
+parents. And I sez, “I’d let ’em go now, Josiah. I don’t believe
+they’ll ever harm Sarah agin.” Sez I, “Boys, you won’t, will you ever
+strike a poor feeble old woman agin?.” Sez I, “promise me, boys, not to
+hurt Sarah.”
+
+Josiah’s Anger
+
+I don’t know what the effect of my words would have been, but a man
+came up just then and explained to me, that Aunt Sally wuz a image that
+they throwed at for one cent apiece to see if they could break her
+pipe.
+
+I see how it wuz, and cooled right down, and so did Josiah. And he gin
+the boys five cents apiece, and quiet rained down on the Encampment.
+
+But I sez to the man, “I don’t like the idee of havin’ my sect throwed
+at from day to day, and week to week.” Sez I, “Why didn’t you have a
+man fixed up to throw at, why didn’t you have a Uncle Sam?” Sez I, “I
+don’t over and above like it; it seems to be a sort of a slight onto my
+sect.”
+
+Sez the man winkin’ kind a sly at Josiah, “It won’t do to make fun of
+men, men have the power in their hands and would resent it mebby. Uncle
+Sam can’t be used jest like Aunt Sally.”
+
+Sez I, “That haint the right spirit. There haint nothin’ over and above
+noble in that, and manly.”
+
+I wuz kinder rousted up about it, and so wuz Josiah. And that is I
+s’pose the reasun of his bein’ so voyalent, at the next place of
+recreation we halted at Josiah see the picture of the mermaid; that
+beautiful female, a, settin’ on the rock and combin’ her long golden
+hair. And he proposed that we should go in and see it.
+
+Sez I, “It costs ten cents apiece, Josiah Allen. Think of the cost
+before it is too late.” Sez I, “Your expenditure of money today has
+been unusial.” Sez I, “The sum of ten cents has jest been raised by you
+for noble principles, and I honer you for it. But still the money has
+gone.” Sez I, “Do you feel able to incur the entire expense?”
+
+Sez he, “All my life, Samantha, I have jest hankered after seein’ a
+mermaid. Them beautiful creeters, a settin’ and combin’ their long
+golden tresses. I feel that I must see it. I fairly long to see one of
+them beautiful, lovely bein’s before I die.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “if you feel like that, Josiah Allen, it is not fur from
+me to balk you in your search for beauty. I too admire loveliness,
+Josiah Allen, and seek after it.” And sez I, “I will faithfully follow
+at your side, and together we will bask in the rays of beauty, together
+will we be lifted up and inspired by the immortal spirit of
+loveliness.”
+
+So payin’ our 30 cents we advanced up the steps, I expectin’ soon to be
+made happy, and Josiah held up by the expectation of soon havin’ his
+eyes blest by that vision of enchantin’ beauty, he had so long dremp
+of.
+
+He advanced onto the pen first and before I even glanced down into the
+deep where as I s’posed she set on a rock a combin’ out her long golden
+hair, a singin’ her lurin’ and enchanted song, to distant mariners she
+had known, and to the one who wuz a showin’ of her off, before I had
+time to even glance at her, the maid, I was dumbfounded and stood
+aghast, at the mighty change that came over my pardner’s linement.
+
+He towered up in grandeur and in wrath before me. He seemed almost like
+a offended male fowl when ravenin’ hawks are angerin’ of it beyond its
+strength to endure. I don’t like that metafor; I don’t love to compare
+my pardner to any fowl, wild or tame; but my frenzied haste to describe
+the fearful seen must be my excuse, and also my agitation in recallin’
+of it.
+
+He towered up, he fluttered so to speak majestically, and he says in
+loud wild axents that must have struck terror to the soul of that
+mariner, “Where is the hair-comb?”
+
+And then he shook his fist in the face of that mariner, and cries out
+once agin, “Where is them long golden tresses? Bring ’em on this
+instant! Fetch on that hair-comb, in a minute’s time, or I’ll prosecute
+you, and sue you, and take the law to you - !”
+
+The mariner quailed before him and sez I, “My dear pardner, be calm! Be
+calm!”
+
+“I won’t be calm!”
+
+Sez I mildly, but firmly, “You must, Josiah Allen; you must! or you
+will break open your own chest. You must be calm.”
+
+“And I tell you I won’t be calm. And I tell you,” says he, a turnin’ to
+that destracted mariner agin “I tell you to bring on that comb and that
+long hair, this instant. Do you s’pose I’m goin’ to pay out my money to
+see that rack-a-bone that I wouldn’t have a layin’ out in my barn-yard
+for fear of scerin’ the dumb scere-crows out in the lot. Do you s’pose
+I’m goin’ to pay out my money for seein’ that dried-up mummy of the
+hombliest thing ever made on earth, the dumbdest, hombliest; with 2 or
+3 horse hairs pasted onto its yellow old shell! Do you spose I’m goin’
+to be cheated by seein’ that, into thinkin’ it is a beautiful creeter a
+playin’ and combin’ her hair? Bring on that beautiful creeter a combin’
+out her long, golden hair this instant, and bring out the comb and I’ll
+give you five minutes to do it in.”
+
+He wuz hoorse with emotion, and he wuz pale round his lips as anything
+and leis eyes under his forward looked glassy. I wuz fearful of the
+result.
+
+Thinkses I, I will look and see what has wrecked my pardner’s happiness
+and almost reasen. I looked in and I see plain that his agitation was
+nothin’ to be wondered at. It did truly seem to be the hombliest,
+frightfulest lookin’ little thing that wuz ever made by a benignant
+Providence or a taxy-dermis. I couldn’t tell which made it. I see it
+all, but I see also, so firm, sot is my reasun onto its high throne on
+my heart, I see that to preserve my pardner’s sanity, I must control my
+reasun at the sight that had tottered my pardner’s.
+
+I turned to him, and tried to calm the seethin’ waters, but he loudly
+called for the comb, and for the tresses, and the lookin’ glass. And,
+askin’ in a wild’ sarcastic way where the song wuz that she sung to
+mariners? And hollerin’ for him to bring on that rock at that minute,
+and them mariners, and ordered him to set her to singin’.
+
+The idee! of that little skeletin with her skinny lips drawed back from
+her shinin’ fish teeth, a singin’. The idee on’t!
+
+But truly, he wuz destracted and knew not what he did. The mariner in
+charge looked destracted. And the bystanders a standin’ by wuz amazed,
+and horrowfied by the spectacle of his actin’ and behavin’. And I knew
+not how I should termonate the seen, and withdraw him away from where
+he wuz.
+
+But in my destraction and agony of sole, I bethought me of one meens of
+quietin’ him and as it were terrifyin’ him into silence and be the
+meens of gettin’ on him to leave the seen. I begoned to Ardelia to come
+forward and I sez in a whisper to her, “Take out your pencil and a
+piece of paper and stand up in front of him and go to writin’ some of
+your poetry,”
+
+And then I sez agin in tender agents, “Be calm, Josiah.”
+
+“And I tell you that I won’t be calm! And I tell you,” a shakin’ his
+fist at that pale mariner, “I tell you to bring out—“
+
+At that very minute he turned his eyes onto Ardelia, who stood with a
+kind of a fur-away look in her eyes in front of him with the paper in
+her hand, and sez he to me, “What is she doin’?”
+
+“She is composin’ some poetry onto you, Josiah Allen,” sez I, in
+tremblin’ axents; for I felt that if that skeme failed, I wuz undone,
+for I knew I had no ingredients there to get him a extra good meal. No,
+I felt that my tried and true weepon wuz fur away, and this wuz my last
+hope.
+
+But as I thought these thoughts with almost a heatlightnin’ rapidety, I
+see a change in his liniment. It did not look so thick and dark; it
+began to look more natural and clear.
+
+And sez he in the same old way I have heerd him say it so many times,
+“Dumb it all! What duz she want to write poetry on me for? It is time
+to go home.” And so sayin’, he almost tore us from the seen.
+
+I gin Ardelia that night 2 yards of lute-string ribbon, a light pink,
+and didn’t begrech it. But I have never dast, not in his most placid
+and serene moments - I have never dast, to say the word “Mermaid’ to
+him.
+
+Truly there is something that the boldest female pardner dassent do.
+Mermaids is one of the things I don’ dast to bring up. No! no, fur be
+it from me to say “Mermaid” to Josiah Allen.
+
+On the Porch
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+A DRIVE TO SARATOGA LAKE.
+
+
+Josiah and me took a short drive this afternoon, he hirin’ a buggy for
+the occasion. He called it “goin’ in his own conveniance,” and I didn’t
+say nothin’ aginst his callin’ it so. I didn’t break it up for this
+reasun, thinkses I it is a conveniance for us to ride in it, for us 2
+tried and true souls to get off for a minute by ourselves.
+
+Wall, Josiah wuz dretful good behaved this afternoon. He helped me in a
+good deal politer than usual and tucked the bright lap-robe almost
+tenderly round my form.
+
+Men do have sech spells. They are dretful good actin’ at times. Why
+they act better and more subdueder and mellerer at sometimes than at
+others, is a deep subject which we mortals cannot as yet fully
+understand. Also visey versey, their cross, up headeder times, over
+bearin’ and actin’. It is a deep subject and one freighted with a great
+deal of freight.
+
+But Josiah’s goodness on this afternoon almost reached the Scripteral
+and he sez, when we first sot out, and I see that the horse’s head wuz
+turned towards the Lake. Sez he, “I guess we’ll go to the Lake, but
+where do you want to go, Samantha? I will go anywhere you want to go.”
+
+And he still drove almost recklessly on lakewards. And sez he, “We had
+better go straight on, but say the word, and you can go jest where you
+want to.” And he urged the horse on to still greater speed. And he sez
+agin, “Do you want to go any particular place, Samantha?”
+
+“Yes,” sez I, “I had jest as leves go there as not.”
+
+“Wall, I knew there would be where you would want to go.” And he drove
+on at a good jog. But no better jog than we had been a goin’ on.
+
+Wall the weather wuz delightful. It wuz soft and balmy. And my feelin’s
+towered my pardner (owin’ to his linement) wuz soft and balmy as the
+air. And so we moved onwards, past the home of one who wuz true to his
+country, when all round him wuz false, who governed his state wisely
+and well, held the lines firm, when she wuz balky, and would have been
+glad to take the lines in her teeth and run away onto ruin; past the
+big grand house of him who carried a piece of our American justice way
+off into Egypt and carried it firm and square too right there in the
+dark. I s’pose it is dark. I have always hearn about its bein’ as dark
+as Egypt. Wall, anyway he is a good lookin’ man. They both on ’em are
+and Josiah admitted it - after some words.
+
+Wall anon, or perhaps a little after, we came to where we could see the
+face of Beautiful Saratoga Lake, layin’ a smilin’ up into the skies. A
+little white cloud wuz a restin’ up on the top of the tree-covered
+mountain that riz up on one side of the lake, and I felt that it might
+be the shadow form of the sacred dove Saderrosseros a broodin’ down
+over the waters she loved.
+
+That she loved still, though another race wuz a bathin’ their weary
+forwards in the tide. And I wondered as I looked down on it, whether
+the great heart of the water wuz constant; if it ever heaved up into
+deep sithes a thinkin’ of the one who had passed away, of them who once
+rested lightly on her bosem, bathed their dark forwards and read the
+meanin’ of the heavens, in the moon and stars reflected there.
+
+I don’t know as she remembered ’em, and Josiah don’t. But I know as we
+stood there, a lookin’ down on her, the lake seemed to give a sort of a
+sithe and a shiver kind a run over her, not a cold shiver exactly, but
+a sort of a shinin’, glorified shiver. I see it a comin’ from way out
+on the lake and it swept and sort a shivered on clean to the shore and
+melted away there at our feet. Mebby it wuz a sort o’ sithe, and mebby
+agin it wuzn’t.
+
+I guess it felt that it wuz all right, that a fairer race had brought
+fairer customs and habits of thoughts, and the change wuz not a bad
+one. I guess she looked forward to the time when a still grander race
+should look down into her shinin’ face, a race of free men, and free
+wimmen; sons and daughters of God, who should hold their birthright so
+grandly and nobly that they will look back upon the people of to-day,
+as we look back upon the dark sons and daughters of the forest, in pity
+and dolor.
+
+I guess she thought it wuz all right. Any way she acted as if she did.
+She looked real sort o’ serene and calm as we left her, and sort o’
+prophetic too, and glowin’.
+
+Wall, we went by a long first rate lookin’ sort of a tarven, I guess.
+It wuz a kind of a dark red color, and dretfully flowered off in wood -
+red wood. And there we see standin’ near the house, a great big round
+sort of a buildin’, and my Josiah sez,
+
+“There! that is a buildin’ I like the looks on. That is a barn I like;
+built perfectly round. That is sunthin’ uneek. I’ll have a barn like
+that if I live. I fairly love that barn.” And he stopped the horse stun
+still to look at it.
+
+And I sez in sort o’ cool tones, not entirely cold, but coolish: “What
+under the sun do you want with a round barn? And you don’t need another
+one.”
+
+“Wall, I don’t exactly need it, Samantha, but it would be a comfert to
+me to own one. I should dearly love a round barn.”
+
+And he went on pensively, - “I wonder how much it would cost. I
+wouldn’t have it quite so big as this is. I’d have it for a horse barn,
+Samantha. It would look so fashionable, and genteel. Think what it
+would be, Samantha, to keep our old mair in a round barn, why the mair
+would renew her age.”
+
+A Round Barn
+
+“She wouldn’t pay no attention to it,” sez I. “She knows too much.” And
+I added in cooler, more dignifieder tones, but dretful meanin’ ones,
+“The old mair, Josiah Allen, don’t run after every new fancy she hears
+on. She don’t try to be fashionable, and she haint high-headed,
+except,” sez I, reasenably, “when you check her up too much.”
+
+“Wall,” sez he, “I am bound to make some enquiries. Hello!” says he to
+a bystander a comin’ by. “Have you any idee what such a barn as that
+would cost? A little smaller one, I don’t need so big a one. How many
+feet of lumber do you s’pose it would take for it? I ask you,” sez he,
+“as between man and man.”
+
+I nudged him there, for as I have said, I didn’t believe then, and I
+don’t believe now, that he or any other man ever knew or mistrusted
+what they meant by that term “as between man and man.” I think it
+sounds kind o’ flat, and I always oppose Josiah’s usin’ it; he loves
+it.
+
+Wall, the man broke out a’ laughin’ and sez he, “That haint a barn,
+that is a tree.”
+
+“A tree!” sez I, a sort o’ cranin’ my neck forward in deep amaze. And
+what exclamation Josiah Allen made, I will not be coaxed into
+revealin’; no, it is better not.
+
+But suffice it to say that after a long explanation my companion at
+last gin in that the man wuz a tellin’ the truth, and it wuz the lower
+part of a tree-trunk, that growed once near the Yo Semity valley of
+California. Good land! good land!
+
+Josiah drove on quick after the man explained it, he felt meachin’, but
+I didn’t notice his linement so much, I wuz so deep in thought, and a
+wonderin’ about it; a wonderin’ how the old tree felt with her feet a
+restin’ here on strange soil - her withered, dry old feet a standin’
+here, as if jest ready to walk away restless like and feverish, a
+wantin’ to get back by the rushin’ river that used to bathe them feet
+in the spring overflow of the pure cold mountain water. It seemed to me
+she felt she was a alien, as if she missed her strong sturdy grand old
+body, her lofty head that used to peer up over the mountains, and as if
+some day she wuz a goin’ to set off a walkin’ back, a tryin’ to find
+’em.
+
+I thought of how it had towered up, how the sun had kissed its
+branches, how the birds had sung and built their nests against her
+green heart, hovered in her great, outstretched arms. The birds of a
+century, the birds of a thousand years. How the storms had beat upon
+her; the first autumn rains of a thousand years, the first snow-flakes
+that had wavered down in a slantin’ line and touched the tips of her
+outstretched fingers, and then had drifted about her till her heart wuz
+almost frozen and she would clap her cold hands together to warm ’em,
+and wail out a dretful moanin’ sound of desolation, and pain.
+
+But the first warm rain drops of Spring would come, the sunshine warmed
+her, she swung out her grand arms in triumph agin, and joined the
+majestic psalm of victory and rejoicing with all her grand sisterhood
+of psalmists. The stars looked down on her, the sun lit her lofty
+forward, the suns and stars of a thousand years. Strange animals, that
+mebby we don’t know anything about now, roamed about her feet, birds of
+a different plumage and song sung to her (mebby).
+
+Strange faces of men and women looked up to her. What faces had looked
+up to her in sorrow and in joy? I’d gin a good deal to know. I’d have
+loved to see them strange faces touched with strange pains and hopes.
+Tribulations and joys of a thousand years ago. What sort of
+tribulations wuz they, and what sort of joys? Sunthin’ human, sunthin’
+that we hold in common, no doubt. The same pain that pained Eve as she
+walked down out of Eden, the same joy that Adam enjoyed while they and
+the garden wuz prosperus, wuz in their faces most probable whether
+their forwards wuz pinted or broad, their faces black, copper colored
+or white.
+
+And the changes, the changes of a thousand years, all these the old
+tree had seen, and I respected her dry dusty old feet and wuz sorry for
+’em. And I reveryed on the subject more’n half the way home, and
+couldn’t help it. Anyway my revery lasted till jest before we got to
+the big gate of the Race Course.
+
+And right there, right in front of them big ornamental doors, we see
+Miss G. Washington Flamm, with about a thousand other carriages and
+wagons and Tally ho’s and etcetry, and etcetry. Josiah thinks there wuz
+a million teams, but I don’t. I am mejum; there wuzn’t probable over a
+thousand right there in the road.
+
+Race Course Entry
+
+Miss Flamm re_cog_nized us and asked us if we didn’t want to go in.
+Wall, Josiah wuz agreeable to the idee and said so. And then she said
+sunthin’ to the man that tended to the gate, probably sunthin’ in our
+praise, and handed him sunthin’, it might have been a ten cent piece,
+for all I know.
+
+But anyway he wuz dretful polite to us, and let us through. And my
+land! if it wuzn’t a sight to behold! Of all the big roomy places I
+ever see all filled with vehicles of all shapes and sizes and folks on
+foot and big high platforms, all filled with men and wimmen and
+children! And Josiah sez to me, “I thought the hull dumb world wuz
+there outside in the road, and here there is ten times as many in
+here.”
+
+And I sez, “Yes, Josiah, be careful and not lose me, for I feel like a
+needle in a hay mow.”
+
+He looked down on me and sort a smiled. I s’pose it wuz because I
+compared myself to a needle, and he sez, “A cambric needle, or a
+darnin’ needle?”
+
+And I sez, “I wouldn’t laugh in such a time as this, Josiah Allen.” Sez
+I, “Do jest look over there on the race course.”
+
+And it wuz a thrillin’ seen. It wuz a place big enough for all the
+horses of our land to run ’round in and from Phario’s horses down to
+them of the present time. And beautiful broad smooth roads cut in the
+green velvet of the grass, and horses goin’ ’round jest like lightnin’,
+with little light buggys hitched to ’em, some like the quiver on sheet
+lightnin’ (only different shape) and men a drivin’ ’em.
+
+And then there wuz a broad beautiful race course with little clusters
+of trees and bushes, every little while right in the road, and if
+you’ll believe it, I don’t s’pose you will, but it is the livin’ truth,
+when them horses, goin’ jest like a flash of light, with little boys
+all dressed in gay colors a ridin’ ’em—when them horses came to them
+trees instid of goin’ ’round ’em, or pushin’ in between ’em, or goin’
+back agin, they jumped right over ’em. I don’t spose this will be
+believed by lots of folks in Jonesville and Loontown, but it is the
+truth, for I see it with both my eyes. Josiah riz right up in the buggy
+and cheered jest as the rest of ’em did, entirely unbeknown to himself,
+so he said, to see it a goin’ on.
+
+Why he got nearly rampant with excitement. And so did I, though I
+wouldn’t want it known by Tirzah Ann’s husband’s folks and others in
+Jonesville. They call it “steeple chasin’” so if they should hear on’t,
+it wouldn’t sound so very wicked any way. I should probable tell ’em if
+they said _too_ much, “That it wuz a pity if folks couldn’t get
+interested in a steeple and chase it up.” But between you and me I
+didn’t see no sign of a steeple, nor meetin’ house nor nuthin’. I
+s’pose they gin it that name to make it seem more righter to
+perfessors. I know it wuz a great comfort to me. (But I don’t think
+they chased a steeple, and Josiah don’t, for we think we should have
+seen it if they had.)
+
+Wall, as I say, we wuz both dretfully interested, excited, and wrought
+up, I s’pose I ort to say, when a chap accosted me and says to me
+sunthin’ about buyin’ a pool. And I shook my head and sez, “No, I don’t
+want to buy no pool.”
+
+But he kep’ on a talkin’ and a urgin’, and sez, “Won’t you buy a French
+pool, mom, you can make lots of money out of it.”
+
+“A pool,” sez I in dignified axents, and some stern, for I wuz weary
+with his importunities. “What do I want a pool for? Don’t you s’pose
+there’s any pools in Jonesville, and I never thought nothin’ on ’em, I
+always preferred runnin’ water. But if I wuz a goin’ to buy one, what
+under the sun do you s’pose I would buy one way off here for, hundreds
+of miles from Jonesville?”
+
+“I might possibly,” sez I, not wantin’ to hurt his feelin’s and tryin’
+to think of some use I could put it tot “ _might_ if you had a good
+small American pool, that wuz a sellin’ cheap; and I could have it set
+right in our back yard, clost to the horse barn, why I might possibly
+try to make a dicker with you for it. I might use it for raisin’ ducks
+and geese, though I’d rather have a runnin’ stream then. But how under
+the sun you think I could take a pool home on a tower, how I could pack
+it, or transport it, or drive it home is a mystery to me.”
+
+Again he sez mechinecally, “Lots of wimmen do get ’em.”
+
+“Wall, some wimmen,” sez I mildly, for I see he wuz a lookin’ at me
+perfect dumbfoundered. I see I wuz fairly stuntin’ him with my
+eloquence. “Some wimmen will buy anything if it has a French name to
+it. But I prefer my own country, land or water. And some wimmen,” sez
+I, “will buy anything if they can get it cheap, things they don’t need,
+and would be better off without, from a eliphant down to a magnificent
+nothin’ to call husband. They’ll buy any worthless and troublesome
+thing jest to get ’em to goin’. Now such wimmen would jest jump at that
+pool. But that haint my way. No, I don’t want to purchase your pool.”
+
+Sez he, “You are mistaken, mom!”
+
+“No I haint,” sez I firmly and with decesion. “No I haint. I don’t need
+no pool. It wouldn’t do me no good to keep it on my hands, and I haint
+no notion of settin’ up in the pool or pond business, at my age.”
+
+“And then,” sez I reasonably, “the canal runs jest down below our
+orchard, and if we run short, we could get all the water we wanted from
+there. And we have got two good cisterns and a well on the place.”
+
+Sez he, “What I mean is, bettin’ on a horse. Do you want to bet on
+which horse will go the fastest, the black one or the bay one?”
+
+“No,” sez I, “I don’t want to bet.”
+
+But he kep’ on a urgin’ me, and thinkin’ I had disappinted him in
+sellin’ a pool, or rather pond, I thought it wouldn’t hurt me to kinder
+gin in to him in this, so I sez mildly, “Bettin’ is sunthin’ I don’t
+believe in, but seein’ I have disappinted you in sellin’ your water
+power, I don’t know as it would be wicked to humor you in this and say
+it to please you. You say the bay horse is the best, so I’ll say for
+jest this once - There! I’ll bet the bay one will go the best.”
+
+“Where is your money?” sez he. “It is five dollars for a bet. You pay
+five dollars and you have a chance to get back mebby 100.”
+
+I riz right up in feerful dignity, and the buggy and I sez that one
+feerful word to him, “Gamblin’!” He sort a quailed. But sez he, “you
+had better take a five-dollar chance on the bay horse.”
+
+Feerful Dignity
+
+“No,” sez I, with a freezin’ coldness, that must have made his ears
+fairly tingle it wuz so cold, “no I shall not gamble, neither on foot
+nor on horseback.”
+
+Then I sot down and I sez in the same lofty tones to Josiah Allen,
+“Drive on, Josiah, instantly and to once.”
+
+He too had heerd the fearful word and his princeples too wuz rousted
+up. He driv right on rapidly, out of the gate and into the highway. But
+as he druv on fast and almost furius I heerd him murmur words to
+himself, that accounted for his eager looks while the man wuz dickerin’
+about the pool. He sez, “It is dumb hard work pumpin’ water for so many
+head of cattle.” He thought a pool would come handy, so I see. But it
+wuz all done and I would have done the same thing if it was to do over
+agin, so I didn’t say nuthin’, but kep’ a serene silence, and let him
+drive along in quiet; and anon, I see the turbelence of his feelin’s
+subsided in a measure.
+
+It wuz a gettin’ along towards sundown and the air wuz a growin’ cool
+and balmy, as if it wuz a blowin’ over some balm flowers, and we begun
+to feel quite well in our minds, though the crowd in the road wuz too
+big for comfert. The crowd of carriages and horses, and vehicles of all
+kinds, seemed to go in two big full rows or streams, one a goin’ down
+on one side of the road, and the other a goin’ up on the other. So the
+2 tides swept past each other constantly—but the bubbles on the tide
+wuzn’t foam but feathers, and bows, and laces, and parasols, and
+buttons, and diamonds, and etcetry, etcetry, etcetry.
+
+And all of a sudden my Josiah jest turned into a big gate that wuz a
+standin’ wide open and we drove into a beautiful quiet road that went a
+windin’ in under the shadows of the tall grand old trees. He did it
+without askin’ my advice or sayin’ a word to me. But I wuzn’t sorry.
+Fur it wuz beautiful in there. It seemed as if we had left small cares
+and vexations and worryments out there in the road and dust, and took
+in with us only repose and calmness, and peace, and they wuz a
+journeyin’ along with us on the smooth road under the great trees, a
+bendin’ down on each side on us. And pretty soon we came to a beautiful
+piece of water crossed by a rustick bridge, and all surrounded by green
+trees on every side. Then up on the broad road agin, sweepin’ round a
+curve where we could see a little ways off a great mansion with a wall
+built high round it as if to shet in the repose and sweet home-life and
+shet out intrusion, sort a protect it from the too curius glances of a
+curius generation. Some as I hold my hand up before my face to keep off
+the too-scorchin’ rays of the sun, when I am a lookin’ down the western
+road for my Josiah.
+
+It wuz a good lookin’ spot as I ever want to see, sheltered, quiet and
+lovely. But we left it behind us as we rode onwards, till we came out
+along another broad piece of the water, and we rode along by the side
+of it for some time.
+
+Beautiful water with the trees growin’ up on every side of it, and
+their shadows reflected so clearly in the shinin’ surface, that they
+seemed to be trees a growin’ downwards, tall grand trees, wavin’
+branches, goin’ down into the water and livin’ agin in another world,—a
+more beautiful one.
+
+The sun wuz a gettin’ low and piles of clouds wuz in the west and all
+their light wuz reflected in the calm water. And the beautiful soft
+shadows rested there on that rosy and golden light, some like the
+shadow of a beautiful and sorrowful memory, a restin’ down and reposin’
+on a divine hope, an infinite sweetness.
+
+The Race Course
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+VISITS TO NOTABLE PLACES.
+
+
+It is a perfect sight to behold, to set on the piazzas at Saratoga, and
+see the folks a goin’ past.
+
+Now in Jonesville, when there wuz a 4th of July, or campmeetin’, or
+sunthin’ of that kind a goin’ on, why, I thought I had seen the streets
+pretty full. Why, I had counted as many as seven teams in the road at
+one time, and I had thought that wuz pretty lively times. But good
+land? Good land! You would have gin up in ten minutes time here, that
+you had never seen a team (as it were).
+
+Why I call my head a pretty sound one, but I declare, it did fairly
+make my head swim to set there kinder late in the afternoon, and see
+the drivin’ a goin’ on. See the carriages a goin’ this way, and a goin’
+that way; horses of all colers, and men and wimmen of all colers, and
+parasols of all colers, and hats, and bonnets and parasols, and satins,
+and laces, and ribbins, and buttons, and dogs, and flowers, and plumes,
+and parasols. And horses a turnin’ out to go by, and horses havin’ gone
+by, and horses that hadn’t gone by. And big carriages with folks inside
+all dressed up in every coler of the rain beaux. And elligent gentlemen
+dressed perfectly splendid, a settin’ up straight behind. With thin
+yellow legs, or stripes down the side on ’em, and their hats all
+trimmed off with ornaments and buttons up and down their backs.
+
+Haughty creeters they wuz, I make no doubt. They showed it in their
+looks. But I never loved so much dress in a man. And I would jest as
+soon have told them so; as to tell you. I hain’t one to say things to a
+man’s back that I won’t say to his face, whether it be a plain back or
+buttoned.
+
+Wall, as I say, it wuz a dizzy sight to set there on them piazzas and
+see the seemin’ly endless crowd a goin’ by; back and forth, back and
+forth; to and fro, to and fro. I didn’t enjoy it so much as some did,
+though for a few minutes at a time I looked upon it as a sort of a
+recreation, some like a circus, only more wilder.
+
+But some folks enjoyed it dretfully. Yes, they set a great deal on
+piazzas at Saratoga. And when I say set on ’em, I mean they set a great
+store on ’em, and they set on ’em a great deal. Some folks set on ’em
+so much, that I called them setters. Real likely creeters they are too,
+some on ’em, and handsome; some pious, sober ones, some sort a gay.
+Some not married at all, and some married a good deal, and when I say a
+good deal I meen, they have had various companions and lost ’em.
+
+Now there wuz one woman that I liked quite well.
+
+She had had 4 husbands countin’ in the present one. She wuz a good
+lookin’ woman and had seen trouble. It stands to reeson she had with 4
+husbands. Good land!
+
+She showed me one day a ring she wore. She had took the weddin’ rings
+of her 4 pardners and had ’em all run together, and the initials of
+their first names carved inside on it. Her first husband’s name wuz
+Franklin, her next two wuz Orville and Obed, and her last and livin’
+one Lyman. Wall, she meant well, but she never see what would be the
+end on’t and how it would read till she had got their initials all
+carved out on it.
+
+She wuz dretfully worked up about it, but I see that it wuz right. For
+nobody but a fool would want to run all these recollections and
+memories together, all the different essociations and emotions, that
+must cluster round each of them rings. The idee of runnin’ ’em all
+together with the livin’ one! It wuz ectin’ like a fool and it seemed
+fairly providential that their names run in jest that way.
+
+Why, if I had had 2 husbands, or even 4, I should want to keep ’em
+apart - settin’ up in high chairs on different sides of my heart. Why,
+if I’d had 4, I’d have ’em to the different pints of the compass, east,
+west, north, south, as far apart from each other as my heart would
+admit of. Ketch me a lumpin’ in all the precious memories of my Josiah
+with them of any other man, bond or free, Jew or Genteel; no, and I’d
+refrain from tellin’ to the new one about the other ones.
+
+No, when a pardner dies and you set out to take another one, bury the
+one that has gone right under his own high chair in your heart, don’t
+keep him up there a rattlin’ his bones before the eyes of the 2d, and
+angerin’ him, and agonizen’ your own heart. Bury him before you bring a
+new one into the same room.
+
+And never! never! even in moments of the greatest anger, dig him up
+agin or even weep over his grave, before the new pardner. No; under the
+moonlight, and the stars, before God only, and your own soul, you may
+lay there in spirit on that grave, weep over it, keep the turf green.
+But not before any one else. And I wouldn’t advise you to go there
+alone any too often. I would advise you to spend your spare time
+ornementin’ the high chair where the new one sets, wreathin’ it round
+with whatever blossoms and trailin’ vines of tenderness and romance you
+have left over from the first great romance of life.
+
+It would be better for you in the end.
+
+I said some few of these little thoughts to the female mentioned; and I
+s’pose I impressed her dretfully, I s’pose I did. But I couldn’t stay
+to see the full effects on’t, for another female setter came up at that
+minute to talk with her, and my companion came up at that very minute
+to ask me to go a walkin’ with him up to the cemetery.
+
+That is a very favorite place for Josiah Allen. He often used to tell
+the children when they wuz little, that if they wuz real good he would
+take ’em out on a walk to the grave-yard.
+
+And when I first married to him, if I hadn’t broke it up, that would
+have been the only place of resort that he would have took me to
+Summers. But I broke it up after a while. Good land! there is times to
+go any where and times to stay away. I didn’t want to go a trailin’ up
+there every day or two; jest married too!
+
+But to-day I felt willin’ to go. I had been a lookin’ so long at the
+crowd a fillin’ the streets full, and every one on ’em in motion, that
+I thought it would be sort a restful to go out to a place where they
+wuz still. And so after a short walk we came to the village that haint
+stirred by any commotion or alarm. Where the houses are roofed with
+green grass and daisies, and the white stun doors don’t open to let in
+trouble or joy, and where the inhabitants don’t ride out in the
+afternoon.
+
+Wall, if I should tell the truth which I am fur from not wantin’ to do,
+I should say that at first sight, it wuz rather of a bleak, lonesome
+lookin’ spot, kinder wild and desolate lookin’. But as we went further
+along in it, we came to some little nooks and sheltered paths and
+spots, that seemed more collected together and pleasant. There wuz some
+big high stuns and monuments, and some little ones but not one so low
+that it hadn’t cast a high, dark shadow over somebody’s life.
+
+There wuz one in the shape of a big see shell. I s’pose some mariner
+lay under that, who loved the sea. Or mebby it wuz put up by some one
+who had the odd fancy that put a shell to your ear you will hear a
+whisperin’ in it of a land fur away, fur away. Not fur from this wuz a
+stun put up over a young engineer who had been killed instantly by his
+engine. There wuz a picture of the locomotive scraped out on the stun,
+and in the cab of the engine wuz his photograph, and these lines wuz
+underneath:
+
+My engine now lies still and cold,
+No water does her boiler hold;
+The wood supplies its flames no more,
+My days of usefulness are o’er.
+
+
+We wended our way in and out of the silent streets for quite a spell,
+and then we went and sot down on the broad piazza of the sort of chapel
+and green-house that stood not fur from the entrance. And while we sot
+there we see another inhabitent come there to the village to stay.
+
+It wuz a long procession, fur it wuz a good man who had come. And many
+of his friends come with him jest as fur as they could: wife, children,
+and friends, they come with him jest as fur as they could, and then he
+had to leave ’em and go on alone. How weak love is, and how strong. It
+wuz too weak to hold him back, or go with him, though they would fain
+have done so. But it wuz strong enough to shadow the hull world with
+its blackness, blot out the sun and the stars, and scale the very
+mounts of heaven with its wild complaints and pleadin’s. A strange
+thing love is, haint it?
+
+Wall, we sot there for quite a spell and my companion wantin’, I spose,
+to make me happy, took out a daily paper out of his pocket and went to
+readin’ the deaths to me. He always loves to read the deaths and
+marriages in a paper. He sez that is the literature that interests him.
+And then I s’pose he thought at such a time, it wuz highly appropriate.
+So I didn’t break it up till he began to read a long obituary piece
+about a child’s death; about its being cut down like a flower by a
+lightin’ stroke out of a cloudless sky, and about what a mysterious
+dispensation of Providence it wuz, etc., etc. And then there wuz a hull
+string of poetry dedicated to the heart-broken mother bewailin’ the
+mystery on’t, and wonderin’ why Providence should do such strange,
+onlookedfor things, etc., and etcetery, and so 4th.
+
+And I spoke right up and sez, “That is a slander onto Providence and
+ort to be took as such by every lover of justice.”
+
+Josiah wuz real horrified, he had been almost sheddin’ tears he wuz so
+affected by it; to think the little creeter should be torn away by a
+strange chance of Providence from a mother who worshipped her, and
+whose whole life and every thought wuz jest wrapped up in the child,
+and who never had thought nor cared for anything else only just the
+well bein’ of the child and wardin’ trouble off of her, for so the
+piece stated. And he sez in wild amaze, “What do you mean, Samantha?
+What makes you talk so?”
+
+“Because,” sez I, “I know it is the truth. I know the hull story;” and
+then I went on and told it to him, and he agreed with me and felt jest
+as I did.
+
+You see, the mother of the child wuz a perfect high flyer of fashion
+and she always wore dresses so tight, that she couldn’t get her hands
+up to her head to save her life, after her corset wuz on. Wall, she wuz
+out a walkin’ with the child one day, or rather toddlin’ along with it,
+on her high-heeled sboes. They wuz both dressed up perfectly beautiful,
+and made a most splendid show. Wall, they went into a store on their
+way to the park, and there wuz a big crowd there, and the mother and
+the little girl got into the very middle of the crowd. They say there
+wuz some new storks for sale that day, and some cattail flags, and so
+there wuz naturelly a big crowd of wimmen a buyin’ ’em, and cranes. And
+some way, while they stood there a heavy vase that stood up over the
+child’s head fell down and fell onto it, and hurt the child so, that it
+died from the effects of it.
+
+The mother see the vase when it flrst begun to move, she could have
+reached up her hands and stiddied it, and kep’ it from fallin’, if she
+could have got ’em up, but with that corset on, the hull American
+continent might have tumbled onto the child’s head and she couldn’t
+have moved her arms up to keep it off; couldn’t have lifted her arms up
+over the child’s head to save her life. No, she couldn’t have kep’ one
+of the States off, nor nothin’. And then talk about her wardin’ trouble
+offen the child, why she _couldn’t_ ward trouble off, nor nothin’ else
+with that corset on. She screemed, as she see it a comin’ down onto the
+head of her beloved little child, but that wuz all she could do. The
+child wuz wedged in by the throng of folks and couldn’t stir, and they
+wuz all engrossed in their own business which wuz pressin’, and very
+important, a buyin’ plates, and plaks, with bull-rushes, and cranes,
+and storks on ’em, so naturelly, they didn’t mind what wuz a goin’ on
+round ’em. And down it come!
+
+And there it wuz put down in the paper, “A mysterious dispensation of
+Providence.” Providence slandered shamefully and I will say so with my
+last breath.
+
+What are mothers made for if it haint to take care of the little ones
+God gives ’em. What right have they to contoggle themselves up in a way
+that they can see their children die before ’em, and they not able to
+put out a hand to save ’em. Why, a savage mother is better than this, a
+heathen one. And if I had my way, there would be a hull shipload of
+savages and heathens brought over here to teach and reform our too
+civilized wimmen. I’d bring ’em over this very summer.
+
+Wall, we sot there on the stoop for quite a spell and then we wended
+our way down to the highway, and as we arrived there my companion
+proposed that we should take a carriage and go to the Toboggen slide.
+Sez I, “Not after where we have been today, Josiah Allen.”
+
+And he sez, “Why not?”
+
+And I sez, “It wouldn’t look well, after visitin’ the folks we have
+jest now.”
+
+“Wall,” sez he, “they won’t speak on’t to anybody, if that is what you
+are afraid on, or sense it themselves.”
+
+And I see in a minute, he had some sense on his side, though his words
+shocked me some at first, kinder jarred aginst some sensitive spot in
+my nater, jest as pardners will sometimes, however devoted they may be
+to each other. Yet I see he wuz in the right on’t.
+
+They wouldn’t sense anything about it. And as for us, we wuz in the
+world of the livin’ still, and I still owed a livin’ duty to my
+companion, to make him as happy as possible. And so I sez, mildly,
+“Wall, I don’t know as there is anything wrong in slidin’ down hill,
+Josiah. I s’pose I can go with you.”
+
+“No,” sez he, “there haint nothin’ wrong about slidin’ down hill unless
+you strike too hard, or tip over, or sunthin’.” So he bagoned to a
+carriage that wuz passin’, and we got into it, and sot sail for the
+Toboggen slide.
+
+We passed through the village. (Some say it is a city, but if it is, it
+is a modest, retirin’ one as I ever see; perfectly unassumin’, and
+don’t put on a air, not one.)
+
+But howsumever, we passed through it, through the rows and rows of
+summer tarvens and boardin’ houses, good-lookin’ ones too; past some
+good-lookin’ private houses—a long tarven and a pretty red brick studio
+and rows of summer stores, little nests that are filled up summers, and
+empty winters, then by some more of them monster big tarvens where some
+of the 200,000 summer visitors who flock here summers, find a restin’
+place; and then by the large respectable good-lookin’ stores and shops
+of the natives, that stand solid, and to be depended on summer and
+winter; by churches and halls, and etc., and good-lookin’ houses and
+then some splendid-lookin’ houses all standin’ back on their grassy
+lawns behind some trees, and fountains, and flower beds, etc., etc.
+
+Better-lookin’ houses, I don’t want to see nor broader, handsomer
+streets. And pretty soon fur away to the east you could see through the
+trees a glimpse of a glorious landscape, a broad lovely view of hill
+and valley, bounded by blue mountain tops. It was a fair seen - a fair
+seen. To be perfectly surrounded by beauty where you, wuz, and a
+lookin’ off onto more. There I would fain have lingered, but time and
+wagons roll stidily onward, and will not brook delay, nor pause for
+women to soar over seenery.
+
+So we rolled onwards through still more beautiful, and quiet pictures.
+Pictures of quiet woods and bendin’ trees, and a country road windin’
+tranquilly beneath, up and down gentle hills, and anon a longer one,
+and then at our feet stood the white walls of a convent, with 2 or 3
+brothers, a strollin’ along in their long black gowns, and crosses, a
+readin’ some books.
+
+I don’t know what it wuz, what they wuz a readin’ out of their books,
+or a readin’ out of their hearts. Mebby sunthin’ kinder sad and serene.
+Mebby it wuz sunthin’ about the gay world of human happiness, and human
+sorrows, they had turned backs to forever. Mebby it wuz about the other
+world that they had sot out for through a lonesome way. Mebby it wuz
+“Never” they wuz a readin’ about, and mebby it wuz “Forever.” I don’t
+know what it wuz. But we went by ’em, and anon, yes it wuz jest anon,
+for it wuz the very minute that I lifted my eyes from the Father’s calm
+and rather sad-lookin’ face, that I ketched sight on’t, that I see a
+comin’ down from the high hills to the left on us, an immense sort of a
+trough, or so it looked, a comin’ right down through the trees, from
+the top of the mountain to the, bottom. And then all acrost the fields
+as fur, as fur as from our house way over to Miss Pixley’s wuz a sort
+of a road, with a row of electric lights along the side on’t.
+
+We drove up to a buildin’ that stood at the foot of that immense slide,
+or so they called it, and a female woman who wuz there told us all
+about it. And we went out her back door, and see way up the slide, or
+trough. There wuz a railin’ on each side on’t, and a place in the
+middle where she said the Toboggen came down.
+
+And sez Josiah, “Who is the Toboggen, anyway? Is he a native of the
+place or a Injun? Anyway,” sez he, “I’d give a dollar bill to see him a
+comin’ down that place.”
+
+And the woman said, “A Toboggen wuz a sort of a long sled, that two or
+three folks could ride on, and they come down that slide with such
+force that they went way out acrost the fields as far as the row of
+lights, before it stopped.”
+
+Sez I, “Josiah Allen, did you ever see the beat on’t?” Sez I, “Haint
+that as far as from our house to Miss Pixley’s?”
+
+“Yes,” says he, “and further too. It is as far as Uncle Jim
+Hozzleton’s.”
+
+“Wall,” says I, “I believe you are in the right on’t.”
+
+And sez Josiah, “How do they get back agin? Do they come in the cars,
+or in their own conveniences?”
+
+“There is a sleigh to bring ’em back, but sometime they walk back,” sez
+the woman.
+
+“Walk back!” sez I, in deep amaze. “Do they walk from way out there,
+and cleer up that mountain agin?”
+
+“Yes,” sez she. “Don’t you see the place at the side for ’em to draw
+the Toboggen up, and the little flights of steps for ’em to go up the
+hill?”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, in deep amaze, and auxins as ever to get information on
+deep subjects, “where duz the fun come in, is it in walkin’ way over
+the plain and up the hills, or is it in comin’ down?”
+
+And she said she didn’t know exactly where the fun lay, but she s’posed
+it wuz comin’ down. Anyway, they seemed to enjoy it first rate. And she
+said it wuz a pretty sight to see ’em all on a bright clear night, when
+the sky wuz blue and full of stars, and the earth white and glistenin’
+underneath to see 7 or 800, all dressed up in to gayest way, suits of
+white blankets, gay borders and bright tasseled caps of every color,
+and suits of every other pretty color all trimmed with fur and
+embroideries, to see ’em all a laughin’ and a talkin’, with their
+cheeks and eyes bright and glowin’, to see ’em a comin’ down the slide
+like flashes of every colored light, and away out over the white
+glistenin’ plains; and then to see the long line of happy laughin’
+creeters a walkin’ back agin’ drawin’ the gay Toboggens. She said it
+wuz a sight worth seein’.
+
+“Do they come down alone?” sez Josiah.
+
+“Oh no!” sez she. “Boys and their sweethearts, men and wives, fathers
+and mothers and children, sometimes 4 on a Toboggan.”
+
+Sez Josiah, lookin’ anamated and clever, “I’d love to take you on one
+on ’em, Samantha.’
+
+“Oh no!” sez I, “I wouldn’t want to be took.”
+
+But a bystander a standin’ by said it wuz a sight to behold to stand up
+on top and start off. He said the swiftness of the motion, the
+brightness of the electric lights ahead, the gleam of the snow made it
+seem like plungin’ down a dazzlin’ Niagara of whiteness and glitterin’
+light; and some, like bein’ shot out of a cannon. Why, he said they
+went with such lightnin’ speed, that if you stood clost by the slide a
+waitin’ to see a friend go by, you might stand so near as to touch her,
+but you couldn’t no more see her to recognize her, than you could
+recognize one spoke from another in the wheel of a runaway carriage.
+You would jest see a red flash go by, if so be it wuz a red gown she
+had on. A red flash a dartin’ through the air, and a disappearin’ down
+the long glitterin’ lane of light.
+
+You could see her a goin’ back, so they said, a laughin’ and a jokin’
+with somebody, if so be she walked back, but there wuz long sleighs to
+carry ’em back, them and their Toboggens, if they wanted to ride, at
+the small expenditure of 10 cents apiece. They go, in the fastest time
+anybody can make till they go on the lightnin’, a way in which they
+will go before long, I think, and Josiah duz too.
+
+“They said there wuzn’t nothin’ like it. And I said, “Like as not.” I
+believed ’em. And then the woman said, “This long room we wuz a
+standin’ in,” for we had gone back into the house, durin’ our
+interview, this long room wuz all warm and light for ’em to come into
+and get warm, and she said as many as 600 in a night would come in
+there and have supper there.
+
+And then she showed us the model of a Toboggen, all sculped out, with a
+man and a woman on it. The girl wuz ahead sort a drawin’ the Toboggen,
+as you may say, and her lover. (I know he wuz, from his looks.) He wuz
+behind her, with his face right clost to her shoulder.
+
+And I’ll bet that when they started down that gleamin’ slide, they felt
+as if they 2 wuz alone under the stars and the heavens, and wuz a
+glidin’ down into a dazzlin’ way of glory. You could see it in their
+faces. I liked their faces real well.
+
+But the sight on ’em made Josiah Allen crazier’n ever to go too, and he
+sez, “I feel as if I _must_ Toboggen, Samantha!”
+
+Sez I, “Be calm! Josiah, you _can’t_ slide down hill in July.”
+
+“How do you know?” sez he, “I’m bound to enquire.” And he asked the
+woman if they ever Toboggened in the summer.
+
+“No, never!” sez she.
+
+And I sez, “You see it can’t be done.”
+
+“She never see it tried,” sez he. “How can you tell what you can do
+without tryin’?” sez he lookin’ shrewdly, and longingly, up the slide.
+I trembled, for I knew not what the next move of his would be. But I
+bethought me of a powerful weepon I had by me. And I sez, “The driver
+will ask pay for every minute we are here.”
+
+Down the Steps
+
+And as I sez this, Josiah turned and almost flew down the steps and
+into the buggy. I had skairt him. Truly I felt relieved, and sez I to
+myself, “What would wimmen do if it wuzn’t for these little weepons
+they hold in their hands, to control their pardners with.” I felt
+happy.
+
+But the next words of Josiah knocked down all that palace of Peace,
+that my soul had betook herself to. Sez he, “Samantha Allen, before I
+leave Saratoga I shall Toboggen.”
+
+Wall, I immegetly turned the subject round and talked wildly and almost
+incoherently on politicks. I praised the tariff amost beyond its
+deserts. I brung up our foreign relations, and spoke well on ’em. I
+tackled revenues and taxation, and hurried him from one to the other on
+’em, almost wildly, to get the idee out of his head. And I
+congratulated myself on havin’ succeeded. Alas! how futile is our
+hopes, sometimes futiler than we have any idee on!
+
+By night all thoughts of danger had left me, and I slept sweetly and
+peacefully. But early in the mornin’ I had a strange dream. I dreamed I
+wuz in the woods with my head a layin’ on a log, and the ground felt
+cold that I wuz a layin’ on. And then the log gin way with me, and my
+head came down onto the ground. And then I slept peaceful agin, but
+chilly, till anon, or about that time, I beard a strange sound and I
+waked up with a start. It wuz in the first faint glow of mornin’
+twilight. But as faint as the light wuz, for the eye of love is keen, I
+missed my beloved pardner’s head from the opposite pillow, and I riz up
+in wild agitation and thinkses I, “Has rapine took place here; has
+Josiah Allen been abducted away from me? Is he a kidnapped Josiah?”
+
+At that fearful thought my heart begun to beat so voyalently as to
+almost stop my breath, and I felt I wuz growin’ pale and wan, wanner,
+fur wanner than I had been sense I came to Saratoga. I love Josiah
+Allen, he is dear to me.
+
+And I riz up feelin’ that I would find that dear man and rescue him or
+perish in the attempt. Yes, I felt that I _must_ perish if I did not
+find him. What would life be to me without him? And as I thought that
+thought the light of the day that wuz a breakin’, looked sort of a
+faint to me, and sickish. And like a flash it came to me, the thought
+that that light seemed like the miserable dawns of wretched days
+without him, a pale light with no warmth or brightness in it.
+
+But at that very minute I heard a noise outside the door, and I heard
+that beloved voice a sayin’ in low axents the words I had so often
+heard him speak, words I had oft rebuked him for, but now, so weak will
+human love make one, now, I welcome them gladly—they sounded
+exquisitely sweet to me. The words wuz, “Dumb ’em!”
+
+And I joyfully opened the door. But oh! what a sight met my eye. There
+stood Josiah Allen, arrayed in a blanket he had took from our bed (that
+accounted for my cold feelin’ in my dream). The blanket wuz white, with
+a gay border of red and yellow. He had fixed it onto him in a sort of a
+dressy way, and strapped it round the waist with my shawl strap. And he
+had took a bright yeller silk handkerchief of hisen, and had wrapped it
+round his head so’s it hung down some like a cap, and he wuz a tryin’
+to fasten it round his forward with one of my stockin’ supporters. He
+couldn’t buckle it, and that is what called forth his exclamations. At
+his feet, partly upon the stairs, wuz the bolster from our bed (that
+accounted for the log that had gin way). And he had spread a little red
+shawl of mine over the top on’t, and as I opened the door he wuz jest
+ready to embark on the bolster, he waz jest a steppin’ onto it. But as
+he see me he paused, and I sez in low axents, “What are you a goin’ to
+do, Josiah Allen?”
+
+“I’m a goin’ to Toboggen,” sez he.
+
+toboggening
+
+Sez I, “Do you stop at once, and come back into your room.”
+
+“No, no!” sez he firmly, and preparin’ to embark on the bolster, “I am
+a goin’ to Toboggen. And you come and go to. It is so fashionable,” sez
+he, “such a genteel diversion.”
+
+Sez I, “Do you stop it at once, and come back to your room. Why,” sez
+I, “the hull house will be routed up, and be up here in a minute.”
+
+“Wall,” sez he, “they’ll see fun if they do and fashion. I am a goin’,
+Samantha!” and be stepped forward.
+
+Sez I, “They’ll see sunthin’ else that begins with a f, but it haint
+fun or fashion.’ And agin I sez, “Do you come back, Josiah Allen.
+You’ll break your neck and rout up the house, and be called a fool.”
+
+“Oh no, Samantha! I must Toboggen. I must go down the slide once.” And
+he fixed the bolster more firmly on the top stair.
+
+“Wall,” sez I, feelin’ that I wuz drove to my last ambush by him, sez
+I, “probably five dollars won’t make the expenses good, besides your
+doctor’s bill, and my mornin’. And I shall put on the deepest of crape,
+Josiah Allen,” sez I.
+
+I see he wavered and I pressed the charge home. Sez I, “That bolster is
+thin cloth, Josiah Allen, and you’ll probably have to pay now for
+draggin’ it all over the floor. If anybody should see you with it
+there, that bolster would be charged in your bill. And how would it
+look to the neighbors to have a bolster charged in your bill? And I
+should treasure it, Josiah Allen, as bein’ the last bill you made
+before you broke your neck !”
+
+“Oh, wall,” sez he, “I s’pose I can put the bolster back.” But he wuz
+snappish, and he kep’ snappish all day.
+
+He wuzn’t quelled. Though he had gin in for the time bein’ I see he
+wuzn’t quelled down. He acted dissatisfied and highheaded, and I felt
+worried in my mind, not knowin’ what his next move would be.
+
+Oh! the tribulations it makes a woman to take care of a man. But then
+it pays. After all, in the deepest of my tribulations I feel, I do the
+most of the time feel, that it pays. When he is good he is dretful
+good.
+
+Wall, I went over to see Polly Pixley the next night, and when I got
+back to my room, there stood Josiah Allen with both of his feet sort a
+bandaged and tied down onto sumthin’, which I didn’t at first
+recognize. It waz big and sort a egg shaped, and open worked, and both
+his feet wuz strapped down tight onto it, and he wuz a pushin’ himself
+round the room with his umberell.
+
+And I sez, “What is the matter now, Josiah Allen; what are you a doin’
+now?”
+
+“Oh I am a walkin’ on snow-shoes, Samantha! But I don’t see,” sez he a
+stoppin’ to rest, for he seemed tuckered out, “I don’t see how the
+savages got round as they did and performed such journeys. You put ’em
+on, Samantha,” sez he, “and see if you can get on any faster in ’em.”
+
+Snowshoes
+
+Sez I, coldly, “The savages probable did’nt have both feet on one shoe,
+Josiah Allen, as you have. I shall put on no snowshoes in the middle of
+July; but if I did, I should put ’em on accordin’ to a little mite of
+sense. I should try to use as much sense as a savage any way.”
+
+“Why, how it would look to have one foot on that great big snow-shoe. I
+always did like a good close fit in my shoes. And you see I have room
+enough and to spare for both on ’em on this. Why it wouldn’t look
+dressy at all, Samantha, to put ’em on as you say.”
+
+Sez I very coldly, “I don’t see anything over and above dressy in your
+looks now, Josiah Allen, with both of your feet tied down onto that one
+shoe, and you a tryin’ to move off when you can’t. I can’t see anything
+over and above ornamental in it, Josiah Allen.”
+
+“Oh! you are never willin’ to give in that I look dressy, Samantha. But
+I s’pose I can put my feet where you say. You are so sot, but they are
+too big for me—I shall look like a fool.”
+
+I looked at him calmly over my specks, and sez I, “I guess I sha’n’t
+notice the difference or realize the change. I wonder,” sez I, in
+middlin’ cold axents, “how you think you are a lookin’ now, Josiah
+Allen.”
+
+“Oh! keep a naggin’ at me!” sez he. But I see he wuz a gittin’ kinder
+sick of the idee.
+
+“What you mean by puttin’ ’em on at all is more than I can say,” sez I,
+“a tryin to walk on snowshoes right in dog-days.”
+
+“I put ’em on,” Samantha, sez he, a beginnin’ to unstrap ’em, “I put
+’em on because I wanted to feel like a savage.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “I have seen you at times durin’ the last 20 years, when
+I thought you realized how they felt without snow-shoes on, either.”
+
+(These little interchanges of confidence will take place in every-day
+life.) But at that very minute Ardelia Tutt rapped at the door, and
+Josiah hustled them snow-shoes into the closet, and that wuz the last
+trial I had with him about ’em. He had borrowed ’em.
+
+Wall, Ardelia wuz dretful pensive, and soft actin’ that night, she
+seemed real tickled to see us, and to get where we wuz. She haint over
+and above suited with the boardin’ place where she is, I think. I don’t
+believe they have very good food, though she won’t complain, bein’ as
+they are relations on her own side. And then she is sech a good little
+creeter anyway. But I had my suspicions. She didn’t seem very happy.
+She said she had been down to the park that afternoon, she and the
+young chap that has been a payin’ her so much attention lately, Bial
+Flamburg. She said they had sot down there by the deer park most all
+the afternoon a watchin’ the deer. She spoke dretful well of the deer.
+And they are likely deer for anything I know. But she seemed sort a
+pensive and low spirited. Mebby she is a beginnin’ to find Bial
+Flamburg out. Mebby she is a beginnin’ to not like his ways. He drinks
+and smokes, that I know, and I’ve mistrusted worse things on him.
+Before Ardelia went away, she slipped the followin’ lines into my hand,
+which I read after she had left. They wuz rather melancholy and ran as
+follows:
+
+“STANZAS WROTH ON A DEER IN CENTRAL PARK.
+“BY ARDELIA TUTT.
+
+“Oh deer, sweet deer that softly steppeth out
+From out thy rustick cot beneath the hill;
+We would not meet thee with a wild, wild shout,
+But with the low voice, low and sweet, and still
+As anything.
+
+“And in thine ear would whisper thoughts that swell
+Our bosom nigh beyond our corset’s bound;
+As lo! we see thee step along the dell
+And with thy horns, and eyes look all around
+And up, and down.
+
+“We think of all thy virtue, and thy ways,
+Thy simple ways of eating hay and grass;
+We would not cause thy cheek to blush with praise,
+Yet we have marked thee, marked thee as thou pass
+We could but fain.
+
+“And lo! our admiration thou dost win
+Thou in the haunts of fashion keep afar,
+Thou dost not lo! imbibe vile beer or gin,
+Or smoke with pipe, or with a bad cigar,
+Or cigarette.
+
+“Thou dost not flirt nor cast sheep eyes on her
+Who is bound unto another by a vow—
+Thou dost not murmur love words in her ear,
+While husband’s prowl about, to make a row
+Or shoot with gun.
+
+“Thou dost not drive in tandem, or on high—
+In stately loneliness, in Tally Ho go round,
+Thou dost not on a horse back nobly canter by,
+Or drive in dog carts up and down the land,
+By day or night.
+
+“For ice cream, or for custard pie thou hankerest not,
+Yearn not for caramels, nor apple sass,
+Thou dost not eat pop corn, or peanuts down the grot,
+Ah! no, sweet deer, thou meekly eatest grass
+In peace.
+
+“A lesson man might learn of thee full well,
+To eat with sweet content tough steak, or thin;
+Cold toast, or hot imbibe, think of that dell—
+That patient deer, and eat in peace, nor sin
+With profane word.
+
+“If waiters do not come with food, think on that deer,
+If food be bad and cold, think on that dell,
+Strike not for vengeance with a deadly spear,
+Learn of that angel deer and murmur, all is well,
+While eating grass.”
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV.
+LAKE GEORGE AND MOUNT McGREGOR.
+
+
+It wuz on a nice pleasant day that Ardelia Tuit, Josiah Allen, and me,
+met by previous agreement quite early in the mornin’, A. M., and sot
+out for Lake George. It is so nigh, that you can step onto the cars,
+and go out and see George any time of day.
+
+It seemed to me jest as if George wuz glad we had come, for there wuz a
+broad happy smile all over his face, and a sort of a dimplin’ look, as
+if he wanted to laugh right out. All the beckonin’ shores and islands,
+with their beautiful houses on ’em, and the distant forests, and the
+trees a bendin’ over George, all seemed to sort a smile out a welcome
+to us. We had a most beautiful day, and got back quite late in the
+afternoon, P. M.
+
+And the next day, a day heavenly calm and fair, Josiah Allen and me sot
+sail for Mount McGregor—that mountain top that is lifted up higher in
+the hearts of Americans than any other peak on the continent—fur
+higher. For it is the place where the memory of a Hero lays over all
+the peaceful landscape like a inspiration and a benediction, and will
+rest there forever.
+
+The railroad winds round and round the mountain sometimes not seemin’ly
+goin’ up at all, but gradually a movin’ in’ on towards the top, jest as
+this brave Hero did in his career. If some of the time he didn’t seem
+to move on, or if some of the time he seemed to go back for a little,
+yet there wuz a deathless fire inside on him, a power, a strength that
+kep’ him a goin’ up, up, up, and drawin’ the nation up with him onto
+the safe level ground of Victory.
+
+We got pleasant glimpses of beauty, pretty pictures on’t, every little
+while as we wended our way on up the mountains. Anon we would go round
+a curve, a ledge of rocks mebby, and lo! far off a openin’ through the
+woods would show us a lovely picture of hill and dell, blue water and
+blue mountains in the distance. And then a green wood picture, shut in
+and lonely, with tall ferns, and wild flowers, and thick green grasses
+under the bendin’ trees. Then fur down agin’ a picture of a farmhouse,
+sheltered and quiet, with fields layin’ about it green and golden.
+
+But anon, we reached the pretty little lonesome station, and there we
+wuz on top of Mount McGregor. We disembarked from the cars and wended
+our way up the hill up the windin’ foot path, wore down by the feet of
+pilgrims from every land, quite a tegus walk though beautiful, up to
+the good-lookin’, and good appearin’ tarven.
+
+I would fain have stopped at that minute at the abode the Hero had
+sanctified by his last looks. But my companion said to me that he wuz
+in nearly a starvin’ state. Now it wuzn’t much after 11 A. M. forenoon,
+and I felt that he would not die of starvation so soon. But his looks
+wuz pitiful in the extreme and he reminded me in a sort of a weak voice
+that he didn’t eat no breakfast hardly.
+
+I sez truthfully, “I didn’t notice it, Josiah.” But sez I, “I will
+accompany you where your hunger can be slaked.” So we went straight up
+to the tarven.
+
+But I would stop a minute in front of it, to see the lovely, lovely
+seen that wuz spread out before our eyes. For fur off could we see
+milds and milds of the beautiful country a layin’ fur below us.
+Beautiful landscape, dotted with crystal lakes, laved by the blue
+Hudson and bordered by the fur-away mountains.
+
+It wuz a fair seen, a fair seen. Even Josiah wuz rousted up by it, and
+forgot his hunger. I myself wuz lost in the contemplation on it, and
+entirely by the side of myself. So much so, that I forgot where I wuz,
+and whether I wuz a wife or a widow, or what I wuz.
+
+But anon, as my senses came back from the realm of pure beauty they had
+been a traversin’, I recollected that I wuz a wife, that Providence and
+Elder Minkley had placed a man in my hands to take care on; and I see
+he wuz gone from me, and I must look him up.
+
+And I found that man in one of the high tallish lookin’ swing chairs
+that wuz a swingin’ from high poles all along the brow of the hill.
+They looked some like a stanchol for a horse, and some like a pair of
+galluses that criminals are hung on.
+
+Josiah wuzn’t able to work it right and it did require a deep mind to
+get into one without peril. And he wuz on the brink of a catastrophe. I
+got him out by siezin’ the chair and holdin’ it tight, till he
+dismounted from it—which he did with words unadapted to the serenity of
+the atmosphere. And then we went out the broad pleasant door-yard up
+into the tarven, and my companion got some coffee, and some
+refreshments, to refresh ourselves with. And then he, feelin’ clever
+and real affectionate to me (owin’ partly I s’pose to the good dinner),
+we wended our way down to the cottage where the Hero met his last foe
+and fell victorious.
+
+The Swing Chair
+
+We went up the broad steps onto the piazza, and I looked off from it,
+and over all the landscape under the soft summer sky, lay that same
+beautiful tender inspired memory. It lay like the hush that follows a
+prayer at a dyin’ bed. Like the glow that rests on the world when the
+sun has gone down in glory. Like the silence full of voices that
+follows a oriter’s inspired words.
+
+The air, the whole place, thrilled with that memory, that presence that
+wuz with us, though unseen to the eyes of our spectacles. It followed
+us through the door way, it went ahead on us into the room where the
+pen wuz laid down for the last time, where the last words wuz said.
+That pen wuz hung up over the bed where the tired head had rested last.
+By the bedside wuz the candle blowed out, when he got to the place
+where it is so light they don’t need candles. The watch stopped at the
+time when he begun to recken time by the deathless ages of immortality.
+And as I stood there, I said to myself, “I wish I could see the faces
+that wuz a bendin’ over this bed, August 11th, 1885.”
+
+All the ministerin’ angels, and heroes, and conquerors, all a waitin’
+for him to join ’em. All the Grand Army of the Republic, them who fell
+in mountain and valley; the lamented and the nameless, all, all a
+waitin’ for the Leader they loved, the silent, quiet man, whose soul
+spoke, who said in deeds what weaker spirits waste in language.
+
+I wished I could see the great army that stood around Mount McGregor
+that day. I wished I could hear the notes of the immortal revelee,
+which wuz a soundin’ all along the lines callin’ him to wake from his
+earth sleep into life—callin’ him from the night here, the night of
+sorrow and pain, into the mornin’.
+
+And as I lifted my eyes, the eyes of the General seemed to look cleer
+down into my soul, full of the secrets that he could tell now, if he
+wanted to, full of the mysteries of life, the mysteries of death. The
+voiceless presence that filled the hull landscape, earth and air,
+looked at us through them eyes, half mournful, prophetic, true and
+calm, they wuz a lookin’ through all the past, through all the future.
+What did they see there? I couldn’t tell, nor Josiah.
+
+In another room wuz the flowers from many climes. Flowers strewed onto
+the stage from hands all over the world, when the foot lights burned
+low, and the dark curtain went down for the last time on the Hero.
+Great masses of flowers, every one on ’em, bearin’ the world’s love,
+the world’s sorrow over our nation’s loss.
+
+I had a large quantity of emotions as I stood there, probably as many
+as 48 a minute for quite a spell, and that is a large number of
+emotions to have, when the size of ’em is as large as the sizes of ’em
+wuz. I thought as I stood there of what I had hearn the Hero said once
+in his last illness, that, liftin’ up his grand right arm that had
+saved the Nation, he said, “I am on duty from four to six.”
+
+Yes, thinkses I, he wuz on duty all through the shadows and the
+darkness of war, all through the peril, and the heartache, and the wild
+alarm of war, calm and dauntless, he wuz on duty till the mornin’ of
+peace came, and the light wuz shinin’.
+
+On duty through the darkness. No one believed, no one dared to think
+that if peril had come again to the country, he would not have been
+ready,—ready to face danger and death for the people he had saved once,
+the people whom he loved, because he had dared death for ’em.
+
+Yes, he wuz on duty.
+
+There wuz a darker shadow come to him than any cloud that ever rose
+over a battle-field when, honest and true himself as the light, he
+still stood under the shadow of blame and impendin’ want, stood in the
+blackest shadow that can cover generous, faithful hearts, the
+heart-sickenin’ shadow of ingratitude; when the people he had saved
+from ruin hesitated, and refused to give him in the time of his need
+the paltry pension, the few dollars out of the millions he had saved
+for them, preferring to allow _him_, the greatest hero of the world,
+the man who had represented them before the nations, to sell the badges
+and swords he had worn in fightin’ their battles, for bread for himself
+and wife.
+
+But he wuz on duty all through this night. Patient, uncomplainin’. And
+not one of these warriors fightin’ their bloodless battle of words
+aginst him, would dare to say that he would not have been ready at any
+minute, to give his life agin for these very men, had danger come to
+the country and they had needed him.
+
+And when hastened on by the shock, and the suspense, death seemed to be
+near him, so near that it seemed as if the burden must needs be
+light—the tardy justice that came to him must have seemed like an
+insult, but if he thought so he never said it; no, brave and patient,
+he wuz on duty.
+
+And all through the long, long time that he looked through the shadows
+for a more sure foe than had ever lain in Southern ambush for him, he
+wuz on duty. Not an impatient word, not an anxious word. Of all the
+feerin’, doubtin’, hopin’, achin’ hearts about him, he only wuz calm.
+
+For, not only his own dear ones, but the hull country, friends and foes
+alike, as if learnin’ through fear of his loss how grand a hero he wuz,
+and how greatly and entirely he wuz beloved by them all, they sent up
+to Heaven such a great cloud of prayers for his safety as never rose
+for any man. But he only wuz calm, while the hull world wuz excited in
+his behalf.
+
+For the sight of his patient work, the sight of him who stopped dyin’
+(as it were) to earn by his own brave honest hand the future comfort of
+his family, amazed, and wonderin’ at this spectacle, one of the
+greatest it seems to me that ever wuz seen on earth, the hull nation
+turned to him in such a full hearted love, and admiration, and worship,
+that they forgot in their quicker adorin’ heart-throbs, the slower
+meaner throbs they had gin him, this same brave Hero, jest as brave and
+true-hearted in the past as he wuz on his grand death-bed.
+
+They forgot everything that had gone by in their worship, and I don’t
+know but I ort to. Mebby I had. I shouldn’t wonder a mite if I had. But
+all the while, all through the agony and the labor, and when too
+wearied he lay down the pen,—he wuz on duty.
+
+Waitin’ patiently, fearlessly, till he should see in the first glow of
+the sunrise the form of the angel comin’ to relieve his watch, the
+tall, fair angel of Rest, that the Great Commander sent down in the
+mornin’ watches to relieve his weary soldier,that divinest angel that
+ever comes to the abode of men, though her beauty shines forever
+through tears, led by her hand, he has left life’s battle-field
+forever; and what is left to this nation but memory, love, and mebby
+remorse.
+
+But little matters it to him, the Nation’s love or the Nation’s blame,
+restin’ there by the calm waters he loved. The tides come in, and the
+tides go out; jest as they did in his life; the fickle tide of public
+favor that swept by him, movin’ him not on his heavenly mission of duty
+and patriotism.
+
+The tides go out, and the tides come in; the wind wails and the wind
+sings its sweet summer songs; but he does not mind the melody or the
+clamor. He is resting. Sleep on, Hero beloved, while the world wakes to
+praise thee.
+
+Wall, we sot sail from Mount McGregor about half-past four P. M.,
+afternoon. And we wound round and round the mountain side jest as he
+did, only goin’ down into the valley instid of upwards. But the trees
+that clothed the bare back of the mountain looked green and shinin’ in
+the late afternoon sunlight, and the fields spread out in the valley
+looked green and peaceful under the cool shadows of approachin’ sunset.
+
+And right in the midst of one of these fields, all full of white
+daisies, the cars stopped and the conductor sung out: “Five minutes’
+stop at Daisy station. Five minutes to get out and pick daisies.”
+
+And sez Josiah to me in gruff axents, when I asked him if he wuz goin’
+to get out and pick some. Sez he, “Samantha, no man can go ahead of me
+in hatin’ the dumb weeds, and doin’ his best towards uprootin’ ’em in
+my own land; and I deeply sympathize with any man who is over run by
+’em. But why am I beholdin’ to the man that owns this lot? Why should I
+and all the rest of this carload of folks, all dressed up in our best
+too, lay hold and weed out these infernal nuisances for nothin’?”
+
+Yes, he said these fearfully profane words to me and I herd him in
+silence, for I did not want to make a seen in public. Sez I, “Josiah,
+they are pickin’ ’em because they love ’em.”
+
+“Love ’em!” Oh, the fearful, scornful unbelievin’ look that came over
+my pardner’s face, as I said these peaceful words to him. And he added
+a expletive which I am fur from bein’ urged to ever repeat. It wuz
+sinful.
+
+“Love ’em!” Agin he sez. And agin follerd a expletive that wuz still
+more forcible, and still more sinful. And I felt obliged to check him
+which I did. And after a long parlay, in which I used my best endeavors
+of argument and reason to convince him that I wuz in the right on’t, I
+see he wuzn’t convinced. And then I spoke about its bein’ fashionable
+to get out and pick ’em, and he looked different to once. I could see a
+change in him. All my arguments of the beauty and sweetness of the
+posies had no effect, but when I said fashionable, he faltered, and he
+sez, “Is it called a genteel diversion?”
+
+And I sez, “Yes.”
+
+And finally he sez, “Wall, I s’pose I can go out and pick some for you.
+Dumb their dumb picters.”
+
+Sez I, “Don’t go in that spirit, Josiah Allen.”
+
+“Wall, I shall go in jest that sprit,” he snapped out, “if I go at
+all.” And he went.
+
+But oh! it wuz a sight to set and look on, and see the look onto his
+face, as he picked the innocent blossoms. It wuz a look of such deep
+loathin’, and hatred, combined with a sort of a genteel, fashionable
+air.
+
+Altogether it wuz the most curius, and strange look, that I ever see
+outside of a menagery of wild animals. And he had that same look onto
+his face as he came in and gin ’em to me. He had yanked’em all up by
+their roots too, which made the Bokay look more strange. But I accepted
+of it in silence, for I see by his mean that he wuz not in a condition
+to brook another word.
+
+And I trembled when a bystander a standin’ by who wuz arrangin’ a
+beautiful bunch of ’em, a handlin’ ’em as flowers ort to be handled, as
+if they had a soul, and could feel a rough or tender touch,—this man
+sez to Josiah, “I see that you too love this beautiful blossom.”
+
+I wuz glad the man’s eyes wuz riveted onto his Bokay, for the ferocity
+of Josiah Allen’s look wuz sunthin’ fearful. He looked as if he could
+tear him lim’ from lim’.
+
+And I hastily drawed Josiah to a seat at the other end of the car, and
+voyalently, but firmly, I drawed his attention off onto Religion.
+
+I sez, “Josiah, do you believe we had better paint the steeple of the
+meetin’-house, white or dark colered?”
+
+This wuz a subject that had rent Jonesville to its very twain. And
+Josiah had been fearfully exercised on it. And this plan of mine
+succeeded. He got eloquent on it, and I kinder held off, and talked
+offish, and let him convince me.
+
+I did it from principle.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV.
+ADVENTURES AT VARIOUS SPRINGS.
+
+
+A few days after this, Josiah Allen came in, and sez he, “The
+Everlastin’ spring is the one for me, Samantha! I believe it will keep
+me alive for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
+
+Sez I, “I don’t believe that, Josiah Allen.”
+
+“Wall, it is so, whether you believe it or not. Why, I see a feller
+just now who sez he don’t believe anybody would ever die at all, if
+they kep’ themselves’ kind a wet through all the time with this water.”
+
+Sez I, “Josiah Allen, you are not talkin’ Bible. The Bible sez, ‘all
+flesh is as grass.’”
+
+“Wall, that is what he meant; if the grass wuz watered with that water
+all the time, it would never wilt.”
+
+“Oh, shaw!” sez I. (I seldom say shaw, but this seemed to me a time for
+shawin’.)
+
+But Josiah kep’ on, for he wuz fearfully excited. Sez he, “Why, the
+feller said, there wuz a old man who lived right by the side of this
+spring, and felt the effects of it inside and out all the time, it wuz
+so healthy there. Why the old man kep’ on a livin’, and a livin’ till
+he got to be a hundred. And he wuz kinder lazy naturally and he got
+tired of livin’. He said he wuz tired of gettin’ up mornin’s and
+dressin’ of him, tired of pullin’ on his boots and drawin’ on his
+trowsers, and he told his grandson Sam to take him up to Troy and let
+him die.
+
+“Wall, Sam took him up to Troy, and he died right away, almost. And Sam
+bein’ a good-hearted chap, thought it would please the old man to he
+buried down by the spring, that healthy spot. So he took him back there
+in a wagon he borrowed. And when he got clost to the spring, Sam heard
+a sithe, and he looked back, and there the old gentleman wuz a settin’
+up a leanin’ his head on his elbo and he sez, in a sort of a sad way,
+not mad, but melanecolly, ‘You hadn’t ort to don it, Sam. You hadn’t
+ort to. I’m in now for another hundred years.’”
+
+The Everlastin’ Spring
+
+I told Josiah I didn’t believe that. Sez I, “I believe the waters are
+good, very good, and the air is healthy here in the extreme, but I
+don’t believe that.”
+
+But he said it wuz a fact, and the feller said he could prove it.
+“Why,” Josiah sez, “with the minerals there is in that spring, if you
+only take enough of it, I don’t see how anybody can die.” And sez
+Josiah, “I am a goin’ to jest live on that water while I am here.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “you must do as you are a mind to, with fear and
+tremblin’.”
+
+I thought mebby quotin’ Scripture to him would kinder quell him down,
+for he wuz fearfully agitated and wrought up about the Everlastin’
+spring. And he begun at once to calculate on it, on how much he could
+drink of it, if he begun early in the mornin’ and drinked late at
+night.
+
+But I kep’ on megum. I drinked the waters that seemed to help me and
+made me feel better, but wuz megum in it, and didn’t get over excited
+about any on ’em. But oh! oh! the quantities of that water that Josiah
+Allen took! Why, it seemed as if he would make a perfect shipwreck of
+his own body, and wash himself away, till one day he came in fearful
+excited agin, and sez he, in agitated axents, “I made a mistake,
+Samantha. The Immortal spring is the one for me.”
+
+“Why?” sez I.
+
+“Oh, I have jest seen a feller that has been a tellin’ me about it.”
+
+“What did he say?” sez I, in calm axents.
+
+“Wall, I’ll tell you. It has acted on my feelin’s dretful.” Says he, “I
+have shed some tears.” (I see Josiah Allen had been a cryin’ when he
+came in.)
+
+And I sez agin, “What is it?”
+
+“Wall,” he said, “this man had a dretful sick wife. And he wuz a
+carryin’ her to the Immortal spring jest as fast as he could, for he
+felt it would save her, if he could get her to it. But she died a mile
+and a half from the spring. It wuz night, for he had traveled night and
+day to get her there, and the tarvens wuz all shut up, and he laid her
+on the spring-house floor, and laid down himself on one of the benches.
+He took a drink himself, the last thing before he laid down, for he
+felt that he must have sunthin’ to sustain him in his affliction.
+
+“Wall, in the night he heard a splashin’, and he rousted up, and he see
+that he had left the water kinder careless the night before, and it had
+broke loose and covered the floor and riz up round the body, and there
+she wuz, all bright and hearty, a splashin’ and a swimmin’ round in the
+water.” He said the man cried like a child when he told him of it.
+
+The Immortal Spring
+
+And sez Josiah, “It wuz dretful affectin’. It brought tears from me, to
+hear on’t. I thought what if it had been you, Samantha!”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “I don’t see no occasion for tears, unless you would
+have been sorry to had me brung to.”
+
+“Oh!” sez Josiah, “I didn’t think! I guess I have cried in the wrong
+place.”
+
+Sez I coldly, “I should think as much.”
+
+And Josiah put on his hat and hurried out. He meant well. But it is
+quite a nack for pardners to know jest when to cry, and when to laff.
+
+Wall, he follered up that spring, and drinked more, fur more than wuz
+good for him of that water. And then anon, he would hear of another
+one, and some dretful big story about it, and he would foller that up,
+and so it went on, he a follerin’ on, and I a bein’ megum, and drinkin’
+stiddy, but moderate. And as it might be expected, I gained in health
+every day, and every hour. For the waters is good, there haint no doubt
+of it.
+
+But Josiah takin’ em as he did, bobbin’ round from one to the other,
+drinkin’ ’em at all hours of day and night, and floodin’ himself out
+with ’em, every one on ’em—why, he lost strength and health every day,
+till I felt truly, that if it went on much longer, I should go home in
+weeds. Not mullein, or burdock, or anything of that sort, but crape.
+
+But at last a event occurred that sort a sot him to thinkin’ and
+quelled him down some. One day we sot out for a walk, Josiah and
+Ardelia Tutt and me. And in spite of all my protestations, my pardner
+had drinked 11 glasses full of the spring he wuz a follerin’ then. And
+he looked white round the lips as anything. And Ardelia and I wuz a
+sittin’ in a good shady place, and Josiah a little distance off, when a
+man ackosted him, a man with black eyes and black whiskers, and sez,
+“You look pale, Sir. What water are you a drinkin’?”
+
+And Josiah told him that at that time he wuz a drinkin’ the water from
+the Immortal spring.
+
+“Drinkin’ that water?” sez the man, startin’ back horrefied.
+
+“Yes,” sez Josiah, turnin’ paler than ever, for the man’s looks wuz
+skairful in the extreme.
+
+“Oh! oh!” groaned the man. “And you are a married man?” he groaned out
+mournfully, a lookin’ pitifully at him. “With a family?”
+
+“Yes,” sez Josiah, faintly.
+
+“Oh dear,” sez the man, “must it be so, to die, so—so lamented?”
+
+“To die!” sez Josiah, turnin’ white jest round the lip.
+
+“Yes, to die! Did you not say you had been a drinkin’ the water from
+the Immortal spring?”
+
+“Yes,” sez Josiah.
+
+“Wall, it is a certain, a deadly poison.”
+
+“Haint there no help for me?” sez Josiah.
+
+“Yes,” sez the man, “You must drink from the Live-forever spring, at
+the other end of the village. That water has the happy effect of
+neutralizin’ the poisons of the Immortal spring. If anything can save
+you that can. Why,” sez he, “folks that have been entirely broke down,
+and made helpless and hopeless invalids, them that have been brung down
+on their death-beds by the use of that vile Immortal water, have been
+cured by a few glasses of the pure healin’ waters of the Live-forever
+spring. I’d advise you for your own sake, and the sake of your family,
+who would mourn your ontimely decese, to drink from that spring at
+once.”
+
+“But,” sez Josiah, with a agonized and hopeless look, “I can’t drink no
+more now.”
+
+“Why?” sez the man.
+
+“Because I don’t hold any more. I don’t hold but two quarts, and I have
+drinked 11 tumblers full now.”
+
+“Eleven glasses of that poison?” sez the man.
+
+“Wall, if it is too late I am not to blame. I’ve warned you. Farewell,”
+sez he, a graspin’ holt of Josiah’s hand. “Farewell, forever. But if
+you _do_ live,” sez he, “if by a miricle you are saved, remember the
+Live-forever spring. If there is any help for you it is in them
+waters.”
+
+The Live-forever Spring
+
+And he dashed away, for another stranger wuz approachin’ the seen.
+
+I, myself, didn’t have no idee that Josiah wuz a goin’ to die. But
+Ardelia whispered to me, she must go back to the hotel, so she went. I
+see she looked kinder strange, and I didn’t object to it. And when we
+got back she handed me some verses entitled:
+
+“Stanzas on the death of Josiah Allen.”
+
+She handed ’em to me, and hastened away, quick. But Josiah Allen didn’t
+die. And this incident made him more megum. More as I wanted him to be.
+Why, you have to be megum in everything, no matter how good it is. Milk
+porridge, or the Bible, or anything. You can kill yourself on milk
+porridge if you drink enough. And you can set down and read the Bible,
+till you grow to your chair, and lose your eyesight.
+
+Now these waters are dretful good, but you have got to use some
+megumness _with_ ’em, it stands to reason you have. Taint megum to
+drink from 10 to 12 glasses at a time, and mix your drinks goin’ round
+from spring to spring like a luny. No; get a good doctor to tell you
+what minerals you seem to stand in need on the most, and then try to
+get ’em with fear and tremblin’. You’ll get help I haint a doubt on’t.
+For they are dretful good for varius things that afflict the human
+body. Dretful!
+
+These are the verses of Ardelia:
+
+“STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF JOSIAH ALLEN.
+
+“Oh! angel man that erst did live and move,
+Thy wings close furled within a broad cloth vest,
+With cambric back, oh, soul of love
+That in those depths reposed—Alas why wrest
+Why wildly tear,
+
+“Oh death, that soul, white nigh upon as snow,
+From body, small perhaps, by stillyards weighed,
+And full as light complexioned, as men go,
+As is the common run of men, arrayed,
+Oh yes, arrayed,
+
+“In graces full he wentest to his fate,
+His doom wuz pure as men’s dooms ever are;
+Not by the brandy bottle fell he desolate
+No, by sweet water fell he, with a noble air,
+And breath of balm,
+
+“Not with a feud with neighbor foe he fell
+Nor scaffolds did he tread with aching feet
+Nor arson he, nor rapine down the dell,
+No, pure white soul, he fell by water sweet;
+All innocent.
+
+“Had whisky strong his slight form overthrew—
+We’d weep with finger hiding all our face,
+To think a sling should slung at him and slew,
+But no, by water fell he, no disgrace—
+No direful shame.
+
+“Rests on his tomb, his bride; the world around,
+Methinks a world might wish to fall like him
+The prophets of old time who smiled and frowned
+Could court such fate, we feel Abim—
+We feel Abim—
+
+“ilek, or Job, might be content to die
+With crystal water, drunken from a glass,
+Held by a boy, and no great quantitie
+Drunk he, not over nine in all, alas,
+Or ten, or ’leven.
+
+“Oh, spring, oh, magnesie percipitate
+And sodium and iron—and everything,
+Methinks ye’ll sadder feel, since his sad fate
+Who drunk thee up, not thinking anything—
+We do suppose—
+
+“Not anything of poison ye might keep
+Might hold within thy crystal foaming breast
+Why did he not the other spring drink deep,
+And live? But oh! why ask? sweet angel spirit rest
+From water far.
+
+“Dear man, we raise this mound of verse o’er thee,
+Would that ’twere higher, and more fiery bright.
+We will, we will, while nations disagree,
+Sit down and write as many as it seemeth right
+Unto his wife.”
+
+
+On the other side of the paper, as if wrote later, wuz the follerin’
+lines. Ardelia is truthful. This is her strong point, that and her
+ambition.
+
+“MY OWN LAY ON A SPRING.
+“BV ARDELIA TUTT.
+
+“Oh who can tell when air is full of warn
+What crystal drop shall speed us to our fate,
+And I alas, so blind, shall still drink on,
+Shall drink thee early, and shall drink thee late
+From every spring.
+
+“Shall drink as many glasses as I hold,
+One quart, or two, as fate shall thus decree,
+Some are but vessels weak, some bold
+And dauntless, hold from two quarts up to three,
+Or thereabouts.
+
+“Shall drink from wells all gemmed with crystal rays
+With golden sheen, up sparkling to the rim,
+And that is pure and clear to outward gaze
+With hathorn bending gently o’er the brim
+And every sort.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI.
+AT A LAWN PARTY.
+
+
+Wall, the very next mornin’ Miss Flamm sent word for Josiah and me to
+come that night to a lawn party. And I sez at once, “I must go and get
+some lawn.”
+
+Sez Josiah, “What will you do with it?”
+
+And I sez, “Oh, I s’pose I shall wrap it round me, I’ll do what the
+rest do.”
+
+And sez Josiah, “Hadn’t I ort to have some too? If it is a lawn party
+and everybody else has it, I shall feel like a fool without any lawn.”
+
+And I looked at him in deep thought, and through him into the causes
+and consequences of things, and sez I, “I s’pose you do ort to have a
+lawn necktie, or handkerchief, or sunthin’.”
+
+Sez he, “How would a vest look made out of it, a kinder sprigged one,
+light gay colors on a yaller ground-work?”
+
+But I sez at once, “You never will go out with me, Josiah, with a lawn
+vest on.” And I settled it right there on the spot.
+
+Then he proposed to have some wrapped round his hat, sort a festooned.
+But I stood like marble aginst that idee. But I knew I had got to have
+some lawn, and pretty soon we sallied out together and wended our way
+down to where I should be likely to find a lawn store.
+
+And who should we meet a comin’ out of a store but Ardelia. Her 3d
+cousin had sent her over to get a ingregient for cookin’. Good, willin’
+little creeter! She walked along with us for a spell. And while she wuz
+a walkin’ along with us, we come onto a sight that always looked
+pitiful to me, the old female that wuz always a’ sittin’ there a
+singin’ and playin’ on a accordeun. And it seemed to me that she looked
+pitifuller and homblier than ever, as she sot there amongst the dense
+crowd that mornin’ a singin’ and a playin’. Her tone wuz thin, thin as
+gauze, hombly gause too. But I wondered to myself how she wuz a feelin’
+inside of her own mind, and what voices she heard a speakin’ to her own
+soul, through them hombly strains. And, ontirely unbeknown to myself, I
+fell into a short revery (short but deep) right there in the street, as
+I looked down on her, a settin’ there so old, and patient and helpless,
+amongst the gay movin’ throng.
+
+And I wondered what did she see, a settin’ there with her blind eyes,
+what did she hear through them hombly tones that she wuz a singin’ day
+after day to a crowd that wuz indifferent to her, or despised her? Did
+she hear the song of the mornin’, the spring time of life? Did the song
+of a lark come back to her, a lark flyin’ up through the sweet mornin’
+sky over the doorway of a home, a lark watched by young eyes, two pairs
+of ’em, that made the seein’ a blessedness? Did a baby’s first sweet
+blunders of speech, and happy laughter come back to her, as she sot
+there a drawin’ out with her wrinkled hands them miserable sounds from
+the groanin’ instrument? Did home, love, happiness sound out to her,
+out of them hombly strains? I’d have gin a cent to know.
+
+And I’d have gin a cent quick to know if the tread—tread—tread of the
+crowd goin’ past her day after day, hour after hour, seems to her like
+the trample of Time a marchin’ on. Did she hear in ’em the footsteps of
+child, or lover, or friend, a steppin’ away from her, and youth and
+happiness, and hope, a stiddy goin’ away from her?
+
+Did she ever listen through the constant sound of them steps, listen to
+hear the tread of them feet that she must know wuz a comin’ nigh to
+her—the icy feet that will approach us, if their way leads over rocks
+or roses?
+
+Did she hate to hear them steps a comin’ nearer to her, or did she
+strain her ears to hear ’em, to welcome ’em? I thought like as not she
+did. For thinkses I to myself, and couldn’t help it, if she is a
+Christian she must be glad to change that old accordeun for a harp of
+any size or shape. For mournfuller and more melancholy sounds than her
+voice and that instrument made I never hearn, nor ever expect to hear,
+and thin.
+
+Poor, old, hombly critter, I gin her quite a lot of change one day, and
+she braced up and sung and drawed out faster than ever, and thinner.
+Though I’d have gladly hearn her stop.
+
+When I come up out of my revery, I see Ardelia lookin’ at her stiddy
+and kind a sot. And I mistrusted trouble wuz ahead on me, and I hurried
+Josiah down the street. Ardelia a sayin’ she had got to turn the
+corner, to go to another place for her 3d cousin.
+
+Jest as we wuz a crossin’ a street my companion drawed my attention to
+a sign that wuz jest overhead, and sez lie, “That means me, I’m spoke
+of right out, and hung up overhead.”
+
+And sez I, “What do you mean?”
+
+Sez he, “Read it—‘The First Man-I-Cure Of The Day.’ That’s me,
+Samantha; I haint a doubt of it. And I s’pose I ort to go in and be
+cured. I s’pose probably it will be expected of me, that I should go
+in, and let him look at my corns.”
+
+Sez I, “Josiah Allen, I’ve heerd you talk time and agin aginst big
+feelin’ folks, and here you be a talkin’ it right to yourself, and
+callin’ yourself the first man of the day.”
+
+“Wall,” sez he firmly, “I believe it, and I believe you do, and you’d
+own up to it, if you wuzn’t so aggravatin’.”
+
+“Wall, sez I mildly, “I do think you are the first in some things,
+though what them things are, I would be fur from wantin’ to tell you.
+But,” I continued on, “I don’t see you should think that means you.
+Saratoga is full of men, and most probable every man of ’em thinks it
+means him.”
+
+“Wall,” sez he, “I don’t _think_ it means me, I _know_ it. And I
+s’pose,” he continued dreamily, “they’d cure me, and not charge a
+cent.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “wait till another time, Josiah Allen.” And jest at this
+minute, right down under our feet, we see the word “Pray,” in big
+letters scraped right out in stun. And Josiah sez, “I wonder if the
+dumb fools think anybody is goin to kneel down right here in the
+street, and be run over. Why a man would be knocked over a dozen times,
+before he got through one prayer, Now I lay me down to sleep, or
+anything.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, mildly, “I don’t think that would be a very suitable
+prayer under the circumstances. It haint expected that you’d lay down
+here for a nap—howsumever,” sez I reesunably “their puttin’ the word
+there shows what good streaks the folks here have, and I don’t want you
+to make light on’t, and if you don’t want to act like a perfect
+backslider you’ll ceese usin’ such profane language on sech a solemn
+subject.”
+
+Wall, we went into a good lookin’store and I wuz jest a lookin’ at some
+lawn and a wonderin’ how many yards I should want, when who should come
+in but Miss Flamm to get a rooch for her neck.
+
+Looking at some lawn
+
+And she told me that I didn’t need any lawn, and that it wuz a Garden
+party, and folks dressed in anything they wuz a mind to, though sez
+she, “A good many go in full dress.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I calmly, “I have got one.” And she told me to come in good
+season.
+
+That afternoon, Josiah a bein’ out for a walk, I took out of my trunk a
+dress that Alminy Hagidon had made for me out of a very full pattern I
+had got of a peddler, and wanted it all put in, so’s it would fade all
+alike, for I mistrusted it wouldn’t wash. It wuz gethered-in full round
+the waist, and the sleeves wuz set in full, and the waist wuz kinder
+full before, and it had a deep high ruffle gathered-in full round the
+neck. It wuz a very full dress, though I haint proud, and never wuz
+called so. Yet anybody duz take a modest pleasure in bein’ equal to any
+occasion and comin’ up nobly to a emergency. And I own that I did say
+to myself, as I pulled out the gethers in front, “Wall, there may be
+full dresses there to-night, but there will be none fuller than mine.”
+
+And I wuz glad that Alminy had made it jest as she had. She had made it
+a little fuller than even I had laid out to have it, for she mistrusted
+it would shrink in washin’. It wuz a very full dress. It wuz cambrick
+dark chocolate, with a set flower of a kind of a cinnamon brown and
+yellow, it wuz bran new and looked well.
+
+Wall, I had got it on, and wuz contemplatin’ its fullness with
+complacency and a hand-glass, a seein’ how nobly it stood out behind,
+and how full it wuz, when Josiah Allen came in. I had talked it over
+with him, before he went out—and he wuz as tickled as I wuz, and
+tickleder, to think I had got jest the right dress for the occasion.
+But he sez to me the first thing—“You are all wrong, Samantha, full
+dress means low neck and short sleeves.”
+
+Sez I, “I know better!”
+
+Sez he, “It duz.”
+
+Sez I, “Somebody has been a foolin’ you, Josiah Allen! There ain’t no
+sense in it. Do you s’pose folks would call a dress full, when there
+wuzn’t more’n half a waist and sleeves to it. I’d try to use a little
+judgment, Josiah Allen! “
+
+But he contended that he wuz in the right on’t. And he took up his best
+vest that lay on the bed, and sot down, and took out his jack knife and
+went a rippin’ open one of the shoulders, and sez I, “What are you
+doin’, Josiah Allen?”
+
+“Why, you can do as you are a mind to, Samantha Allen,” sez he. “But I
+shall go fashionable, I shall go in full dress.”
+
+Sez I, “Josiah Allen do you look me in the face and say you are a goin’
+in a low neck vest, and everything, to that party to-night?”
+
+“Yes, mom, I be. I am bound to be fashionable.” And he went to rollin’
+up his shirt sleeves and turnin’ in the neck of his shirt, in a manner
+that wuz perfectly immodest.
+
+I turned my head away instinctively, for I felt that my cheek wuz a
+gettin’ as red as blood, partly through delicacy and partly through
+righteous anger. Sez I, “Josiah Allen, be you a calculatin’ to go there
+right out in public before men and wimmen, a showin’ your bare bosom to
+a crowd? Where is your modesty, Josiah Allen? Where is your decency?”
+
+Sez he firmly, “I keep ’em where all the rest do, who go in full
+dress.”
+
+I sot right down in a chair and sez I, “Wall there is one thing
+certain; if you go in that condition, you will go alone. Why,” sez I,
+“to home, if Tirzah Ann, your own daughter, had ketched you in that
+perdickerment, a rubbin’ on linement or anything, you would have jumped
+and covered yourself up, quicker’n a flash, and likeways me, before
+Thomas Jefferson. And now you lay out to go in that way before young
+girls, and old ones, and men and wimmen, and want me to foller on after
+your example. What in the world are you a thinkin’ on, Josiah Allen?”
+
+Full Dress
+
+“Why I’m a thinkin, on full dress,” sez be in a pert tone, a kinder
+turnin’ himself before the glass, where he could get a good view of his
+bones. His thin neck wuzn’t much more than bones, anyway, and so I told
+him. And I asked him if he could see any beauty in it, and sez I, “Who
+wants to look at our old bare necks, Josiah Allen? And if there wuzn’t
+any other powerful reeson of modesty and decency in it, you’d ketch
+your death cold, Josiah Allen, and be laid up with the newmoan. You
+know you would,” sez I, “you are actin’ like a luny, Josiah Allen.”
+
+“It is you that are actin’ like a luny,” sez he bitterly. “I never
+propose anything of a high fashionable kind but what you want to break
+it up. Why, dumb it all, you know as well as I do, that men haint
+called as modest as wimmen anyway. And if they have the name, why
+shouldn’t they have the game? Why shouldn’t they go round half dressed
+as well as wimmen do? And they are as strong agin; if there is any
+danger to health in it they are better able to stand it. But,” sez he,
+in the same bitter axents, “you always try to break up all my efforts
+at high life and fashion. I presume you won’t waltz to-night, nor want
+me to.”
+
+I groaned several times in spite of myself, and sithed, “Waltz!” sez I
+in awful axents. “A classleader! and a grandfather! and talkin’ about
+waltzin’!”
+
+Sez Josiah, “Men older than me waltz, and foller it up. Put their arms
+right round the prettiest girls in the room, hug ’em, and swing ’em
+right round”—sez he kinder spoony like.
+
+I said nothin’ at them fearful words, only my groans and sithes became
+deeper and more voyalent. And in a minute I see through the fingers
+with which I had nearly covered my face, that he wuz a pullin’ down his
+shirt sleeves and a puttin’ his jack knife in his pocket.
+
+That man loves me. And love sways him round often times when reesun and
+sound argument are powerless. Now, the sound reesun of the case didn’t
+move him, such as the indelicacy of makin’ a exhibition of one’s self
+in a way that would, if displayed in a heathen, be a call for
+missionarys to convert ’em, and that makes men blush when they see it
+in a Christian woman.
+
+The sound reason of its bein’ the fruitful cause of disease and death,
+through the senseless exposure.
+
+The sound reason of the worse than folly of old and middle-aged folks
+thinkin’ that the exhibition is a pretty one when it haint.
+
+The sound reason of its bein’ inconsistent for a woman to allow the
+familiarity of a man and a stranger, a walkin’ up and puttin’ his arm
+round her, and huggin’ her up to him as clost as he can; that act, that
+a woman would resent as a deadly insult and her incensed relatives
+avenge with the sword, if it occurred in any other place than the
+ball-room and at the sound of the fiddle. The utter inconsistency of
+her meetin’ it with smiles, and making frantic efforts to get more such
+affronts than any other woman present—her male relatives a lookin’
+proudly on.
+
+The inconsistency of a man’s bein’ not only held guiltless but
+applauded for doin’ what, if it took place in the street, or church,
+would make him outlawed, for where is there a lot of manly men who
+would look on calmly, and see a sweet young girl insulted by a man’s
+ketchin’ hold of her and embracin’ of her tightly for half an
+hour,—why, he would be turned out of his club and outlawed from
+Christian homes if it took place in silence, but yet the sound of a
+fiddle makes it all right.
+
+And I sez to myself mildly, as I sot there, “Is it that men and wimmen
+lose their senses, or is there a sacredness in the strains of that
+fiddle, that makes immodesty modest, indecency decent, and immorality
+moral?” And agin I sithe heavy and gin 3 deep groans. And I see Josiah
+gin in. All the sound reasons weighed as nothin’ with him, but 2 or 3
+groans, and a few sithes settled the matter. Truly Love is a mighty
+conqueror.
+
+And anon Josiah spoke and sez, “Wall, I s’pose I can gin it all up, if
+you feel so about it, but we shall act like fools, Samantha, and look
+like ’em.”
+
+Sez I sternly, “Better be fools than naves, Josiah Allen! if we have
+got to be one or the other, but we haint. We are a standin’ on firm
+ground, Josiah Allen,” sez I. “The platform made of the boards of
+consistency, and common sense, and decency, is one that will never
+break down and let you through it, into gulfs and abysses. And on that
+platform we will both stand to-night, dear Josiah.”
+
+I think it is always best when a pardner has gin in and you have had a
+triumph of principle, to be bland; blander than common to him. I always
+love at such times to round my words to him with a sweet
+affectionateness of mean. I love to, and he loves it.
+
+We sot out in good season for the Garden party. And it wuz indeed a
+sight to behold! But I did not at that first minute have a chance to
+sense it, for Miss Flamm sent her hired girl out to ask me to come to
+her room for a few minutes. Miss Flamm’s house is a undergoin’ repairs
+for a few weeks, sunthin’ had gin out in the water works, so she and
+her hired girl have been to this tarven for the time bein’. The hired
+girl got us some good seats and tellin’ Josiah to keep one on ’em for
+me, I follered the girl, or “maid,” as Miss Flamm calls her. But good
+land! if she is a old maid, I don’t see where the young ones be.
+
+Miss Flamm had sent for me, so she said, to see if I wanted to ride out
+the next day, and what time would be the most convenient to me, and
+also, to see how I liked her dress. She didn’t know as she should see
+me down below, in the crowd, and she wanted me to see it. (Miss Flamm
+uses me dretful well, but I s’pose 2/3ds of it, is on Thomas J’s
+account. Some folks think she is goin’ to have another lawsuit, and I
+am glad enough to have him convey her lawsuits, for they are good,
+honerable ones, and she pays him splendid for carryin’ ’em.)
+
+Wall, she had her skirts all on when I went in, all a foamin’ and a
+shinin’, down onto the carpet, in a glitterin’ pile of pink satin and
+white lace and posys. Gorgus enough for a princess.
+
+And I didn’t mind it much, bein’ only females present, if she wuz
+exposin’ of herself a good deal. I kinder blushed a little as I looked
+at her, and kep’ my eyes down on her skirts all I could, and thinkses I
+to myself,—“What if G. Washington should come in? I shouldn’t know
+which way to look.” But then the very next minute, I says to myself,
+“Of course he won’t be in till she gets her waist on. I’m a borrowin’
+trouble for nothin’.”
+
+At last Miss Flamm spoke and says she, as she kinder craned herself
+before the glass, a lookin’ at her back (most the hull length on it
+bare, as I am a livin’ creeter); and says she, “How do you like my
+dress?”
+
+How do you like my dress?
+
+“Oh,” says I, wantin’ to make myself agreeable (both on account of
+principle, and the lawsuit), “the skirts are beautiful but I can’t
+judge how the hull dress looks, you know, till you get your waist on.”
+
+“My waist?” says she.
+
+“Yes,” says I.
+
+“I have got it on,” says she.
+
+“Where is it?” says I, a lookin’ at her closer through my specks,
+“Where is the waist?”
+
+“Here,” says she, a pintin’ to a pink belt ribbon, and a string of
+beads over each shoulder.
+
+Says I, “Miss Flamm, do you call that a waist?”
+
+“Yes,” says she, and she balanced herself on her little pink tottlin’
+slippers. She couldn’t walk in ’em a good honerable walk to save her
+life. How could she, with the instep not over two inches acrost, and
+the heels right under the middle of her foot, more’n a finger high?
+Good land, they wuz enuff to lame a Injun savage, and curb him in. But
+she sort o’ balanced herself unto ’em, the best she could, and put her
+hands round her waist—it wuzn’t much bigger than a pipe-stem, and sort
+o’ bulgin’ out both ways, above and below, some like a string tied
+tight round a piller, - and says she complacently, “I don’t believe
+there will be a dress shown to-night more stylish and beautiful than
+mine.”
+
+Says I, “Do you tell me, Miss Flamm, that you are a goin’ down into
+that crowd of promiscus men and women, with nothin’ but them strings on
+to cover you?” Says I, “Do you tell me that, and you a perfesser and a
+Christian?”
+
+“Yes,” says she, “I paid 300 dollars for this dress, and it haint
+likely I am goin’ to miss the chance of showin’ it off to the other
+wimmen who will envy me the possession of it. To be sure,” says she,
+“it is a little lower than Americans usually wear. But in fashion, as
+in anything else, somebody has got to go ahead. This is the very
+heighth of fashion,” says she.
+
+Says I in witherin’ and burnin’ skorn, “It is the heighth of
+immodesty.”
+
+And I jest turned my back right ont’ her, and sailed out of the room. I
+wuzn’t a a goin’ to stand that, lawsuit or no lawsuit. I wuz all worked
+up in my mind, and by the side of myself, and I didn’t get over it for
+some time, neither.
+
+Wall, I found my companion seated in that comfertable place, and a
+keepin’ my chair for me, and so I sot down by him, and truly we sot
+still, and see the glory, and the magnificence on every side on us.
+There wuz 3 piazzas about as long as from our house to Jonesville, or
+from Jonesville to Loontown, all filled with folks magnificently
+dressed, and a big garden layin’ between ’em about as big as from our
+house to Miss Gowdey’s, and so round crossways to Alminy Hagidone’s
+brother’s, and back agin’. It wuz full as fur as that, and you know
+well that that is a great distance.
+
+There wuz some big noble trees, all twinklin’ full of lights, of every
+coler, and rows of shinin’ lights, criss-crossed every way, or that is,
+every beautiful way, from the high ornimental pillers of the immense
+house, that loomed up in the distance round us on every side, same as
+the mountains loom up round Loontown.
+
+There wuz a big platform built in the middle of the garden, with sweet
+music discoursin’ from it the most enchantin’ strains. And the
+fountains wuz sprayin’ out the most beautiful colers you ever see in
+your life, and fallin’ down in pink, and yellow, and gold, and green,
+and amber, and silver water; sparklin’ down onto the green beautiful
+ferns and flowers that loved to grow round the big marble basin which
+shone white, risin’ out of the green velvet of the grass.
+
+Josiah looked at that water, and sez he, “Samantha, I’d love to get
+some of that water to pass round evenin’s when we have company.” Sez
+he, “It would look so dressy and fashionable to pass round pink water,
+or light blue, or light yeller. How it would make Uncle Nate Gowdey
+open his eyes. I believe I shall buy some bottles of it, Samantha, to
+take home. What do you say? I don’t suppose it would cost such a
+dretful sight, do you?”
+
+Sez he, “I s’pose all they have to do is to put pumps down into a pink
+spring, or a yeller one, as the case may be, and pump. And I would be
+willin’ to pump it up myself, if it would come cheaper.”
+
+But my companion soon forgot to follow up the theme in lookin’ about
+him onto the magnificent, seen, and a seein’ the throngs of men and
+wimmen growin’ more and more denser, and every crowd on ’em that swept
+by us, and round us, and before us, a growin’ more gorgus in dress, or
+so it seemed to us. Gemms of every gorgus coler under the heavens and
+some jest the coler of the heavens when it is blue and shinin’ or when
+it is purplish dark in the night time, or when it is full of white
+fleecy clouds, or when it is a shinin’ with stars.
+
+Why, one woman had so many diamonds on that she had a detective
+follerin’ her all round wherever she went. She wuz a blaze of splendor
+and so wuz lots of ’em, though like the stars, they differed from each
+other in glory.
+
+But whatever coler their gowns wuz, in one thing they wuz most all
+alike—most all of ’em had waists all drawed in tight, but a bulgin’ out
+on each side, more or less as the case might be. Why some of them
+waists wuzn’t much bigger than pipe’s tails and so I told Josiah.
+
+And he whispered back to me, and sez he, “I wonder if them wimmen with
+wasp waists, think that we men like the looks on ’em. They make a dumb
+mistake if they do. Why,” sez he, “we men know what they be; we know
+they are nothin’ but crushed bones and flesh.” Sez he, “I could make my
+own waist look jest like ’em, if I should take a rope and strap myself
+down.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, in agitated axents, “don’t you try to go into no such
+enterprise, Josiah Allen.”
+
+I remembered the eppisode of the afternoon, and I sez in anxins axents,
+and affectionate, “Besides not lookin’ well, it is dangerous, awful
+dangerous. And how I should blush,” sez I, “if I wuz to see you with a
+leather strap or a rope round your waist under your coat, a drawin’ you
+in ; a changin’ your good honerable shape. And God made men’s and
+wimmen’s waists jest alike in the first place, and it is jest as smart
+for men to deform themselves in that way as it is for wimmen. But oh,
+the agony of my soul if I should see you a tryin’ to disfigure yourself
+in that way.”
+
+“You needn’t be afraid, Samantha,” sez he, “I am dressy, and always
+wuz, but I haint such a fool as that, as to kill myself in perfect
+agony, for fashion.”
+
+I didn’t say nothin’ but instinctively I looked down at his feet, “Oh,
+you needn’t look at my feet, Samantha, feet are very different from the
+heart, and lungs, and such. You can squeeze your feet down, and not
+hurt much moren the flesh and bones. But you are a destroyin’ the very
+seat of life when you draw your waist in as them wimmen do.”
+
+“I know it,” sez I, “but I wouldn’t torture myself in any way if I wuz
+in your place.”
+
+“I don’t lay out to,” sez he. “I haint a goin’ to wear corsets, it
+haint at all probable I shall, though I am better able to stand it,
+than wimmen be.”
+
+“I know that,” sez I. “I know men are stronger and better able to bear
+the strain of bein’ drawed in and tapered.” I am reesonable, and will
+ever speak truthful and honest, and this I couldn’t deny and didn’t try
+to.
+
+“Wall, dumb it, what makes men stronger?” sez he.
+
+“Why,” sez I, “I s’pose one great thing is their dressin’ comfortable.”
+
+“Wall, I am glad you know enough to know it,” sez he. “Why,” sez he,
+“jest imagine a man tyin’ a rope round his waist, round and round; or
+worse yet, take strong steel, and whalebones, and bind and choke
+himself down with ’em, and tottlin’ himself up on high heel slippers,
+the high heels comin’ right up in the ball of his foot—and then havin’
+heavy skirts a holdin’ him down, tied back tight round his knees and
+draggin’ along on the ground at his feet—imagine me in that
+perdickerment, Samantha.”
+
+I shuddered, and sez I, “Don’t bring up no such seen to harrow up my
+nerve.” Sez I, “You know I couldn’t stand it, to see you a facin’ life
+and its solemn responsibilities in that condition. It would kill me to
+witness your sufferin’,” sez I. And agin’ I shuddered, and agin I
+sithed.
+
+And he sez, “Wall, it is jest as reasonable for a man to do it as for a
+woman; it is far worse and more dangerous for a woman than a man.”
+
+“I know it,” sez I, between my sithes. “I know it, but I can’t, I can’t
+stand it, to have you go into it.”
+
+“Wall, you needn’t worry, Samantha, I haint a fool. You won’t ketch men
+a goin’ into any such performances as this, they know too much.” And
+then he resumed on in a lighter agent, to get my mind still further off
+from his danger, for I wuz still a sithin’, frequent and deep.
+
+Sez he, as he looked down and see some wimmen a passin’ below; sez hey
+“I never see such a sight in my life, a man can see more here in one
+evenin’ than he can in a life time at Jonesville.”
+
+“That is so, Josiah,” sez I, “you can.” And I felt every word I said,
+for at that very minute a lady, or rather a female woman, passed with a
+dress on so low in the neck that I instinctively turned away my head,
+and when I looked round agin, a deep blush wuz mantlin’ the cheeks of
+Josiah Allen, a flushin’ up his face, clear up into his bald head.
+
+I don’t believe I had ever been prouder of Josiah Allen, than I wuz at
+that minute. That blush spoke plainer than words could, of the purity
+and soundness of my pardner’s morals. If the whole nation had stood up
+in front of me at that time, and told me his morals wuz a tottlin’ I
+would have scorned the suggestion. No, that blush telegraphed to me
+right from his soul, the sweet tidin’s of his modesty and worth.
+
+And I couldn’t refrain from sayin’ in encouragin’, happy axents, “Haint
+you glad now, Josiah Allen, that you listened to your pardner; haint
+you glad that you haint a goin’ round in a low necked coat and vest, a
+callin’ up the blush of skern and outraged modesty to the cheeks ‘of
+noble and modest men?”
+
+“Yes,” sez he, graspin’ holt of my hand in the warmth of his gratitude,
+for he see what I had kep’ him from. “Yes, you wuz in the right on’t,
+Samantha. I see the awfulness of the peril from which you rescued of
+me. But never,” sez he, a lookin’ down agin over the railin’, onto some
+more wimmen a passin’ beneath, “never did I see what I have seen here
+to-night. Not,” sez he dreemily, “sense I wuz a baby.”
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “don’t try to look, Josiah; turn your eyes away.”
+
+And I believe he did try to—though such is the fascination of a known
+danger in front of you, that it is hard to keep yourself from
+contemplatin’ of it. But he tried to. And he tried to not look at the
+waltzin’ no more than he could help, and I did too. But in spite of
+himself he had to see how clost the young girls wuz held; how warmly
+the young men embraced ’em. And as he looked on, agin I see the hot
+blush of shame mantillied Josiah’s cheeks, and again he sez to me in
+almost warm axents, “I realize what you have rescued me from,
+Samantha.”
+
+And I sez, “You couldn’t have looked Elder Minkley in the face, could
+you? if you had gone into that shameful diversion.”
+
+“No, I couldn’t, nor into yourn nuther. I couldn’t have looked nobody
+in the face, if I had gone on and imposed on any young girl as they are
+a doin’, and insulted of her. Why,” sez he, “if it wuz my Tirzah Ann
+that them, men wuz a embracin’, and huggin’, and switchin’ her round,
+as if they didn’t have no respect for her at all,—why, if it wuz Tirzah
+Ann, I would tear ’em ’em from lim.”
+
+And he looked capable on’t. He looked almost sublime (though small).
+And I hurried him away from the seen, for I didn’t know what would
+ensue and foller on, if I let him linger there longer. He looked as
+firm and warlike as one of our bantam fowls, a male one, when hawks are
+a hoverin’ over the females of the flock. And when I say Bantam I say
+it with no disrespect to Josiah Allen. Bantams are noble, and warlike
+fowls, though small boneded.
+
+I got one more glimps of Miss Flamm jest as we left the tarven. She wuz
+a standin’ up in the parlor, with a tall man a standin’ up in front of
+her a talkin’. He seemed to be biddin’ of her good-bye, for he had holt
+of her hand, and be wuz a sayin’ as we went by ’em, sez he, “I am sorry
+not to see more of you.”
+
+“Good land!” thinkses I, “what can the man be a thinkin’ on? the mean,
+miserable creeter! If there wuz ever a deadly insult gin to a woman,
+then wuz the time it wuz gin. Good land! good land!”
+
+I don’t know whether Miss Flamm resented it, or not, for I hurried
+Josiah along. I didn’t want to expose him to no sich sights, good,
+innocent old creeter. So I kep’ him up on a pretty good jog till I got
+him home.
+
+The next mornin’ Ardelia Tutt sent me over a copy of the followin’
+verses, which wuz as follers:
+
+“LINES WROTE ON A OLD WOMAN; OR,
+STANZAS ON A ACKORDEUN.
+
+“Oh mournful sounds that riseth through the air,
+Not very far, but far enough to hear.
+We fain would say to thee forbear, forbear!
+As we adown the road, our pathway steer.
+
+“Oh! had thy voice not been so low and thin
+It would have been more high, and loud and deep—
+And thine Ackordeun, oh could it, could it win,
+A glorious voice of soul, methinks I’d weep—
+
+“With joy. But now I weep not, nay, nor fain
+Would set me down beneath thy song-tree blest;
+More fain I would relate, it giveth me pain
+To list the strains, and listening lo! I sigh for rest, sweet rest.
+
+“For ah! no nightingale art thou, nor lark,
+Nor thrush, nor any other bird, afar or nigh
+Thy instrument hath not the thunder shock
+That calleth nation’s wildly, wet or dry.
+
+“A lesson thou mightest learn oh! female sweet!
+If thou no voice hast got, soar not in song,
+Much noise the lonely aching ear doth greet,
+That maketh sad, and ’tis a fearful wrong.
+
+“A fearful wrong to pound pianos with a fiendish will
+Misuse them far above their feeble power to bear,
+Ah! could pianos cower down, and lo! be still,
+’Twould calm the savage breast, and smooth the brow of care.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII.
+A TRIP TO SCHUYLERVILLE.
+
+
+It wuz a lovely mornin’ when my companion and me sot out to visit
+Schuylerville to see the monument that is stood up there in honor of
+the Battle of Saratoga, one of 7 great decisive battles of the world.
+
+Wall, the cars rolled on peacefully, though screechin’ occasionally,
+for, as the poet says, “It is their nater to,” and rolled us away from
+Saratoga. And at first there wuzn’t nothin’ particularly insperin’ in
+the looks of the landscape, or ruther woodscape. It wuz mostly woods
+and rather hombly woods too, kinder flat lookin’. But pretty soon the
+scenery became beautiful and impressive. The rollin’ hills rolled down
+and up in great billowy masses of green and pale blue, accordin’ as
+they wuz fur or near, and we went by shinin’ water, and a glowin’
+landscape, and pretty houses, and fields of grain and corn, etc., etc.
+And anon we reached a place where “Victory Mills” wuz printed up high,
+in big letters. When Josiah see this, he sez, “Haint that neighborly
+and friendly in Victory to come over here and put up a mill? That
+shows, Samantha,” sez he, “that the old hardness of the Revolution is
+entirely done away with.”
+
+He wuz jest full of Revolutionary thoughts that mornin’, Josiah Allen
+wuz. And so wuz I too, but my strength of mind is such, that I reined
+’em in and didn’t let ’em run away with me. And I told him that it
+didn’t mean that. Sez I, “The Widder Albert wouldn’t come over here and
+go to millin’, she nor none of her family.”
+
+“But,” sez he, “the name must mean sunthin’. Do you s’pose it is where
+folks get the victory over things? If it is, I’d give a dollar bill to
+get a grist ground out here, and,” sez he, in a sort of a coaxin’ tone,
+“le’s stop and get some victory, Samantha.”
+
+And I told him, that I guessed when he got a victory over the world,
+the flesh, or the—David, he would have to work for it, he wouldn’t get
+it ground out for him. But anon, he cast his eyes on sunthin’ else and
+so forgot to muse on this any further. It wuz a fair seen.
+
+Anon, a big manufactory, as big as the hull side of Jonesville almost,
+loomed up by the side of us. And anon, the fair, the beautiful country
+spread itself out before our vision. While fur, fur away the pale blue
+mountains peeked up over the green ones, to see if they too could see
+the monument riz up to our National Liberty. It belonged to them, jest
+as much as to the hill it wuz a standin’ on, it belongs to the hull
+liberty-lovin’ world.
+
+Wall, the cars stopped in a pretty little village, a clean, pleasant
+little place as I ever see, or want to see. And Josiah and me wended
+our way up the broad roomy street, up to where the monument seemed to
+sort a beegon to us to come. And when we got up to it; we see it wuz a
+sight, a sight to behold.
+
+The curius thing on’t wuz, it kep a growin’ bigger and bigger all the
+time we wuz approachin’ it, till, as we stood at its base, it seemed to
+tower up into the very skies.
+
+There wuz some flights of stun steps a leadin’ up to some doors in the
+side on’t. And we went inside on’t after we had gin a good look at the
+outside. But it took us some time to get through gazin’ at the outside
+on’t.
+
+Way up over our heads wuz some sort a recesses, some like the recess in
+my spare bed-room, only higher and narrower, and kinder nobler lookin’.
+And standin’ up in the first one, a lookin’ stiddy through storm and
+shine at the North star, stood General Gates, bigger than life
+considerable, but none too big; for his deeds and the deeds of all of
+our old 4 fathers stand out now and seem a good deal bigger than life.
+Yes, take ’em in all their consequences, a sight bigger.
+
+Wall, there he stands, a leanin’ on his sword. He’ll be ready when the
+enemy comes, no danger but what he will.
+
+On the east side, is General Schuyler a horsback, ready to dash forward
+against the foe, impetuous, ardent, gallant. But oh! the perils and
+dangers that obstruct his pathway; thick underbrush and high, tall
+trees stand up round him that he seemin’ly can’t get through.
+
+But his gallant soldiers are a helpin’ him onward, they are a cuttin’
+down the trees so’s he can get through ’em and dash at the enemy. You
+see as you look on him that he will get through it all. No envy, nor
+detraction, nor jealousy, no such low underbrush full of crawlin’
+reptiles, nor no high solid trees, no danger of any sort can keep him
+back. His big brave, generous heart is sot on helpin’ his country,
+he’ll do it.
+
+On the south side, is the saddest sight that a patriotic American can
+see. On a plain slab stun, lookin’ a good deal like a permanent
+grave-stun, sot up high there, for Americans to weep over forever,
+bitter tears of shames, is the name, “Arnold.”
+
+He wuz a brave soldier; his name ort to be there; it is all right to
+have it there and jest where it is, on a gravestun. All through the
+centuries it will stand there, a name carved by the hand of cupidity,
+selfishness, and treachery.
+
+On the west side, General Morgan is standin’ up with his hands over his
+eyes; lookin’ away into the sunset. He looked jest like that when he
+wuz a lookin’ after prowlin’ red skins and red coats; when the sun wuz
+under dark clouds, and the day wuz dark 100 years ago.
+
+But now, all he has to do is to stand up there and look off into the
+glowin’ heavens, a watchin’ the golden light of the sun of Liberty a
+rollin’ on westward. He holds his hand over his eyes; its rays most
+blind him, he is most lost a thinkin’ how fur, how fur them rays are a
+spreadin’, and a glowin’,way, way off, Morgan is a lookin’ onto our
+future, and it dazzles him. Its rays stretch off into other lands; they
+strike dark places; they burn! they glow! they shine! they light up the
+world!
+
+Hold up your head, brave old General, and your loyal steadfast eyes.
+You helped to strike that light. Its radience half-frights you. It is
+so heavenly bright, its rays, may well dazzle you. Brown old soldiers,
+I love to think of you always a standin’ up there, lifted high up by a
+grateful Nation, a lookin’ off over all the world, a lookin’ off
+towards the glowin’ west, toward our glorious future.
+
+On the inside too, it wuz a noble seen. After you rose up the steps and
+went inside, you found yourself in a middlin’ big room all surrounded
+by figures in what they called Alto Relief, or sunthin’ to that effect.
+I don’t know what Alto they meant. I don’t know nobody by that name,
+nor I don’t know how they relieved him. But I s’pose Alto when he wuz
+there wuz relieved to think that the figures wuz all so noble and
+impressive. Mebby he had been afraid they wouldn’t suit him and the
+nation. But they did, they must have. He must have been hard to suit,
+Alto must, if he wuzn’t relieved, and pleased with these.
+
+On one side wuz George the 3d of England, in his magnificent palace,
+all dressed up in velvet and lace, surrounded by his slick drestup
+nobles, and all of ’em a sittin’ there soft and warm, in the lap of
+Luxury, a makin’ laws to bind the strugglin’ colonies.
+
+And right acrost from that, wuz a picture of them Colonists, cold and
+hungry, a havin’ a Rally for Freedom, and a settin’ up a Town meetin!
+right amongst the trees, and under-brush that hedged ’em all in and
+tripped ’em up at every step; and savages a hidin’ behind the trees,
+and fears of old England, and dread of a hazerdous unknown future, a
+hantin’ and cloudin’ every glimpse of sky that came down on ’em through
+the trees. But they looked earnest and good, them old 4 fathers did,
+and the Town meetin’ looked determined, and firm principled as ever a
+Town meetin’ looked on the face of the earth.
+
+Then there wuz some of the women of the court, fine ladies, all silk,
+and ribbons, and embroideries, and paint, and powder, a leanin’ back in
+their cushioned arm-chairs, a wantin’ to have the colonies taxed still
+further so’s to have more money to buy lace with and artificial
+flowers. And right acrost from ’em wuz some of our old 4 mothers, in a
+rude, log hut, not strong enough to keep out the cold, or the Injuns.
+
+One wuz a cardin’ wools, one of ’em wuz a spinnin’ ’em, a tryin’ to
+make clothes to cover the starved, half-naked old 4 fathers who wuz a
+tramplin’ round in the snow with bare feet and shiverin’ lims. And one
+of ’em had a gun in her hand. She had smuggled the children all in
+behind her and she wuz a lookin’ out for the foe. These wimmen hadn’t
+no ribbons on, no, fur from it.
+
+And then there wuz General Schuyler a fellin’ trees to obstruct the
+march of the British army. And Miss Schuyler a settin’ fire to a field
+of wheat rather than have it help the enemy of her country. Brave old 4
+mother, worthy pardner of a grand man, she wuz a takin’ her life in her
+hand and a destroyin’ her own property for the sake of the cause she
+loved. A emblem of the way men and women sot fire to their own hopes,
+their own happiness, and burnt ’em up on the altar of the land we love.
+
+And there wuz some British wimmen a follerin’ their husbands through
+the perils of danger and death, likely old 4 mothers they wuz, and
+thought jest as much of their pardners as I do of my Josiah. I could
+see that plain. And could see it a shinin’ still plainer in another one
+of the pictures—Lady Aukland a goin’ over the Hudson in a little canoe
+with the waves a dashin’ up high round her, to get to the sick bed of
+her companion. The white flag of truce wuz a wavin’ over her head and
+in her heart wuz a shinin’ the clear white light of a woman’s deathless
+devotion. Oh! there wuz likely wimmen amongst the British, I haint a
+doubt of it, and men too.
+
+And then we clim a long flight of stairs and we see some more pictures,
+all round that room. Alto relieved agin, or he must have been relieved,
+and happified to see ’em, they wuz so impressive. I myself had from 25
+to 30 emotions a minute while I stood a lookin’ at em—big lofty
+emotions too.
+
+There waz Jennie McCrea a bein’ dragged offen her horse, and killed by
+savages. A dreadful sight—a woman settin’ out light-hearted toward
+happiness and goin’ to meet a fearful doom. Dreadful sight that has
+come down through the centuries, and happens over and over agin amongst
+female wimmen. But here it wuz fearful impressive for the savages that
+destroyed her wuz in livin’ form, they haint always materialized.
+
+Yes, it wuz a awful seen. And jest beyond it, wuz Burgoyne a scoldin’
+the savages for the cruelty of the deed. Curius, haint it? How the acts
+and deeds of a man that he sets to goin’, when they have come to full
+fruition skare him most to death, horrify him by the sight. I’ll bet
+Burgoyne felt bad enough, a lookin’ on her dead body, if it wuz his
+doin’s in the first place, in lettin’ loose such ignerance and savagery
+onto a strugglin’ people.
+
+Yes, Mr. Burgoyne felt bad and ashamed, I haint a doubt of it. His poet
+soul could suffer as well as enjoy—and then I didn’t feel like sayin’
+too much aginst Mr. Burgoyne, havin’ meditated so lately in the
+treachery of Arnold, one of our own men doin’ a act that ort to keep us
+sort a humble-minded to this day.
+
+And then there wuz the killin’ and buryin’ of Frazier both impressive.
+He wuz a gallant officer and a brave man. And then there wuz General
+Schuyler (a good creeter) a turnin’ over his command to Gates. And I
+methought to myself as I looked on it, that human nater wuz jest about
+the same then; it capered jest about as it duz now in public affairs
+and offices. Then there wuz the surrender of Burgoyne to Gates. A sight
+impressive enough to furnish one with stiddy emotions for weeks and
+weeks. A thinkin’ of all he surrendered to him that day, and all that
+wuz took.
+
+The monument is dretful high. Up, up, up, it soars as if it wuz bound
+to reach up into the very heavens, and carry up there these idees of
+ourn about Free Rights, and National Liberty. It don’t go clear up,
+though. I wish it did. If it had, I should have gone up the high ladder
+clear to the top. But I desisted from the enterprise for 2 reasons, one
+wuz, that it didn’t go, as I say, clear up, and the other wuz that the
+stairs wuzn’t finished.
+
+Josiah proposed that he should go up as he clim up our well, with one
+foot on each side on’t. He said he wuz tempted to, for he wanted
+dretfully to look out of them windows on the top. And he said it would
+probable be expected of him. And I told him that I guessed that the
+monument wouldn’t feel hurt if he didn’t go up; I guessed it would
+stand it. I discouraged the enterprise.
+
+And anon we went down out of the monument, and crossed over to the
+good-lookin’ house where the man lives who takes care of the monument,
+and shows off its good traits, a kind of a guardian to it. And we got a
+first-rate dinner there, though such is not their practice. And then he
+took us in a likely buggy with 2 seats, and a horse to draw it, and we
+sot out to see what the march of 100 years has left us of the doin’s of
+them days.
+
+Time has trampled out a good many of ’em, but we found some. We found
+the old Schuyler mansion, a settin’ back amongst the trees, with the
+old knocker on it, that had been pulled by so many a old 4 father,
+carryin’ tidin’s of disappointment, and hope, and triumph, and
+encouragement, and everything. We went over the threshold wore down by
+the steps that had fell there for a hundred years, some light, some
+heavy steps.
+
+We went into the clean, good-lookin’ old kitchen, with the platters,
+and shinin’ dressers and trays; the old-fashioned settee, half-table
+and half-seat. And we see the cup General Washington drinked tea out
+of, good old creeter. I hope the water biled and it wuz good tea, and
+most probable it wuz. And we see lots of arms that had been carried in
+the war, and cannon balls, and shells, and tommy-hawks, and hatchets,
+and arrows, and etc., etc. And down in one room all full of other
+curiosities and relicts, wuz the skull of a _traitor_. I should judge
+from the looks on’t that besides bein’ mean, he wuz a hombly man.
+Somebody said folks had made efforts to steal it. But Josiah whispered
+to me, that there wuzn’t no danger from him, for he would rather be
+shet right up in the Tombs than to own it, in any way.
+
+And I felt some like him. Some of his teeth had been stole, so they
+said. Good land! what did they want with his teeth! But it wuz a
+dretful interestin’ spot. And I thought as I went through the big
+square, roomy rooms that I wouldn’t swap this good old house for dozens
+of Queen Anns, or any other of the fashionable, furbelowed houses of
+to-day. The orniments of this house wuz more on the inside, and I
+couldn’t help thinkin’ that this house, compared with the modern
+ornimental cottages, wuz a good deal like one of our good old-fashioned
+foremothers in her plain gown, compared with some of the grandma’s of
+to-day, all paint, and furbelows, and false hair.
+
+The old 4 mothers orniments wuz on the inside, and the others wuz more
+up on the roof, scalloped off and gingerbreaded, and criss-crossed.
+
+The old house wuz full of rooms fixed off beautiful. It wuz quite a
+treat to walk throngh’em. But the old fireplaces, and mantle tray
+shelves spoke to our hearts of the generations that had poked them
+fires, and leaned up against them mantle trays. They went ahead on us
+through the old rooms; I couldn’t see ’em, but I felt their presence,
+as I follered ’em over the old thresholts their feet had worn down a
+hundred years ago. Their feet didn’t make no sound, their petticoats
+and short gowns didn’t rustle against the old door ways and stair
+cases.
+
+The dear old grandpas in their embroidered coats, didn’t cast no shadow
+as they crossed the sunshine that came in through the old-fashioned
+window panes. No, but with my mind’s eye (the best eye I have got, and
+one that don’t wear specks) I see ’em, and I follerd ’em down the
+narrow, steep stair case, and out into the broad light of 4 P. M.,
+1886.
+
+Ghosts of the Past
+
+Anon, or shortly after, we drove up on a corner of the street jest
+above where the Fish creek empties into the Hudson, and there, right on
+a tall high brick block, wuz a tablet, showin’ that a tree once stood
+jest there, under which Burgoyne surrendered. And agin, when I thought
+of all that he surrendered that day, and all that America and the world
+gained, my emotions riz up so powerful, that they wuzn’t quelled down a
+mite, by seein’ right on the other side of the house wrote down these
+words, “Drugs, Oils, etc.”
+
+No, oil couldn’t smooth ’em down, nor drugs drug ’em; they wuz too
+powerful. And they lasted jest as soarin’ and eloquent as ever till we
+turned down a cross street, and arrove at the place, jest the identical
+spot where the British stacked their arms (and stacked all their pride,
+and their ambitious hopes with ’em). It made a high pile.
+
+Wall, from there we went up to a house on a hill, where poor Baroness
+Riedesel hid with her three little children, amongst the wounded and
+dyin’ officers of the British army, and stayed there three days and
+three nights, while shots and shells wuz a bombardin’ the little
+house—and not knowin’ but some of the shots had gone through her lover
+husband’s heart, before they struck the low ruff over her head.
+
+What do you s’pose she wuz a thinkin’ on as she lay hid in that suller
+all them three days and three nights with her little girls’ heads in
+her lap? Jest the same thoughts that a mother thinks to-day, as she
+cowers down with the children she loves, to hide from danger; jest the
+same thoughts that a wife thinks today when her heart is out a facing
+danger and death, with the man she loves.
+
+She faced danger, and died a hundred deaths in the thought of the
+danger to them she loved. I see the very splinters that the cruel
+shells and cannon balls split and tore right over her head. Good
+honorable splinters and not skairful to look at today, but hard, and
+piercin’, and harrowin’ through them days and nights.
+
+Time has trampled over that calash she rode round so much in (I wish I
+could a seen it); but Time has ground it down into dust. Time’s hand,
+quiet but heavy, rested down on the shinin’ heads of the three little
+girls, and their Pa and Ma, and pushed ’em gently but firmly down out
+of sight; and all of them savages who used to follow that calash as it
+rolled onwards, and all their canoes, and war hoops, and snowshoes,
+etc., etc.
+
+Yes, that calash of Miss Riedesel has rolled away, rolled away years
+ago, carryin’ the three little girls, their Pa and Ma and all the
+fears, and hopes, and dreads, and joys, and heartaches of that time it
+has rolled on with ’em all; on, on, down the dusty road of Oblivion,—it
+has disappeared there round the turn of road, and a cloud of dust comes
+up into our faces, as we try to follow it. And the Injuns that used to
+howl round it, have all follered on the trail of that calash, and gone
+on, on, out of sight. Their canoes have drifted away down the blue
+Hudson, away off into the mist and the shadows. Curius, haint it?
+
+And there the same hills and valleys lay, calm and placid, there is the
+same blue sparklin’ Hudson. Dretful curius, and sort a heart breakin’
+to think on’t—haint it? Only jest a few more years and we, too, shall
+go round the turn of the road, out of sight, out of sight, and a cloud
+of dust will come up and hide us from the faces of them that love us,
+and them, too, from the eyes of a newer people.
+
+All our hopes, all our ambitious, all our loves, our joys, our
+sorrows,—all, all will be rolled away or floated away down the river,
+and the ripples will ripple on jest as happy; the Sunshine will kiss
+the hills jest as warmly, and lovin’ly; but other eyes will look on
+’em, other hearts will throb and burn within ’em at the sight.
+
+Kinder sad to think on, haint it?
+
+The Butgoynes
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+THE SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETING.
+
+
+One day Josiah and me went into a meetin’ where they wuz kinder fixin’
+over the world, sort a repairin’ of it, as you may say. Some of the
+deepest, smartest speeches I ever hearn in my life, I hearn there.
+
+You know it is a middlin’ deep subject. But they rose to it. They rose
+nobly to it. Some wuz for repairin’ it one way, and some another—some
+wanted to kinder tinker it up, and make it over like. Some wanted to
+tear it to pieces, and build it over new. But they all meant well by
+the world, and nobody could help respectin’ ’em.
+
+I enjoyed them hours there with ’em, jest about as well as it is in my
+power to enjoy anything. They wuz all on ’em civilized Christian folks
+and philanthropists of different shades and degrees, all but one. There
+wuz one heathen there. A Hindoo right from Hindoostan, and I felt
+kinder sorry for him. A heathen sot right in the midst of them folks of
+refinement, and culture, who had spent their hull lives a tryin’ to fix
+over the world, and make it good.
+
+This poor little heathen, with a white piller case, or sunthin’ wound
+round his head (I s’pose he hadn’t money to buy a hat), and his small
+black eyes lookin’ out kinder side ways from his dark hombly little
+face, rousted up my pity, and my sympathy. There had been quite a firm
+speech made against allowin’ foreigners on our shores. And this little
+heathen, in his broken speech, said, It all seemed so funny to him,
+when everybody wuz foreigners in this country, to think that them that
+got here first should say they owned it, and send everybody else back.
+And he said, It seemed funny to him, that the missionarys we sent over
+to his land to teach them the truth, told them all about this land of
+Liberty, where everybody wuz free, and everybody could earn a home for
+themselves, and urged ’em all to come over here, and then when they
+broke away from all that held ’em in their own land, and came thousands
+and thousands of milds, to get to this land of freedom and
+religion,then they wuz sent back agin, and wuzn’t allowed to land. It
+seemed so funny.
+
+And so it did to me. And I said to myself, I wonder if they don’t lose
+all faith in the missionarys, and what they tell them. I wonder if they
+don’t have doubts about the other free country they tell ’em about. The
+other home they have urged ’em to prepare for, and go to. I wonder if
+they haint afraid, that when they have left their own country and
+sailed away for that home of Everlastin’ freedom, they will be sent
+back agin, and not allowed to land.
+
+But it comferted me quite a good deal to meditate on’t, that that land
+didn’t have no laws aginst foreign emigration. That its ruler wuz one
+who held the rights of the lowest, and poorest, and most ignerent of
+His children, of jest as much account as he did the rights of a king.
+Thinkses I that poor little head with the piller case on it will be
+jest as much looked up to, as if it wuz white and had a crown on it.
+And I felt real glad to think it wuz so.
+
+But I went to every meetin’ of ’em, and enjoyed every one of ’em with a
+deep enjoyment. And I said then, and I say now, for folks that had took
+such a hefty job as they had, they done well, nobody could do better,
+and if the world wuzn’t improved by their talk it wuz the fault of the
+world, and not their’n.
+
+And we went to meetin’ on Sunday mornin’ and night, and hearn good
+sermons. There’s several high big churches at Saratoga, of every
+denomination, and likely folks belong to the hull on ’em: There is no
+danger of folks losin’ their way to Heaven unless they want to, and
+they can go on their own favorite paths too, be they blue Presbyterian
+paths, or Methodist pasters, or by the Baptist boat, or the
+Episcopalian high way, or the Catholic covered way, or the Unitarian
+Broadway, or the Shadow road of Spiritualism.
+
+No danger of their losin’ their way unless they want to. And I thought
+to myself as I looked pensively at the different steeples, “What though
+there might be a good deal of’wranglin’, and screechin’, and puffin’
+off steam, at the different stations, as there must always be where so
+many different routes are a layin’ side by side, each with its own
+different runners, and conductors, and porters, and managers, and
+blowers, still it must be, that the separate high ways would all end at
+last in a serener road, where the true wayfarers and the earnest
+pilgrims would all walk side by side, and forget the very name of the
+station they sot out from.
+
+I sez as much to my companion, as we wended our way home from one of
+the meetin’s, and he sez, “There haint but one right way, and it is a
+pity folks can’t see it.” Sez he a sithin’ deep, “Why can’t everybody
+be Methodists?”
+
+We wuz a goin’ by the ’Piscopal church then, and he sez a lookin’ at
+it, as if he wuz sorry for it, “What a pity that such likely folks as
+they be, should believe in such eronious doctrines. Why,” sez he, “I
+have hearn that they believe that the bread at communion is changed
+into sunthin’ else. What a pity that they should believe anything so
+strange as that is, when there is a good, plain, practical, Christian
+belief that they might believe in, when they might be Methodists. And
+the Baptists now,” sez he, a glancin’ back at their steeple, “why can’t
+they believe that a drop is as good as a fountain? Why do they want to
+believe in so _much_ water? There haint no need on’t. They might be
+Methodists jest as well as not, and be somebody.”
+
+And he walked along pensively and in deep thought, and I a feelin’
+somewhat tuckered didn’t argue with him, and silence rained about us
+till we got in front of the hall where the Spiritualists hold their
+meetin’s, and we met a few a comin’ out on it and then he broke out and
+acted mad, awful mad and skernful, and sez he angrily, “Them dumb fools
+believe in supernatural things. They don’t have a shadow of reason or
+common sense to stand on. A man is a fool to gin the least attention to
+them, or their doin’s. Why can’t they believe sunthin’ sensible? Why
+can’t they jine a church that don’t have anything curius in it? Nothin’
+but plain, common sense facts in it: Why can’t they be Methodists?”
+
+“The idee!” sez he, a breakin’ out fresh. “The idee of believin’ that
+folks that have gone to the other world can come back agin and appear.
+Shaw!” sez he, dretful loud and bold. I don’t believe I ever heard a
+louder shaw in my life than that wuz, or more kinder haughty and
+highheaded.
+
+And then I spoke up, and sez, “Josiah, it is always well, to shaw in
+the right place, and I am afraid you haint studied on it as much as you
+ort. I am afraid you haint a shawin’ where you ort to.”
+
+“Where should I shaw?” sez he, kinder snappish.
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “when you condemn other folkses beliefs, you ort to be
+careful that you haint a condemin’ your own belief at the same time.
+Now my belief is grounded in the Methodist meetin’ house like a rock;
+my faith has cast its ancher there inside of her beliefs and can’t be
+washed round by any waves of opposin’ doctrines. But I am one who can’t
+now, nor never could, abide bigotry and intolerance either in a Pope,
+or a Josiah Allen.
+
+“And when you condemn a belief simply on the ground of its bein’
+miraculous and beyond your comprehension, Josiah Allen, you had better
+pause and consider on what the Methodist faith is founded.
+
+“All our orthodox meetin’ houses, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist,
+Episcopalian, every one on ’em, Josiah Allen, are sot down on a belief,
+a deathless faith in a miraculous birth, a life of supernatural events,
+the resurrection of the dead, His appearance after death, a belief in
+the graves openin’ and the dead comin’ forth, a belief in three persons
+inhabitin’ one soul, the constant presence and control of spiritual
+influences, the Holy Ghost, and the spirits of just men. And while you
+are a leanin’ up against that belief, Josiah Allen, and a leanin’
+heavy, don’t shaw at any other belief for the qualities you hold sacred
+in your own.”
+
+He quailed a very little, and I went on.
+
+“If you want to shaw at it, shaw for sunthin’ else in it, or else let
+it entirely alone. If you think it lacks active Christian force, if you
+think it is not aggressive in its assaults at Sin, if you think it
+lacks faith in the Divine Head of the church, say so, do; but for
+mercy’s sake _try_ to shaw in the right place.”
+
+“Wall,” sez he, “they are a low set that follers it up mostly, and you
+know it.” And his head was right up in the air, and he looked _very_
+skernful.
+
+But I sez, “Josiah Allen, you are a shawin’ agin in the wrong place,”
+sez I. “If what you say is true, remember that 1800 years ago, the same
+cry wuz riz up by Pharisees, ‘He eats with Publicans and sinners.’ They
+would not have a king who came in the guise of the poor, they scerned a
+spiritual truth that did not sparkle with worldly lustre.
+
+“But it shone on; it lights the souls of humanity to-day. Let us not be
+afraid, Josiah Allen. Truth is a jewel that _cannot_ be harmed by
+deepest investigation, by roughest handlin’. It can’t be buried, it
+will shine out of the deepest darkness. What is false will be washed
+away, what is true will remain. For all this frettin’, and chafing, all
+this turbelence of conflectin’ beliefs, opposin’ wills, will only
+polish this jewel. Truth, calm and serene, will endure, will shine,
+will light up the world.”
+
+He begun to look considerable softer in mean, and I continued on:
+“Josiah Allen, you and I know what we believe the beautiful religion
+(Methodist Episcopal) that we both love, makes a light in our two
+souls. But don’t let us stand in that light and yell out, that
+everybody else’s light is darkness; that our light is the only one. No,
+the heavens are over all the earth; the twelve gates of heaven are open
+and a shinin’ down on all sides of us.
+
+“Jonesville meetin’ house (Methodist Episcopal) haint the only medium
+through which the light streams. It is dear to us, Josiah Allen, but
+let us not think that we must coller everybody and drag ’em into it.
+And let us not cry out too much at other folkses superstitions, when
+the rock of our own faith, that comforts us in joy and sorrow, is sot
+in a sea of supernaturalism.
+
+“You know how that faith comforts our two souls, how it is to us, like
+the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, but they say, their belief
+is the same to them, let us not judge them too hardly. No, the twelve
+gates of heaven are open, Josiah Allen, and a shinin’ down onto the
+earth. We know the light that has streamed into our own souls, but we
+do not know exactly what rays of radience may have been reflected down
+into some other lives through some one of those many gates.
+
+“The plate below has to be prepared, before it can ketch the picture
+and hold it. The light does not strike back the same reflection from
+every earthly thing. The serene lake mirrors back the light, in a calm
+flood of glory, the flashin’ waterfall breaks it into a thousand
+dazzlin’ sparkles. The dewy petal of the yellow field lily, reflects
+its own ray of golden light back, so does the dark cone of the pine
+tree, and the diamond, the opal, the ruby, each tinges the light with
+its own coloring, but the light is all from above. And they all reflect
+the light, in their own way for which the Divine skill has prepared
+them.
+
+“Let us not try to compel the deep blue Ocean waves and the shinin’
+waterfall, and the lily blow, to reflect back the light, in the same
+identical manner. No, let the light stream down into high places, and
+low ones, let the truth shine into dark hearts, and into pure souls.
+God is light. God is Love. It is His light that shines down out of the
+twelve gates, and though the ruby, or the amethyst, may color it by
+their own medium, the light that is reflected, back is the light of
+Heaven. And Josiah Allen,” sez I in a deeper, earnester tone, “let us
+who know so little ourselves, be patient with other ignerent ones. Let
+us not be too intolerent, for no intolerence, Josiah Allen is so cruel
+as that of ignerence, an’ stupidity.”
+
+Sez Josiah, “I won’t believe in anything I can’t _see_, Samantha
+Allen.”
+
+I jest looked round at him witheringly, and sez I, “What _have_ you
+ever seen, Josiah Allen, I mean that is worth sein’? Haint everything
+that is worth havin’ in life, amongst the unseen? The deathless loves,
+the aspirations, the deep hopes, and faiths, that live in us and
+through us, and animate us and keep us alive,—Whose spectacles has ever
+seen ’em? What are we, all of us human creeters, any way, but little
+atoms dropped here, Heaven knows why, or how, into the midst of a
+perfect sea of mystery, and unseen influences. What hand shoved us
+forwards out of the shadows, and what hand will reach out to us from
+the shadows and draw us back agin? Have you seen it Josiah Allen? You
+have felt this great onseen force a movin’ you along, but you haint sot
+your eyes on it.
+
+“What is there above us, below us, about us, but a waste of mystery, a
+power of onseen influences?.
+
+“You won’t believe anything you can’t see:—Did you ever see old
+Gravity, Josiah Allen, or get acquainted with him? Yet his hands hold
+the worlds together. Who ever see the mysterious sunthin’ in the North
+that draws the ship’s compass round? Who ever see that great mysterious
+hand that is dropped down in the water, sweepin’ it back and forth,
+makin’ the tides come in, and the tides go out? Who ever has ketched a
+glimpse of them majestic fingers, Josiah Allen? Or the lips touched
+with lightnin’, whose whispers reach round the world, and through the
+Ocean? You haint see ’em, nor I haint, No, Josiah Allen, we don’t know
+much of anything, and we don’t know that for certain. We are all on us
+only poor pupils down in the Earth’s school-room, learnin’ with
+difficulty and heart ache the lessons God sets for us.
+
+Tough old Experience gives us many a hard floggin’, before we learn the
+day’s lessons. And we find the benches hard, long before sundown. And
+it makes our hearts ache to see the mates we love droop their too tired
+heads in sleep, all round us before school is out. But we grind on at
+our lessons, as best we may. Learnin’ a little maybe. Havin’ to onlearn
+a sight, as the pinters move on towards four. Clasping hands with
+fellow toilers and (hard task) onclaspin’ ’em, as they go up above us,
+or down nearer the foot. Havin’ little ‘intermissions’ of enjoyment,
+soon over. But we plod on, on, and bimeby—and sometimes we think we do
+not care how soon—the teacher will say to us, that we can be
+‘dismissed.’ And then we shall drop out of the rank of learners, and
+the school will go without us, jest as busily, jest as cheerfully, jest
+as laboriously, jest as sadly. Poor learners at the hard lessons of
+life. Learnin’ out of a book that is held out to us from the shadows by
+an onseen, inexorable hand. Settin’ on hard benches that may fall out
+from under us at any time. Poor ignerent creeters that we are, would it
+not be a too arrant folly for us to judge each other hardly, we, all on
+us, so deplorably ignerent, so weakly helpless?”
+
+Sez Josiah, in earnest axcents, “Le’s walk a little faster.”
+
+And, in lookin’ up, I see that he wuz readin’ a advertisement. I
+ketched sight of a picture ornamentin’ of it. It wuz Lydia Pinkham. And
+as I see that benine face, I found and recovered myself. Truly, I had
+been a soarin’ up, up, fur above Saratoga, Patent Medicines, Josiah
+Allen, etc., etc.
+
+But when I found myself by the side of Josiah Allen once more, I moved
+onwards in silence, and soon we found ourselves right by the haven
+where I desired to be,—our own tried and true boardin’ house.
+
+Truly eloquence is tuckerin’, very, especially when you are a soarin’
+and a walkin’ at the same time.
+
+Josiah
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX.
+ST. CHRISTINA’S HOME.
+
+
+Wall, it wuz that very afternoon, almost immegetly after dinner, that
+Josiah Allen invited me warmly to go with him to the Roller Coaster.
+And I compromised the matter by his goin’ with us first to St.
+Christina’s Home, and then, I told him, I would proceed with him to the
+place where he would be. They wuz both on one road, nigh to each other,
+and he consented after some words.
+
+I felt dretfully interested in this Home, for it is a place where poor
+little sick children are took to, out of their miserable, stiflin’,
+dirty garrets, and cellars, and kep’ and made well and happy in their
+pleasant, home-like surroundin’s. And I thought to myself, as I looked
+ont on the big grounds surroundin’ it, and walked through the clean
+wide rooms, that the change to these children, brought out of their
+narrow dark homes of want and woe, into this great sunshiny Home with
+its clean fresh rooms, its good food, its cheery Christian atmosphere,
+its broad sunshiny playgrounds, must seem like enterin’ Paradise to
+’em.
+
+And I thought to myself how thankful I wuz that this pleasant House
+Beautiful, wuz prepared for the rest and refreshment of the poor little
+pilgrims, worn out so early in the march of life. And I further
+thinkses I, “Heaven bless the kind heart that first thought on’t, and
+carried out the heavenly idee.”
+
+The children’s faces all looked, so happy, and bright, it wuz a treat
+to see ’em. And the face of the sister who showed us round the rooms
+looked as calm, and peaceful, and happy, as if her face wuz the sun
+from which their little lights wuz reflected.
+
+Up amongst the rooms overhead, every one on ’em clean as a pin and
+sweet and orderly, wuz one room that specially attracted my attention.
+It wuz a small chapel where the little ones wuz took to learn their
+prayers and say ’em. It wuzn’t a big, barren barn of a room, such as I
+have often seen in similar places, and which I have always thought must
+impress the children with a awful sense of the immensity and
+lonesomeness of space, and the intangebility, and distance of the Great
+Spirit who inhabiteth Eternity. No, it wuz small, and cozy, and
+cheerful, like a home. And the stained glass window held a beautiful
+picture of love and charity, which might well touch the children’s
+hearts, sweetly and unconsciously, with the divine worth of love, and
+beauty, and goodness.
+
+And I could fancy the dear, little ones kneelin’ here, and prayin’ “Our
+Father, who art in Heaven,” and feelin’ that He wuz indeed their
+Father, and not a stranger, and that Heaven wuz not fur off from ’em.
+
+And I thought to myself “Never! never! through all their life will they
+get entirely away from the pure, sweet lessons they learn here.”
+
+I enjoyed the hour I spent here with a deep, heart enjoyment, and so
+did Josiah. Or, that is, I guess he did, though he whispered to me from
+time to time, or even oftener, as we went through the buildin’, that we
+wuz a devourin’ time that we might be spendin’ at the Roller Coaster.
+
+Wall, at last, greatly to my pardner’s satisfaction, we sot out for the
+place where he fain would be. On our way there we roamed through
+another Indian Encampment, a smaller one than that where we had the
+fearful incident of the Mermaid and Sarah.
+
+No, it wuzn’t so big, but it had many innocent diversions and a
+photograph gallery, and other things for its comfert. And a standin’ up
+a leanin’ aginst a tree, by one of the little houses stood a Injun. He
+wuz one of the last left of his tribe. He seemed to be a lookin’
+pensively on—and seein’ how the land that had belonged to ’em, the
+happy huntin’-grounds, the springs they believed the Great Spirit had
+gin to ’em, had all passed away into the bands of another race.
+
+I wuz sorry for that Injun, real sorry. And thinkses I to myself, we
+feel considerable pert now, and lively, but who knows in another three
+or four hundred years, but what one of the last of our race, may be a
+leanin’ up aginst some new tree, right in the same spot, a watchin’ the
+old places passed away into other hands, mebby black hands, or some
+other colored ones; mebby yellow ones, who knows? I don’t, nor Josiah
+don’t. But my pardner wuz a hurryin’ me on, so I dropped my revery and
+my umberell in my haste to foller on after his footsteps.
+
+Josiah picked up my umberell, but he couldn’t pick up my soarin’
+emotions for me. No, he haint never been able, to get holt of ’em. But
+suffice it to say, that soon, preceded by my companion, I found myself
+a mountin’ the nearly precipitus stairs, that led to the Roller
+Coaster.
+
+The Rollercoaster
+
+And havin’ reached the spot, who should we find there but Ardelia Tutt
+and Bial Flamburg. They had been on the Roller Coaster seven times in
+succession, and the car. And they wuz now a sittin’ down to recooperate
+their energies, and collect their scattered wits together. The Roller
+Coaster is _very_ scatterin’ to wits that are not collected firm and
+sound, and cemented by strong common sense.
+
+The reason why the Roller Coaster don’t scatter such folkses wits is
+supposed to be because, they don’t go on to it. Ardelia looked as if
+her idees wuz scattered to the four pints of the compass. As for Bial,
+it seemed to me, as if he never had none to scatter. But he spoke out
+to once, and said, he didn’t care to ride on ’em. (Bial Flamburg’s
+strong pint, is his truthfulness, I can’t deny that.)
+
+Ardelia wouldn’t own up but what she enjoyed it dretfully. You know
+folks are most always so. If they partake of a pleasure and recreation
+that is doubtful in its effects, they will always say, what a high
+extreme of enjoyment they enjoyed a partakin’ of it. Curius, haint it?
+Wall, Josiah had been anticipatin’ so much enjoyment from the exercise,
+that I didn’t make no move to prevent him from embarkin’ on it—though
+it looked hazardous and dangerous in the extreme.
+
+I looked down on the long valleys, and precipitous heights of the
+assents and desents, in which my pardner wuz so soon to be assentin’
+and desentin’ and I trembled, and wuz jest about to urge him to forego
+his diversion, for the sake of his pardner’s happiness, but as I turned
+to expostulate with him, I see the beautiful, joyous, hopeful look on
+his liniment, and the words fell almost dead on my tongue. I felt that
+I had ruther suffer in silence than to say one word to mar that bliss.
+
+Such is the love of pardners, and such is some of the agonies they
+suffer silently to save from woundin’ the more opposite one. No, I said
+not a word; but silently sat, and see him makin’ his preparations to
+embark. He see the expression onto my face, and he too wuz touched by
+it. He never said one word to me about embarkin’ too, which I laid to
+two reasons. One wuz my immovable determination not to embark on the
+voyage, which I had confided to him before.
+
+And the other wuz, the added expenses of the journey if he took his
+companion with him.
+
+No, I felt that he thought it wuz better we should part temporarily
+than that the expenditure should be doubled. But as the time drew near
+for him to leave me, I see by his meen that he felt bad about leavin’
+me. He realized what a companion I had been to him. He realized the
+safety and repose he had always found at my side and the unknown
+dangers he wuz a rushin’ into.
+
+And he got up and silently shook hands with me. He would have kissed
+me, I make no doubt, if folks hadn’t been a standin’ by. He then
+embarked, and with lightnin’ speed wuz bore away from me, as he
+dissapeared down the desent, his few gray hairs waved back, and as he
+went over the last precipitus hill, I heard him cry out in agonizin’
+axents, “Samantha! Samantha!”
+
+And I rushed forwards to his rescue but so lightnin’ quick wuz their
+movements that I met my companion a comin’ back, and I sez, the first
+thing, “I heard your cry, Josiah! I rushed to save you, my dear
+pardner.”
+
+“Yes,” sez he, “I spoke out to you, to call your attention to the
+landscape, over the woods there!”
+
+I looked at him in a curious, still sort of a way, and didn’t say
+nothin’ only just that look. Why, that man looked all trembly and broke
+up, but he kep’ on.
+
+“Yes, it wuz beautiful and inspirin’, and I knew you wuz such a case
+for landscapes, I thought I would call your attention to it.”
+
+Sez I, coldly, “You wuz skairt, Josiah Allen, and you know it.”
+
+“Skairt! the idee of me bein’ skairt. I wuz callin’ your attention to
+the beauty of the view, over in the woods.”
+
+“What wuz it?” sez I, still more coldly; for I can’t bear deceit, and
+coverin’ up.
+
+“Oh, it wuz a house, and a tree, and a barn, and things.”
+
+“A great seen to scream about,” sez I. “It would probable have stood
+there till you got back, but you couldn’t seem to wait.”
+
+“No, I have noticed that you always wanted to see things to once. I
+have noticed it in you.”
+
+“I could most probable have waited till you got back, to see a house
+and a tree.” And in still more—frigid axents, I added, “Or a barn.” And
+I sez, kinder sarkastikly, “You enjoyed your ride, I s’pose.”
+
+“Immensely, it wuz perfectly beautiful! So sort a free and soarin’
+like. It is jest what suits a man.”
+
+“You’d better go right over it agin,” sez I.
+
+“Yes,” sez the man who runs the cars. “You’d better go agin.”
+
+“Oh no,” sez Josiah.
+
+“Why not?” sez I.
+
+“Why not?” sez the man.
+
+Josiah Allen looked all around the room, and down on the grass, as if
+trying to find a good reasonable excuse a layin’ round loose somewhere,
+so’s he could get holt of it.
+
+“You’d better go,” sez I, “I love to see you happy, Josiah Allen.”
+
+“Yes, you’d better go,” sez the man.
+
+“No!” sez Josiah, still a lookin’ round for a excuse, up into the
+heavens and onto the horizon. And at last his face kinder brightenin’
+up, as if he had found one: “No, it looks so kinder cloudy, I guess I
+won’t go. I think we shall have rain between now and night.” And so we
+said no more on the subject and sot out homewards.
+
+Ardelia wrote a poem on the occasion, wrote it right there, with
+rapidity and a lead pencil, and handed it to me, before I left the
+room. I put it into my pocket and didn’t think on it, for some days
+afterwards.
+
+That night after we got home from the Roller Coaster, I felt dretful
+sort a down hearted about Abram Gee, I see in that little incident of
+the day, that Bial, although I couldn’t like him, yet I see he had his
+good qualities, I see how truthful he wuz. And although I love truth—I
+fairly worship it—yet I felt that if things wuz as he said they wuz, he
+would more’n probable get Ardelia Tutt, for I know the power of
+Ambition in her, and I felt that she would risk the chances of
+happiness, for the name of bein’ a Banker’s Bride.
+
+So I sat there in deep gloom, and a chocolate colored wrapper, till as
+late as half past nine o’clock P. M. And I felt that the course of
+Abram’s love wuz not runnin’ smooth. No, I felt that it wuz runnin’ in
+a dwindlin’ torrent over a rocky bed, and a precipitus one. And I felt
+that if he wuz with me then and there, if we didn’t mingle our tears
+together we could our sithes, for I sithed, powerful and frequent.
+
+Poor short-sighted creeter that I wuz, a settin’ in the shadow, when
+the sun wuz jest a gettin’ ready to shine out onto Abram and reflect
+off onto my envious heart. Even at that very time the hand of righteous
+Retribution had slipped its sure noose over Bial Flamburg’s neck, and
+wuz a walkin’ him away from Ardelia, away from happiness (oritory).
+
+At that very hour, half past nine P. M., Ardelia Tutt and Abram Gee had
+met agin, and rosy love and happiness wuz even then a stringin’ roses
+on the chain that wuz to bind ’em together forever.
+
+The way on’t wuz: It bein’ early when Ardelia got here, Bial proposed
+to take her out for a drive and she consented. He got a livery horse,
+and buggy, and they say that the livery man knew jest what sort of a
+creeter the horse wuz, and knew it wuz liable to break the buggy all to
+pieces and them to, and he let ’em have it for goin.’ But howsumever,
+whether that is so or not, when they got about five or six milds from
+Saratoga the horse skeert out of the road, and throwed ’em both out.
+
+It wuz a bank of sand that skeert it, a high bank that wuz piled up by
+a little hovel that stood by the side of the road. The ground all round
+the hut wuz too poor to raise anything else but sand, and had raised
+sights of that.
+
+A man and woman, dretful shabby lookin’, wuz a standin’ by the door of
+the hut, and the man had a shovel in his hand, and had been a loadin’
+sand into a awful big wheelbarrow that wuz a standin’ by—seemin’ly
+ready to carry it acrost the fields, to where some man wuz a mixin’
+some motar, to lay the foundations of a barn.
+
+Wall, the old man stood a pantin’ by the side of the wheelbarrow, as if
+he had indeed got on too heavy a load. It wuz piled up high. The horse
+shied, and Ardelia wuz throwed right out onto the bank of sand, Bial by
+the side of her. And the old man and woman came a runnin’ up, and
+callin’ out, “Bial, my son, my son, are you wounded?”
+
+The Accident
+
+And there it all wuz. Ardelia see the hull on it. The Banker wuz before
+her, and she wuz a layin’ on the bank. And the banker wuz a doin’ a
+heavy business, if anybody doubted it, let ’em take holt and cart a
+load on it acrost the fields.
+
+Wall, Ardelia wuz jarred fearful, in her heart, her ambition, her
+pride, and her bones. And as the horse wuz a fleein’ far away, and no
+other conveyance could be found to transport her to the next house
+(Ardelia wouldn’t go into his’n), and night wuz approachin’ with rapid
+strides, the old Banker jest unloaded the load of sand (good old
+creeter, he would have to load it all over agin), and took Ardelia into
+the wheelbarrow, and wheeled her over to the next house and unloaded
+her.
+
+Ardelia in the wheelbarrow
+
+The old Banker told Ardelia that when his neighbor got home he would
+take her back to Saratoga, which he did. He had been to the village for
+necessaries, but he turned right round and carried her back to Mr.
+Pixleyses. And I s’pose Ardelia paid him, mebby as high as 75 cents. As
+for Bial, he tramped off into the house, and she didn’t see him agin,
+nor didn’t want to. Wall, I s’pose it wuz durin’ that ride on the
+wheelbarrow, that Ardelia’s ambition quelled to softer emotions. I
+s’pose so. She never owned it right up to me, but I s’pose so.
+
+Bial Flamburg hadn’t lied a word to her. In all her agony she realized
+that. But she had built a high towerin’ structure of ambition on what
+he said, and it had tottered. And as is natural in times of danger, the
+heart turns instinctively to its true love, she thought of Abram Gee,
+she wanted him. And as if in answer to her deep and lovin’ thought, who
+should come out to the buggy to help her out at Mr. Pixleyses gate, but
+Abram Gee? He had come unexpected, and on the eight o’clock train, and
+wuz there waitin’ for her.
+
+If Bial Flamburg had been with her, he wouldn’t have gone a nigh the
+buggy, but he see it was a old man, and he rushed out. Ardelia couldn’t
+walk a step on her feet (owin’ to bein shaken up, in bones and
+feelin’s), and Abram jest took her in his strong lovin’ arms and
+carried her into the house, and she sort a clung round his neck, and
+seemed tickled enough to see him,
+
+But she wuz dretful shook up and agitated, and it wuzn’t till way along
+in the night some time, that she wuz able to write a poem called, “a
+lay on a wheelbarrow; or, the fallen one.”
+
+Which I thought when I read it, wuz a good name for it, for truly she
+had fell, and truly she had lay on it. Howsumever, Ardelia wrote that
+jest because it wuz second nater to write poetry on every identical
+thing she ever see or did.
+
+She wuz glad enough to get rid of Bial Flamburg, and glad enough to go
+back to her old love. Abram wuz too manly and tender to say a word to
+Ardelia that night on the subject nearest to his heart. No, he see she
+needed rest. But the next day, when they wuz alone together, I s’pose
+he put the case all before her. All his warm burnin’ love for her, all
+his jealousy, and his wretchedness while she wuz a waverin’ between
+Banks and Bread, how his heart had been checked by the thought that
+Bial would vault over him, and in the end hold him at a discount.
+
+Why, I s’pose he talked powerful and melted Ardelia’s soft little heart
+till it wuz like the softest kind of dough in his hands. And then he
+went on tenderly to say, how he needed her, and how she could mould him
+to her will. I s’pose he talked well, and eloquent, I s’pose so. Anyhow
+she accepted him right there in full faith and a pink and white cambric
+dress.
+
+And they came over and told me about it in the afternoon P. M. And I
+felt well and happy in my mind, and wished ’em joy with a full heart
+and a willin’ mind.
+
+They are both good creeters. And she bein’ so soft, and he so kinder
+hardy and stout-hearted, I believe they will get along firstrate. And
+when she once let her mind and heart free to think on him, she worships
+him so openly and unreservedly (though soft), that I don’t, believe
+there is a happier man in the hull country.
+
+Wall, I lay out to give’em a handsome present when they be married,
+which will be in the fall. Mother Gee (who has got as well as can be
+expected) is goin’ to live with Susan. And I’m glad on’t. Mother Gee is
+a good old female no doubt, but it is resky work to take a new husband
+to live with, and when you take a mother-in-law too it adds to the
+resk.
+
+But she is goin’ to live with Susan; it is her prefference.
+
+And Abram has done so well, that he has bought another five acres onto
+his place, and is a goin’ to fix his house all over splendid before the
+weddin’ day. And Ardelia is to go right from the altar to her home—it
+is her own wishes.
+
+She knows enough in her way, Ardelia duz. And she has a wisdom of the
+heart which sometimes I think, goes fur ahead of the wisdom of the
+head. And then agin, I think they go well together, wisdom of the head
+and the heart too. (The times I think this is after readin’ her
+poetry.)
+
+But any way she will make Abram a good soft little wife, lovin’ and
+affectionate always. And good land! he loves her to that extent that it
+wouldn’t make no difference to him if she didn’t know enough to come in
+when it rained. He would fetch her in, drippin’ and worship her, damp
+or dry.
+
+Them verses of Ardelia’s, that she handed me, by the Roller Coaster wuz
+as follows—
+
+“A LAY ON A ROLLER COASTER
+“BY ARDELIA TUTT.
+
+“Oh was thy track all straight, and smooth like glass
+Thou couldest not mount the hills, and lo, the dells,
+The hills and dells oh! Roller Coaster pass
+In peace, believing all things well.
+
+“The hills of life go down, and mount elate
+We mount or sink on them, as case may be
+All seated on the wagon seat of life—
+A holdin’ on in peace, or screamin’ fearfulee.
+
+“Hold then thy breath, and go, e’en up or down,
+Hold to the seat, and hold to royal hope,
+Hope for the best, so shalt thou wear a crown,
+A clinging hope to hold, is better than a rope.
+
+“Mount then the Mounts, Oh Roller Coaster mount,
+And sink then in the dells with brow serene;
+’Tis no disgrace to sink a spell, we count
+Him coward, knave, who floats and calls it mean.”
+
+
+Ardelia always will stand up for Josiah Allen, and I am glad on’t. I
+should jest as soon be jealous of one of Josiah’s gingham neckties, one
+of the thinnest and stringiest ones, as to be jealous of her. She means
+well, Ardelia duz.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX.
+AN ACCIDENT WITH RESULTS.
+
+
+Wall, it wuz on the very day before we laid out to leave for home. I
+wuz a settin’ in my room a mendin’ up a rip in my pardner’s best coat,
+previous to packin’ in his trunk, when all of a sudden Miss Flamm’s
+hired girl came in a cryin’, and sez I, “What is the matter?”
+
+And sez she, “Ah! Miss Flamm has sent for you and Mr. Allen to come
+over there right away. There has been a axident.”
+
+“A axident!” sez I.
+
+“Yes,” sez she. “The little girl has got hurt, and they don’t think she
+will live. Poor little pretty thing,” sez the hired girl, and busted
+out a cryin’ agin.
+
+“How did she get hurt?” sez I, as I laid down the coat, and went to
+tyin’ on my bunnet mekanically.
+
+“Wall, the nurse had her out with the baby and the little boys. And we
+s’pose she had been drinkin’ too much. We all knew she drinked, and she
+wuzn’t in a condition to go out with the children this mornin’, and
+Miss Flamm would have noticed it and kep’ ’em in, but the dog wuz sick
+all night, and Miss Flamm wuz up with it most all night, and she felt
+wore out this mornin’ with her anxtety for the dog, and her want of
+sleep, and so they went out, and it wuzn’ more’n half an hour before it
+took place. She left the baby carriage and the little boys and girl in
+a careless place, not knowin’ what she wuz about, and they got run
+over. The baby and the little boys wuzn’t hurt much, but they think the
+little girl will die. Miss Flamm went right into a caniption fit,” sez
+she, “when she wuz brung in.”
+
+“It is a pity she hadn’t went into one before,” sez I very dryly, dry
+as a chip almost. My axents wuz fairly dusty they wuz so dry. But my
+feelin’s for Miss Flamm moistened up and melted down when I see her,
+when we went into the room. It didn’t take us long for they are still
+to the tarven, and we met Josiah Allen at the door, so he went with us.
+
+Yes, Miss Flamm felt bad enough, bad enough. She has got a mother’s
+heart after all, down under all the strings and girtins, and laces, and
+dogs, etc., etc., that have hid it, and surrounded it. Her face wuz
+jest as white and deathly as the little girl’s, and that wuz jest the
+picture of stillness and death. And I remembered then that I had heard
+that the little girl wuz her favorite amongst her children, whenever
+she had any time to notice ’em. She wuz a only daughter and a beauty,
+besides bein’ smart.
+
+The doctor had been there and done what he could, and go gone away. He
+said there wuz nothin’ more to do till she came out of that stuper, if
+she ever did.
+
+But it looked like death, and there Miss Flamm sot alone with her
+child, and her conscience. She wuzn’t a cryin’ but there wuz a look in
+her eyes, in her set white face that went beyond tears, fur beyond ’em.
+She gripped holt of my hand with her icy cold ones, and sez she, “Pray
+for me!” She wuz brung up a Methodist, and knew we wuz the same. My
+feelin’s overcame me as I looked in her face and the child’s, both
+lookin’ like dyin’ faces, and I sez with the tears a jest runnin’ down
+my cleeks and a layin’ my hand tender on her shoulder, “Is there
+anything I can do for you, you poor little creeter?”
+
+“Pray for me,” sez she agin, with her white lips not movin’ in a smile,
+nor a groan.
+
+Now my companion, Josiah Allen, is a class-leader, and though I say it
+that mebby shouldn’t—That man is able in prayer. He prays as if he
+meant what he said. He don’t try to show off in oritory as so many do,
+or give the Lord information. He never sez, “Oh Lord, thou knowest by
+the mornin’ papers, so and so.” No, he prays in simple words for what
+he wants. And he always seems to feel that somebody is nigh to him, a
+hearin’ him, and if it is best and right, his requests will be granted.
+
+So I motioned for that man to kneel down by the bed and pray, which he
+did. He wuz to the fore side of the bed, and Miss Flamm and I on the
+other side. Wall, Josiah commenced his prayer, in a low earnest askin’
+voice, then all of a sudden he begun to hesitate, waver, and act
+dretful agitated. And his actions and agitations seemed to last for
+some time. I thought it wuz his feelin’s overcomin’ of him, and of
+course, my hand bein’ over my eyes in a respectful, decent way, I
+didin’t see nothin’.
+
+But at last, after what wuz seemingly a great effort, he began to go on
+as usual agin. About that time I heard sunthin’ hit the wall hard on
+the other side of the room, and I heard a yelp. But then everything wuz
+still and Josiah Allen made a good prayer. And before it wuz through
+Miss Flamm laid her head down onto my shoulder, and busted into tears.
+
+And what wuz rooted up and washed away by them tears I don’t know, and
+I don’t s’pose anybody duz. Whether vanity, and a mistaken ambition,
+and the poor empty successes of a fashionable life wuz uprooted and
+floated away on the awakened, sweepin’ tide of a mother’s love and
+remorse; whether the dog floated down that stream, and low necked
+dresses, and high hazardus slippers, and strings for waists and
+corsets, and fashion, and folly, and rivalry, and waltzin’, and
+glitter, and buttons, and show; whether they all went down that stream,
+swept along like bubbles on a heavin’ tumultuous tide, I don’t know,
+nor I don’t s’pose anybody duz.
+
+But any way, from that day on Miss Flamm has been a different woman. I
+stayed with her all that night and the next day, she a not leavin’ the
+child’s bed for a minute, and we a not gettin’ of her to, much as we
+tried to; eatin’ whatever we could make her eat right there by the
+bedside. And on the 2d day the doctor see a change in the child and she
+began to roust a little out of that stuper, and in a week’s time, she
+wuz a beginnin’ to get well.
+
+We stayed on till she wuz out of danger and then we went home. But I
+see that she wuz to be trusted with her children after that. She
+dismissed that nurse, got a good motherly one, who she said would help
+her take care of the children for the future; only _help_ her, for she
+should have the oversight of ’em herself, always.
+
+The hired girl told me (Miss Flamm never mentioned it to me), and she
+wuz glad enough of it, that the dog wuz dead. It died the day the
+little girl wuz hurt. The hired girl said the doctor had told Miss
+Flamm, that it couldn’t live long. But it wuzn’t till we wuz on our way
+home that I found out one of the last eppisodes in that dog’s life. You
+see, sick as that dog wuz, it wuz bound to bark at my pardner as long
+as it had a breath left in its body. And Josiah told me in confidence
+(and it must be kep’, it is right that it should be); he said jest
+after he had knelt down and began to pray he felt that dog climb up
+onto his heels, and pull at his coat tails, and growl a low mad growl,
+and naw at ’em.
+
+Josiah prays
+
+He tried to nestle round and get it off quietly but no, there it stood
+right onto Josiah Allen’s heels, and hung on, and tugged at them
+coat-tails, and growled at ’em that low deep growl, and shook ’em, as
+if determined to worry ’em off. And there my companion wuz. He couldn’t
+show his feelin’s in his face; he had got to keep his face all right
+towards Miss Flamm. And his feelin’s was rousted up about her, and he
+wuz a wantin’, and knew he wuz expected, to have his words and manner
+soothin’ and comfortin’, and that dog a standin’ on his heels and
+tearin’ off his coat-tails.
+
+What to do he didn’t know. He couldn’t stop his prayer on such a time
+as this and kill a dog, though he owned up to me that he felt like it,
+and he couldn’t keep still and feel his coat-tails tore off of him, and
+be growled at, and shook, and pawed at all day. So he said after the
+dog had gin a most powerful tug, almost a partin’ the skirts asunder
+from his coat, he drew up one foot carefully (still a keepin’ his face
+straight and the prayer agoin’) and brung it back sudden and voyalent,
+and he heard the dog strike aginst the opposite side of the room with
+one short, sharp yelp, and then silence rained down and he finished the
+prayer.
+
+But he said, and owned it up to me, that it didn’t seem to him so much
+like a religious exercise, as he could wish. It didn’t seem to help his
+spiritual growth much, if any.
+
+And I sez, “I should think as much,” and I sez, “You wuz in a hard
+place, Josiah Allen.”
+
+And he sez, “It wuz the dumbest hard place any one wuz ever in on
+earth.”
+
+And I sez, “I don’t know but it wuz.” That man wuz to be pitied, and I
+told him so, and he acted real cheerful and contented at hearin’ my
+mind. He owned up that he had dreaded tellin’ me about it, for fear I
+would upbraid him. But, good land! I would have been a hard hearted
+creeter if I could upbraid a man for goin’ through such a time as that.
+He said he thought mebby I would think it wuz irreverent or sunthin’,
+the dog’s actions, at such a time.
+
+“Wall,” sez I, “you didn’t choose the actions, did you? It wuzn’t
+nothin’ you wanted.”
+
+“No,” sez he feelin’ly. “Heaven knows I didn’t. And I done the best I
+could,” sez he sort a pitiful.
+
+Sez I, “I believe you, Josiah Allen,” and sez I warmly, “I don’t
+believe that Alexander, or Cezar, or Grover Cleveland, could have done
+any better.”
+
+He brightened all up at this, he felt dretful well to think I felt with
+him, and my feelin’s wuz all rousted up to think of the sufferin’s he
+had went through, so we felt real well towards each other. Such is some
+of the comforts and consolations of pardners. Howsumever, the dog died,
+and I wuz kinder sorry for the dog. I think enough of dogs (as dogs)
+and always did. Always use ’em dretful well, only it mads me to have
+’em put ahead of children, and sot up in front of ’em. I always did and
+always shall like a dog as a _dog_.
+
+Wall, they say that when that dog died, Miss Flamm hardly inquired
+about it, she wuz so took up in gettin’ acquainted with her own
+children. And I s’pose they improved on acquaintance, for they say she
+is jest devoted to ’em. And she got acquainted with G. Washington too,
+so they say. He wuz a stiddy, quiet man, and she had got to lookin’ on
+him as her banker and business man. But they say she liked him real
+well, come to get acquainted with him. He always jest worshipped her,
+so they are real happy. There wuz always sunthin’ kinder good about
+Miss Flamm.
+
+Thos. J. is a carryin’ on another lawsuit for her (more money that
+descended onto her from her father, or that ort to descend). And he is
+carryin’ it stiddy and safe. It will bring Thomas Jefferson over 900
+dollars in money besides fame, a hull lot of fame.
+
+Wall, we sot sail for home in good spirits, and the noon train. And we
+reached Jonesville with no particular eppisodin’ till we got to the
+Jonesville Depot.
+
+I rather think Ardelia Tutt wrote a poem on the cars goin’ home, though
+I can’t say for certain.
+
+She and Abram sot a few seats in front of us, and I thought I see a
+certain look to the backside of her head that meant poetry. It wuz a
+kind of a sot look, and riz up like. But I can’t say for certain for
+she didn’t have no chance to tell me about it. Abram looked down at her
+all the time as if he jest worshipped her. And she is a good little
+creeter, and will make him a happy wife; I don’t make no doubt. As I
+said, the old lady is goin’ to live with Susan. They went right on in
+the train, for Ardelia’s home lays beyond Jonesville, and Abram wuz
+goin’ home with her by Deacon Tutt’s request. They are willin’.
+
+Wall, we disembarked from the cars, and we found the old mair and the
+_Democrat_ a waitin’ for us. Thomas J. wuz a comin’ for us, but had
+spraint his wrist and couldn’t drive. Wall, Josia lifted our saddul
+bags in, and my umbrell, and the band box. But when he went to lift my
+trunk he faltered. It _wuz_ heavy. I had got relicts from Mount
+McGregor, from the Battlefield, from the various springs, minerals,
+stuns, and things, and Josiah couldn’t lift it.
+
+What added to the hardness of the job, the handles had broken offen it,
+and he had to grip hold on it, by the might of his finger nails. It wuz
+a hard job, and Josiah’s face got red and I felt, as well as see, that
+his temper wuz a risin’. And I sez, instinctively, “Josiah, be calm!”
+For I knew not what unguarded word he might drop as he vainly tried to
+grip hold on’t, and it eluded his efferts and came down on the ground
+every time, a carryin’ with it, I s’pose, portions of his fingernails,
+broke off in the fray.
+
+Wall, he wuz a strugglin’ with it and with his feelin’s, for I kep’ on
+a sayin’, “Josiah, do be calm! Do be careful about usin’ a profane word
+so nigh home and at this time of day, and you jest home from a tower.”
+
+trying to lift trunk
+
+And he kep’ his feelin’s nobly under control, and never said a word,
+only to wonder “what under the High Heavens a woman wanted to lug round
+a ton of stuns in her trunk for.” And anon sayin’ that he would be
+dumbed if he didn’t leave it right there on the platform.
+
+Too heavy!
+
+Savin’ these few slight remarks that man nobly restrained himself, and
+lugged and lifted till the blood almost gushed through his bald head.
+And right in the midst of the fray, a porter came up and went to
+liftin’ the trunk in the usual highheaded, haughty way Railroad
+officials have. But anon a change came over his linement. And as it
+fell back from his fingers to the platform for the 3d time, he broke
+out in a torrent of swearin’ words dretful to hear.
+
+I felt as if I should sink through the _Democrat_. But Josiah listened
+to the awful words with a warm glow of pleasure and satisfaction a
+beamin’ from his face. I never saw him look more complacent. And as the
+man moistened his hands and with another frightful burst of profanity
+histed it into the end of the buggy.
+
+Wall, I gin the man a few warnin’ words aginst profanity, and Josiah
+gin him a quarter for liftin’ in the trunk, he said, and we drove off
+in the meller glow of the summer sunset.
+
+But it wuz duskish before we got to the turn of the road, and
+considerable dark before we got to the Corners. But we went on tbgough
+the shadows, a feelin’ we could bear ’em, for we wuz together, and we
+wuz a goin’ home.
+
+And pretty soon we got there! The door wuz open, the warm light wuz a
+streamin’ out from doors and windows, and there stood the children!
+
+There they all wuz, all we loved best, a waitin’ to welcome us. Love,
+which is the light of Heaven, wuz a shinin’ on their faces, and we had
+got home.
+
+The End
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA ***
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diff --git a/3425-0.zip b/3425-0.zip
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Samantha at Saratoga, by Marietta Holley</title>
+<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
+<style type="text/css">
+
+body { margin-left: 20%;
+       margin-right: 20%;
+       text-align: justify; }
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+h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight:
+normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;}
+
+h1 {font-size: 300%;
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+<body>
+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Samantha at Saratoga, by Marietta Holley</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Samantha at Saratoga</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Marietta Holley</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April 26, 2001 [eBook #3425]<br />
+[Most recently updated: February 21, 2020]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: an anonymous volunteer</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="cover" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>Samantha at Saratoga</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by Marietta Holley</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+Marietta Holley (1836-1926) has been called America&rsquo;s first female
+humorist. She was an extremely popular author and a well-known suffragette.
+Holley, who never married, published her first books as Josiah Allen&rsquo;s
+Wife, only adding her own name after her success was established. She lived in
+an 18 room home she built in Jefferson County, New York and drove a
+Pierce-Arrow. Her legacy of more than 20 books has mostly been forgotten today
+but they are still very good reading.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have no information about the illustrator.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
+      <tr align="center">
+        <td align="center">
+          <img src="images/dedleft.gif" height="156" width="120" alt="Josiah" />
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          <b>TO THE GREAT ARMY OF SUMMER TRAMPS</b>
+          <p>
+            <b>THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED</b>
+          </p>
+          <p>
+            <b>BY THEIR COMRADE AND FELLOW WANDERER</b>
+          </p>
+          <p>
+            <b>THE AUTHOR</b>
+          </p>
+          <p>
+            <b>* * * * * * * * * * *</b>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          <img src="images/dedrght.gif" height="156" width="143"
+          alt="Samantha" />
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#pref01">PREFACE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I. SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II. ARDELIA TUTT AND HER MOTHER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III. THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV. ARDELIA AND ABRAM GEE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V. WE ARRIVE AT SARATOGA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI. SARATOGA BY DAYLIGHT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII. SEEING THE DIFFERENT SPRINGS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII. JOSIAH AND SAMANTHA TAKE A LONG WALK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX. JOSIAH&rsquo;S FLIRTATIONS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X. MISS G. WASHINGTON FLAMM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI. VISIT TO THE INDIAN ENCAMPMENT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII. A DRIVE TO SARATOGA LAKE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII. VISITS TO NOTABLE PLACES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV. LAKE GEORGE AND MOUNT McGREGOR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">HAPTER XV. ADVENTURES AT VARIOUS SPRINGS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI. AT A LAWN PARTY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII. A TRIP TO SCHUYLERVILLE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII. THE SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETING</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX. ST. CHRISTINA&rsquo;S HOME</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX. AN ACCIDENT WITH RESULTS	</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="pref01"></a>A SORT OF PREFACE.<br/>
+WHICH IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO READ.</h2>
+
+<p>
+When Josiah read my dedication he said &ldquo;it wuz a shame to dedicate a book
+that it had took most a hull bottle of ink to write, to a lot of creeters that
+he wouldn&rsquo;t have in the back door yard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I explained it to him, that I didn&rsquo;t mean tramps with broken hats,
+variegated pantaloons, ventilated shirt-sleeves, and barefooted. But I meant
+tramps with diamond ear-rings, and cuff-buttons, and Saratoga trunks, and big
+accounts at their bankers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he said, &ldquo;Oh, shaw!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I went on nobly, onmindful of that shaw, as female pardners have to be, if
+they accomplish all the talkin&rsquo; they want to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And sez I, &ldquo;It duz seem sort o&rsquo; pitiful, don&rsquo;t it, to think
+how sort o&rsquo; homeless the Americans are a gettin&rsquo;? How the posys
+that blow under the winders of Home are left to waste their sweet breaths
+amongst the weeds, while them that used to love &rsquo;em are a climbin&rsquo;
+mountain tops after strange nosegays.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The smoke that curled up from the chimbleys, a wreathin&rsquo; its way up to
+the heavens&mdash;all dead and gone. The bright light that shone out of the
+winder through the dark a tellin&rsquo; everybody that there wuz a Home, and
+some one a waitin&rsquo; for somebody&mdash;all dark and lonesome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, the waiter and the waited for are all a rushin&rsquo; round somewhere, on
+the cars, mebby, or a yot, a chasin&rsquo; Pleasure, that like as not settled
+right down on the eves of the old house they left, and stayed there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wonder if they will find her there when they go back again. Mebby they will,
+and then agin, mebby they won&rsquo;t. For Happiness haint one to set round and
+lame herself a waitin&rsquo; for folks to make up their minds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes she looks folks full in the face, sort o&rsquo; solemn like and
+heart-searchin&rsquo;, and gives &rsquo;em a fair chance what they will chuse.
+And then if they chuse wrong, shee&rsquo;ll turn her back to &rsquo;em, for
+always. I&rsquo;ve hearn of jest such cases.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it duz seem sort o&rsquo; solemn to think&mdash;how the sweet restful
+felin&rsquo;s that clings like ivy round the old familier door
+steps&mdash;where old 4 fathers feet stopped, and stayed there, and baby feet
+touched and then went away&mdash;I declare for&rsquo;t, it almost brings tears,
+to think how that sweet clingin&rsquo; vine of affection, and domestic repose,
+and content&mdash;how soon that vine gets tore up nowadays.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a sort of a runnin&rsquo; vine anyway, and folks use it as sech, they run
+with it. Jest as it puts its tendrils out to cling round some fence post, or
+lilock bush, they pull it up, and start off with it. And then its roots get
+dry, and it is some time before it will begin to put out little shoots and
+clingin&rsquo; leaves agin round some petickular mountain top, or bureau or
+human bein&rsquo;. And then it is yanked up agin, poor little runnin&rsquo;
+vine, and run with&mdash;and so on&mdash;and so on&mdash;and so on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why sometimes it makes me fairly heart-sick to think on&rsquo;t. And I fairly
+envy our old 4 fathers, who used to set down for several hundred years in one
+spot. They used to get real rested, it must be they did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jacob now, settin&rsquo; right by that well of his&rsquo;n for pretty nigh two
+hundred years. How much store he must have set by it during the last hundred
+years of &rsquo;em! How attached he must have been to it!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Good land! Where is there a well that one of our rich old American patriarks
+will set down by for two years, leavin&rsquo; off the orts. There haint none,
+there haint no such a well. Our patriarks haint fond of well water, anyway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And old Miss Abraham now, and Miss Isaac&mdash;what stay to home wimmen they
+wuz, and equinomical!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What a good contented creeter Sarah Abraham wuz. How settled down, and stiddy,
+stayin&rsquo; right to home for hundreds of years. Not gettin&rsquo; rampent
+for a wider spear, not a coaxin&rsquo; old Mr. Abraham nights to take her to
+summer resorts, and winter hants of fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, old Mr. Abraham went to bed, and went to sleep for all of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when they did once in a hundred years, or so, make up their minds to move
+on a mile or so, how easy they traveled. Mr. Abraham didn&rsquo;t have to lug
+off ten or twelve wagon loads of furniture to the Safe Deposit Company, and
+spend weeks and weeks a settlin&rsquo; his bisness, in Western lands, and
+Northern mines, Southern railroads, and Eastern wildcat stocks, to get ready to
+go. And Miss Abraham didn&rsquo;t have to have a dozen dress-makers in the
+house for a month or two, and messenger boys, and dry goods clerks, and have to
+stand and be fitted for basks and polenays, and back drapery, and front
+drapery, and tea gowns, and dinner gowns, and drivin&rsquo; gowns, and
+mornin&rsquo; gowns, and evenin&rsquo; gowns, and etectery, etcetery, etcetery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, all the preperations she had to make wuz to wrop her mantilly a little
+closter round her, and all Mr. Abraham had to do wuz to gird up his lions. That
+is what it sez. And I don&rsquo;t believe it would take much time to gird up a
+few lions, it don&rsquo;t seem to me as if it would.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when these few simple preperations had been made, they jest histed up their
+tent and laid it acrost a camel, and moved on a mild or two, walkin&rsquo;
+afoot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why jest imagine if Miss Abraham had to travel with eight or ten big Saratoga
+trunks, how could they have been got up onto that camel? It couldn&rsquo;t lave
+been done. The camel would have died, and old Mr. Abraham would also have
+expired a tryin&rsquo; to lift &rsquo;em up. No, it was all for the best.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And jest think on&rsquo;t, for all of these simple, stay to home ways, they
+called themselves Pilgrims and Sojourners. Good land! What would they have
+thought nowadays to see folks make nothin&rsquo; of settin&rsquo; off for
+China, or Japan or Jerusalem before breakfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And what did they know of the hardships of civilization? Now to sposen the
+case, sposen Miss Abraham had to live in New York winters, and go to two or
+three big receptions every day, and to dinner parties, and theatre parties, and
+operas and such like, evenin&rsquo;s, and receive and return about three
+thousand calls, and be on more &rsquo;n a dozen charitable boards (hard boards
+they be too, some on &rsquo;em) and lots of other projects and
+enterprizes&mdash;be on the go the hull winter, with a dress so tight she
+couldn&rsquo;t breathe instead of her good loose robes, and instead of her good
+comfortable sandals have her feet upon high-heeled shoes pinchin&rsquo; her
+corns almost unto distraction. And then to Washington to go all through it
+agin, and more too, and Florida, and Cuba; and then to the sea-shore and have
+it all over agin with sea bathin&rsquo; added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then to the mountains, and all over agin with climbin&rsquo; round added.
+Then to Europe, with seas sickness, picture galleries, etc., added. And so on
+home agin in the fall to begin it all over agin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why Miss Abraham would be so tuckered out before she went half through with one
+season, that she would be a dead 4 mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Mr. Abraham&mdash;why one half hour down at the stock exchange would have
+been too much for that good old creeter. The yells and cries, and distracted
+movements of the crowd of Luker Gatherers there, would have skairt him to
+death. He never would have lived to follow Miss Abraham round from pillow to
+post through summer and winter seasons&mdash;he wouldn&rsquo;t have lived to
+waltz, or toboggen, or suffer other civilized agonies. No, he would have been a
+dead patriark. And better off so, I almost think.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not but what I realize that civilization has its advantages. Not but what I
+know that if Mr. Abraham wanted Miss Abraham to part his hair straight, or
+clean off his phylackrity when she happened to be out a pickin&rsquo; up manny,
+he couldn&rsquo;t stand on one side of his tent and telephone to bring her
+back, but had to yell at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I realize fully that if one of his herd got strayed off into another
+county, they hadn&rsquo;t no telegraf to head it off, but the old man had to
+poke off through rain or sun, and hunt it up himself. And he couldn&rsquo;t set
+down cross-legged in front of his tent in the mornin&rsquo;, and read what
+happened on the other side of the world, the evenin&rsquo; before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I know that if he wanted to set down some news, they had to kill a sheep,
+and spend several years a dressin&rsquo; off the hide into parchment&mdash;and
+kill a goose, or chase it up till they wuz beat out, for a goose-quill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then after about 20 years or so, they could put it down that Miss Isaac had
+got a boy&mdash;the boy, probably bein&rsquo; a married man himself and a
+father when the news of his birth wuz set down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I realize this, and also the great fundimental fact that underlies all
+philosophies, that you can&rsquo;t set down and stand up at the same
+time&mdash;and that no man, however pure and lofty his motives may be,
+can&rsquo;t lean up against a barn door, and walk off simultanious. And if he
+don&rsquo;t walk off, then the great question comes in, How will he get there?
+And he feels lots of times that he must stand up so&rsquo;s to bring his head
+up above the mullien and burdock stalks, amongst which he is a settin&rsquo;,
+and get a wider view-a broader horizeon. And he feels lots of time, that he
+must get there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is a sort of a curius world, and it makes me feel curius a good deal of
+the time as we go through it. But we have to make allowances for it, for the
+old world is on a tramp, too. It can&rsquo;t seem to stop a minute to oil up
+its old axeltrys&mdash;it moves on, and takes us with it. It seems to be in a
+hurry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything seems to be in a hurry here below. And some say Heaven is a place of
+continual sailin&rsquo; round and goin&rsquo; up and up all the time. But while
+risin&rsquo; up and soarin&rsquo; is a sweet thought to me, still sometimes I
+love to think that Heaven is a place where I can set down, and set for some
+time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told Josiah so (waked him up, for he wuz asleep), and he said he sot more
+store on the golden streets, and the wavin&rsquo; palms, and the procession of
+angels. (And then he went to sleep agin.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I don&rsquo;t feel so. I&rsquo;d love, as I say, to jest set down for quite
+a spell, and set there, to be kinder settled down and to home with them whose
+presence makes a home anywhere. I wouldn&rsquo;t give a cent to sail round
+unless I wuz made to know it wuz my duty to sail. Josiah wants to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, as I say, everybody is in a hurry. Husbands can&rsquo;t hardly find time
+to keep up a acquaintance with their wives. Fathers don&rsquo;t have no time to
+get up a intimate acquaintance with their children. Mothers are in such a
+hurry&mdash;babys are in such a hurry&mdash;that they can&rsquo;t scarcely find
+time to be born. And I declare for&rsquo;t, it seems sometimes as if folks
+don&rsquo;t want to take time to die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old folks at home wait with faithful, tired old eyes for the letter that
+don&rsquo;t come, for the busy son or daughter hasn&rsquo;t time to write
+it&mdash;no, they are too busy a tearin&rsquo; up the running vine of affection
+and home love, and a runnin&rsquo; with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, the hull nation is in a hurry to get somewhere else, to go on, it
+can&rsquo;t wait. It is a trampin&rsquo; on over the Western slopes, a
+trampin&rsquo; over red men, and black men, and some white men a hurryin&rsquo;
+on to the West&mdash;hurryin&rsquo; on to the sea. And what then?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Is there a tide of restfulness a layin&rsquo; before it? Some cool waters of
+repose where it will bathe its tired forward, and its stun-bruised feet, and
+set there for some time?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t s&rsquo;pose so. I don&rsquo;t s&rsquo;pose it is in its nater
+to. I s&rsquo;pose it will look off longingly onto the far off somewhere that
+lays over the waters&mdash;beyend the sunset.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+JOSIAH ALLEN&rsquo;S WIFE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+NEW YORK, June, 1887.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>Chapter I.<br/>
+SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The idee on&rsquo;t come to me one day about sundown, or a little before
+sundown. I wuz a settin&rsquo; in calm peace, and a big rockin&rsquo; chair
+covered with a handsome copperplate, a readin&rsquo; what the Sammist sez about
+&ldquo;Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.&rdquo; The words struck deep, and as I
+said, it was jest that very minute that the idee struck me about goin&rsquo; to
+Saratoga. Why I should have had the idee at jest that minute, I can&rsquo;t
+tell, nor Josiah can&rsquo;t. We have talked about it sense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But good land! such creeters as thoughts be never wuz, nor never will be. They
+will creep in, and round, and over anything, and get inside of your mind
+(entirely unbeknown to you) at any time. Curious, haint it?&mdash;How you may
+try to hedge &rsquo;em out, and shet the doors and everything. But they will
+creep up into your mind, climb up and draw up their ladders, and there they
+will be, and stalk round independent as if they owned your hull head; curious!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, there the idee wuz&mdash;I never knew nothin&rsquo; about it, nor how it
+got there. But there it wuz, lookin&rsquo; me right in the face of my soul,
+kinder pert and saucy, sayin&rsquo;, &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better go to Saratoga
+next summer; you and Josiah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I argued with it. Sez I, &ldquo;What should we go to Saratoga for? None
+of the relations live there on my side, or on hison; why should we go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But still that idee kep&rsquo; a hantin me; &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better go to
+Saratoga next summer, you and Josiah.&rdquo; And it whispered, &ldquo;Mebby it
+will help Josiah&rsquo;s corns.&rdquo; (He is dretful troubled with corns.)
+And so the idee kep&rsquo; a naggin&rsquo; me, it nagged me for three days and
+three nights before I mentioned it to my Josiah. And when I did, he scorfed at
+the idee. He said, &ldquo;The idee of water curing them dumb
+corns&mdash;&ldquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, stranger things have been done;&rdquo; sez I,
+&ldquo;that water is very strong. It does wonders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he scorfed agin and sez, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you believe faith could cure
+em?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image01.gif" height="317" width="283" alt="Josiah in woodlot" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;If it wuz strong enough it could.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the thought kep a naggin&rsquo; me stiddy, and then&mdash;here is the
+curious part of it&mdash;the thought nagged me, and I nagged Josiah, or not
+exactly nagged; not a clear nag; I despise them, and always did. But I kinder
+kep&rsquo; it before his mind from day to day, and from hour to hour. And the
+idee would keep a tellin&rsquo; me things and I would keep a tellin&rsquo;
+&rsquo;em to my companion. The idee would keep a sayin&rsquo; to me, &ldquo;It
+is one of the most beautiful places in our native land. The waters will help
+you, the inspirin&rsquo; music, and elegance and gay enjoyment you will find
+there, will sort a uplift you. You had better go there on a tower;&rdquo; and
+agin it sez, &ldquo;Mebby it will help Josiah&rsquo;s corns.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And old Dr. Gale a happenin&rsquo; in at about that time, I asked him about it
+(he doctored me when I wuz a baby, and I have helped &rsquo;em for years. Good
+old creetur, he don&rsquo;t get along as well as he ort to. Loontown is a
+healthy place.) I told him about my strong desire to go to Saratoga, and I
+asked him plain if he thought the water would help my pardner&rsquo;s corns.
+And he looked dreadful wise and he riz up and walked across the floor 2 and fro
+several times, probably 3 times to, and the same number of times fro, with his
+arms crossed back under the skirt of his coat and his eyebrows knit in deep
+thought, before he answered me. Finely he said, that modern science had not
+fully demonstrated yet the direct bearing of water on corn. In some cases it
+might and probably did stimulate &rsquo;em to greater luxuriance, and then
+again a great flow of water might retard their growth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, anxiously, &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;d advise me to go there with
+him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;on the hull, I advise you to go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image02.gif" height="265" width="341" alt="Samantha and Dr. Gale" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Them words I reported to Josiah, and sez I in anxious axents, &ldquo;Dr. Gale
+advises us to go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Josiah sez, &ldquo;I guess I shan&rsquo;t mind what that old fool
+sez.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Them wuz my pardner&rsquo;s words, much as I hate to tell on &rsquo;em. But
+from day to day I kep&rsquo; it stiddy before him, how dang&rsquo;r&rsquo;us it
+wuz to go ag&rsquo;inst a doctor&rsquo;s advice. And from day to day he would
+scorf at the plan. And I, ev&rsquo;ry now and then, and mebby oftener, would
+get him a extra good meal, and attack him on the subject immegatly afterwards.
+But all in vain. And I see that when he had that immovible sotness onto him,
+one extra meal wouldn&rsquo;t soften or molify him. No, I see plain I must
+make a more voyalent effort. And I made it. For three stiddy days I put
+before that man the best vittles that these hands could make, or this brain
+could plan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at the end of the 3d day I gently tackled him agin on the subject, and his
+state wuz such, bland, serene, happified, that he consented without a parlay.
+And so it wuz settled that the next summer we wuz to go to Saratoga. And he
+began to count on it and make preparation in a way that I hated to see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, from the very minute that our two minds wuz made up to go to Saratoga
+Josiah Allen wuz set on havin&rsquo; sunthin new and uneek in the way of dress
+and whiskers. I looked coldly on the idee of puttin&rsquo; a gay stripe down
+the legs of the new pantaloons I made for him, and broke it up, also a figured
+vest. I went through them two crisises and came out triumphent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he went and bought a new bright pink necktie with broad long ends which he
+intended to have float out, down the front of his vest. And I immegatly took
+it for the light-colored blocks in my silk log-cabin bedquilt. Yes, I settled
+the matter of that pink neck-gear with a high hand and a pair of shears. And
+Josiah sez now that he bought it for that purpose, for the bedquilt, because he
+loves to see a dressy quilt,&mdash;sez he always enjoys seein&rsquo; a cabin
+look sort o&rsquo; gay. But good land! he didn&rsquo;t. He intended and
+calculated to wear that neck-tie into Saratoga,&mdash;a sight for men and
+angels, if I hadn&rsquo;t broke it up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in the matter of whiskers, there I was powerless. He trimmed &rsquo;em
+(unbeknow to me) all off the side of his face, them good honerable side
+whiskers of hisen, that had stood by him for years in solemnity and decency,
+and begun to cultivate a little patch on the end of his chin. I argued with
+him, and talked well on the subject, eloquent, but it wuz of no use, I might as
+well have argued with the wind in March.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said, he wuz bound on goin&rsquo; into Saratoga with a fashionable whisker,
+come what would.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then I sithed, and he sez,&mdash;&ldquo; You have broke up my pantaloons,
+my vest, and my neck-tie, you have ground me down onto plain broadcloth, but in
+the matter of whiskers I am firm! Yes!&rdquo; sez he &ldquo;on these whiskers I
+take my stand!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And agin I sithed heavy, and I sez in a dretful impressive way, as I looked on
+&rsquo;em, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, remember you are a father and a
+grandfather!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he sez firmly, &ldquo;If I wuz a great-grandfather I would trim my whiskers
+in jest this way, that is if I wuz a goin&rsquo; to set up to be fashionable
+and a goin&rsquo; to Saratoga for my health.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I groaned kinder low to myself, and kep&rsquo; hopin&rsquo; that mebby they
+wouldn&rsquo;t grow very fast, or that some axident would happen to &rsquo;em,
+that they would get afire or sunthin&rsquo;. But they didn&rsquo;t. And they
+grew from day to day luxurient in length, but thin. And his watchful care
+kep&rsquo; &rsquo;em from axident, and I wuz too high princepled to set fire to
+&rsquo;em when he wuz asleep, though sometimes, on a moonlight night, I was
+tempted to, sorely tempted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I didn&rsquo;t, and they grew from day to day, till they wuz the curiusest
+lookin&rsquo; patch o&rsquo; whiskers that I ever see. And when we sot out for
+Saratoga, they wuz jest about as long as a shavin&rsquo; brush, and looked some
+like one. There wuz no look of a class-leader, and a perfesser about
+&rsquo;em, and I told him so. But he worshiped &rsquo;em, and gloried in the
+idee of goin&rsquo; afar to show &rsquo;em off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the neighbors received the news that we wuz goin&rsquo; to a waterin&rsquo;
+place coldly, or with ill-concealed envy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Uncle Jonas Bently told us he shouldn&rsquo;t think we would want to go round
+to waterin&rsquo; troughs at our age.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I told him it wuzn&rsquo;t a waterin&rsquo; trough, and if it wuz, I
+thought our age wuz jest as good a one as any, to go to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had the impression that Saratoga wuz a immense waterin&rsquo; trough where
+the country all drove themselves summers to be watered. He is deef as a
+Hemlock post, and I yelled up at him jest as loud as I dast for fear of
+breakin&rsquo; open my own chest, that the water got into us, instid of our
+gettin&rsquo; into the water, but I didn&rsquo;t make him understand, for I
+hearn afterwards of his sayin&rsquo; that, as nigh as he could make out we all
+got into the waterin&rsquo; trough and wuz watered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The school teacher, a young man, with long, small lims, and some pimpley on the
+face, but well meanin&rsquo;, he sez to me: &ldquo;Saratoga is a beautiful
+spah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image03.gif" height="350" width="234" alt="Samantha and the school
+teacher" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And I sez warmly, &ldquo;It aint no such thing, it is a village, for I have
+seen a peddler who went right through it, and watered his horses there, and he
+sez it is a waterin&rsquo; place, and a village.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;it is a beautiful village, a modest retiren
+city, and at the same time it is the most noted spah on this continent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wouldn&rsquo;t contend with him for it wuz on the stoop of the meetin&rsquo;
+house, and I believe in bein&rsquo; reverent. But I knew it wuzn&rsquo;t no
+&ldquo;spah,&rdquo;&mdash;that had a dreadful flat sound to me. And any way I
+knew I should face its realities soon and know all about it. Lots of wimen said
+that for anybody who lived right on the side of a canal, and had two good,
+cisterns on the place, and a well, they didn&rsquo;t see why I should feel in a
+sufferin&rsquo; condition for any more water; and if I did, why didn&rsquo;t I
+ketch rain water?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such wuz some of the deep arguments they brung up aginst my embarkin&rsquo; on
+this enterprise, they talked about it sights and sights;&mdash;why, it lasted
+the neighbors for a stiddy conversation, till along about the middle of the
+winter. Then the Minister&rsquo;s wife bought a new alpacky
+dress&mdash;unbeknown to the church till it wuz made up&mdash;and that kind
+o&rsquo; drawed their minds off o&rsquo; me for a spell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Aunt Polly Pixley wuz the only one who received the intelligence gladly. And
+she thought she would go too. She had been kinder run down and most bed rid for
+years. And she had a idee the water might help her. And I encouraged Aunt Polly
+in the idee, for she wuz well off. Yes, Mr. and Miss Pixley wuz very well off
+though they lived in a little mite of a dark, low, lonesome house, with some
+tall Pollard willows in front of the door in a row, and jest acrost the road
+from a grave-yard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her husband had been close and wuzn&rsquo;t willin&rsquo; to have any other
+luxury or means of recreation in the house only a bass viol, that had been his
+father&rsquo;s&mdash;he used to play on that for hours and hours. I thought
+that wuz one reason why Polly wuz so nervous. I said to Josiah that it would
+have killed me outright to have that low grumblin&rsquo; a goin&rsquo; on from
+day to day, and to look at them tall lonesome willows and grave stuns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, howsumever, Polly&rsquo;s husband had died durin&rsquo; the summer, and
+Polly parted with the bass viol the day after the funeral. She got out some
+now, and wuz quite wrought up with the idee of goin&rsquo; to Saratoga.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Sister Minkley; sister in the church and sister-in-law by reason of
+Wbitefield, sez to me, that she should think I would think twice before I
+danced and waltzed round waltzes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;I haint thought of doin&rsquo; it, I haint thought of
+dancin&rsquo; round or square or any other shape.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez she, &ldquo;You have got to, if you go to Saratoga.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Not while life remains in this frame.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And old Miss Bobbet came up that minute&mdash;it wuz in the store that we were
+a talkin&rsquo;&mdash;and sez she, &ldquo;It seems to me, Josiah Allen&rsquo;s
+wife, that you are too old to wear low-necked dresses and short sleeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I should think you&rsquo;d take cold a goin&rsquo;
+bareheaded,&rdquo; sez Miss Luman Spink who wuz with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, lookin&rsquo; at &rsquo;em coldly, &ldquo;Are you lunys or has softness
+begun on your brains?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; sez they, &ldquo;you are talking about goin&rsquo; to
+Saratoga, hain&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then you have got to wear &rsquo;em,&rdquo; says Miss Bobbet.
+&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t let anybody inside of the incorporation without they
+have got on a low-necked dress and short sleeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And bare-headed,&rdquo; sez Miss Spink; &ldquo;if they have&rsquo; got a
+thing on their heads they won&rsquo;t let &rsquo;em in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez Miss Bobbet, &ldquo;It is so, for I hearn it, and hearn it straight. James
+Robbets&rsquo;s wife&rsquo;s sister had a second cousin who lived neighbor to a
+woman whose niece had been there, been right there on the spot. And Celestine
+Bobbet, Uncle Ephraim&rsquo;s Celestine, hearn it from James&rsquo;es wife when
+she wuz up there last spring, it come straight. They all have to go in low
+necks.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And not a mite of anything on their heads,&rdquo; says Miss Spink.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I in sarcastical axents, &ldquo;Do men have to go in low necks too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; says Miss Bobbet. &ldquo;But they have to have the tails of
+their coats kinder pinted. Why,&rdquo; sez she, &ldquo;I hearn of a man that
+had got clear to the incorporation and they wouldn&rsquo;t let him in because
+his coat kinder rounded off round the bottom, so he went out by the side of the
+road and pinned up his coat tails, into a sort of a pinted shape, and good land
+the incorporation let him right in, and never said a word.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I contended that these things wuzn&rsquo;t so, but I found it wuz the
+prevailin&rsquo; opinion. For when I went to see the dressmaker about
+makin&rsquo; me a dress for the occasion, I see she felt just like the rest
+about it. My dress wuz a good black alpacky. I thought I would have it begun
+along in the edge of the winter, when she didn&rsquo;t have so much to do, and
+also to have it done on time. We laid out to start on the follerin&rsquo; July,
+and I felt that I wanted everything ready.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bought the dress the 7th day of November early in the forenoon, the next day
+after my pardner consented to go, and give 65 cents a yard for it, double
+wedth. I thought I could get it done on time, dressmakers are drove a good
+deal. But I felt that a dressmaker could commence a dress in November and get
+it done the follerin&rsquo; July, without no great strain bein&rsquo; put onto
+her; and I am fur from bein&rsquo; the one to put strains onto wimmen, and
+hurry &rsquo;em beyend their strength. But I felt Almily had time to make it on
+honor and with good buttonholes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she sez, the first thing after she had unrolled the
+alpacky, and held it up to the light to see if it was firm&mdash;sez she:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I s&rsquo;pose you are goin&rsquo; to have it made with a long train,
+and low neck and short sleeves, and the waist all girted down to a
+taper?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wuz agast at the idee, and to think Alminy should broach it to me, and I give
+her a piece of my mind that must have lasted her for days and days. It wuz a
+long piece, and firm as iron. But she is a woman who likes to have the last
+word and carry out her own idees, and she insisted that nobody was allowed in
+Saratoga&mdash;that they wuz outlawed, and laughed at if they didn&rsquo;t have
+trains and low necks, and little mites of waists no bigger than pipe-stems.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Alminy Hagidone, do you s&rsquo;pose that I, a woman of my age,
+and a member of the meetin&rsquo; house, am a goin&rsquo; to wear a low-necked
+dress?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?,&rdquo; sez she, &ldquo;it is all the fashion and wimmen as old
+agin as you be wear &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, sez I, &ldquo;It is a shame and a disgrace if they do, to say
+nothin&rsquo; of the wickedness of it. Who do you s&rsquo;pose wants to see
+their old skin and bones? It haint nothin&rsquo; pretty anyway. And as fer the
+waists bein&rsquo; all girted up and drawed in, that is nothin&rsquo; but
+crushed bones and flesh and vitals, that is just crowdin&rsquo; down your
+insides into a state o&rsquo; disease and deformity, torturin&rsquo; your heart
+down so&rsquo;s the blood can&rsquo;t circulate, and your lungs so&rsquo;s you
+can&rsquo;t breathe, it is nothin&rsquo; but slow murder anyway, and if I ever
+take it into my head to kill myself, Alminy Hagidone, I haint a goin&rsquo; to
+do it in a way of perfect torture and torment to me, I&rsquo;d ruther be
+drownded.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She quailed, and I sez, &ldquo;I am one that is goin&rsquo; to take good long
+breaths to the very last.&rdquo; She see I wuz like iron aginst the idee of
+bein&rsquo; drawed in, and tapered, and she desisted. I s&rsquo;pose I did look
+skairful. But she seemed still to cling to the idee of low necks and trains,
+and she sez sort a rebukingly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ortn&rsquo;t to go to Saratoga if you haint willin&rsquo; to do as
+the rest do. I spose,&rdquo; sez she dreamily, &ldquo;the streets are full of
+wimmen a walkin&rsquo; up and down with long trains a hangin&rsquo; down and
+sweepin&rsquo; the streets, and ev&rsquo;ry one on &rsquo;em with low necks and
+short sleeves, and all on &rsquo;em a flirting with some man&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Truly,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;if that is so, that is why the idee come to
+me. I am <i>needed</i> there. I have a high mission to perform about. But I
+don&rsquo;t believe it is so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you won&rsquo;t have it made with a long train?&rdquo; sez she, a
+holdin&rsquo; up a breadth of the alpacky in front of me, to measure the skirt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No mom!&rdquo; sez I, and there wuz both dignity and deep resolve in
+that &ldquo;mom.&rdquo; It wuz as firm and stern principled a &ldquo;mom&rdquo;
+as I ever see, though I say it that shouldn&rsquo;t. And I see it skairt her.
+She measured off the breadths kinder trembly, and seemed so anxious to pacify
+me that she got it a leetle shorter in the back than it wuz in the front. And
+(for the same reason) it fairly clicked me in the neck it wuz so high, and the
+sleeves wuz that long that I told Josiah Allen (in confidence) I was tempted to
+knit some loops across the bottom of &rsquo;em and wear &rsquo;em for mits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I didn&rsquo;t, and I didn&rsquo;t change the dress neither. Thinkses I,
+mebby it will have a good moral effect on them other old wimmen there. Thinkses
+I, when they see another woman melted and shortened and choked fur
+principle&rsquo;s sake, mebby they will pause in their wild careers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, this wuz in November, and I wuz to have the dress, if it wuz a possible
+thing, by the middle of April, so&rsquo;s to get it home in time to sew some
+lace in the neck. And so havin&rsquo; everything settled about goin&rsquo; I
+wuz calm in my frame most all the time, and so wuz my pardner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And right here, let me insert this one word of wisdom for the special comfort
+of my sect and yet it is one that may well be laid to heart by the more
+opposite one. If your pardner gets restless and oneasy and middlin&rsquo;
+cross, as pardners will be anon, or even oftener&mdash;start them off on a
+tower. A tower will in 9 cases out of 10 lift &rsquo;em out of their
+oneasiness, their restlessness and their crossness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Why</i> this is so I cannot tell, no more than I can explain other mysteries of
+creation, but I know it is so. I know they will come home more placider, more
+serener, and more settled-downer. Why I have known a short tower to Slab City
+or Loontown act like a charm on my pardner, when crossness wuz in his mean and
+snappishness wuz present with him. I have known him to set off with the mean of
+a lion and come back with the liniment of a lamb. Curious, haint it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And jest the prospect of a tower ahead is a great help to a woman in
+rulin&rsquo; and keepin&rsquo; a pardner straight and right in his liniments
+and his acts. Somehow jest the thought of a tower sort a lifts him up in mind,
+and happifys him, and makes him easier to quell, and pardners <i>must</i> be quelled
+at times, else there would be no livin&rsquo; with &rsquo;em. This is known to
+all wimmen companions and and men too. Great great is the mystery of pardners.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image04.gif" height="150" width="267" alt="Josiah mad and happy" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>Chapter II.<br/>
+ARDELLA TUTT AND HER MOTHER.</h2>
+
+<p>
+But to resoom and continue on. I was a settin&rsquo; one day, after it wuz all
+decided, and plans laid on; I wuz a settin&rsquo; by the fire a mendin&rsquo;
+one of Josiah&rsquo;s socks. I wuz a settin&rsquo; there, as soft and pliable
+in my temper as the woosted I wuz a darnin&rsquo; &rsquo;em with, my Josiah at
+the same time a peacefelly sawin&rsquo; wood in the wood-house, when I heard a
+rap at the door and I riz up and opened it, and there stood two perfect
+strangers, females. I, with a perfect dignity and grace (and with the sock
+still in my left hand) asked &rsquo;em to set down, and consequently they sot.
+Then ensued a slight pause durin&rsquo; which my two gray eyes roamed over the
+females before me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The oldest one wuz very sharp in her face and had a pair of small round eyes
+that seemed when they were sot onto you to sort a bore into you like two
+gimlets. Her nose was very sharp and defient, as if it wuz constantly
+sayin&rsquo; to itself, &ldquo;I am a nose to be looked up to, I am a nose to
+be respected, and feared if necessary.&rdquo; Her chin said the same thing, and
+her lips which wuz very thin, and her elbow, which wuz very sharp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her dress was a stiff sort of a shinin&rsquo; poplin, made tight acrost the
+chest and elboes. And her hat had some stiff feathers in it that stood up
+straight and sort a sharp lookin&rsquo;. She had a long sharp breast-pin sort a
+stabbed in through the front of her stiff standin&rsquo; collar, and her
+knuckles sot out through her firm lisle thread gloves, her umberell wuz long
+and wound up hard, to that extent I have never seen before nor sense. She wuz,
+take it all in all, a hard sight, and skairful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other one wuzn&rsquo;t no more like her in looks than a soft fat young
+cabbage head is like the sharp bean pole that it grows up by the side on, in
+the same garden. She wuz soft in her complexion, her lips, her cheeks, her
+hands, and as I mistrusted at that first minute, and found out afterwards, soft
+in her head too. Her dress wuz a loose-wove parmetty, full in the waist and
+sort a drabbly round the bottom. Her hat wuz drab-colored felt with some loose
+ribbon bows a hangin&rsquo; down on it, and some soft ostridge tips. She had
+silk mits on and her hands wuz fat and kinder moist-lookin&rsquo;. Her eyes wuz
+very large and round, and blue, and looked sort o&rsquo; dreamy and
+wanderin&rsquo; and there wuz a kind of a wrapped smile on her face all the
+time. She had a roll of paper in her hand and I didn&rsquo;t dislike her looks
+a mite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally the oldest female opened her lips, some as a steel trap would open
+sudden and kinder sharp, and sez she: &ldquo;I am Miss Deacon Tutt, of
+Tuttville, and this is my second daughter Ardelia. Cordelia is my oldest, and I
+have 4 younger than Ardelia.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I bowed real polite and said, &ldquo;I wuz glad to make the acquaintance of the
+hull 7 on &rsquo;em.&rdquo; I can be very genteel when I set out, almost
+stylish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I s&rsquo;pose,&rdquo; says she, &ldquo;I am talkin&rsquo; to Josiah
+Allen&rsquo;s wife?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gin her to understand that that wuz my name and my station, and she went on,
+and sez she: &ldquo;I have hearn on you through my husband&rsquo;s 2d cousin,
+Cephas Tutt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cephas,&rdquo; sez she, &ldquo;bein&rsquo; wrote to by me on the subject
+of Ardelia, the same letter containin&rsquo; seven poems of hern, and on
+bein&rsquo; asked to point out the quickest way to make her name and fame known
+to the world at large, wrote back that he havin&rsquo; always dealt in butter
+and lard, wuzn&rsquo;t up to the market price in poetry, and that you would be
+a good one to go to for advice. And so,&rdquo; sez she a pointin&rsquo; to a
+bag she carried on her arm (a hard lookin&rsquo; bag made of crash with little
+bullets and knobs of embroidery on it), &ldquo;and so we took this bag full of
+Ardelia&rsquo;s poetry and come on the mornin&rsquo; train, Cephas&rsquo;es
+letter havin&rsquo; reached us at nine o&rsquo;clock last night. I am a woman
+of business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bag would hold about 4 quarts and it wuz full. I looked at it and sithed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; sez she, &ldquo;that you are sorry that we didn&rsquo;t
+bring more poetry with us. But we thought that this little batch would give you
+a idee of what a mind she has, what a glorious, soarin&rsquo; genus wuz in
+front of you, and we could bring more the next time we come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sithed agin, three times, but Miss Tutt didn&rsquo;t notice &rsquo;em a mite
+no more&rsquo;n they&rsquo;d been giggles or titters. She wouldn&rsquo;t have
+took no notice of them. She wuz firm and decided doin&rsquo; her own errent,
+and not payin&rsquo; no attention to anything, nor anybody else.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ardelia, read the poem you have got under your arm to Miss Allen! The
+bag wuz full of her longer ones,&rdquo; sez she, &ldquo;but I felt that I <i>must</i>
+let you hear her poem on Spring. It is a gem. I felt it would be wrongin&rsquo;
+you, not to give you that treat. Read it Ardelia.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I see Ardelia wuz used to obeyin&rsquo; her ma. She opened the sheet to once,
+and begun. It wuz as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;ARDELIA TUTT ON SPRING.&rdquo;<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh spring, sweet spring, thou comest in the spring;<br/>
+Thou comest in the spring time of the year.<br/>
+We fain would have thee come in Autumn; fling-<br/>
+est thou so sad a shade, oh Spring, so dear?<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;So dear the hopes thou draggest in thy rear,<br/>
+So mournful, and so wan, and not so sweet;<br/>
+So weird thou art, and oh, all! all! too dear<br/>
+Art thou, alas! oh mournful spring; my ear&mdash;<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;My ear that long did lay at gate of hope,<br/>
+Prone at the gate while years glided by&mdash;<br/>
+I fain would lift that ear, alas, why cope<br/>
+With cruel wrong, it must lie there so heavy &rsquo;tis my eye&mdash;<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;My eye, I fling o’er buried ruins long,<br/>
+I flung it there, regardless of the loss;<br/>
+That eye, I fain would gather in with song;<br/>
+In vain! &rsquo;tis gone, I bow and own the cross.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Dear ear, lone eye, sweet buried hopes, alas,<br/>
+I give thee to the proud inexorable main;<br/>
+Deep calls to deep, and it doth not reply,<br/>
+But sayeth my heart, they will not be mine own again.&rdquo;<br/>
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image05.gif" height="285" width="439" alt="Ardelia reads" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Jest the minute Ardelia stopped readin&rsquo; Miss Tatt says proudly:
+&ldquo;There! haint that a remarkable poem,?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, calmly, &ldquo;Yes it is a remarkable one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you ever hear anything like it?&rdquo; says she, triumphly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez I honestly, &ldquo;I never did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ardelia, read the poem on Little Ardelia Cordelia; give Miss Allen the
+treat of hearin&rsquo; that beautiful thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sort a sithed low to myself; it wuz more of a groan than a common sithe, but
+Miss Tutt didn&rsquo;t heed it, she kep&rsquo; right on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have always brought up my children to make other folks happy, all they
+can, and in rehearsin&rsquo; this lovely and remarkable poem, Ardelia will be
+not only makin&rsquo; you perfectly happy, givin&rsquo; you a rich intellectual
+feast, that you can&rsquo;t often have, way out here in the country, fur from
+Tuttville; but she will also be attendin&rsquo; to the business that brought us
+here. I have always fetched my children up to combine joy and business; weld
+&rsquo;em together like brass and steel. Ardelia, begin!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Ardelia commenced agin&rsquo;. It wuz wrote on a big sheet of paper and a
+runnin&rsquo; vine wuz a runnin&rsquo; all &rsquo;round the edge of the paper,
+made with a pen, it was as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;STANZAS ENTITLED<br/>
+&ldquo;SWEET LITTLE THING.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Wrote on the death of Ardelia Cordelia, who died at the age of seven days and seven hours.&rdquo;<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Sweet little thing, that erst so soon did bloom,<br/>
+And didest but fade, as falls the mystic flower!<br/>
+Sweet little thing, we did but erst low croon<br/>
+To thee a plaintive lay, and lo! for hour and hour&mdash;<br/>
+Sweet little thing.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;For hours we sang to thee of high emprise, the songs of hope<br/>
+Though aged but week (and seven hours) thou laughested in thy sleep;<br/>
+We cling to that in peace, though mope<br/>
+The dullard knave, and biddest us go and weep&mdash;<br/>
+Sweet little thing.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Thou laughested at high emprise, and yet, in sooth,<br/>
+&rsquo;Twere craven to say thou couldst not rise<br/>
+To scale the mounts! to soar the cliffs! if worth<br/>
+Were the test, twice worthy thou, in that the merit lies&mdash;<br/>
+Sweet little thing.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Thy words that might have shook the breathless world with might;<br/>
+Alas! I catchested not on any earthly ground,<br/>
+That voice that might have guided nations high aright,<br/>
+Congealed within thy tiny windpipe &rsquo;twas, it did not steal around&mdash;<br/>
+Sweet little thing.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Sweet little thing, so soon thy wings unfurled<br/>
+A wing, a feather lone low floated up the yard;<br/>
+A world might weep, a world might stand appalled,<br/>
+To hear it low rehearsed by tearful female bard&mdash;<br/>
+Sweet little thing.&rdquo;<br/>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jest as soon as Ardelia stopped rehearsin&rsquo; the verses, Miss Tutt sez agin
+to me:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haint that a most remarkable poem?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And agin I sez calmly, and trutbfully, &ldquo;Yes, it is a very remarkable
+one!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; sez Miss Tutt, plungin&rsquo; her hand in the bag, and
+drawin&rsquo; out a sheet of paper, &ldquo;to convince you that Ardelia has
+always had this divine gift of poesy&mdash;that it is not, all the effect of
+culture and high education&mdash;let me read to you a poem she wrote when she
+wuz only a mere child,&rdquo; and Miss Tutt read:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+&ldquo;LINES ON A CAT
+<br/>
+&ldquo;WRITTEN BY ARDELIA TUTT,
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+&ldquo;At the age of fourteen years, two months and eight days.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Oh Cat! Sweet Tabby cat of mine;<br/>
+6 months of age has passed o&rsquo;er thee,<br/>
+And I would not resign, resign<br/>
+The pleasure that I find in you.<br/>
+Dear old cat!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; sez Miss Tutt, &ldquo;that this poem shows
+a fund of passion, a reserve power of passion and constancy, remarkable in one
+so young?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez I reasonably, &ldquo;no doubt she liked the cat.
+And,&rdquo; sez I, wantin&rsquo; to say somethin&rsquo; pleasant and agreeable
+to her, &ldquo;no doubt it was a likely cat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh the cat itself is of miner importance,&rdquo; sez Miss Tutt.
+&ldquo;We will fling the cat to the winds. It&rsquo;s of my daughter I would
+speak. I simply handled the cat to show the rare precocious intellect. Oh! how
+it gushed out in the last line in the unconquerable burst of repressed
+passion&mdash;&rsquo;Dear old cat!&rsquo; Shakespeare might have wrote that
+line, do you not think so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No doubt he might,&rdquo; sez I, calmly, &ldquo;but he
+didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I see she looked mad and I hastened to say: &ldquo;He wuzn&rsquo;t aquainted
+with the cat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked kinder mollyfied and continued:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ardelia dashes off things with a speed that would astonish a mere common
+writer. Why she dashed off thirty-nine verses once while she wuz waitin&rsquo;
+for the dish water to bile, and sent &rsquo;em right off to the printer,
+without glancin&rsquo; at &rsquo;em agin.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I dare say so,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I should judge so by the sound on
+&rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Out of envy and jealousy, the rankest envy, and the shearest jealousy,
+them verses wuz sent back with the infamous request that she should use
+&rsquo;em for curl papers. But she sot right down and wrote forty-eight verses
+on a &lsquo;Cruel Request,&rsquo; wrote &rsquo;em inside of eighteen minutes.
+She throws off things, Ardelia does, in half an hour, that it would take other
+poets, weeks and weeks to write.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image06.gif" height="285" width="453" alt="At the printers" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I persume so,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I dare persume to say, they <i>never</i>
+could write &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; sez Miss Tutt, &ldquo;the question is, will you put
+Ardelia on the back of that horse that poets ride to glory on? Will you lift
+her onto the back of that horse, and do it <i>at once?</i> I require nothin&rsquo;
+hard of you,&rdquo; sez she, a borin&rsquo; me through and through with her
+eyes. &ldquo;It must be a joy to you, Josiah Allen&rsquo;s wife, a rare joy, to
+be the means of bringin&rsquo; this rare genius before the public. I ask
+nothin&rsquo; hard of you, I only ask that you demand, <i>demand</i> is the right
+word, not ask; that would be grovelin&rsquo; trucklin&rsquo; folly, but <i>demand</i>
+that the public that has long ignored my daugther Ardelia&rsquo;s claim to a
+seat amongst the immortal poets, demand them, <i>compel</i> them to pause, to listen,
+and then seat her there, up, up on the highest, most perpendiciler pinnacle of
+fame&rsquo;s pillow. Will you do this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat in deep dejection and my rockin&rsquo; chair, and knew not what to
+say&mdash;and Miss Tutt went on:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We demand more than fame, deathless, immortal fame for &rsquo;em. We
+want money, wealth for &rsquo;em, and want it at once! We want it for extra
+household expenses, luxuries, clothing, jewelry, charity, etc. If we enrich the
+world with this rare genius, the world must enrich us with its richest
+emmolients. Will you see that we have it! Will you <i>at once</i> do as I asked you
+to? Will you seat her immegately where I want her sot?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, considerin&rsquo;, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t get her up there alone, I haint
+strong enough.&rdquo; Sez I, sort a mekanikly, &ldquo;I have got the
+rheumatez.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you scoff me do you? I came to you to get bread, am I to get worse
+than a stun&mdash;a scoff?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haint gin you no scoff,&rdquo; sez I, a spunkin&rsquo; up a little,
+&ldquo;I haint thought on it. I like Ardelia and wish her well, but I
+can&rsquo;t do merikles, I can&rsquo;t compel the public to like things if they
+don&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez Miss Tutt, &ldquo;You are jealous of her, you hate her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I haint jealous of her, and I
+like her looks first-rate. I love a pretty young girl,&rdquo; sez I candidly,
+&ldquo;jest as I love a fresh posy with the dew still on it, a dainty rose-bud
+with the sweet fragrance layin&rsquo; on its half-folded heart. I love
+&rsquo;em,&rdquo; sez I, a beginnin&rsquo; to eppisode a little unbeknown to
+me, &ldquo;I love &rsquo;em jest as I love the soft unbroken silence of the
+early spring mornin&rsquo;, the sun all palely tinted with rose and blue, and
+the earth alayin&rsquo; calm and unwoke-up, fresh and fair. I love such a
+mornin&rsquo; and such a life, for itself and for the unwritten prophecis in
+it. And when I see genius in such a sweet, young life, why it makes me feel as
+it duz to see through all the tender prophetic beauty of the mornin&rsquo;
+skies, a big white dove a soarin&rsquo; up through the blue heavens.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez Miss Tutt, &ldquo;You see that in Ardelia, but you wont own it, you know
+you do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I would love to tell you that I see it in
+Ardelia; I would honest, but I can&rsquo;t look into them mornin&rsquo; skies
+and say I see a white dove there, when I don&rsquo;t see nothin&rsquo; more
+than a plump pullet, a jumpin&rsquo; down from the fence or a pickin&rsquo;
+round calmly in the back door-yard. Jest as likely the hen is, as the white
+dove, jest as honerable, but you mustn&rsquo;t confound the two
+together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A <i>hen</i>,&rdquo; sez Miss Tutt bitterly. &ldquo;To confound my Ardelia with
+a <i>hen!</i> And I don&rsquo;t think there wuz ever a more ironieler
+&lsquo;hen&rsquo; than that wuz, or a scornfuller one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; sez I reasonably. &ldquo;Hens are necessary and useful in
+any position, both walkin&rsquo; and settin&rsquo;, and layin&rsquo;. You
+can&rsquo;t get&rsquo;em in any position hardly, but what they are useful and
+respectable, only jest flyin&rsquo;. Hens can&rsquo;t fly. Their wings haint
+shaped for it. They look some like a dove&rsquo;s wings on the outside, the
+same feathers, the same way of stretchin&rsquo; &rsquo;em out. But there is
+sunthin lackin&rsquo; in &rsquo;em, some heaven-given capacity for
+soarin&rsquo; an for flight that the hens don&rsquo;t have. And it makes
+trouble, sights and sights of trouble when hens try to fly, try to, and
+can&rsquo;t!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At the same time it is hard for a dove to settle down in a back yard and
+stay there, hard and tegus. She can and duz sometimes, but never till after her
+wings have been clipped in some way. Poor little dove! I am always sorry for
+&rsquo;em to see &rsquo;em a walkin&rsquo; round there, a wantin&rsquo; to
+fly&mdash;a not forgettin&rsquo; how it seemed to have their wings
+soarin&rsquo; up through the clear sky, and the rush of the pure liquid
+windwaves a sweepin&rsquo; aginst &rsquo;em, as they riz up, up, in freedom,
+and happiness, and glory. Poor little creeters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but doves can, if you clip their wings, settle down and walk, but
+hens CAN&rsquo;T fly, not for any length of time they can&rsquo;t. No amount of
+stimulatin&rsquo; poultices applied to the ends of their tail feathers and
+wings can ever make &rsquo;em fly. They can&rsquo;t; it haint their nater. They
+can make nests, and fill them with pretty downy chicks, they can be happy and
+beautiful in life and mean; they can spend their lives in jest as honerable and
+worthy a way as if they wuz a flyin&rsquo; round, and make a good honerable
+appearance from day to day, <i>till</i> they begin to flop their wings, and
+fly&mdash;then their mean is not beautiful and inspirin&rsquo;; no, it is fur
+from it. It is tuff to see &rsquo;em, tuff to see the floppin&rsquo;, tuff to
+see their vain efforts to soar through the air, tuff to see &rsquo;em fall
+percepitously down onto the ground agin. For they must come there in the end;
+they are morally certain to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now Ardelia is a sweet pretty lookin&rsquo; girl, she can set down in a
+cushioned arm-chair by a happy fireside, with pretty baby faces a
+clusterin&rsquo; around her and some man&rsquo;s face like the sun a
+reflectin&rsquo; back the light of her happy heart. But she can&rsquo;t sit up
+on the pinnacle of fame&rsquo;s pillow. I don&rsquo;t believe she can ever get
+up there, I don&rsquo;t. Honestly speakin&rsquo;, I don&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Envy!&rdquo; sez Miss Tutt, &ldquo;glarin&rsquo;, shameless envy! You
+don&rsquo;t want Ardelia to rise! You don&rsquo;t want her to mount that horse
+I spoke of; you don&rsquo;t want to own that you see genius in her. But you do,
+Josiah Allen&rsquo;s wife, you know you do&mdash;&ldquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see it. I see the sweetness of
+pretty girlhood, the beauty and charm of openin&rsquo; life, but I don&rsquo;t
+see nothin&rsquo; else, I don&rsquo;t, honest. I don&rsquo;t believe she has
+got genius,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;seein&rsquo; you put the question straight to
+me and depend a answer; seein&rsquo; her future career depends on her choice
+now, I must tell you that I believe she would succeed better in the millionary
+trade or the mantilly maker&rsquo;s than she will in tryin&rsquo; to mount the
+horse you speak on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; sez I, candidly, &ldquo;some folks <i>can&rsquo;t</i> get up on
+that horse, their legs haint strong enough. And if they do manage to get on, it
+throws &rsquo;em, and they lay under the heels for life. I don&rsquo;t want to
+see Ardelia there, I don&rsquo;t want to see her maimed and lamed and stunted
+so early in the mornin&rsquo; of life, by a kick from that animal, for she
+can&rsquo;t ride it,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;honestly she can&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is nothin&rsquo; so useless in life, and so sort a wearin&rsquo;
+as to be a lookin&rsquo; for sunthin&rsquo; that haint there. And when you
+pretend it is there when it haint, you are addin&rsquo; iniquity to
+uselessness; so if you&rsquo;ll take my advice, the advice of a wellwisher, you
+will stop lookin&rsquo;, for I tell you plain that it haint there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez Miss Tutt, &ldquo;Josiah Allen&rsquo;s wife, you have for reasens best
+known to your conscience baulked my hopes of a speedy immortality. You have
+willfully tried to break down my hopes of an immense, immediate income to flow
+out of them poems for luxuries, jewelry, charity, etc. But I can at least claim
+this at your hands, I <i>demand honesty</i>. Tell me honestly what you yourself think
+of them poems.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I (gettin&rsquo; up sort a quick and goin&rsquo; into the buttery, and
+bringin&rsquo; out a little basket), &ldquo;Here are some beautiful sweet
+apples, won&rsquo;t you have one?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Apples</i>, at such a time as this;&rdquo; sez Miss Tutt
+&ldquo;When the slumberin&rsquo; world trembles before the advancin&rsquo;
+tread of a new poet&mdash;When the heavens are listenin&rsquo; intently to
+ketch the whispers of an Ardelia&rsquo;s fate&mdash;Sweet apples! in such a
+time as this!&rdquo; sez she. But she took two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I <i>demand the truth</i>,&rdquo; sez she. &ldquo;And you are a base,
+trucklin&rsquo; coward, if you give it not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, tryin&rsquo; to carry off the subject and the apples into the buttery;
+&ldquo;Poetry ort to have pains took with it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jealousy!&rdquo; sez Miss Tutt. &ldquo;Jealousy might well whisper this.
+Envy, rank envy might breathe the suspicion that Ardelia haint been took pains
+with. But I can see through it,&rdquo; sez she. &ldquo;I can see through
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; sez I, wore out, &ldquo;if they belonged to me, and if she
+wuz my girl, I would throw the verses into the fire, and set her to a
+trade.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood for a minute and bored me through and through with them eyes. Why it
+seemed as if there wuz two holes clear through my very spirit, and sole; she
+partly lifted that fearful lookin&rsquo; umberell as if to pierce me through
+and through; it wuz a fearful seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last she turned, and flung the apple she wuz a holdin&rsquo; onto the floor
+at my feet&mdash;and sez she, &ldquo;I scorn &rsquo;em, and you too.&rdquo; And
+she kinder stomped her feet and sez, &ldquo;I fling off the dust I have
+gethered here, at your feet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now my floor wuz clean and looked like yeller glass, almost, it wuz so
+shinin&rsquo; and spotless, and I resented the idee of her sayin&rsquo; that
+she collected dust off from it. But I didn&rsquo;t say nothin&rsquo; back. She
+had the bag of poetry on her arm, and I didn&rsquo;t feel like addin&rsquo; any
+more to her troubles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Ardelia, after her mother had swept out ahead, turned round and held out
+her hand, and smiled a sweet but ruther of a despondent and sorrowful smile,
+and I kissed her warmly. I like Ardelia. And what I said, I said for her good,
+and she knew it. I like Ardelia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Miss Tutt and Ardelia went from our house to Eben Pixley&rsquo;s. They
+are distant relatives of hern, and live about 3 quarters of a mile from us. The
+Pixleys think everything of Ardelia but they can&rsquo;t bear her mother. There
+has been difficulties in the family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Ardelia stayed there mor&rsquo;n two weeks right along. She haint very
+happy to home I believe. And before she went back home it wuz arranged that she
+should teach the winter&rsquo;s school and board to Miss Pixley&rsquo;s. But
+Miss Pixley wuz took sick with the tyfus before she had been there two
+weeks&mdash;and, for all the world, if the deestrict didn&rsquo;t want us to
+board her. Josiah hadn&rsquo;t much to do, so he could carry her back and forth
+in stormy weather, and it wuz her wish to come. And it wuz Josiah&rsquo;s wish
+too, for the pay wuz good, and the work light&mdash;for <i>him</i>. And so I consented
+after a parlay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I didn&rsquo;t regret it. She is a good little creeter and no more like her
+mother than a feather bed is like a darnin&rsquo; needle. I like Ardelia: so
+does Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image07.gif" height="180" width="241" alt="The schoolroom" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>Chapter III.<br/>
+THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS.</h2>
+
+<p>
+We have been havin&rsquo; a pound party here in Jonesville. There wuz a lot of
+children left without any father or mother, nobody only an old grandma to take
+care of &rsquo;em, and she wuz half bent with the rheumatiz, and had a swelled
+neck, and lumbago and fits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They lived in an old tumble-down house jest outside of Jonesville. The father
+wuz, I couldn&rsquo;t deny, a shiftless sort of a chap, good-natured, always
+ready to obleege a neighbor, but he hadn&rsquo;nt no faculty. And I don&rsquo;t
+know, come to think of it, as anybody is any more to blame if they are born
+without a faculty, than if they are born with only one eye. Faculty is one of
+the things that you can&rsquo;t buy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He loved to hunt. That is, he loved to hunt some kinds of things. He never
+loved to hunt stiddy, hard work, and foller on the trail of it till he evertook
+success and captured it. No, he druther hunt after catamounts and painters, in
+woods where catamounts haint mounted, and painters haint painted sence he wuz
+born.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He generally killed nothin&rsquo; bigger than red squirrels and chipmunks. The
+biggest game he ever brought down wuz himself. He shot himself one cold day in
+the fall of the year. He wuz gettin&rsquo; over a brush fence, they
+s&rsquo;posed the gun hit against somethin&rsquo; and went off, for they found
+him a layin&rsquo; dead at the bottom of the fence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I always s&rsquo;posed that the shock of his death comin&rsquo; so awful sudden
+unto her, killed his wife. She had been sick for a long spell, she had
+consumption and dropsy, and so forth, and so forth, for a long time, and after
+he wuz brought in dead, she didn&rsquo;t live a week. She thought her eyes of
+him, for no earthly reason as I could ever see. How strange, how strange a
+dispensation of Providence it duz seem, that some women love some men, and vicy
+versey and the same.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she did jest about worship him, and she died whisperin&rsquo; his name, and
+reachin&rsquo; out her hands as if she see him jest ahead of her. And I told
+Josiah I didn&rsquo;t know but she did. I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder a mite if she
+did see him, for there is only the veil of mystery between us and the other
+world at any time, and she had got so nigh to it, that I s&rsquo;pose it got so
+thin that she could see through it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just as you can see through the blue haze that lays before our forest in Injun
+summer. Come nigh up to it and you can see the silvery trunks of the maples and
+the red sumac leaves, and the bright evergreens, and the forms of the happy
+hunters a passin&rsquo; along under the glint of the sunbeams and the soft
+shadows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They died in Injun summer. I made a wreath myself of the bright-colored leaves
+to lay on their coffins. Dead leaves, dead to all use and purpose here, and yet
+with the bright mysterious glow upon them that put me in mind of some immortal
+destiny and blossoming beyond our poor dim vision. Jane Smedley wuz a good
+woman, and so wuz Jim, good but shiftless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I made the same wreath for her and Jim, and the strange mellow light lay on
+both of &rsquo;em, makin&rsquo; me think in spite of myself of some happy
+sunrisin&rsquo; that haply may dawn on some future huntin&rsquo; ground, where
+poor Jim Smedley even, may strike the trail of success and happiness, hid now
+from the sight of Samantha, hid from Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, they died within a week&rsquo;s time of each other, and left nine
+children, the oldest one of &rsquo;em not quite fifteen. She, the oldest one,
+wuz a good girl, only she had the rickets so that when she walked, she seemed
+to walk off all over the house backwards, and sideways, and every way, but when
+she sot down, she wuz a good stiddy girl, and faithful; she took after her
+mother, and her mother took after her grandmother, so there wuz three
+takin&rsquo; after each other, one right after the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jane wuz a good, faithful, hard-workin&rsquo; creeter when she wuz well,
+brought up her children good as she could, learnt &rsquo;em the catechism, and
+took in all kinds of work to earn a little somethin&rsquo; towards
+gettin&rsquo; a home for &rsquo;em; she and her mother both did, her mother
+lived with &rsquo;em, and wuz a smart old woman, too, for one that wuz pretty
+nigh ninety. And she wuzn&rsquo;t worrysome much, only about one
+thing&mdash;she wanted a home, wanted a home dretfully. Some wimmen are so; she
+had moved round so much, from one poor old place to another, that she sort
+o&rsquo; hankered after bein&rsquo; settled down into a stiddy home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, there wuz eight children younger than Marvilla, that wuz the oldest young
+girl&rsquo;s name. Eight of &rsquo;em, countin&rsquo; each pair of twins as
+two, as I s&rsquo;pose they ort. The Town buried the father and mother, which
+wuz likely and clever in it, but after that it wouldn&rsquo;t give only jest so
+much a week, which wuz very little, because it said, Town did, that they could
+go to the poor-house, they could be supported easier there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t know as the Town could really be blamed for sayin&rsquo; it, and
+yet it seemed kinder mean in it, the Town wuz so big, and the children, most of
+&rsquo;em, wuz so little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But any way, it wuz jest sot on it, and there wuz the end of it, for you might
+jest as well dispute the wind as to dispute the Town when it gets sot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the old grandma said she would die in the streets before she would go to
+the poor-house. She had come from a good family in the first place,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They say she run away and left a good home and got married, and did dretful
+poor in the married state. He waz shiftless and didn&rsquo;t have nothin&rsquo;
+and didn&rsquo;t lay up any. And she didn&rsquo;t keep any of her old
+possessions only jest her pride. She kept that, or enough of it to say that she
+would die on the road before she would go to the poor-house. And once I see her
+cry she wanted a home so bad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And lots of folks blamed her for it, blamed the old woman awfully. They said
+pride wuz so wicked. Wimmen who would run like deers if company came when they
+wuzn&rsquo;t dressed up slick, they would say the minute they got back into the
+room, all out of breath with hurryin&rsquo; into their best clothes,
+they&rsquo;d say a pantin&rsquo; &ldquo;That old woman ought to be <i>made</i> to go
+to the poorhouse, to take the pride out of her, pride wuz so awfully, dretfully
+wicked, and it wuz a shame that she wuz so ongrateful as to want a home of her
+own.&rdquo; And then they would set down and rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the family wuz in a sufferin&rsquo; state. The Town allowed &rsquo;em one
+dollar a week. But how wuz ten human beings to live on a dollar a week. The
+children worked every chance they got, but they couldn&rsquo;t earn enough to
+keep &rsquo;em in shoes, let alone other clothin&rsquo; and vittles. And the
+old house wuz too cold for &rsquo;em to stay in durin&rsquo; the cold weather,
+it wuz for Grandma Smedley, anyway, if the children could stand it she
+couldn&rsquo;t. And what wuz to be done. A cold winter wuz a cumin&rsquo; on,
+and it wouldn&rsquo;t delay a minute because Jim Smedley had got shot, and his
+wife had follered him, into, let us hope, a happier huntin&rsquo; ground than
+he had ever found in earthly forests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I proposed to have a pound party for &rsquo;em. I said they might have it
+to our house if they wanted it, but if they thought they wanted it in a more
+central place (our house wuz quite a little to one side), why we could have it
+to the schoolhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I proposed to Josiah the first one. He wuz a settin&rsquo; by the fire relapsed
+into silence. It wuz a cold night outside, but the red curtains wuz down at our
+sitting-room winders, shettin&rsquo; out the cold drizzlin&rsquo; storm of hail
+and snow that wuz a deseendin&rsquo; onto the earth. The fire burned up warm
+and bright, and we sot there in our comfortable home, with the teakettle
+singin&rsquo; on the stove, and the tea-table set out cosy and cheerful, for
+Josiah had been away and I had waited supper for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I sot there waitin&rsquo; for the tea-kettle to bile (and when I say bile, I
+mean bile, I don&rsquo;t, mean simmer) the thought of the Smedleys would come
+in. The warm red curtains would keep the storm out, but they couldn&rsquo;t
+keep the thought of the children, and the feeble old grandmother out of the
+room. They come right in, through the curtains, and the firelight, and
+everything, and sot right down by me and hanted me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And what curious creeters thoughts be, haint they? and oncertain, too. You may
+make all your plans to get away from &rsquo;em. You may shet up your doors and
+winders, and set with a veil on and an umbrell up - but good land! how easy
+they jest ontackle the doors and windows, with no sounds of ontacklin&rsquo;
+and come right in by you.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First you know there they be right by the side of you, under your umbrell,
+under your veil, under your spectacles, a lookin&rsquo; right down into your
+soul, and a hantin&rsquo; you.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then agin, when you expect to be hanted by &rsquo;em, lay out to, why,
+they&rsquo;ll jest stand off somewhere else, and don&rsquo;t come nigh you.
+Don&rsquo;t want to. Oncertain creeters, thoughts be, and curious, curious
+where they come from, and how.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why, I got to thinkin&rsquo; about it the other day, and I got lost, some like
+children settin&rsquo; on a log over a creek a ridin&rsquo;; there they be, and
+there the log is, but they don&rsquo;t seem to be there, they seem to be a
+floatin&rsquo; down the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there I wuz, a settin&rsquo; in my rockin&rsquo; chair, and I seemed to be
+a floatin&rsquo; down deep water, very deep. A thinkin&rsquo; and a
+wonderin&rsquo;. A thinkin&rsquo; how all through the ages what secrets God had
+told to man when the time had come, and the reverent soul below was ready to
+hear the low words whispered to his soul, and a wonderin&rsquo; what strange
+revelation God held now, ready to reveal when the soul below had fitted itself
+to hear, and comprehend it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! such mysteries as He will reveal to us if we will listen. If we wait for
+God&rsquo;s voice. If we did not heed so much the confusing clamor of the
+world&rsquo;s voices about us. Emulation, envy, anger, strife, jealousy; if we
+turned our heads away from these discords, and in the silence which is
+God&rsquo;s temple, listened, listened,&mdash;who knows the secrets He would
+make known to us?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Secrets of the day, secrets of the night, the sunshine, the lightning, the
+storm. The white glow of that wonderful light that is not like the glow of the
+sun or of the moon, but yet lighteth the world. That strange light that has a
+soul - that reads our thoughts, translates our wishes, overleaps distance,
+carrying our whispered words after holding our thoughts for ages, and then
+unfoldin&rsquo; &rsquo;em at will. What other wondrous mysteries lie concealed,
+wrapped around by that soft pure flame, mysteries that shall lie hidden until
+some inspired eye shall be waiting, looking upward at the moment when
+God&rsquo;s hand shall draw back the shining veil for an instant, and let him
+read the glowing secret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Secrets of language! shall some simple power, some symbol be revealed, and the
+nations speak together?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Secrets of song! shall some serene, harmonious soul catch the note to celestial
+melodies?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Secrets of sight! shall the eyes too dim now, see the faces of the silent
+throngs that surround them, &ldquo;the great cloud of witnesses&rdquo;?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Secrets of the green pathways that lead up through the blue silent fields of
+space - shall we float from star to star?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Secrets of holiness! shall earthly faces wear the pure light of the immortals?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But oh! who shall be the happy soul that shall be listening when the time has
+fully come and He shall reveal His great secret? The happy soul listening so
+intently that it shall catch the low, clear whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Listening, maybe, through the sweet twilight shadows for the wonderful secret,
+while the silver shallop of the moon is becalmed over the high northern
+mountains, as if a fleet of heavenly guests had floated down through the clear
+ocean waves of the sky to listen too - to hear the wonderful heavenly secret
+revealed to man - and a clear star looks out over the glowing rose of the
+western heavens, looking down like God&rsquo;s eye, searching his soul,
+searching if it be worthy of the great trust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maybe it will be in the fresh dawning of the day, that the great secret will
+grow bright and clear and luminous, as the dawning of the light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maybe it will be in the midst of the storm - a mighty voice borne along by the
+breath of the wind and the thunder, clamoring and demanding the hearer to
+listen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! if we were only good enough, only pure enough, what might not our rapt
+vision discern?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we know not where or when the time shall be fully come, but who, who, shall
+be the happy soul that shall, at the time, be listening?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! how deep, how strange the waters wuz, and how I floated away on &rsquo;em,
+and how I didn&rsquo;t. For there I wuz a settin in my own rockin&rsquo; chair
+and there opposite me sot my own Josiah a whittlin&rsquo;, for the <i>World</i>
+hadn&rsquo;t come, and he wuz restless and ill at ease, and time hung heavy on
+his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There I sot the same Samantha - and the thought of the Smedleys, the same old
+Smedleys, was a hantin&rsquo; of me, the same old hant, and I says to my
+Josiah, says I: &ldquo;Josiah, I can&rsquo;t help thinkin&rsquo; about the
+Smedleys,&rdquo; says I. &ldquo;What do you think about havin&rsquo; a pound
+party for &rsquo;em, and will you take holt, and do your part?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good land, Samantha! Are you crazy? Crazy as a loon? What under the sun
+do you want to pound the Smedleys for? I should think they had trouble enough
+without poundin&rsquo; &rsquo;em. Why,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;the old woman
+couldn&rsquo;t stand any poundin&rsquo; at all, without killin&rsquo; her right
+out and out, and the childern haint over tough any of &rsquo;em. Why, what has
+got into you? I never knew you to propose anything of that wicked kind before.
+I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t have anything to do with it. If you want &rsquo;em
+pounded you must get your own club and do your own poundin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean poundin&rsquo; &rsquo;em with a club, but let
+folks buy a pound of different things to eat and drink and carry it to
+&rsquo;em, and we can try and raise a little money to get a warmer horse for
+&rsquo;em to stay in the coldest of the weather.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; says he, with a relieved look. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a
+different thing. I am willin&rsquo; to do that. I don&rsquo;t know about
+givin&rsquo; &rsquo;em any money towards gettin&rsquo; &rsquo;em a home, but
+I&rsquo;ll carry &rsquo;em a pound of crackers or a pound of flour, and help it
+along all I can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah is a clever creeter (though close), and he never made no more objections
+towards havin&rsquo; it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the next day I put on my shawl and hood (a new brown hood knit out of
+zephyr worsted, very nice, a present from our daughter Maggie, our son Thomas
+Jefferson&rsquo;s wife), and sallied out to see what the neighbor&rsquo;s
+thought about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first woman I called on wuz Miss Beazley, a new neighbor who had just moved
+into the neighborhood. They are rich as they can be, and I expected at least to
+get a pound of tea out of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said it wuz a worthy object, and she would love to help it along, but they
+had so many expenses of their own to grapple with, that she didn&rsquo;t see
+her way clear to promise to do anything. She said the girls had got to have
+some new velvet suits, and some sealskin sacques this winter, and they had got
+to new furnish the parlors, and send their oldest boy to college, and the girls
+wanted to have some diamond lockets, and ought to have &rsquo;em but she
+didn&rsquo;t know whether they could manage to get them or not, if they did,
+they had got to scrimp along every way they could. And then they wuz
+goin&rsquo; to have company from a distance, and had got to get another girl to
+wait on &rsquo;em. And though she wished the poor well, she felt that she could
+not dare to promise a cent to &rsquo;em. She wished the Smedley family
+well&mdash;dretful well&mdash;and hoped I would get lots of things for
+&rsquo;em. But she didn&rsquo;t really feel as if it would be safe for her to
+promise&rsquo;em a pound of anything, though mebby she might, by a great
+effort, raise a pound of flour for &rsquo;em, or meal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I dryly (dry as meal ever wuz in its dryest times), &ldquo;I
+wouldn&rsquo;t give too much. Though,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;A pound of flour
+would go a good ways if it is used right.&rdquo; And I thought to myself that
+she had better keep it to make a paste to smooth over things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I went from that to Miss Jacob Hess&rsquo;es, and Miss Jacob Hess
+wouldn&rsquo;t give anything because the old lady wuz disagreeable, old Grandma
+Smedley, and I said to Miss Jacob Hess that if the Lord didn&rsquo;t send His
+rain and dew onto anybody only the perfectly agreeable, I guessed there would
+be pretty dry times. It wuz my opinion there would be considerable of a drouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There wuz a woman there a visitin&rsquo; Miss Hess&mdash;she wuz a stranger to
+me and I didn&rsquo;t ask her for anything, but she spoke up of her own accord
+and said she would give, and give liberal, only she wuz hampered. She
+didn&rsquo;t say why, or who, or when, but she only sez this that &ldquo;she
+wuz hampered,&rdquo; and I don&rsquo;t know to this day what her hamper wuz, or
+who hampered her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then I went to Ebin Garven&rsquo;ses, and Miss Ebin Garven wouldn&rsquo;t
+help any because she said &ldquo;Joe Smedley had been right down lazy, and she
+couldn&rsquo;t call him anything else.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;Joe is dead, and why should his children
+starve because their pa wasn&rsquo;t over and above smart when he wuz
+alive?&rdquo; But she wouldn&rsquo;t give.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Miss Whymper said she didn&rsquo;t approve of the <i>manner</i> of giving. Her
+face wuz all drawed down into a curious sort of a long expression that she
+called religus and I called somethin&rsquo; that begins with
+&ldquo;h-y-p-o&rdquo;&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t mean hypoey, either.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, she couldn&rsquo;t give, she said, because she always made a practise of
+not lettin&rsquo; her right hand know what her left hand give.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I said, for I wuz kinder took aback, and didn&rsquo;t think, I said to her,
+a glancin&rsquo; at her hands which wuz crossed in front of her, that I
+didn&rsquo;t see how she managed it, unless she give when her right hand was
+asleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she said she always gave secret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I said, &ldquo;So I have always s&rsquo;posed&mdash;very secret.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I s&rsquo;pose my tone was some sarcastic, for she says, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t the
+Scripter command us to do so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I firmly, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe the Scripter means to have us stand
+round talkin&rsquo; Bible, and let the Smedleys starve,&rdquo; says I. &ldquo;I
+s&rsquo;pose it means not to boast of our good deeds.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says she, &ldquo;I believe in takin&rsquo; the Scripter literal, and if I
+can&rsquo;t git my stuff there entirely unbeknown to my right hand I
+sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t give.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; says I, gettin&rsquo; up and movin&rsquo; towards the door,
+&ldquo;you must do as you&rsquo;re a mind to with fear and
+tremblin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I said it pretty impressive, for I thought I would let her see I could quote
+Scripter as well as she could, if I sot out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But good land! I knew it wuz a excuse. I knew she wouldn&rsquo;t give
+nothin&rsquo; not if her right hand had the num palsy, and you could stick a
+pin into it&mdash;no, she wouldn&rsquo;t give, not if her right hand was cut
+off and throwed away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Miss Bombus, old Dr. Bombus&rsquo;es widow, wouldn&rsquo;t give&mdash;and
+for all the world&mdash;I went right there from Miss Whymper&rsquo;ses. Miss
+Bombus wouldn&rsquo;t give because I didn&rsquo;t put the names in the
+Jonesville <i>Augur</i> or <i>Gimlet</i>, for she said, &ldquo;Let your good deeds so
+shine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;Miss Whymper wouldn&rsquo;t give because she
+wanted to give secreter, and you won&rsquo;t give because you want to give
+publicker, and you both quote Scripter, but it don&rsquo;t seem to help the
+Smedleys much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said that probably Miss Whymper was wrestin&rsquo; the Scripter to her own
+destruction.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;while you and Miss Whymper are a
+wrestin&rsquo; the Scripter, what will become of the Smedleys? It don&rsquo;t
+seem right to let them &lsquo;freeze to death, and starve to death, while we
+are a debatin&rsquo; on the ways of Providence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she didn&rsquo;t tell, and she wouldn&rsquo;t give.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A woman wuz there a visitin&rsquo;, Miss Bombus&rsquo;es aunt, I think, and she
+spoke up and said that she fully approved of her niece Bombus&rsquo;es
+decision. And she said, &ldquo;As for herself, she never give to any subject
+that she hadn&rsquo;t thoroughly canvassed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I, &ldquo;There they all are in that little hut, you can canvass them at
+any time. Though,&rdquo; says I, thoughtfully, &ldquo;Marvilla might give you
+some trouble.&rdquo; And she asked why.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I told her she had the rickets so she couldn&rsquo;t stand still to be
+canvassed, but she could probably follow her up and canvass her, if she tried
+hard enough. And says I, &ldquo;There is old Grandma Smedley, over eighty, and
+five children under eight, you can canvass them easy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says she, &ldquo;The Bible says, &lsquo;Search the Sperits.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I was so wore out a seein&rsquo; how place after place, for three times a
+runnin the Bible was lifted up and held as a shield before stingy creeters, to
+ward off the criticism of the world and their own souls, that I says to
+myself&mdash;loud enough so they could hear me, mebbe, &ldquo;Why is it that
+when anybody wants to do a mean, ungenerous act, they will try to quote a verse
+of Scripter to uphold &rsquo;em, jest as a wolf will pull a lock of pure white
+wool over his wolfish foretop, and try to look innocent and sheepish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t care if they did hear me, I wuz on the step mostly when I thought
+it, pretty loud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, from Miss Bombus&rsquo;es I went to Miss Petingill&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Petingill is a awful high-headed creeter. She come to the door herself and
+she said, I must excuse her for answerin&rsquo; the door herself. (I never
+heard the door say anything and don&rsquo;t believe she did, it was jest one of
+her ways.) But she said I must excuse her as her girl wuz busy at the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She never mistrusted that I knew her hired girl had left, and she wuz
+doin&rsquo; her work herself. She had ketched off her apron I knew, as she come
+through the hall, for I see it a layin&rsquo; behind the door, all covered with
+flour. And after she had took me into the parlor, and we had set down, she
+discovered some spots of flour on her dress, and she said she &ldquo;had been
+pastin&rsquo; some flowers into a scrap book to pass away the time.&rdquo; But
+I knew she had been bakin&rsquo; for she looked tired, tired to death almost,
+and it wuz her bakin&rsquo; day. But she would sooner have had her head took
+right off than to own up that she had been doin&rsquo; housework&mdash;why,
+they say that once when she wuz doin&rsquo; her work herself, and was ketched
+lookin&rsquo; awful, by a strange minister, that she passed herself off&rsquo;
+for a hired girl and said, &ldquo;Miss Petingill wasn&rsquo;t to home, and when
+pressed hard she said she hadn&rsquo;t &ldquo;the least idee where Miss
+Petingill wuz.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image08.gif" height="309" width="171" alt="‘Hired’ girl" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Jest think on &rsquo;t once&mdash;and there she wuz herself. The idee!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the minute I sot down before I begun my business or anything, Miss
+Petingill took me to do about puttin&rsquo; in Miss Bibbins President of our
+Missionary Society for the Relief of Indignent Heathens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bibbins&rsquo;es are good, very good, but poor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says Miss Petingill: &ldquo;It seems to me as if there might be some other
+woman put in, that would have had more influence on the Church.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I, &ldquo;Haint Miss Bibbins a good Christian sister, and a great
+worker?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why yes, she wuz good, good in her place. But,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;the Petingills hadn&rsquo;t never associated with the
+Bibbins&rsquo;es.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I asked her if she s&rsquo;posed that would make any difference with the
+heathen; if the heathen would be apt to think less of Miss Bibbins because she
+hadn&rsquo;t associated with the Petingills?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she said, she didn&rsquo;t s&rsquo;pose &ldquo;the heathens would ever know
+it; it might make some difference to &rsquo;em if they did,&rdquo; she thought,
+&ldquo;for it couldn&rsquo;t be denied,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that Miss
+Bibbins did not move in the first circles of Jonesville.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had been my doin&rsquo;s a puttin&rsquo; Miss Bibbins in and I took it right
+to home, she meant to have me, and I asked her if she thought the Lord would
+condemn Miss Bibbins on the last day, because she hadn&rsquo;t moved in the
+first circles of Jonesville?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Miss Petingill tosted her head a little, but had to own up, that she
+thought &ldquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, then,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;do you s&rsquo;pose the Lord has any
+objections to her working for Him now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why no, I don&rsquo;t know as the <i>Lord</i> would object.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;we call this work the Lord&rsquo;s work, and
+if He is satisfied with Miss Bibbins, we ort to be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she kinder nestled round, and I see she wuzn&rsquo;t satisfied, but I
+couldn&rsquo;t stop to argue, and I tackled her then and there about the
+Smedleys. I asked her to give a pound, or pounds, as she felt disposed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she answered me firmly that she could&rsquo;t give one cent to the
+Smedleys, she wuz principled against it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I asked her, &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she said, because the old lady wuz proud and wanted a home, and she thought
+that pride wuz so wicked, that it ort to be put down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Miss Huff, Miss Cephas Huff, wouldn&rsquo;t give anything because one of
+the little Smedleys had lied to her. She wouldn&rsquo;t encourage lyin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I told her I didn&rsquo;t believe she would be half so apt to reform him on
+an empty stomach, as after he wuz fed up. But she wouldn&rsquo;t yield.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Miss Daggett said she would give, and give abundant, only she
+didn&rsquo;t consider it a worthy object.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it wuzn&rsquo;t nothin&rsquo; only a excuse, for the object has never been
+found yet that she thought wuz a worthy one. Why, she wouldn&rsquo;t give a
+cent towards painting the Methodist steeple, and if that haint a high and
+worthy object, I don&rsquo;t know what is. Why, our steeple is over seventy
+feet from the ground. But she wouldn&rsquo;t help us a mite&mdash;not a single
+cent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Take such folks as them and the object never suits &rsquo;em. They won&rsquo;t
+come right out and tell the truth that they are too stingy and mean to give
+away a cent, but they will always put the excuse onto the object&mdash;the
+object don&rsquo;t suit &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why, I do believe it is the livin&rsquo; truth that if the angel Gabriel wuz
+the object, if he wuz in need and we wuz gittin&rsquo; up a pound party for
+him&mdash;she would find fault with Gabriel, and wouldn&rsquo;t give him a
+ounce of provisions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, I believe it&mdash;I believe they would tost their heads and say, they
+always had had their thoughts about anybody that tooted so loud&mdash;it might
+be all right but it didn&rsquo;t <i>look</i> well, and would be apt to make talk. Or
+they would say that he wuz shiftless and extravagant a loafin&rsquo; round in
+the clouds, when he might go to work&mdash;or that he might raise the money
+himself by selling the feathers offen his wings for down pillers&mdash;or some
+of the rest of the Gabriel family might help him&mdash;or something, or
+other&mdash;anyway they would propose some way of gittin&rsquo; out of
+givin&rsquo; a cent to Gabriel. I believe it as much as I believe I live and
+breathe; and so does Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Miss Mooney wouldn&rsquo;t give anything because she thought Jane Smedley
+wuzn&rsquo;t so sick as she thought she wuz; she said &ldquo;she was
+spleeny.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I told Miss Mooney that when a woman was sick enough to die, I thought she
+ort to be called sick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Miss Mooney wouldn&rsquo;t give up, and insisted to the very last that Miss
+Smedley wuz hypoey and spleeny&mdash;and thought she wuz sicker than she really
+wuz. And she held her head and her nose up in a very disagreeable and haughty
+way, and said as I left, that she never could bear to help spleeny people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, all that forenoon did I traipse through the street and not one cent did I
+get for the Smedleys, only Miss Gowdey said she would bring a cabbage and Miss
+Deacon Peedick and Miss Ingledue partly promised a squash apiece. And I
+mistrusted that they give &rsquo;em more to please me than anything else.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I wuz clean discouraged and beat out, and so I told Josiah. But he
+encouraged me some by sayin&rsquo;:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, I could have told you jest how it would be,&rdquo; and, &ldquo;You
+would have done better, Samantha, to have been to home a cookin&rsquo; for your
+own famishin&rsquo; family.&rdquo; And several more jest such inspirin&rsquo;
+remarks as men will give to the females of their families when they are engaged
+in charitable enterprises.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I got a good, a very good dinner, and it made me feel some better, and then
+I haint one to give up to discouragements, anyway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I put on a little better dress for after noon, and my best bonnet and shawl,
+and set sail again after dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And if I ever had a lesson in not givin&rsquo; up to discouragements in the
+first place I had it then. For whether it wuz on account of the more dressy
+look of my bonnet and shawl&mdash;or whether it wuz that folks felt cleverer in
+the afternoon&mdash;or whether it wuz that I had gone to the more
+discouragin&rsquo; places in the forenoon, and the better ones in the
+afternoon&mdash;or whether it wuz that I tackled on the subject in a better way
+than I had tackled &rsquo;em&mdash;whether it wuz for any of these reasons, or
+all of &rsquo;em or somethin&rsquo;&mdash;anyway my luck turned at noon, 12 M.,
+and all that afternoon I had one triumph after another&mdash;place after place
+did I collect pound or pounds as the case may be (or collected the promises of
+&rsquo;em, I mean). I did <i>splendid</i>, and wuz prospered perfectly
+amazing&mdash;and I went home feelin&rsquo; as happy and proud as a king or a
+zar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the next Tuesday evenin&rsquo; we had the pound party. They concluded to
+have it to our house. And Thomas Jefferson and Maggie, and Tirzah Ann and
+Whitefield came home early in the afternoon to help trim the parlor and
+setin&rsquo; room with evergreens and everlastin&rsquo; posies, and fern
+leaves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They made the room look perfectly beautiful. And they each of &rsquo;em, the
+two childern and their companions, brought home a motto framed in nice plush
+and gilt frames, which they put up on each side of the settin&rsquo; room, and
+left them there as a present to their pa and me. They think a sight of us, the
+childern do&mdash;and visey versey, and the same.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of &rsquo;em wuz worked in gold letters on a red back-ground &ldquo;Bear Ye
+One Another&rsquo;s Burdens.&rdquo; And the other wuz &ldquo;Feed my
+Lambs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They think a sight on us, the childern do&mdash;they knew them mottoes would
+highly tickle their pa and me. And they did seem to kinder invigorate up all
+the folks that come to the party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And they wuz seemingly legions. Why, they come, and they kept a comin&rsquo;.
+And it did seem as if every one of &rsquo;em had tried to see who could bring
+the most. Why, they brought enough to keep the Smedleys comfortable all winter
+long. It wuz a sight to see &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image09.gif" height="258" width="496" alt="The Pound Party" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a curious sight, too, to set and watch what some of the folks said and
+done as they brought their pounds in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had to be to the table all the time a&rsquo;most, for I wuz appointed a
+committee, or a board&mdash;I s&rsquo;pose it would be more proper to call
+myself a board, more business like. Wall, I wuz the board appointed to lay the
+things on&mdash;to see that they wuz all took care of, and put where they
+couldn&rsquo;t get eat up, or any other casuality happen to &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I declare if some of the queerest lookin&rsquo; creeters didn&rsquo;t come
+up to the table and talk to me. There wuz lots of &rsquo;em there that I
+didn&rsquo;t know, folks that come from Zoar, Jim Smedley&rsquo;s old
+neighborhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There wuz a long table stretched acrost one end of the settin&rsquo; room, and
+I stood behind it some as if I wuz a dry goods merchant or grocery, and some
+like a preacher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the women would come up to me and talk. There wuz one woman who got real
+talkative to me before the evenin&rsquo; wuz out. She said her home wuz over
+two miles beyond Zoar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had a young babe with her, a dark complexioned babe, with a little round
+black head, that looked some like a cannon ball. She said she had shingled the
+child that day about eight o&rsquo;clock in the forenoon; she talked real
+confidential to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said the babe had sights of hair, and she told her husband that day that if
+he would shingle the babe she would come to the party and if he wouldn&rsquo;t
+shingle it she wouldn&rsquo;t come. It seemed they had had a altercation on the
+subject; she wanted it shingled and he didn&rsquo;t. But it seemed that ruther
+than stay away from the party&mdash;he consented, and shingled it. So they
+come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They brought a eight pound loaf of maple sugar and two dozen eggs. They did
+well. Then there wuz another woman who would walk her little girl into the
+bedroom every few minutes, and wet her hair, and comb it over, and curl it on
+her fingers. The child had a little blue flannel dress on, with a long plain
+waist, and a long skirt gethered on full all round. Her hair lay jest as smooth
+and slick as glass all the time, but five times did she walk her off, and go
+through with that performance. She brought ten yards of factory cloth, and a
+good woollen petticoat for the old grandma. She did first-rate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then there wuz another woman who stayed by the table most all the
+evenin&rsquo;. She would gently but firmly ask everybody who brought anything,
+what the price of the article wuz&mdash;and then she would tackle the different
+women who come up to the table for patterns. I do believe she got the pattern
+of every bask waist there wuz there, and every mantilly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Abram Gee brought twenty-five loaves of bread&mdash;of different sizes, but
+all on &rsquo;em good. And he looked at Ardelia Tutt every minute of the time.
+And Ardelia brought a lot of verses,&mdash;&ldquo;Stanzas on a
+Grandmother.&rdquo; I didn&rsquo;t think they would do Grandma Smedley much
+good, and then on the other hand I didn&rsquo;t s&rsquo;pose they would hurt
+her any.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we had a splendid good time after the things wuz all brought in&mdash;of
+course, bein&rsquo; a board the fore part of the evenin&rsquo; I naturally had
+a harder time than I did the latter part, after I had got over it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The children, Thomas J., and Tirzah Ann, and Ardelia Tutt, and Abram Gee, and
+some of the rest of the young folks sung and played some beautiful pieces, and
+they had four tablows, which wuz perfectly beautiful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then we passed good nice light biscuit and butter, and hot coffee, and pop
+corn and apples. And it did seem, and all the neighbors said so, that it wuz
+the very best party they had ever attended to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And before they went away they made a motion some of the responsable men
+did&mdash;some made the motions and some seconded &rsquo;em&mdash;that they
+would adjourn till jest one year from that night, when if the Smedleys was
+still alive and in need&mdash;we would have jest such a party ag&rsquo;in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at the last on&rsquo;t Elder Minkley made a prayer&mdash;a very thankful
+and good prayer, but short. And then they went home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the next mornin&rsquo; we started to carry the things to the Smedleys. It
+wuz very early, for Josiah had got to go clear to Loontown on business, and I
+wuz goin&rsquo; to stay with the childern till he got back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a very cold mornin&rsquo;. We hadn&rsquo;t heard from the Smedleys for
+two or three days, because we wanted to surprise &rsquo;em, so we didn&rsquo;t
+want to give &rsquo;em a hint beforehand of what we wuz a doin&rsquo;. So, as I
+say, it wuz a number of days sense we had heard from &rsquo;em, and the weather
+wuz cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we got to the door it seemed to be dretful still there inside. And there
+wuz some white frost on the latch jest as if a icy, white hand had onlatched
+the door, and had laid on it last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We rapped, but nobody answered. And then we opened the door and went in, and
+there they all lay asleep. The children waked up. But old Grandma didn&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image10.gif" height="285" width="443" alt="Nobody answered" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+There wuzn&rsquo;t any fire in the room, and you could see by the freezing
+coldness of the air that there hadn&rsquo;t been any for a day or two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grandma Smedley had took the poor old coverin&rsquo;s all off from herself, and
+put &rsquo;em round the youngest baby, little Jim. And he lay there all huddled
+up tight to his Grandma, with his red cheek close to her white one, for he
+loved her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah cried and wept, and wept and cried onto his bandana&mdash;but I
+didn&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tears run down my face some, to see the childern feel so bad when Grandma
+couldn&rsquo;t speak to &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I knew that the childern would be took care of now, I knew the
+Jonesvillians would be all rousted up and sorry enough for &rsquo;em, and would
+be willin&rsquo; to do anything now, when it wuz some too late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I felt that I couldn&rsquo;t cry nor weep (and told Josiah so), the tears
+jest dripped down my face in a stream, but I wouldn&rsquo;t weep&mdash;for as I
+said to myself:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the Jonesvillians had been a disputin&rsquo; back and forth, and
+wrestin&rsquo; Scripter, and the meanin&rsquo; of Providence in regard to
+helpin&rsquo; Grandma Smedley and gittin&rsquo; her a comfortable place to stay
+in, and somethin&rsquo; to eat, the Lord himself had took the case in hand and
+had gin her a home and the bread that satisfies.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image11.gif" height="283" width="373" alt="Samantha and Josiah at
+home" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>Chapter IV.<br/>
+ARDELIA AND ABRAM GEE.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I don&rsquo;t s&rsquo;pose there had been a teacher in our deestrict for
+years and years that gin&rsquo; better satisfaction than Ardelia Tutt. Good
+soft little creeter, the scholars any one of &rsquo;em felt above hurtin&rsquo;
+on her or plagin&rsquo; her any way. She sort a made &rsquo;em feel they had to
+take care on her, she wuz so sort a helpless actin&rsquo;, and good natured,
+and yet her learnin&rsquo; wuz good, fust-rate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, Ardelia was thought a sight on in Jonesville by scholars and parents and
+some that wuzn&rsquo;t parents. One young chap in perticiler, Abram Gee by
+name, who had just started a baker&rsquo;s shop in Jonesville, he fell so deep
+in love with her from the very start that I pitied him from about the bottom of
+my heart. It wuz at our house that he fell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young folks of our meetin&rsquo;-house had a sort of a evenin&rsquo;
+meetin&rsquo; there to see about raisin&rsquo; some money for the help of the
+steeple&mdash;repairin&rsquo; of it. Abram is a member, and so is Ardelia, and
+I see the hull thing. I see him totter and I see him fall. And prostrate he
+wuz, from that first night. Never was there a feller that fell in love deeper,
+or lay more helpless. And Ardelia liked him, that wuz plain to see; at fust as
+I watched and see him totter, I thought she wuz a sort o&rsquo; wobblin&rsquo;
+too, and when he fell deep, deep in love, I looked to see her a follerin&rsquo;
+on. But Ardelia, as soft as she wuz, had an element of strength. She wuz
+ambitious. She liked Abram, but she had read novels a good deal, and she had
+for years been lookin&rsquo; for a prince to come a ridin&rsquo; up to their
+dooryard in disguise with a crown on under his hat, and woo her to be his
+bride.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image12.gif" height="299" width="413" alt="The Prince" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And so she braced herself against the sweet influence of love and it wuz
+tuff&mdash;I could see for myself that it wuz, when she had laid out to set on
+a throne by the side of a prince, he a holdin&rsquo; his father&rsquo;s scepter
+in his hand&mdash;to descend from that elevation and wed a husband who wuz a
+moulder of bread, with a rollin&rsquo; pin in his hand. It wuz tuff for
+Ardelia; I could see right through her mind (it wuzn&rsquo;t a great distance
+to see), and I could see jest how a conflict wuz a goin&rsquo; on between love
+and ambition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Abram had my best wishes, for he wuz a boy I had always liked. The Gees had
+lived neighbor to us for years. He wuz a good creeter and his bread wuz
+delicious (milk emptin&rsquo;s). He wuz a sort of a hard, sound lookin&rsquo;
+chap, and she, bein&rsquo; so oncommon soft, the contrast kinder sot each other
+off and made &rsquo;em look well together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had a house and lot all paid for, with no incumbrances only a mortgage of
+150 dollars and a lame mother. But he laid out to clear off the mortgage this
+year, and I wuz told that mother Gee wuz a goin&rsquo; to live with her
+daughter Susan, who had jest come into a big property&mdash;as much as 700
+dollars worth of land, besides cows, 2 heads of cow, and one head of a calf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I knew Mother Gee and she wuz goin&rsquo; to stay with Abram till he got
+married and then she wuz goin&rsquo; to live with Susan. And I s&rsquo;pose it
+is so. She is a likely old woman with a milk leg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Abram paid Ardelia lots of attention, sech as walkin&rsquo; home with her
+from protracted meetin&rsquo;s nights, and lookin&rsquo; at her durin&rsquo;
+the meetin&rsquo;s more protracted than the meetin&rsquo;s wuz fur. And 3 times
+he sent her a plate of riz biscuit sweetened, sweetened too sweet almost, he
+went too fur in this and I see it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, he done his part as well as his condition would let him, paralyzed by his
+feelin&rsquo;s&mdash;but she acted kinder offish, and I see that sonthin&rsquo;
+wuz in the way. I mistrusted at first, it might be Abram&rsquo;s incumbrance,
+but durin&rsquo; a conversation I had with her, I see I wuz in the wrong
+on&rsquo;t. And I could see plain, though some couldn&rsquo;t, that she liked
+Abram as she did her eyes. Somebody run him down a little one day before me and
+she sprouted right up and took his part voyalent. I could see her
+feelin&rsquo;s towards him though she wouldn&rsquo;t own up to &rsquo;em. But
+one day she came out plain to me and lamented his condition in life. Somebody
+had attact her that day before me about marryin&rsquo; of him&mdash;and she
+owned up to me, that she had laid out to marry somebody to elevate her. Some
+one with a grand pure mission in life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I spoke right up and sez, &ldquo;Why bread is jest as pure and innocent as
+anything can be, you won&rsquo;t find anything wicked about good yeast bread,
+nor,&rdquo; sez I, cordially, &ldquo;in milk risin&rsquo;, if it is made
+proper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she said she preferred a occupation that wuz risin&rsquo;, and noble, and
+that made a man necessary and helpful to the masses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez agin&mdash;&ldquo;Good land! the masses have got to eat. And I guess
+you starve the masses a spell and they&rsquo;ll think that good bread is as
+necessary and helpful to &rsquo;em as anything can be. And as fer its
+bein&rsquo; a risin&rsquo; occupation, why,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;it is stiddy
+risen&rsquo;&mdash;risin&rsquo; in the mornin,&rsquo; and risin&rsquo; at
+night, and all night, both hop and milk emptin&rsquo;s. Why,&rdquo; sez I,
+&ldquo;I never see a occupation so risin&rsquo; as his&rsquo;n is, both milk
+and hop.&rdquo; But she wouldn&rsquo;t seem to give in and encourage him much
+only by spells.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then Abram didn&rsquo;t take the right way with her. I see he wuz a
+goin&rsquo; just the wrong way to win a woman&rsquo;s love. For his love, his
+great honest love for her made him abject, he groveled at her feet, loved to
+grovel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told him, for he confided in me from the first on&rsquo;t and bewailed her
+coldness to me, I told him to sprout up and act as if he had some will of his
+own and some independent life of his own. Sez I, &ldquo;Any woman that sees a
+man a layin&rsquo; around under her feet will be tempted to step on him,&rdquo;
+sez I. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how she can help it, if she calcerlates to get
+round any, and walk.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;Sprout up and be somebody. She is a
+good little creeter, but no better than you are, Abram; be a man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image13.gif" height="329" width="256" alt="Abram" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And he would try to be. I could see him try. But one of her soft little
+glances, specially if it wuz kind and tender to him, es it wuz a good deal of
+the time, why it would just overthrow him ag&rsquo;in. He would collapse and
+become nothin&rsquo; ag&rsquo;in, before her. Why I have hearn him sing that
+old him, a lookin&rsquo; right at Ardelia stiddy:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Oh to be nothin&rsquo;, nothin&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And thinks I to myself, &ldquo;if this keeps on, you are in a fairway to git
+your wish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wuz a good singer, a beartone, and she a secent. They loved to sing
+together. They needed some air, but then they got along without it; and it
+sounded quite well, though rather low and deep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, it run along for weeks and weeks, he with his hopes a risin&rsquo; up
+sometimes like his yeast and then bein&rsquo; pounded down ag&rsquo;in like his
+bread, under the hard knuckles of a woman&rsquo;s capricious cruelty. For I
+must say that she did, for sech a soft littte creeter, have cold and cruel ways
+to Abram. (But I s&rsquo;pose it wuz when she got to thinkin&rsquo; about the
+Prince, or some other genteel lover.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her real feelin&rsquo;s would break out once in a while, and lift him up to
+the 3d heaven of happiness and then he&rsquo;d have to totter and fall down
+ag&rsquo;in. Abram Gee had a hard time on&rsquo;t. I pitied him from nearly the
+bottom of my heart. But I still kep&rsquo; a thinkin&rsquo; it would turn out
+well in the end. For it wuz jest about this time that I happened to find this
+poetry in a book where she had, I s&rsquo;posed, left it. And I read &rsquo;em,
+almost entirely unbeknown to myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz wrote in a dreatful blind way but I recognized it at once. I looked
+right through it, and see what she wuz a writin&rsquo; about though many
+wouldn&rsquo;t, it wuz wrote in sech a deep style.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+&ldquo;STANZAS ON BREAD;<br/>
+&ldquo; or<br/>
+&ldquo; A LAY OF A BROKEN HEART.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Oh Bread, dear Bread, that seemest to us so cold,<br/>
+Oft&rsquo;times concealed thee within, may be a sting!<br/>
+Sweet buried hopes may in thy crust be rolled;<br/>
+A sad, burnt crust of deepest suffering.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;There are some griefs the female soul don&rsquo;t tell,<br/>
+And she may weep, and she may wretched be;<br/>
+Though she may like the name of Abram well<br/>
+And she may not like dislike the name of G-,<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh Fel Ambition, how thou lurest us on,<br/>
+How by thy high, bold torch we&rsquo;re stridin&rsquo; led:<br/>
+Thou lurest us up, cold mountain top upon,<br/>
+And seated by us there, thou scoffest at bread.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Thou lookest down, Ambition, on the ovens brim;<br/>
+Thou brookest not a word of him save with contumalee:<br/>
+And yet, wert thou afar, how sweet to set by him<br/>
+And cut low slices of sweet joy with G&mdash;,<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh! Fel Ambition, wert but thou away,<br/>
+Could we thy hauntin&rsquo; form no more, nor see;<br/>
+How sweet &rsquo;twould be to linger on with A&mdash;,<br/>
+How sweet &rsquo;twould be to dwell for aye with G&mdash;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, as I say, she gin good satisfaction in the deestrict and I declare for
+it, I got to likin&rsquo; her dretful well before the winter wuz over. Softer
+she wuz, and had to be, than any fuz that was ever on any cotton flannel fur or
+near. And more verses she wrote than wuz good for her, or for anybody
+else,&mdash;Why she would write &ldquo;Lines on the Tongs,&rdquo; or
+&ldquo;Stanzas on the Salt Suller,&rdquo; if she couldn&rsquo;t do any better;
+it beats all! And then she would read &rsquo;em to me to get my idees on
+&rsquo;em. Why I had to call on every martyr in the hull string of martyrs
+sometimes to keep myself from tellin&rsquo; her my full mind about &rsquo;em
+unbeknown to me. For, if I had, it would have skairt the soft little creeter
+out of what little wit she had.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I kep&rsquo; middlin&rsquo; still, and see it go on. For she wuz a good
+little soul, affectionate and kinder helpful. A good creeter now to find your
+speks. Why she found &rsquo;em for me times out of number, and I got real
+attached to her and visey versey. And when she came a visitin&rsquo; me in the
+spring (at my request), and I happened to mention that Josiah and me laid out
+to go to Saratoga for the summer, what did the soft little creeter want to do
+but to go too. Her father was well off and wuz able to send her, and she had
+relatives there on her own side, some of the Pixleys, so her board
+wouldn&rsquo;t cost nothin&rsquo;. So it didn&rsquo;t look nothin&rsquo;
+unreasonable, though whether I could get her there and back without her
+mashin&rsquo; all down on my hands, like a over ripe peach, she wuz that soft,
+wuz a question that hanted me, and so I told Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Josiah kinder likes young girls (nothin&rsquo; light; a calm
+meetin&rsquo;-house affection), it is kinder nater that he should, and he sez:
+&ldquo;Better let her go, she won&rsquo;t make much trouble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;not to you, but if you had to set for hours and
+hours and hear her verses read to you on every subject&mdash;on heaven, and
+earth, and the seas, and see her a measurin&rsquo; of it with a stick to get
+the lines the right length; if you had to go through all this, mebby you would
+meditate on the subject before you took it for a summer&rsquo;s job.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo; Wall,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;mebby she won&rsquo;t write so much when
+she gets started; she will be kinder jogged round and stirred up in body and
+mebby her feelins&rsquo; will kinder rest. I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder a mite if
+they did,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;And then she can take a good many steps for
+you, and I love to see you favored,&rdquo; sez he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wanted her to go, I see that, and I see that it wuz natur that he should,
+and so I consented in my mind&mdash;after a parlay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She found his specks a sight and his hat. Nothin&rsquo; seemed to please her
+better than to be gropin&rsquo; round after things to please somebody; her
+disposition wuz such. So it wuz settled that she should accompany and go with
+us. And the mornin&rsquo; we started she met us at the Jonesville Depot in good
+sperits and a barege delaine dress, cream color, and a hat of the same.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image14.gif" height="296" width="366" alt="At the depot" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+I hadn&rsquo;t seen her for some weeks, and she seemed softly tickled to see
+Josiah and me, and asked a good many questions about Jonesville, kinder
+turnin&rsquo; the conversation gradually round onto bread, as I could see. So I
+branched right out, knowin&rsquo; what she wanted of me, and told her plain,
+that &ldquo;Abram Gee wuz a lookin&rsquo; kinder mauger. But doin&rsquo; his
+duty <i>stiddy</i>,&rdquo; sez I, lookin&rsquo; keenly at her, &ldquo;a doin&rsquo;
+his duty by everybody, and beloved by everybody, him and his bread too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned her head away and kinder sithed, and I guess it wuz as much as a
+quarter of a hour after that, that I see her take out a pencil and a piece of
+paper out of her portmonny, and a little stick, and she went to makin&rsquo;
+some verses, a measurin&rsquo; &rsquo;em careful as she wrote &rsquo;em, and
+when she handed &rsquo;em to me they wuz named
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+&ldquo;A LAY ON A CAR;<br/>
+&ldquo; or<br/>
+&ldquo;THE LESSON OF A LOCOMOTIVE.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Oh cars that bearest us on; oh cars that run<br/>
+If backward thou didst go, we should not near<br/>
+The place we started for at break of sun;<br/>
+The place we love, with love devout, sincere.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh! snortin&rsquo; Engine, didst thou not so snort<br/>
+Thou wouldst not start, and lo! we see&mdash;<br/>
+Our sorrows&rsquo; hidden griefs, they do not come for nort<br/>
+They start the Locomotive, Life, with screechin&rsquo; agony<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh passengers that wail, and dread the screech,<br/>
+Wail not; but lift eyes o&rsquo;er the chimney top<br/>
+As they bend over the Locomotive; beach<br/>
+Thy hopes on fairer shores, a sweeter crop.&rdquo;<br/>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After I had read it and handed it back to her, she sez, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you
+think I improve on the melody and rhythm of my poetry? I take this little stick
+with me now wherever I go, and measure my lines by it. They are jest of a
+length, I am very particular; you know you advised me to be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez I mechaniklly, &ldquo;but I didn&rsquo;t mean jest
+that.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;the poetry I wuz a thinkin&rsquo; on, is measured by
+the soul, the enraptured throb of heart and brain; it don&rsquo;t need
+takin&rsquo; a stick to it. Howsumever,&rdquo; sez I, for I see she looked sort
+a disapinted, &ldquo;howsumever, if you have measured &rsquo;em, they are
+probable about the same length: it is a good sound stick, I haint no
+doubt;&rdquo; and I kinder sithed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she sez, &ldquo;What do you think of the first verse? Haint that verse as
+true as fate, or sadness, or anything else you know of?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; sez I candidly, &ldquo;yes; if the cars run backwards we
+shouldn&rsquo;t go on; that is true as anything can be. But if I wuz in your
+place, Ardelia,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t write any more to-day. It
+is a kind of muggy damp day. It is a awfully bad day for poetry to-day.
+And,&rdquo; sez I, to get her mind offen it, &ldquo;Have you seen anything of
+my companion&rsquo;s specks?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And that took her mind offen poetry and she went a huntin&rsquo; for &rsquo;em,
+on the seat and under the seat. She hunted truly high and low and at last she
+found &rsquo;em on my pardner&rsquo;s foretop, the last place any of us thought
+of lookin&rsquo;. And she never said another word about poetry, or any other
+trouble, nor I nuther.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image15.gif" height="221" width="356" alt="Cupid" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>Chapter V.<br/>
+WE ARRIVE AT SARATOGA.</h2>
+
+<p>
+We arrived at Saratoga jest as sunset with a middlin&rsquo; gorgeous dress on
+wuz a walkin&rsquo; down the west and a biddin&rsquo; us and the earth
+good-bye. There wuz every color you could think on almost, in her gown and some
+stars a shinin&rsquo; through the floatin&rsquo; drapery and a half moon
+restin&rsquo; up on her cloudy foretop like a beautiful orniment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(I s&rsquo;pose mebby it is proper to describe sunset in this way on
+goin&rsquo; to such a dressy place, though it haint my style to do so, I
+don&rsquo;t love to describe sunset as a female and don&rsquo;t, much of the
+time, but I love to see things correspond.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we descended from the cars and went to the boardin&rsquo; place provided
+for us beforehand by the look out of friends. It wuz a good place, there haint
+no doubt of that, good folks; good fare and clean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ardelia parted away from us at the depo. She wuz a goin&rsquo; to board to a
+smaller boardin&rsquo; house kep&rsquo; by a second cousin of her
+father&rsquo;s brother&rsquo;s wife&rsquo;s aunt. It wuz her father&rsquo;s
+request that she should get her board there on account of its bein&rsquo; in
+the family. He loved &ldquo;to see relations hang together;&rdquo; so he said,
+and &ldquo;get their boards of each other.&rdquo; But I thought then, and I
+think now, that it wuz because they asked less for the board. Deacon Tutt is
+close. But howsumever Ardelia went there, and my companion and me arrove at the
+abode where we wuz to abide, with no eppisode only the triflin&rsquo; one of
+the driver bein&rsquo; dretful mistook as to the price he asked to take us
+there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought, and Josiah thought, that 50 cents wuz the outlay of expendatur he
+required to carry us where we would be; it wuz but a short distance. But no! He
+said that 5 dollars wuz what he said, that is, if we heard anything about a 5.
+But he thought we wuz deef, and dident hear him. He thought he spoke plain, and
+said 4 dollars for the trip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And on that price he sot down immovible. They arged, and Josiah Allen even went
+so far as to use language that grated on my nerve, it wuz so voyalent and
+vergin&rsquo; on the profane. But there the man sot, right onto that price, and
+he had to me the appeerance of one who wuz goin&rsquo; to sot there on it all
+night. And so rather than to spend the night out doors, in conversation with
+him, he a settin&rsquo; on that price, and Josiah a shakin&rsquo; his fist at
+it, and a jawin&rsquo; at it, I told Josiah that he had better pay it. And
+finally he did, with groanin&rsquo;s that could hardly be uttered.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image16.gif" height="287" width="465" alt="They argued" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Wall, after supper (a good supper and enough on&rsquo;t), Josiah proposed that
+we should take a short walk, we two alone, for Ardelia wuz afar from us, most
+to the other end of the village, either asleep or a writin&rsquo; poetry, I
+didn&rsquo;t know which, but I knew it wuz one or the other of &rsquo;em. And I
+wuz tired enough myself to lay my head down and repose in the arms of sleep,
+and told my companion so, but he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh shaw! Let old Morpheus wait for us till we get back, there&rsquo;ll
+be time enough to rest then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah felt so neat, that he wuz fairly beginnin&rsquo; to talk high learnt,
+and classical. But I didn&rsquo;t say nothin&rsquo; to break it up, and tied on
+my bonnet with calmness (and a double bow knot) and we sallied out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon, or mebby a little after, for we didn&rsquo;t walk fast on account of my
+deep tucker, we stood in front of what seemed to be one hull side of a long
+street, all full of orniments and open work, and pillows, and flowers, and
+carvin&rsquo;s, and scallops, and down between every scollop hung a big basket
+full of posys, of every beautiful color under the heavens. And over all, and
+way back as fur as we could see, wuz innumerable lights of every color,
+gorgeousness a shinin&rsquo; down on gorgeousness, glory above, a shinin&rsquo;
+down on glory below. And sweet strains of music wuz a floatin, out from
+somewhere, a shinin&rsquo; somewhere, renderin&rsquo; the seen fur more
+beautiful to all 4 of our wraptured ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Josiah sez, as we stood there nearly rooted to the place by our motions,
+and a picket fence, sez he dreamily,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I almost feel as if we had made a mistake, and that this is the land of
+Beuler.&rdquo; And he murmured to himself some words of the old him:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Oh Beuler land! Sweet Beuler land!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I whispered back to him and sez&mdash;&ldquo;Hush they don&rsquo;t have brass
+bands in Beulah land.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he sez, &ldquo;How do you know what they have in Beuler?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;&rsquo;taint likely they do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I don&rsquo;t know as I felt like blamin&rsquo; him, for it did seem to me
+to be the most beautiful place that I ever sot my eyes on. And it did seem
+fairly as if them long glitterin&rsquo; chains and links of colored lights, a
+stretchin&rsquo; fur back into the distance sort a begoned for us to enter into
+a land of perfect beauty and Pure Delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then them glitterin&rsquo; chains of light would jine onto other golden,
+and crimson, and orange, and pink, and blue, and amber links of glory and hang
+there all drippin&rsquo; with radiance, and way back as fur as we could see.
+And away down under the shinin&rsquo; lanes the white statues stood, beautiful
+snow-white females, a lookin&rsquo; as if they enjoyed it all. And the lake
+mirrowed back all of the beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Right out onto the lake stood a fairy-like structure all glowin&rsquo; with big
+drops of light and every glitterin&rsquo; drop reflected down in the water and
+the fountain a sprayin&rsquo; up on each side. Why it sprayed up floods of
+diamonds, and rubys, and sapphires, and topazzes, and turkeys, and pearls, and
+opals, and sparklin&rsquo; &rsquo;em right back into the water agin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And right while we stood there, neerly rooted to the spot and gazin&rsquo;
+through extacy and 2 pickets, the band gin a loud burst of melody and then
+stopped, and after a minute of silence, we hearn a voice angel-sweet a
+risin&rsquo; up, up, like a lark, a tender-hearted, golden-throated lark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+High, high above all the throngs of human folks who wuz cheerin&rsquo; her down
+below - up above the sea of glitterin&rsquo; light - up above the bendin&rsquo;
+trees that clasped their hands together in silent applaudin&rsquo; above her,
+up, up, into the clear heavens, rose that glorious voice a singin&rsquo; some
+song about love, love that wuz deathless, eternal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why it seemed as if the very clouds wuz full of shadowy faces a bendin&rsquo;
+down to hear it, and the new moon, shaped just like a boat, had glided down,
+down the sky to listen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If the man of the moon was there he wuz a layin&rsquo; in the bottom of the
+boat, he wuzn&rsquo;t in sight. But if he heard that music I&rsquo;ll bet he
+would say he wuzn&rsquo;t in the practice of hearin&rsquo; any better. And
+Josiah stood stun still till she had got done, and then he sort a sithed out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, it seems as if it must be Beuler land! Do you s&rsquo;pose,
+Samantha, Beuler land is any more beautiful?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;I haint a thinkin&rsquo; about Beulah.&rdquo; I sez it pretty
+middlin&rsquo; tart, partly to hide my own feelin&rsquo;s, which wuz perfectly
+rousted up, and partly from principle, and sez I, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t for
+mercy&rsquo;s sake call it Beuler.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah always will call it so. I&rsquo;ve got a 4th cousin, Beulah Smith (my
+own age and unmarried up to date), and he always did and would call her Beuler.
+Truly in some things a pardner&rsquo;s influence and encouragement fails to
+accomplish the ends aimed at.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, it wuz after some words that I drew Josiah away from that seen of
+enchantment - or he me, I don&rsquo;t exactly know which way it wuz - and we
+wended onwards in our walk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hull broad streets wuz full of folks, full as they could be, all on
+&rsquo;em perfect strangers to us and who knew what motives or weapons they wuz
+a carryin&rsquo; with &rsquo;em; but we knew we wuz safe, Josiah and me did,
+for way up over all our heads, stood a big straight soldier, a volunteer
+volunteerin, to see to the hull crew on &rsquo;em below, a seein&rsquo; that
+they behaved themselves. His age wuz seventy-seven as near as I could make out
+but he didn&rsquo;t look more&rsquo;n half that. He had kep&rsquo; his age
+remarkable.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image17.gif" height="310" width="321" alt="The soldier" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Wall, it wuz, if I remember right, jest about now that we see a
+glitterin&rsquo; high up over our heads some writen in flame. I never see such
+brilliant writin, before nor don&rsquo;t know as I ever shall ag&rsquo;in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Josiah stopped stun still, and stood a lookin&rsquo; perfectly dumfoundered
+at it. And finally he sez, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d give a dollar bill if I could write
+like that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I see he wuz deeply rousted up for 2 cents is as high as he usually goes in
+betted. I see he felt deep and I didn&rsquo;t blame him. Why,&rdquo; sez he,
+&ldquo;jest imagine, Samantha, a hull letter wrote like that! how I&rsquo;d
+love to send one back to Uncle Nate Gowdey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How Uncle Nate&rsquo;s eyes would open, and he wouldn&rsquo;t want no
+spectacles nor nothin&rsquo; to read it with, would he? I wonder if I could do
+it,&rdquo; sez he, a beginnin&rsquo; to be all rousted up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I sez, &ldquo;Be calm,&rdquo; for so deep is my mind that I grasped the
+difficuties of the undertaken&rsquo; at once. &ldquo;How could yon send it,
+Josiah Allen? Where would you get a envelop? How could you get it into the mail
+bag?&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;When anybody would send a letter wrote like that,
+they would want to write it on sheets of lightnin&rsquo;, and fold it up in the
+envelopin&rsquo; clouds of the skies, and it should be received by a
+kneelin&rsquo; and reverent soul. Who is Uncle Nate that he should get it? He
+has not a reverent Soul and he has also rheumatiz in his legs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then I thought, so quick and active is my mind when it gets to
+startin&rsquo; off on a tower, I thought of what I had hearn a few days before,
+of how the secret had been learnt by somebody who lived right there in the
+village, of floatin&rsquo; letters up at sea from one ship to another,
+sigualin&rsquo; out in letters of flame -
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Help! I&rsquo;m a sinkin&rsquo;!&rdquo; or &ldquo;Danger ahead! Look
+out!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I thought what it must be to stand on a dusky night on a lone deck and see
+up on the broad, dark; lonesome sky above, a sudden message, a flash of vivid
+lightnin&rsquo;, takin&rsquo; to itself the form of language. And I wondered to
+myself if in the future we should use the great pages of the night-sky to write
+messages from one city to another, or from sea to land, of danger and
+warnin&rsquo;; and then I thought to myself, if souls clog-bound to earth are
+able to accomplish so much, who knows but the freed soul goin&rsquo; outward
+and onward from height to height of wisdom may yet be able to signal down from
+the Safe Land messages of help and warnin&rsquo; to the souls it loved below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The souls a sailin&rsquo; and a driftin&rsquo; through the dark night of
+despair - a dashin&rsquo; along through fog and mist and darkness aginst rocks.
+What it would be to one kneelin&rsquo; in the lonesome night watches by a
+grave, if the dark sky could grow luminous and he could read, - &ldquo;Do not
+despair! I am alive! I love you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Or, in the hour of the blackest temptation and dread, when the earth is hollow
+and the sky a black vault, and the only way of happiness on God&rsquo;s earth
+seems down the dangerous, beautiful way, God-forbidden, what would it be to
+have the empty vault lit up with &ldquo;Danger ahead! We will help you! be
+patient a little longer!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh how fur my thoughts wuz a travellin&rsquo;, and at what a good jog, but not
+one trace did my companion see on my forward of these thoughts that wuz a
+passin&rsquo; through my foretop: and at that very minute, we came up nigh
+enough to see that right back of the glitterin&rsquo; language overhead, went a
+long line of big, glowin&rsquo; stars of glory way up over our heads, and
+leadin&rsquo; down a gentle declivity and Josiah sez, &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s foller
+on, and see what it will lead us to, Samantha.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;light is pretty generally, safe to foller,
+Josiah Allen.&rdquo; And so we meandered along, keepin&rsquo; our 2 heads as
+nigh as we could under that long glitterin&rsquo; chain of golden drops that
+wuz high overhead. And on, and on, we follered it dilligently; till for the
+land&rsquo;s sake! if it didn&rsquo;t lead us to another one of them openwork
+buildin&rsquo;s, fixed off beautiful, and we could see inside 2 big wells like,
+with acres of floor seemin&rsquo;ly on each side of &rsquo;em, and crowds of
+folks a walkin&rsquo; about and settin&rsquo; at little tables and most all of
+&rsquo;em a drinkin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The water they drinked we could see wuz a bubblin&rsquo; up and a runnin&rsquo;
+over all the time, in big round crystal globes. And up, up on a slender pole
+way up over one of the wells hung another one of them crystal bowls, a
+bubblin&rsquo; over with the water and sparklin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And ag&rsquo;in Josiah asked me if I thought Beuler land could compare with it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I told him ag&rsquo;in kinder sharp, That I wuzn&rsquo;t a thinkin&rsquo;
+about Beuler, I didn&rsquo;t know any sech a place or name. I wish he would
+call things right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, he wuz so dead tired by this time, that we sot sail homewards; that is,
+my feet wuz tired, and my bones, but my mind seemed more rousted up than
+common.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image18.gif" height="259" width="264" alt="Josiah" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>Chapter VI.<br/>
+SARATOGA BY DAYLIGHT.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the next mornin&rsquo; Josiah and me sallied out middlin&rsquo; early to
+explore still further the beauties and grandness of Saratoga. I had on a black
+straw bonnet, a green vail, and a umbrell. I also have my black alpacky, that
+good moral dress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My dress bein&rsquo; such a high mission one choked me. It wuz so high in the
+neck it held my chin up in a most uncomfortable position, but sort a grand and
+lofty lookin&rsquo;. My sleeves wuz so long that more&rsquo;n half the time my
+hand wuz covered up by &rsquo;em and I wuz too honerable to wear &rsquo;em for
+mits; no, in the name of principle I wore &rsquo;em for sleeves, good long
+sleeves, a pattern to other grandmas that I might meet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt that when they see me and see what I wuz a doin&rsquo; and
+endurin&rsquo; fur the cause of female dressin&rsquo; they would pause in their
+wild career, and cover up their necks and pull their sleeves down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, it haint to be expected that I could walk along carryin&rsquo; such hefty
+emotions as I wuz a carryin&rsquo;, and havin&rsquo; my neck held high and
+stiddy both by principle and alpacky, and see to every step I wuz a
+takin&rsquo;. And, first I knew, right while I was enjoyin&rsquo; the loftiest
+of these emotions, I ketched my foot in sunthin&rsquo;, and most fell down.
+Instinctively (such is the power of love) I put out my hand and clutched at the
+arm of my pardner. But he too wuz nearly fallin&rsquo; at the same time. It wuz
+a narrow chance that we wuz a runnin&rsquo; from having our prostrate forms a
+layin&rsquo; there outstretched on the highway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instinctively I sez, &ldquo;Good land!&rdquo; and Josiah sez&mdash;wall, it is
+fur from me to tell what he said, but it ended up with these words, &ldquo;Dumb
+them dumb sidewalks anyway;&rdquo; and sez he, &ldquo;I should think it would
+pay to have a little less gilt paint and spangles and orniments overhead and a
+few more solid bricks unless they want more funerals here, dumb
+&rsquo;em!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I,&rdquo;Be calm! who be you a talkin&rsquo; about? who do you want to
+bring down your fearful curses on, Josiah Allen?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, onto the dumb bricks,&rdquo; sez he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wuz agitated and I said no more. But four times in that first walk, did I
+descend almost precipitously into declivities amongst the bricks, risin&rsquo;
+simultaneously on similar elevations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a fearful ordeel and I felt it so, but upheld by principle and Josiah, I
+moved onwards, through what seemed to be 5 great throngs and masses of people,
+3 on the ground and 2 hinted up above us on tall pillows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Them immense places overhead long as the streets, wuz kinder scalloped out and
+trimmed off handsum with railin&rsquo;s, etc. And on it&mdash;oh! what a vast
+congregation of heads of all sorts and sizes and colors. And oh! what a immense
+display of parasols; why no parasol store in the land could begin with what I
+see there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I can truly say that I thought I knew somethin&rsquo; about parasols;,
+havin&rsquo; owned 3 different ones in the course of my life, and havin&rsquo;
+one covered over. I thought I knew somethin&rsquo; of their nater and habits,
+which is a good deal, so I had always s&rsquo;posed, like a umbrell&rsquo;s.
+But good land! I gin up that I knew them not, nor never had.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why anybody could learn more on &rsquo;em through one jerney down that street,
+than from a hull lifetime in Jonesville. Truly travel is very upliftin&rsquo;
+and openin&rsquo; and spreadin&rsquo; out to the mind, both in parasols and
+human nater.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, them 2 masses over our heads wuz 2, then the one in which we wuz a
+strugglin&rsquo; and the one opposite to it made 4. For anybody with any
+pretence to learnin&rsquo; knows that twice 2 is 4. And then in the middle of
+the broad street was a bigger mass of chariots and horsemen, and carts and
+carriages, and great buggies and little ones, and big loads of barrels, and big
+loads of ladies, and then a load of wood, and then a load of hay, and then a
+pair of young folks pretty as a picture. And then came some high big coaches as
+big as our spare bedroom, and as high as the roof on our horse barn, with six
+horses hitched to e&rsquo;m, all runnin&rsquo; over on top with men; and
+wimmen, and children, and parasols, and giggles, and ha ha&rsquo;s. And a man
+wuz up behind a soundin&rsquo; out on a trumpet, a dretful sort of a high,
+sweet note, not dwindlin&rsquo; down to the end as some music duz, but kinder
+crinklin&rsquo; round and endin&rsquo; up in the air every time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah wuz dretful took with it and he told me in confidence that he laid out
+when he got home to buy a trumpet and blow out jest them strains every time he
+went into Jonesville or out of it. He said it would sound so sort a warlike and
+impressive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I expostulated aginst the idee. But sez he, &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll enjoy it when
+you get used to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never!&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes you will,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;and while I live I lay out that you
+shall have advantages, and shall enjoy things new and uneek.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez I feelin&rsquo;ly, &ldquo;I expect to, Josiah Allen, as
+long as I live with you.&rdquo; And I sithed. But I had little time to enjoy
+even sithin&rsquo;, for oh! the crowd that wuz a pressin&rsquo; onto us and
+surroundin&rsquo; us on every side, some on &rsquo;em curius and strange
+lookin&rsquo;, some on &rsquo;em beautiful and grand. Pretty young girls
+lookin&rsquo; sweet enough to kiss, and right behind &rsquo;em a Chinese man
+with a long dress, and wooden shoes, and his hair in a long braid behind, and
+his eyes sot in sideways. And then would come on a hull lot of wimmen in
+dresses ev&rsquo;ry color of the rainbow, and some men. Then a few childern,
+lookin&rsquo; sweet as roses, with their mothers a pushin&rsquo; the little
+carts ahead on &rsquo;em. And if you&rsquo;ll believe it, I don&rsquo;t
+s&rsquo;pose you will, but it is true, that lots of black ma&rsquo;s had
+childern jest as white as snow, and pretty as rosebuds, took after their
+fathers I s&rsquo;pose. But I don&rsquo;t believe in a mixin&rsquo; of the
+races. And when I see &rsquo;em a kissin&rsquo; the pretty babys, I begun to
+muse a very little on the feelin&rsquo;s of the indignent South, at
+havin&rsquo; a colered girl set in the same car with &rsquo;em, or on a bench
+in the same school room.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image19.gif" height="296" width="386" alt="Black Ma’s" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+I mewsed on how they held the white forms clost to their black breasts at
+birth, and in the hour of death&mdash;the black lips pressed to the white
+cheeks and lips, in both cases. And all the way between life and death they
+mingle clost as they can, some in some cases like the hill of knowledge. Then
+the contact is too clost, when they sot out to climb up by &rsquo;em. Truly
+there are deep conundrums and strange ones, all along through life; though the
+white man may be, and is, cleer up out of his way, on the sunshiny brow of the
+hill, and the black man at the foot, way down amongst the shadows and darkness
+of the low grounds. They don&rsquo;t come very nigh each other. But the arms
+that have felt the clasp and the lips that have felt the kisses of that very
+same black climber all through life, moves &rsquo;em and shouts &rsquo;em to
+&ldquo;go down,&rdquo; to &ldquo;go back,&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The contact is getting too clost, danger is ahead.&rdquo; Curious, haint
+it? Jest as if any danger is so dangerous as ignorance and brutality. Curious,
+haint it? But I am a eppisodin&rsquo;, and to resoom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, right after the babies we&rsquo;d meet a Catholic priest with a calm and
+fur away look on his face, a lookin&rsquo; at the crowd as if he wuz in it, but
+not of it. And then a burgler, mebby, anyway a mean lookin&rsquo; creeter,
+ragged and humble. And then 2 or 3 men foreign lookin&rsquo;, jabberin&rsquo;
+in a tongue I know nothin&rsquo; of, nor Josiah either. And then some more
+childern, and wimmen, and dogs, and parasols, and men, and babies, and Injuns,
+and Frenchmen, and old young wimmen, and young old ones, and handsome ones, and
+hombly ones, and parasols, and some sweet young girls ag&rsquo;in, and some
+black men, and some white men, and some more wimmen, and parasols, and silk,
+and velvet, and lace, and puckers, and raffles, and gethers, and gores, and
+flowers, and feathers, and fringes, and frizzles, and then some men, some
+Southerners from the South, some Westerners from the West, some Easterners from
+the East, and some Cubebs from Cuba, and some Chinamen from China.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! what a seen! What a seen! back and forth, passin&rsquo; and
+repassin&rsquo;, to and fro, parasols, and dogs, and wimmen, and men, and
+babies, and parasols, to and fro, to and fro. Why, if I stood there long so
+crazed would I have become at the seen, that I should have felt that Josiah wuz
+a To and I wuz a Fro, or I wuz a parasol and he wuz a dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And to prevent that fearful catastrophe, I sez, &ldquo;If we ever get beyond
+this side of the village that seems all run together, if we ever do get beyond
+it, which seems doubtful, le&rsquo;s go and sit down, in some quiet spot, and
+try to collect our scattered minds.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;I feel curius, Josiah
+Allen!&rdquo; and sez I, &ldquo;How do you feel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His answer I will not translate; it was neither Biblical nor even moral. And I
+sez agin, &ldquo;Hain&rsquo;t it strange that they have the village all run
+together with no streets turnin&rsquo; off of it.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;It makes
+me feel queer, Josiah Allen, and I am a goin&rsquo; to enquire into it.&rdquo;
+So we wended our way some further on amongst the dense crowd I have spoken of,
+only more crowded and more denser, and anon, if not oftener, Josiah&rsquo;s
+head would be scooped in by passin&rsquo; parasols, and then in low, deep
+tones, Josiah would use words that I wouldn&rsquo;t repeat for a dollar bill,
+till at last I asked a by bystander a standin&rsquo; by, and sez I, &ldquo;Is
+this village all built together&mdash;don&rsquo;t you have no streets a
+turnin&rsquo; off of it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll find a street jest as soon as
+you get by this hotel.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stopped right in my tracts; I wuz dumbfoundered. Sez I, &ldquo;Do you mean to
+say that this hull side of the street that we have been a traversin&rsquo;
+anon, or long before anon,&mdash;do you say that this is all one
+buildin&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes mom,&rdquo; sez he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, in faint axents, &ldquo;When shall we get to the end on it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he, &ldquo;You have come jest about half way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah gin a deep groan and turned him round in his tracts and sez,
+&ldquo;Le&rsquo;s go back this minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I too thought of the quiet haven from whence we had set out, with a deep
+longin&rsquo;, but sech is the force and strength of my mind that I grasped
+holt of the situation and held it there tight. If we wuz half way across it
+wouldn&rsquo;t be no further to go on than it would to go back. Such wuz my
+intellect that I see it to once, but Josiah&rsquo;s mind couldn&rsquo;t grasp
+it, and with words murmured in my ears which I will never repeat to a
+livin&rsquo; soul he wended on by my side through the same old
+crowd&mdash;parasols, and wimmen, and dogs, and babies, and men, and parasols,
+and Injuns, and Spanards, and Creoles, and pretty girls, and old wimmen, and
+puckers, and gethers, and bracelets, and diamonds, and lace, and parasols.
+Several times, if not more, wuz Josiah Allen scooped in by a parasol held by a
+female, and I felt he wuz liable to be torn from me. His weight is but small. 3
+times his hat fell off in the operation and wuz reskued with difficulty, and he
+spoke words I blush to recall as havin&rsquo; passed my pardner&rsquo;s lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, in the fullness of time, or a little after, for truly I wuz not in a
+condition to sense things much, we arrove at a street and we gladly turned our
+2 frames into it, and wended our way on it, goin&rsquo; at a pretty good jog.
+The crowd a growin&rsquo; less and less and we kep a goin&rsquo;, and kep a
+goin&rsquo;, till Josiah sez in weary axents:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where be you a goin&rsquo;, Samantha? Haint you never goin&rsquo; to
+stop? I am fairly tuckered out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez in faint axents, &ldquo;I would fain reach a land where parasols and
+puckers are not and dogs and diamonds are no more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wuz middlin&rsquo; incoherent from my agitation. But I meant well. I wuz
+truly in hopes I would reach some quiet place where Josiah and me could set
+down alone. Where I could look in quiet and repose upon that dear bald head,
+and recooperate my strength.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went by beautiful places, grand houses of different colors but every one on
+&rsquo;em good lookin&rsquo; ones, a settin&rsquo; back amongst their green
+trees, with shady grass-covered yards, and fountains and flower beds in front
+of &rsquo;em, and more grand handsome houses, and more big beautiful yards,
+green velvet grass and beautiful flowers and fountains, and birds and beauty on
+every side on us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And though I felt and knew that in them big carriages that was a passin&rsquo;
+2 and fro all the time, though I felt that parasols, and puckers, and laces,
+and dogs, and diamonds, wuz a bein&rsquo; borne past me all the time, yet sech
+is the force of my mind that I could withdraw my specks from &rsquo;em, and
+look at the beautiful works of nater (assisted by man) that wuz about me on
+every hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally my long search wuz rewarded, we came to a big open gateway that seemed
+to lead into a large, quiet delightful forest. And in that lovely, lonesome
+place, Josiah and me sot down to recooperate our 2 energies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah looked good to me. Men are nice creeters, but you don&rsquo;t want to
+see too meny of &rsquo;em to once, likeways with wimmen. Josiah looked to me at
+that moment some like a calico dress that you have picked out of a dense
+quantity of patterns of calico at a store, it looks better to you when you get
+it away from the rest. Josiah Allen looked good to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But anon, after I had bathed my distracted eyes (as you may say) in the
+liniment of my pardner, I began to take in the rare beauty of the seen laid out
+before me and we arose and wended our way onwards peaceful and serene, as 2
+childern led on by their mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dear Mother Nature! how dost thou rest and soothe thy distracted childern when
+too hardly used by the grindin&rsquo;, oppressive hands of fashion,and the
+weerisome elements of a too civilized life. Maybe thou art a heathen mother,
+oneducated and ignorant in all but the wisdom of love, but thy bosom is soft
+and restful, and thy arms lovin&rsquo; and tender. And, heathen if thou art, we
+love thee first and at last. We are glad to slip out of all the vain and gilded
+supports that have held us weerily up, and lay down our tired heads on thy
+kindly and unquestionin&rsquo; bosom and rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we rose from the soft turf, on which we had been a restin&rsquo;, and
+meandered on through that beautiful park, (so tenderly had nature used him,)
+not one trace of the wild commotion that had almost rent Josiah Allen&rsquo;s
+breast, could be seen save one expirin&rsquo; threeoh of agony. As we started
+out ag&rsquo;in, he looked down onto my faithful umberell, that had stiddied me
+on so many towers of principle, and sez he, in low concentrated axents of skern
+and bitterness, &ldquo;If that wuz a dumb parasol, Samantha, I would crush it
+to the earth and grind it to atoms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Truly he could not forget how his bald head had been gethered in like a ripe
+sheaf, by 7 females, during that very walk, hombly ones too, so it had
+happened. But I sez nothin&rsquo; in reply to this expirin&rsquo; note of the
+crysis he had passed through, knowin&rsquo; this was not the time for silver
+speech but for golden silence, and so we meandered onwards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it wuz anon that we see in the distance a fair white female a
+standin&rsquo; kinder still in the edge of the woods, and Josiah spoke in a
+seemin&rsquo;ly careless way, and sez he, &ldquo;She don&rsquo;t seem to have
+many clothes on, Samantha.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Hush, Josiah! she has probably overslept herself, and come out in
+a hurry, mebby to look for some herbs or sunthin&rsquo;. I persoom one of her
+childern are sick, and she sprung right up out of bed, and come out to get some
+weather-wort, or catnip, or sunthin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as I spoke I drawed Josiah down a side path away from her. But he stopped
+stun still and sez he, &ldquo;Mebby I ought to go and help her Samantha.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, sense I lived with you, I don&rsquo;t think I have
+been shamder of you;&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;it would mortify her to death if she
+should <i>mistrust</i> you had seen her in that condition.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez he, still a hangin&rsquo; back, &ldquo;if the child is
+very sick, and I can be any help to her, it is my duty to go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His eye had been on her nearly every moment of the time, in spite of my almost
+voyalent protests, and sez he, kinder excited like, &ldquo;She is
+standin&rsquo; stun still, as if she is skarit; mebby there is a snake in front
+of her or sunthin&rsquo;, or mebby she is took paralysed, I&rsquo;d better go
+and see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, in low, deep axents, &ldquo;You stay where you be, Josiah Allen, and I
+will go forward, bein&rsquo; 2 females together, it is what it is right to do
+and if we need your help I will holler.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image20.gif" height="299" width="467" alt="Woman in the woods" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And finally he consented after a parlay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, as I got up to her I see she wuzn&rsquo;t a live, meat woman, but a
+statute and so I hastened back to my Josiah and told him there wuzn&rsquo;t no
+need of his help and he wuz in the right on&rsquo;t&mdash;she wuz stun
+still.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said he guessed we&rsquo;d better go that way. And I sez, &ldquo;No, Josiah,
+I want to go round by the other road.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we got back to our abode perfectly tuckered out, but perfectly happy. And
+we concluded that after dinner we would set out and see the different springs
+and partake of &rsquo;em. Had it not been for our almost frenzied haste to get
+away from parasols and dogs and destraction into a place of rest we should have
+beheld them sooner. And our afternoon&rsquo;s adventures I will relate in
+another epistol.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image21.gif" height="281" width="399" alt="crowed street" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>Chapter VII.<br/>
+SEEING THE DIFFERENT SPRINGS.</h2>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image22.gif" height="286" width="385" alt="Taking a walk" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Immegeatly after dinner (a good one) Josiah Allen, Ardelia Tutt and me sot out
+to view and look at the different springs and to partake of the same. We
+hadn&rsquo;t drinked a drop of it as yet. Ardelia had come over to go with us.
+She had on a kind of a yellowish drab dress and a hat made of the same, with
+some drab and blue bows of ribbon and some pink holly-hawks in it, and she had
+some mits on (her hands prespired dretfully, and she sweat easy). As I have
+said, she is a good lookin&rsquo; girl but soft. And most any dress she puts on
+kinder falls into the same looks. It may be quite a hard lookin&rsquo; dress
+before she puts it on, but before she has wore it half a hour it will kinder
+crease down into the softest lookin, thing you ever see. And so with her
+bonnets, and mantillys, and everything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The down onto a goslin&rsquo;s breast never looked softer than every rag she
+had on this very afternoon, and no tender goslin&rsquo; itself wuz ever softer
+than she wuz on the inside on&rsquo;t. But that didn&rsquo;t hinder my
+likin&rsquo; her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, anon, or a little before, we came to that long, long buildin&rsquo;,
+beautiful and dretful ornimental, but I could see plain by daylight what I had
+mistrusted before, that it wuzn&rsquo;t built for warmth. It must be dretful
+cold in the winter, and I don&rsquo;t see how the wimmen folks of the home
+could stand it, unless they hang up bed quilts and blankets round the side, and
+then, I should think they would freeze. They couldn&rsquo;t keep their house
+plants over winter any way - and I see they had sights of &rsquo;em - unless
+they kep&rsquo; &rsquo;em down suller.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But howsumever, that is none of my lookout. If they want to be so fashionable,
+as to try to live out doors and in the house too, that is none of my business.
+And of course it looked dretful ornimental and pretty. But I will say this, it
+haint bein&rsquo; mejum. I should rather live either out doors, or in the
+house, one of the 2. But I am a eppisodin&rsquo;. And to resoom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah Allen paid the money demanded of him and we went in and advanced onwards
+to where a boy wuz a pullin&rsquo; up the water and handin&rsquo; of it round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It looked dretful bubblin&rsquo; and sparklin&rsquo;. Why sunthin&rsquo; seemed
+to be a sparklin&rsquo; up all the time in the water and I thought to myself
+mebby it wuz water thoughts, mebby it wanted to tell sunthin&rsquo;, mebby it
+has all through these years been a tryin&rsquo; to bubble up and sparkle out in
+wisdom but haint found any one yet who could understand its liquid language.
+Who knows now?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took my glass and looked close - sparkle, sparkle, up came the tiny thought
+sparks! But I wuzn&rsquo;t wise enough to read the glitterin&rsquo; language.
+No I wuzn&rsquo;t deep enough. It would take a deep mind, mebby thousands of
+feet deep, to understand the great glowin&rsquo; secret that it has been a
+tryin&rsquo; to reveal and couldn&rsquo;t. Mebby it has been a tryin&rsquo; to
+tell of big diamond mines that it has passed through - great cliffs and crags
+of gold sot deep with the crystalized dew of diamonds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But no, I didn&rsquo;t believe that wuz it. That wouldn&rsquo;t help the world,
+only to make it happier, and these seemed to me to be dretful inspirin&rsquo;,
+upliftin&rsquo; thoughts. No, mebby it is a tryin&rsquo; to tell a cold world
+about a way to heat it. Mebby it has been a runnin&rsquo; over and is
+sparklin&rsquo; with bright thoughts about how deep underneath the earth lay a
+big fireplace, that all the cold beggars of mortality could set round and warm
+<i>their</i> frozen fingers by,&mdash;a tryin&rsquo; to tell how the heat of that fire
+that escapes now up the chimbleys of volcanoes, and sometimes in sudden drafts
+blows out sideways into earthquakes, etc., could be utilized by conveyin&rsquo;
+it up on top of the ground, and have it carried into the houses like Croton
+water. Who knows now? Mebby that is it!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! I felt that it would be a happy hour for Samantha when she could bile her
+potatoes by the heat of that large noble fire-place. And more than that, far
+more wuz the thought that heat might become, in the future, as cheap as cold.
+That the little cold hands that freeze every winter in the big cities, could be
+stretched out before the big generous warmth of that noble fire-place. And who
+built that fire in the first place? Who laid the first sticks on the handirons,
+and put the match to it? Who wuz it that did it, and how did he look, and when
+wuz he born, and why, and where?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These, and many other thoughts of similar size and shape, filled my brane
+almost full enough to lift up the bunnet, that reposed gracefully on my
+foretop, as I stood and held the sparklin&rsquo; glass in my hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sparkle! sparkle! sparkle! what wuz it, it wuz a tryin&rsquo; to say to me and
+couldn&rsquo;t? Good land! I couldn&rsquo;t tell, and Josiah couldn&rsquo;t, I
+knew instinctively he couldn&rsquo;t, though I didn&rsquo;t ask him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, I turned and looked at that beloved man, for truly I had for the time
+bein&rsquo; been by the side of myself, and I see that he wuz a drinkin&rsquo;
+lavishly of the noble water. I see that he wuz a drinkin&rsquo; more than wuz
+for his good, his linement showed it, and sez I, for he wuz a liftin&rsquo;
+another tumbler full onto his lips, sez I, &ldquo;Pause, Josiah Allen, and
+don&rsquo;t imbibe too much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image23.gif" height="331" width="199" alt="Taking the water" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;you can drink all you are a mind to for
+5 cents. I am bound for once, Samantha Allen, to get the worth of my
+money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he drinked the tumbler full down at one swoller almost, and turned to the
+weary boy for another. He looked bad, and eager, and sez I, &ldquo;How many
+have you drinked?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he, in a eager, animated whisper, &ldquo;9.&rdquo; And he whispered in the
+same axents, &ldquo;5 times 9 is 45 ; if it had been to a fair, or Fourth of
+July, or anything, it would have cost me 45 cents, and if it had been to a
+church social - lemme see - 9 times 10 is 90. It would have cost me a dollar
+bill! And here I am a havin&rsquo; it all for 5 cents. Why,&rdquo; sez he,
+&ldquo;I never see the beat on&rsquo;t in my life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And ag&rsquo;in he drinked a tumbler full down, and motioned to the frightened
+boy for another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I took him by the vest and whispered to him, sez I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, do
+you want to die, because you can die cheap? Why,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;it will
+kill you to drink so much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But think of the cheapness on&rsquo;t Samantha! The chance I have of
+getting the worth of my money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I whispered back to him in anxus axents and told him, that I guessed if
+funeral expenses wuz added to that 5 cents it wouldn&rsquo;t come so cheap, and
+sez I, &ldquo;you wont live through many more glasses, and you&rsquo;ll see you
+wont. Why,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;you are a drowndin&rsquo; out your
+insides.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wuz fairly a gettin&rsquo; white round the mouth, and I finally got him to
+withdraw, though he looked back longingly at the tumblers and murmured even
+after I had got him to the door, that it wuz a dumb pity when anybody got a
+chance to get the worth of their money, which wuzn&rsquo;t often, to think they
+couldn&rsquo;t take advantage on it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez back to him in low deep axents, &ldquo;There is such a thing as
+bein&rsquo; too graspin&rsquo;, Josiah Allen.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;The children
+of Israel used to want to lay up more manny than they wanted or needed, and it
+spilte on their hands.&rdquo; And sez I, &ldquo;you see if it haint jest so
+with you; you have been in too great haste to enrich yourself, and you&rsquo;ll
+be sorry for it, you see if you haint.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he was. Though he uttered language I wouldn&rsquo;t wish to repeat, about
+the children of Israel and about me for bringin&rsquo; of &rsquo;em up. But the
+man wuz dethly sick. Why he had drinked 11 tumblers full, and I trembled to
+think what would have follered on, and ensued, if I hadn&rsquo;t interfered. As
+it wuz, he wuz confined to our abode for the rest of the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I wouldn&rsquo;t have Josiah Allen blamed more than is due for this little
+incedent, for it only illustrates a pervailin&rsquo; trait in men&rsquo;s
+nater, and sometimes wimmen&rsquo;s - a too great desire to amass sudden
+riches, and when opportunity offers, burden themselves with useless and
+wearysome and oft-times painful gear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They don&rsquo;t need it but seeing they have a chance to get it cheap,
+&ldquo;dog cheap &ldquo; as the poet observes, why they weight themselves down
+with it, and then groan under the burden of unnecessary and wearin&rsquo;
+wealth. This is a deep subject, deep as the well from which my companion
+drinked, and nearly drinked himself into a untimely grave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Men heap up more riches than they can enjoy and then groan and rithe under the
+taxes, the charity given, the envy, the noteriety, the glare, and the glitter,
+the crowd of fortune-hunters and greedy hangers-on, and the care and anxiety.
+They orniment the high front of their houses with the paint, the gildin&rsquo;,
+the fashion, and the show of enormous wealth, and while the crowd of
+fashion-seekers and fortune-hunters pour in and out of the lofty doorway they
+set out on the back stoop a groanin&rsquo; and a sithin&rsquo; at the cares and
+sleepless anxietes of their big wealth, and then they git up and go down street
+and try their best to heap up more treasure to groan over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And wimmen now, when wuz there ever a woman who could resist a good bargain?
+Her upper beauro draws may be a runnin&rsquo; over with laces and ribbons, but
+let her see a great bargain sold for nothin&rsquo; almost, and where is the
+female woman that can resist addin&rsquo; to that already too filled up beauro
+draw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A baby, be he a male, or be he a female child, when he has got a appel in both
+hands, will try to lay holt of another, if you hold it out to him. It is human
+nater. Josiah must not be considered as one alone in layin&rsquo; up more
+riches than he needed. He suffered, and I also, for sech is the divine law of
+love, that if one member of the family suffers, the other members suffer also,
+specially when the sufferin&rsquo; member is impatient and voyalent is his
+distress, and talks loud and angry at them who truly are not to blame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now I didn&rsquo;t make the springs nor I wuzn&rsquo;t to blame for their
+bein&rsquo; discovered in the first place. But Josiah laid it to me. And though
+I tried to make him know that it wuz a Injun that discovered &rsquo;em first,
+he wouldn&rsquo;t gin in and seemed to think they wouldn&rsquo;t have been
+there if it hadn&rsquo;t been for me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hated to hear him go on so. And in the cause of Duty, I brung up Sir William
+Johnson and others. But he lay there on the lounge, and kep&rsquo; his face
+turned resolute towards the wall, in a dretful oncomfertable position (sech wuz
+his temper of mind), and said, he never had heard of them, nor the springs
+nuther, and shouldn&rsquo;t if it hadn&rsquo;t been for me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why, sez I, &ldquo;A Injun brought Sir William Johnson here on his back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez he, cross as a bear, &ldquo;that is the way
+you&rsquo;ll have to take me back, if you go on in this way much longer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In what way, Josiah?&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why a findin&rsquo; springs and draggin&rsquo; a man off to &rsquo;em,
+and makin&rsquo; him drink.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, Josiah Allen,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I told you not to drink -
+don&rsquo;t you remember?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No! I don&rsquo;t remember nuthin&rsquo;, nor don&rsquo;t want to. I
+want to go to sleep!&rdquo; sez he, snappish as anything, so I went out and let
+him think if he wanted to, that I made the Springs, and the Minerals, and the
+Gysers, and the Spoutin&rsquo; Rock, and everything. Good land! I knew I
+didn&rsquo;t; but I had to rest under the unkind insinnuation. Such is some of
+the trials of pardners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Josiah waked up real clever. And I brung him up some delicate warm toast
+and some fragrant tea, and his smile on me wuz dretful good-natured, almost
+warm. And I forgot all his former petulence and basked in the rays of love and
+happiness that beamed on me out of the blue sky of my companion&rsquo;s eyes.
+The clear blue sky that held two stars, to which my heart turned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such is some of the joys of pardners with which the world don&rsquo;t meddle
+with, nor can&rsquo;t destroy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But to resoom. Ardelia sot down awhile in our room before she went back to her
+boardin&rsquo; house. I see she wuz a writin&rsquo; for she had a long lead
+pencil in her right hand and occasionally she would lean her forrerd down upon
+it, in deep thought, and before she went, she slipped the verses into my hand:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+&ldquo;STANZAS ON A MINERAL SPRING.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Oh! waters that doth bubble up and spout<br/>
+Oh, didst thou bubble down insted of up,<br/>
+Thou couldest not with all thy minerals get out<br/>
+We could not then arise and drink thee in a cup.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh! human waves that float and seeth and tear<br/>
+Oh wiltest thou not too a learn to bubble up<br/>
+Instead of down, a lesson deep to bear,<br/>
+Oh Soul, can here be learned, one smooth, or rough.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;A lesson deep of powerful min-er-als<br/>
+That act with power the constitution on,<a href="#linknote-1" name="linknoteref-1" id="linknoteref-1"><sup>[1]</sup></a><br/>
+And still that softly bubbles up, and tells<br/>
+To souls unborn, how sweetly they have ron.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh water that doth mount on slender tip,<br/>
+And spoutest up some 30 feet, through pole;<br/>
+Oh Hope, learn thou a lesson from the water’s lip,<br/>
+Spout out, spout out, in peace from hollow soul.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="linknote-1" id="linknote-1"></a> <a href="#linknoteref-1">[1]</a>
+As in the case of Mr. Allen, poor dear man.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Sez I, a lookin&rsquo; over my specks at Ardelia after I had finished
+readin&rsquo; the verses: &ldquo;What does &lsquo;ron&rsquo; mean? I never
+heerd of that word before, nor knew there wuz sech a one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez she, &ldquo;I meant ran, but I s&rsquo;pose it is a poetical license to say
+&lsquo;ron,&rsquo; don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I s&rsquo;pose so, I don&rsquo;t know much
+about licenses, nor don&rsquo;t want to, they are suthin&rsquo; I never
+believed in. But,&rdquo; sez I, for I see she looked red and overcasted by my
+remarks, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t s&rsquo;pose it will make any difference in a 100
+years whether you say ran or ron.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But sez I, &ldquo;Ardelia, it is a hot day, and I wouldn&rsquo;t write any more
+if I wuz in your place. If you should heat your bra-, the upper part of your
+head, you might not get over it for some time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; sez she, &ldquo;you have told me sometimes to stop on
+account of cold weather.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;most any kind of weather is hard on some
+kinds of poetry.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;Poetry is sunthin&rsquo; that takes
+particular kinds of folks and weather to be successful.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;It
+is sunthin&rsquo; that can&rsquo;t be tampered with with impunity by Christians
+or world&rsquo;s people. It is a kind of a resky thing to do, and I
+wouldn&rsquo;t write any more to-day, Ardelia.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she heard to me and after a settin&rsquo; a while with us, she went back to
+Mr. Pixley&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image24.gif" height="182" width="292" alt="Samantha tastes the water" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>Chapter VIII.<br/>
+JOSIAH AND SAMANTHA TAKE A LONG WALK.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we hadn&rsquo;t been to Saratoga long before Aunt Polly Pixley came over
+to see us, for Aunt Polly had been as good as her word and had come to
+Saratoga, to her 2d cousins, the Mr. Pixley&rsquo;ses, where Ardelia wuz a
+stopping. Ardelia herself is a distant relation to Aunt Polly, quite distant,
+about 40 or 50 miles distant when they are both to home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the change in Aunt Polly is wonderful, perfectly wonderful. She
+don&rsquo;t look like the same woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took her knittin&rsquo; work and come in the forenoon, for a all
+day&rsquo;s visit, jest as she wuz used to in the country, good old soul - and
+I took her right to my room and done well by her, and we talked considerable
+about other wimmen, not runnin&rsquo; talk, but good plain talk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thinks a sight of the Saratoga water, and well she may, if that is what has
+brung her up, for she wuz always sick in Jonesville, kinder bedrid. And when
+she sot out for Saratoga she had to have a piller to put on the seat behind her
+to sort a prop her up (hen&rsquo;s feather).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now, she told me she got up early every mornin&rsquo; and walked down to
+the spring for a drink of the water - walked afoot. And she sez, &ldquo;It is
+astonishin&rsquo; how much good that water is a doin&rsquo; me; for,&rdquo; sez
+she, &ldquo;when I am to home I don&rsquo;t stir out of the house from one
+day&rsquo;s end to the other; and here,&rdquo; sez she, &ldquo;I set out doors
+all day a&rsquo;most, a listenin&rsquo; to the music in the park mornin&rsquo;
+and evenin&rsquo; I hear every strain on&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Aunt Polly is the greatest one for music I ever see, or hearn on. And I sez to
+her, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you believe that one great thing that is helpin&rsquo;
+you, is bein&rsquo; where you are kep&rsquo; gay and cheerful, - by music and
+good company; and bein&rsquo; out so much in the sunshine and pure air.&rdquo;
+(Better air than Saratoga has got never wuz made; that is my opinion and
+Josiah&rsquo;s too.) And sez I, &ldquo;I lay a good deal to that air.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it wuz the water.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;The water is good, I don&rsquo;t make no doubts
+on&rsquo;t.&rdquo; But I continued calmly - for though I never dispute, I do
+most always maintain my opinion - and I sez again calmly, &ldquo;There has been
+a great change in you for the better, sense you come here, Miss Pixley. But
+some on&rsquo;t I lay to your bein&rsquo; where things are so much more
+cheerful and happyfyin&rsquo;. You say you haint heerd a strain of music except
+a base viol for over 14 years before you come here. And though base viols if
+played right may be melodious, yet Sam Pixley&rsquo;s base viol wuz a old one,
+and sort a cracked and grumbly in tone, and he wuzn&rsquo;t much of a player
+anyway, and to me, base viols always sounded kinder base anyway.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And sez I, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you believe a gettin&rsquo; out of your little
+low dark rooms, shaded by Pollard willers and grave stuns, and gettin&rsquo;
+out onto a place where you can heer sweet music from mornin&rsquo; till night,
+a liftin&rsquo; you up and makin&rsquo; you happier - don&rsquo;t you believe
+that has sunthin&rsquo; to do with your feelin&rsquo; so much better - that and
+the pure sweet air of the mountains comin&rsquo; down and bein&rsquo; softened
+and enriched by the breath of the valley, and the minerals, makin&rsquo; a
+balmy atmosphere most full of balm - I lay a good deal to that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; sez she, &ldquo;it is the water.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez I, in a very polite way, - I will be polite, &ldquo;the
+water is good, first rate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at that very minute, word come to her that she had company, and she sot
+sail homewards immegetly, and to once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now I don&rsquo;t care anything for the last word, some wimmen do, but I
+don&rsquo;t. But I sez to her, as I watched her a goin&rsquo; down the
+stairway, steppin&rsquo; out like a girl almost, sez I, &ldquo;How well you do
+seem, Aunt Polly; and I lay a good deal on&rsquo;t to that air.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now who would have thought she would speak out from the bottom of the stairway
+and say, &ldquo;No, it is the water?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the water is good, there haint no doubt, and anyway, through the water
+and the air, and bein&rsquo; took out of her home cares, and old
+surroundin&rsquo;s onto a brght happy place, the change in Polly Pixley is
+sunthin&rsquo; to be wondered at.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, the water is good. And it is dretful smart, knowin&rsquo; water too. Why,
+wouldn&rsquo;t anybody think that when it all comes from the same place, or
+pretty nigh the same place anyway, that they would get kinder flustrated and
+mixed up once in a while?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But they don&rsquo;t. These hundreds and thousands of years, and I don&rsquo;t
+know how much longer, they have kep&rsquo; themselves separate from each other,
+livin&rsquo; nigh neighbors there down under the ground, but never
+neighborin&rsquo; with each other, or intermarryin&rsquo; in each other&rsquo;s
+families. No, they have kep&rsquo; themselves apart, livin&rsquo; exclosive
+down below and bubblin&rsquo; up exclosive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They know how to make each other keep their proper distance, and I s&rsquo;pose
+through all the centuries to come they will bubble up, right side by side,
+entirely different from each other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Curius, hain&rsquo;t it? Dretful smart, knowin&rsquo; waters they be, fairly
+sparklin&rsquo; and flashin&rsquo; with light and brightness, and intelligence.
+They are for the healin&rsquo; and refreshin&rsquo; of ,the nations, and the
+nations are all here this summer, a bein&rsquo; healed by &rsquo;em. But still
+I lay a good deal to that air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Amongst the things that Aunt Polly told me about wimmen that day, wuz this,
+that Ardelia Tutt had got a new Bo, Bial Flamburg, by name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said Mr. Flamburg had asked Ardelia&rsquo;s 3d cousin to introduce him to
+her, and from that time his attentions to her had been unremittent, voyalent,
+and close. She said that to all human appearance he wuz in love with her from
+his hat band down to his boots and she didn&rsquo;t know what the result would
+be, though she felt that the situation wuz dangerus, and more&rsquo;n probable
+Abram Gee had more trouble ahead on him. (Aunt Polly jest worships Abram Gee,
+jest as everybody duz that gets to know him well.) And I too, felt that the
+situation wuz dubersome. For Ardelia I knew wuz one of the soft little wimmen
+that has <i>got</i> to have men a trailin&rsquo; round after &rsquo;em; and her
+bein&rsquo; so uncommon tender hearted, and Mr. Flamburg so deep in love, I
+feared the result.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I wuz jest a thinkin&rsquo; of this that day after dinner when Josiah
+proposed a walk, so we sot out. He proposed we should walk through the park, so
+we did. The air wuz heavenly sweet and that park is one of the most restful and
+beautiful places this side of Heaven, or so it seemed to us that pleasant
+afternoon. The music was very soft and sweet that day, sweet with a undertone
+of sadness, some like a great sorrowful soul in a beautiful body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The balmy south wind whispered through the branches of the bendin&rsquo; trees
+on the hill where we sot. The light was a shinin&rsquo; and a siftin&rsquo;
+down through the green leaves, in a soft golden haze, and the music seemed to
+go right up into them shadowy, shinin&rsquo; pathways of golden misty light, a
+climbin&rsquo; up on them shadowy steps of mist and gold, and amber, up, up
+into the soft depths of the blue overhead - up to the abode of melody and love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Down the hill in the beautiful little valley, all amongst the fountains and
+windin&rsquo; walks and white statutes, and green, green, grass, little
+children wuz a playin&rsquo;. Sweet little toddlers, jest able to walk about,
+and bolder spirits, though small, a trudgin&rsquo; about with little canes, and
+jumpin&rsquo; round, and havin&rsquo; a good time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little boys and little girls (beautiful creeters, the hull on &rsquo;em), for
+if their faces, every one on &rsquo;em, wuzn&rsquo;t jest perfect! They all had
+the beauty of childhood and happiness. And crowds of older folks wuz there. And
+some happy young couples, youths and maidens, wuz a settin&rsquo; round, and a
+wanderin&rsquo; off by themselves, and amongst them we see the form of Ardelia,
+and a young man by her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wuz a leanin&rsquo; on the stun railin&rsquo; that fences in the trout
+pond. She wuz evidently a lookin&rsquo; down pensively at the shinin&rsquo;
+dartin&rsquo; figures of the trout, a movin&rsquo; round down in the cool
+waters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wuzn&rsquo;t nigh enough to &rsquo;em to see really how her companion looked,
+but even at that distance I recognized a certain air and atmosphere a
+surroundin&rsquo; Ardelia that I knew meant poetry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Josiah recognized it too, and he sez to me, &ldquo;We may as well go round
+the hill and out to the road that way,&rdquo; sez he, (a pointin&rsquo; to the
+way furthest from Ardelia) &ldquo;and we may as well be a goin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That man abhors poetry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we wandered down into the high way and havin&rsquo; most the hull
+afternoon before us, we kinder sauntered round amongst the stores that wuz
+pretty nigh to where we wuz. There is some likely good lookin&rsquo; stores
+kep&rsquo; by the natives, as they call the stiddy dwellers in Saratoga. Good
+lookin&rsquo; respectable stores full of comfort and consolation, for the outer
+or inner man or woman. (I speak it in a mortal sense).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But with the hundred thousand summer dwellers, who flock here with the summer
+birds, and go out before the swallers go south, there comes lots of summer
+stores, and summer shops, and picture studios, etc., etc. Like big summer
+bird&rsquo;s-nests, all full and a runnin&rsquo; over with summer wealth, to be
+blowed down by the autumn winds. These shops are full of everything elegant and
+beautiful and useful. The most gorgeous vases and plaks and chiner ware of
+every description and color, and books, and jewelry, and rugs, and fans, and
+parasols, and embroideries, and laces, and etc., etc., etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And one shop seemed to be jest full of drops of light, light and sunshine,
+crystalized in golden, clear, tinted amber. There wuz a young female statute a
+standin&rsquo; up in the winder of that store with her hands outstretched and
+jest a drippin&rsquo; with the great glowin&rsquo; amber drops. Some wuz a
+hangin&rsquo; over her wings for she was a young flyin&rsquo; female. And I
+thought to myself it must be she would fly better with all that golden light a
+drippin&rsquo; about her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah liked her looks first rate. And he liked the looks of some of the
+pictures extremely. There wuz lots of places all full of pictures. A big
+collection of water colors, though as Josiah said and well said, How they could
+get so many colors out of water wuz a mystery to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my choice out of all the pictures I see, wuz a little one called &ldquo;The
+Sands of Dee.&rdquo; It wuz &ldquo;Mary a callin&rsquo; the cattle home.&rdquo;
+The cruel treacherus water wuz a risin&rsquo; about her round bare ankles as
+she stood there amongst the rushes with her little milk-bucket on her arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her pretty innocent face wuz a lookin&rsquo; off into the shadows, and the last
+ray of sunset was a fallin&rsquo; on her. Maybe it wuz the pity on&rsquo;t that
+struck so hard as I looked at it, to know that the &ldquo;cruel, crawli&rsquo;n
+foam&rdquo; wuz so soon to creep over the sweet young face and round limbs. And
+there seemed to be a shadow of the comin&rsquo; fate, a sweepin&rsquo; in on
+the gray mist behind her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stood for some time, and I don&rsquo;t know but longer, a lookin&rsquo; at
+it, my Josiah a standin&rsquo; placidly behind me, a lookin&rsquo; over my
+shoulder and enjoyin&rsquo; of it too, till the price wuz mentioned. But at
+that fearful moment, my pardner seized me by the arm, and walked me so
+voyalently out of that store and down the walk that I did not find and recover
+myself till we stood at the entrance to Philey street.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image25.gif" height="315" width="209" alt="At the art gallery" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And I wuz so out of breath, by his powerful speed, that she didn&rsquo;t look
+nateral to me, I hardly recognized Philey. But Josiah hurried me down Philey
+and wanted to get my mind offen Mary Dee I knew, for he says as we come under a
+sign hangin&rsquo; down over the road, &ldquo;Horse Exchange,&rdquo; sez he,
+&ldquo;What do you say, Samantha, do you spose I could change off the old mair,
+for a camel or sunthin&rsquo;? How would you like a camel to ride?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked at him in speechless witherin&rsquo; silence, and he went on hurridly,
+&ldquo;It would make a great show in Jonesville, wouldn&rsquo;t it, to see us
+comin&rsquo; to meetin&rsquo; on a camel, or to see us ridin&rsquo; in a cutter
+drawed by one. I guess I&rsquo;ll see about it, some other time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he went on hurridly, and almost incoherently as we see another sign, over
+the road - oh! how vollubly he did talk - &ldquo;Quick, Livery.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hate to see folks so dumb conceeted! Now I don&rsquo;t spose that man
+has got any hosses much faster than the old mair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Wing&rsquo;s!&rsquo; Shaw! I don&rsquo;t believe no such thing -
+a livery on wings. I don&rsquo;t believe a word on&rsquo;t. And you
+wouldn&rsquo;t ketch me on one on &rsquo;em, if they had!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Yet Sing!&rsquo;&rdquo; sez he, a lookin&rsquo; accost the street
+into a laundry house. &ldquo;What do I care if you do sing? &rsquo;Taint of
+much account if you do any way. <i>I</i> sing sometimes, I <i>yet</i> sing,&rdquo; says he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Sing</i>,&rdquo; sez I in neerly witherin&rsquo; tone. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d love
+to hear you sing, I haint yet and I&rsquo;ve lived with you agoin&rsquo; on 30
+years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, if you haint heerd me, it is because you are deef,&rdquo; sez he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But that is jest the way he kep&rsquo; on, a hurryin&rsquo; me along, and a
+talkin&rsquo; fast to try to get the price of that picture out of my head.
+Anon, and sometimes oftener, we would come to the word in big letters on signs,
+or on the fence, or the sides of barns, &ldquo;Pray.&rdquo; And sometimes it
+would read, &ldquo;Pray for my wife!&rdquo; And Josiah every time he came to
+the words would stop and reflect on &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Pray!&rsquo; What business is it of yourn, whether I pray or not?
+&lsquo;Pray for my wife!&rsquo; That haint none of your business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he, a shakin&rsquo; his fist at the fence, &ldquo;&rsquo;Taint likely I
+should have a wife without prayin&rsquo; for her. She needs it bad
+enough,&rdquo; sez he once, as he stood lookin&rsquo; at it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gin him a strange look, and he sez, &ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t like it, would
+you, if I didn&rsquo;t pray for you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;and truly as you say, the woman who is your
+wife needs prayer, she needs help, morn half the time she duz.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked kinder dissatisfied at the way I turned it, but he sez,
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Plumbin&rsquo; done here!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d love to know where they are goin&rsquo; to plum. I don&rsquo;t
+see no sign of plum trees, nor no stick to knock &rsquo;em off with.&rdquo; And
+agin he sez, &ldquo;You would make a great &lsquo;fuss, Samantha, if I should
+say what is painted up right there on that cross piece. You would say I wuz a
+swearin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I coldly, (or as cold as I could with my blood heated by the voyalence and
+rapidity of the walk he had been a leadin&rsquo; me,) &ldquo;There is a Van in
+front of it. Van Dam haint swearin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would say it wuz if <i>I</i> used it,&rdquo; sez he reproachfully.
+&ldquo;If I should fall down on the ice, or stub my toe, and trip up on the
+meetin&rsquo; house steps, and I should happen to mention the name of that
+street about the same time, you would say I wuz a swearin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did not reply to him; I wouldn&rsquo;t. And ag&rsquo;in he hurried me
+on&rsquo;ards by some good lookin&rsquo; bildin&rsquo;s, and trees, and
+tavrens, and cottages, and etc., etc., and we come to Caroline street, and
+Jane, and Matilda, and lots of wimmen&rsquo;s names.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Josiah sez, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll bet the man that named them streets wuz love
+sick!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he wuzn&rsquo;t no such thing. It was a father that owned the land, and
+laid out the streets, and named &rsquo;em for his daughters. Good old creeter!
+I wuzn&rsquo;t goin&rsquo; to have him run at this late day, and run down his
+own streets too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But ag&rsquo;in Josiah hurried me on&rsquo;ards. And bimeby we found ourselves
+a standin&rsquo; in front of a kind of a lonesome lookin&rsquo; house, big and
+square, with tall pillows in front. It wuz a standin&rsquo; back as if it wuz a
+kinder a drawin&rsquo; back from company, in a square yard all dark and shady
+with tall trees. And it all looked kinder dusky, and solemn like. And a
+bystander a standin&rsquo; by told us that it wuz &ldquo;ha&rsquo;nted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image26.gif" height="317" width="295" alt="The haunted house" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Josiah pawed at it, and shawed at the idee of a gost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I sez, &ldquo;There! that is the only thing Saratoga lacked to make her
+perfectly interestin&rsquo;, and that is a gost!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But agin Josiah pawed at the idee, and sez, &ldquo;There never wuz such a thing
+as a gost! and never will be.&rdquo; And sez he, &ldquo;what an extraordenary
+idiot anybody must be to believe in any sech thing.&rdquo; And ag&rsquo;in he
+looked very skernful and high-headed, and once ag&rsquo;in he shawed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I kep&rsquo; pretty middlin&rsquo; calm and serene and asked the bystander,
+when the gost ha&rsquo;nted, and where?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he said, it opened doors and blowed out lights mostly, and trampled up
+stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Openin&rsquo;, and blowin&rsquo;, and tramplin&rsquo;,&rdquo; sez I
+dreamily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez the man, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s what it duz.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And agin Josiah shawed loud. And agin I kep&rsquo; calm, and sez I,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d give a cent to see it.&rdquo; And sez I, &ldquo;Do you suppose
+it would blow out and trample if we should go in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Josiah grasped holt of my arm and sez, &ldquo;&rsquo;Taint safe! my dear
+Samantha! don&rsquo;t le&rsquo;s go near the house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why? &ldquo; sez I coldly, &ldquo;you say there haint no sech thing as a
+gost, what are you afraid on?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His teeth wuz fairly chatterin&rsquo;. &ldquo;Oh! there might be spiders there,
+or mice, it haint best to go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I turned silently round and started on, for my companion&rsquo;s looks was
+pitiful in the extreme. But I merely observed this, as we wended onwards,
+&ldquo;I have always noticed this, Josiah Allen, that them that shaw the most
+at sech things, are the ones whose teeth chatter when they come a nigh
+&rsquo;em, showin&rsquo; plain that the shawers are really the ones that
+believe in &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My teeth chattered,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;because my gooms ache.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;the leest said the soonest mended.&rdquo; And
+we went on fast ag&rsquo;in by big houses and little, and boardin&rsquo;
+houses, and boardin&rsquo; houses, and boardin&rsquo; houses, and tavrens, and
+tavrens, and he kept me a walkin&rsquo; till my feet wuz most blistered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I see what his aim wuz; I had recognized it all the hull time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as we went up the stairway into our room, perfectly tuckered out, both on
+us, I sez to him, in weary axents, &ldquo;That picture wuz cheap enough, for
+the money, wuzn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He groaned aloud. And sech is my love for that man, that the minute I heard
+that groan I immegetly added, &ldquo;Though I hadn&rsquo;t no idee of
+buyin&rsquo; it, Josiah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immegetly he smiled warmly, and wuz very affectionate in his demeener to me for
+as much as two hours and a half. Sech is the might of human love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hurryin&rsquo; me over them swelterin&rsquo; and blisterin&rsquo; streets,
+and showin&rsquo; me all the beauty and glory of the world, and his
+conversation had no effect, skercely on my mind. But what them hours of
+frenzied effert could not accomplish, that one still, small groan did. I love
+that man. I almost worship him, and he me, vise versey, and the same.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We found that Ardelia Tutt had been to see us in our absence. She had been into
+our room I see, for she had dropped one of her mits there. And the chambermaid
+said she had been in and waited for us quite a spell - the young man a
+waitin&rsquo; below on the piazza, so I s&rsquo;posed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I expect Ardelia wanted to show him off to us and I myself wuz quite anxus to
+see him, feelin&rsquo; worried and oncomfertable about Abram Gee and
+wantin&rsquo; to see if this young chap wuz anywhere nigh as good as Abram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well about a hour after we came back, Josiah missed his glasses he reads with.
+And we looked all over the house for &rsquo;em, and under the bed, and on the
+ceilin&rsquo;, and through our trunks and bandboxes, and all our pockets, and
+in the Bible, and Josiah&rsquo;s boots, and everywhere. And finely, after
+givin&rsquo; &rsquo;em up as lost, the idee come to us that they might possibly
+have ketched on the fringe of Ardelia&rsquo;s shawl, and so rode home with her
+on it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So we sent one of the office-boys home with her mit and asked her if she had
+seen Josiah&rsquo;s glasses. And word come back by the boy that she
+hadn&rsquo;t seen &rsquo;em, and she sent word to me to look on my
+pardner&rsquo;s head for &rsquo;em, and sure enough there we found &rsquo;em,
+right on his foretop, to both of our surprises.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sent also by the boy a poem she had wrote that afternoon, and sent word how
+sorry she wuz I wuzn&rsquo;t to home to see Mr. Flamburg. But I see him only a
+day or two after that, and I didn&rsquo;t like his looks a mite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he said, and stuck to it, that his father owned a large bank, that he wuz a
+banker, and a doin&rsquo; a heavy business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, that raised him dretfully in Ardelia&rsquo;s eyes; she owned up to me
+that it did. She owned to me that she lead always thought she would love to be
+a Banker&rsquo;s Bride. She thought it sounded rich. She said, &ldquo;banker
+sounded so different from baker.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sez to her coolly, that &ldquo;it wuz only a difference of one letter, and I
+never wuz much of a one to put the letter N above any of the others, or to be
+haughty on havin&rsquo; it added to, or diminished from my name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she kep&rsquo; on a goin&rsquo; with him. She told me it wuz real
+romanticle the way he got aquanted with her. He see her onbeknown to her one
+day, when she wuz a writin&rsquo; a poem on one of the benches in the park.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A Poem on a Bench!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wuz a settin&rsquo; on the bench, and a writin&rsquo; about it, she was a
+writin&rsquo; on the bench in two different ways. Curius, haint it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But to resoom. He immegetly fell in love with her. And he got a feller who wuz
+a boardin&rsquo; to his boardin&rsquo; place to interduce him to
+Ardelia&rsquo;s relative, Mr. Pixley, and Mr. Pixley interduced him to Ardelia.
+He told Ardelia&rsquo;s relatives the same story - That his father wuz a
+banker, that he owned a bank and wuz doin&rsquo; a heavy business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I watched that young chap, and watched him close, and I see there wuz one
+thing about him that could be depended on, he wuz truthful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seemed almost morbid on the subject, and would dispute himself half a hour,
+to get a thing or a story he wuz tellin&rsquo; jest exactly right. But he
+drinked; that I know for I know the symptoms. Coffee can&rsquo;t blind the eyes
+of her that waz once Smith, nor peppermint cast a mist before &rsquo;em. My
+nose could have took its oath, if noses wuz ever put onto a bar of Justice - my
+nose would have gin its firm testimony that Bial Flamburg drinked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there wuz that sort of a air about him, that I can&rsquo;t describe exactly
+- a sort of a half offish, half familier and wholly disagreeable mean, that can
+be onderstood but not described. No, you can&rsquo;t picture that liniment, but
+you can be affected by it. Wall, Bial had it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I kep&rsquo; on a not likin&rsquo; him, and kep&rsquo; stiddy onwards a
+likin&rsquo; Abram Gee. I couldn&rsquo;t help it, nor did&rsquo;nt want to. And
+I looked out constant to ketch him in some big story that would break him right
+down in Ardelia&rsquo;s eyes, for I knew if she had been brought up on any one
+commandment more&rsquo;n another, it wuz the one ag&rsquo;inst lyin&rsquo;. She
+hated lyin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had been brought up on the hull of the commandments but on that one in
+particeler; she wuz brung up sharp but good. But not one lie could I ketch him
+in. And he stuck to it, that his father wuz a banker and doin&rsquo; a heavy
+business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, it kep&rsquo; on, she a goin&rsquo; with him through ambition, for I see
+plain, by signs I knoo, that she didn&rsquo;t love him half as well as she did
+Abram. And I felt bad, dretful bad, to set still and see Ambition ondoin&rsquo;
+of her. For oft and oft she would speak to me of Bial&rsquo;s father&rsquo;s
+bank and the heft of the business he wuz a doin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I finally got so worked up in my mind that I gin a sly hint to Abram Gee,
+that if he ever wanted to get Ardelia Tutt, he had better make a summer trip to
+Saratoga. I never told Ardelia what I had done, but trusted to a
+overrulin&rsquo; destiny, that seems to enrap babys, and lunatiks, and soft
+little wimmen, when their heads get kinder turned by a man, and to
+Abram&rsquo;s honest face when she should compare it with Bial
+Flamburg&rsquo;s, and to Abram&rsquo;s pure, sweet breath with that mixture of
+stale cigars, tobacco, beer, and peppermint.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Abram wrote back to me that his mother wuz a lyin&rsquo; at the p&rsquo;int
+of death with a fever - that his sister Susan wuz sick a bed with the same
+fever and couldn&rsquo;t come a nigh her and he couldn&rsquo;t leave what might
+be his mother&rsquo;s death-bed. And he sez, if Ardelia had forgot him in so
+short a time, mebby it wuz the best thing he could do, to try and forget her.
+Anyway, he wouldn&rsquo;t leave his dying mother for anything or anybody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That wuz Abram Gee all over, a doin&rsquo; his duty every time by bread and
+humanity. But he added a postscript and it wuz wrote in a agitated hand - that
+jest as soon as his mother got so he could leave her, he should come to
+Saratoga.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The verses that Ardelia sent over to me wuz as follers:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;A LAY ON A FEMALE TROUT IN CENTRAL PARK.<br/>
+&ldquo;BY ARDELIA TUTT.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh trout, sweet female trout, oh fain would I<br/>
+In hottest day, perspirin&rsquo; dretfelee<br/>
+Desend, and dressed most cool like thee, would lie<br/>
+As deep in water, some two feet, or three<br/>
+Or even four.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Who would not dress like thee on summer day?<br/>
+How cool thy robes&mdash;lo! not one boddice waist<br/>
+Or corset stay, to make thee taper small.<br/>
+Thou taperest without them, and not then with haste,<br/>
+Or Bandaline.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Thou crimpest not, or bangest up thy hair;<br/>
+Thou hast no hair to bang, sweet trout so dear,<br/>
+Thou dost not dance round dances, nor repair<br/>
+Unto the thronged piazzas, nor appear,<br/>
+Sweet modest trout.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;In long and haughty trains thou never dost appear<br/>
+And switch them up and down the corredere and hall<br/>
+With diamond jewels hanging to thy ear;<br/>
+Thou hast not ears to hang them on, no! not at all.<br/>
+No, not one ear.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Thou walkest not in high heeled shoes, thou cannest not<br/>
+For reesons it were vain to now relate.<br/>
+Ah no! But let us cast one eye adown thy grot<br/>
+And see thee sweet and patient wear thy fate,<br/>
+And wear it well.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;At Garden parties, Race Course, Music Hall,<br/>
+We ne&rsquo;er have set our weary eyes thy form upon;<br/>
+Thou dost not ramble in the crowded maul,<br/>
+Thou hast no legs sweet trout to ramble on;<br/>
+Ah! no! dear one.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;And so thou seemest well content to saunter not,<br/>
+Or waltz about in garments fine and gay;<br/>
+Oh. Mortal Man! a lesson learn of Trout<br/>
+If thou no legs hast got, why seek to waltz away,<br/>
+Or promenade?<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;And, beautius female, learn thou of dear trout<br/>
+So move and swim in thine own native way;<br/>
+Seek not high stations, titles great, and flout<br/>
+Not thou at fate, but gently swim away<br/>
+On native waves.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Cool blooded hold thy heart, like female trout;<br/>
+Melt not at sweet, false words, that melt and seeth and burn;<br/>
+She melteth not, oh no! she cooly turns about<br/>
+And nibbles on, so thou, and follow on<br/>
+Sweet female one.&rdquo;<br/>
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>Chapter IX.<br/>
+JOSIAH&rsquo;S FLIRTATIONS.</h2>
+
+<p>
+They say there is a sight of flirtin&rsquo; done at Saratoga. I didn&rsquo;t
+hear so much about it as Josiah did, naturally there are things that are talked
+of more amongst men than women. Night after night he would come home and tell
+me how fashionable it wuz, and pretty soon I could see that he kinder wanted to
+follow the fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told him from the first on&rsquo;t that he&rsquo;d better let it entirely
+alone. Says I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, you wouldn&rsquo;t never carry it through
+successful if you should undertake it&mdash;and then think of the wickedness
+on&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he seemed sot. He said &ldquo;it wuz more fashionable amongst married men
+and wimmen, than the more single ones,&rdquo; he said &ldquo;it wuz dretful
+fashionable amongst pardners.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;I shall have, nothin&rsquo; to do with it,
+and I advise you, if you know when you are well off, to let it entirely
+alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; says he, fiercely, &ldquo;<i>You</i> needn&rsquo;t have
+nothin&rsquo; to do with it. It is nothin&rsquo; you would want to foller up.
+And I would ruther see you sunk into the ground, or be sunk myself, than to see
+you goin&rsquo; into it. Why,&rdquo; says he, savagely, &ldquo;I would tear a
+man lim from lim, if I see him a tryin&rsquo; to flirt with you.&rdquo; (Josiah
+Allen worships me.) &ldquo;But,&rdquo; says he, more placider like, &ldquo;men
+<i>have</i> to do things sometimes, that they know is too hard for their pardners to
+do&mdash;men sometimes feel called upon to do things that their pardners
+don&rsquo;t care about&mdash;that they haint strong enough to tackle. Wimmen
+are fragile creeters anyway.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image27.gif" height="308" width="207" alt="No flirting" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, the fallacy of them arguments&mdash;and the weakness of &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I didn&rsquo;t say nothin&rsquo; only to reiterate my utterance, that
+&ldquo;if he went into it, he would have to foller it up alone, that he
+musn&rsquo;t expect any help from me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no!&rdquo; says he. &ldquo;Oh! certainly not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His tone wuz very genteel, but there seemed to be sumthin&rsquo; strange in it.
+And I looked at him pityin&rsquo;ly over my specks. The hull idea on it wuz
+extremely distasteful to me, this talk about flirtin&rsquo;, and etc., at our
+ages, and with our stations in the Jonesville meetin&rsquo; house, and with our
+grandchildren.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I see from day to day that he wuz a hankerin&rsquo; after it, and I almost
+made up my mind that I should have to let him make a trial, knowin&rsquo; that
+experience wuz the best teacher, and knowin&rsquo; that his morals wuz sound,
+and he wuz devoted to me, and only went into the enterprize because he thought
+it wuz fashionable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There wuz a young English girl a boardin&rsquo; to the same place we did. She
+dressed some like a young man, carried a cane, etc. But she wuz one of the
+upper 10, and wuz as pretty as a picture, and I see Josiah had kinder sot his
+eyes on her as bein&rsquo; a good one to try his experiment with. He thought
+she wuz beautiful. But good land! I didn&rsquo;t care. I liked her myself. But
+I could see, though he couldn&rsquo;t see it, that she wuz one of the girls who
+would flirt with the town pump, or the meetin&rsquo; house steeple, if she
+couldn&rsquo;t get nobody else to flirt with. She wuz born so, but I suppose
+ontirely unbeknown to her when she wuz born.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Josiah Allen would set and look at her by the hour&mdash;dretful
+admirin&rsquo;. But good land! I didn&rsquo;t care. I loved to look at her
+myself. And then too I had this feelin&rsquo; that his morals wuz sound. But
+after awhile, I could see, and couldn&rsquo;t help seein&rsquo;, that he wuz a
+tryin&rsquo; in his feeble way to flirt with her. And I told him kindly, but
+firmly, &ldquo;that it wuz somethin&rsquo; that I hated to see a goin&rsquo;
+on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image28.gif" height="309" width="263" alt="Josiah admires" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+But he says, &ldquo;Well, dumb it all, Samantha, if anybody goes to a
+fashionable place, they ort to try to be fashionable. &rsquo;Taint
+nothin&rsquo; I <i>want</i> to do, and you ort to know it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I says in pityin&rsquo; axents but firm, &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t want to,
+Josiah, I wouldn&rsquo;t, fashion or no fashion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I see I couldn&rsquo;t convince him, and there happened to be a skercity of
+men jest then&mdash;and he kep&rsquo; it up, and it kep&rsquo; me on the <i>key
+veav</i>, as Maggie says, when she is on the tenter hooks of suspense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt bad to see it go on, not that I wuz jealous, no, my foretop lay smooth
+from day to day, not a jealous hair in it, not one&mdash;but I felt sorry for
+my companion. I see that while the endurin&rsquo; of it wuz hard and tejus for
+him (for truly he was not a addep at the business; it come tuff, feerful tuff
+on him), the endin&rsquo; wuz sure to be harder. And I tried to convince him,
+from a sense of duty, that she wuz makin&rsquo; fun of him&mdash;he had told me
+lots of the pretty things she had said to him&mdash;and out of principle I told
+him that she didn&rsquo;t mean one word of &rsquo;em. But I couldn&rsquo;t
+convince him, and as is the way of pardners, after I had sot the reasen and the
+sense before him, and he wouldn&rsquo;t hear to me, why then I had to set down
+and bear it. Such is some of the trials of pardners?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, it kep&rsquo; agoin&rsquo; on, and a goin&rsquo; on, and I kep&rsquo; a
+hatin&rsquo; to see it, for if anybody has <i>got</i> to flirt, which I am far from
+approvin&rsquo; of, but if I have <i>got</i> to see it a goin&rsquo; on, I would fain
+see it well done, and Josiah&rsquo;s efforts to flirt wuz like an effort of our
+old mair to play a tune on the melodian, no grace in it, no system, nor comfort
+to him, nor me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I s&rsquo;pose the girl got some fun out of it; I hope she did, for if she
+didn&rsquo;t it wuz a wearisome job all round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, a week or so rolled on, and it wuz still in progress. And one day an old
+friend of ours, Miss Ezra Balch, from the east part of Jonesville, come to see
+me. She come to Saratoga for the rheumatiz, and wuz gettin&rsquo; well fast,
+and Ezra was gettin&rsquo; entirely cured of biles, for which he had come,
+carbunkles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, she invited Josiah and me to take a ride with &rsquo;em, and we both
+accepted of it, and at the appointed time I wuz ready to the minute, down on
+the piazza, with my brown cotton gloves on, and my mantilly hung gracefully
+over my arm. But at the last minute, Josiah Allen said &ldquo;he couldn&rsquo;t
+go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I says &ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t you go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he says, kinder drawin&rsquo; up his collar, and
+smoothin&rsquo; down his vest, &ldquo;Oh, I have got another engagement.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked real high-headed, and I says to him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Josiah Allen didn&rsquo;t you promise Druzilla Balch that you would go
+with her and Ezra to-day?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall yes,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;but I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; says I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, Samantha, though they are well meanin&rsquo;, good people, they
+haint what you may call fashionable, they haint the upper 10.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen you have fell over 15 cents in my estimation, sense
+we have begun talkin&rsquo;, you won&rsquo;t go with &rsquo;em because they
+haint fashionable. They are good, honest Christian Methodists, and have stood
+by you and me many a time, in times of trouble, and now,&rdquo; says I,
+&ldquo;you turn against &rsquo;em because they haint fashionable.&rdquo; Says
+I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen where do you think you&rsquo;ll go to?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, probable down through Congress Park, and we may walk up as fur as
+the Indian Encampment. I feel kinder mauger to-day, and my corns ache
+feerful.&rdquo; (His boots wuz that small that they wuz sights to behold,
+sights!) &ldquo;We probably shan&rsquo;t walk fur,&rdquo; says he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I see how &rsquo;twuze in a minute. That English girl had asked him to walk
+with her, and my pardner had broken a solemn engagement with Ezra and Druzilla
+Balch to go a walkin&rsquo; with her. I see how &rsquo;twuz, but I sot in
+silence and one of the big rockin&rsquo; chairs, and didn&rsquo;t say
+nothin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally he says, with a sort of a anxious look onto his foreward:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t feel bad, do you Samantha? You haint jealous, are
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jealous!&rdquo; says I, a lookin&rsquo; him calmly over from head to
+feet&mdash;it wuz a witherin&rsquo; look, and yet pitiful, that took in the
+hull body and soul, and weighed &rsquo;em in the balances of common sense, and
+pity, and justice. It wuz a look that seemed to envelop him all to one time,
+and took him all in, his bald head, his vest, and his boots, and his mind (what
+he had), and his efforts to be fashionable, and his trials and tribulations at
+it, and&mdash;and everything. I give him that one long look, and then I says:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jealous? No, I haint jealous.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then silence rained again about us, and Josiah spoke out (his conscience was a
+troublin&rsquo; him), and he says:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know in fashionable life, Samantha, you have to do things which seem
+unkind, and Ezra, though a good, worthy man, can&rsquo;t understand these
+things as I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I: &ldquo;Josiah Allen, you&rsquo;ll see the day that you&rsquo;ll be
+sorry for your treatment of Druzilla Balch, and Ezra.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh wall,&rdquo; says he, pullin&rsquo; up his collar, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+bound to be fashionable. While I can go with the upper 10, it is my duty and my
+privilege to go with &rsquo;em, and not mingle in the lower classes like the
+Balches.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I firmly, &ldquo;You look out, or some of them 10 will be the death of
+you, and you may see the day that you will be glad to leave &rsquo;em, the hull
+10 of em, and go back to Druzilla and Ezra Balch.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But what more words might have passed between us, wuz cut short by the arrival
+of Ezra and Druzilla in a good big carriage, with Miss Balch on the back seat,
+and Ezra acrost from her, and a man up in front a drivin&rsquo;. It wuz a good
+lookin&rsquo; sight, and I hastened down the steps, Josiah disappearin&rsquo;
+inside jest as quick as he ketched sight of their heads.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They asked me anxiously &ldquo;where Josiah wuz and why he didn&rsquo;t
+come?&rdquo; And I told &rsquo;em, &ldquo;that Josiah had told me that
+mornin&rsquo; that he felt manger, and he had some corns that wuz a
+achin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So much wuz truth, and I told it, and then moved off the subject, and they
+seein&rsquo; my looks, didn&rsquo;t pursue it any further. They proposed to go
+back to their boardin&rsquo; place, and take in Deacon Balch, Ezra&rsquo;s
+brother from Chicago, who wuz stayin&rsquo; there a few days to recooperate his
+energies, and get help for tizick. So they did. He wuz a widowed man. Yes, he
+was the widower of Cornelia Balch who I used to know well, a good lookin&rsquo;
+and a good actin&rsquo; man. And he seemed to like my appeerance pretty well,
+though I am fur from bein&rsquo; the one that ort to say it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as we rolled on over the broad beautiful road towards Saratoga Lake, I
+begun to feel better in my mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Deacon wuz edifyin&rsquo; in conversation, and he thought, and said,
+&ldquo;that my mind was the heftiest one that he had ever met, and he had met
+hundreds and hundreds of &rsquo;em.&rdquo; He meant it, you could see that, he
+meant every word he said. And it wuz kind of comfortin&rsquo; to hear the
+Deacon say so, for I respected the Deacon, and I <i>knew</i> he meant just what he
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said, and believed, though it haint so, but the Deacon believed it,
+&ldquo;that I looked younger than I did the day I wuz married.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told him &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t feel so young.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;then my looks deceived me, for I looked as
+young, if not younger.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Deacon Balch is a good, kind, Christian man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His conversation was very edifyin&rsquo;, and he looked kinder good, and
+warm-hearted at me out of his eyes, which wuz blue, some the color of my
+Josiah&rsquo;s. But alas! I felt that though some comforted and edified by his
+talk, still, my heart was not there, not there in that double buggy with 2
+seats, but wuz afur off with my pardner. I felt that Josiah Allen wuz a
+carryin&rsquo; my heart with him wherever he wuz a goin&rsquo;. Curious, haint
+it? Now you may set and smile, and talk, and seem to be enjoyin&rsquo; yourself
+first-rate, with agreeable personages all around you, and you do enjoy yourself
+with that part of your nater. But with it all, down deep under the laughs, and
+the bright words, the comfort you get out of the answerin&rsquo; laughs, the
+gay talk, under it all is the steady consciousness that the real self is fur
+away, the heart, the soul is fur away, held by some creeter whether he be high,
+or whether he be low, it don&rsquo;t matter&mdash;there your heart is, a
+goin&rsquo; towards happiness, or a travellin&rsquo; towards pain as the case
+may be&mdash;curious, haint it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Ezra and Druzilla wanted to go to the Sulphur Springs way beyend Saratoga
+Lake, and as the Deacon wuz agreeable, and I also, we sot out for it, though,
+as we all said, it wuz goin&rsquo; to be a pretty long and tegus journey for a
+hot day. But we went along the broad, beautiful highway, by the high, handsome
+gates of the Racing Park, down, down, by handsome houses and shady woods, and
+fields of bright-colored wild flowers on each side of the road, down to the
+beautiful lake, acrost it over the long bridge, and then into the long, cool
+shadows of the bendin&rsquo; trees that bend over the road on each side, while
+through the green boughs, jest at our side we could ketch a sight of the blue,
+peaceful waters, a lyin&rsquo; calm and beautiful jest by the side of
+us&mdash;on, on, through the long, sheltered pathway, out into the sunshine for
+a spell, with peaceful fields a layin&rsquo; about us, and peaceful cattle a
+wanderin&rsquo; over &rsquo;em, and then into the shade agin, till at last we
+see a beautiful mountin&rsquo;, with its head held kinder high, crowned with
+ferns and hemlocks, and its feet washed by the cool water of the beautiful
+lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shadows of this mountin&rsquo;, tree crowned, lay on the smooth, placid
+wave, and a white sail boat wuz a comin&rsquo; round the side on&rsquo;t, and
+floatin&rsquo; over the green, crystal branches, and golden shadows. It wuz a
+fair seen, seen for a moment, and then away we went into the green shadows of
+the woods again, round a corner, and here we wuz, at the Sulphur Springs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a quiet peaceful spot. The house looked pleasant, and so did the
+Landlord, and Landlady, and we dismounted and walked through a long clean hall,
+and went out onto a back piazza and sot down. And I thought as I sot there,
+that I would be glad enough to set there, for some time. Everything looked so
+quiet and serene. The paths leadin&rsquo; up the hills in different directions,
+out into the green woods, looked quiet; the pretty, grassy backyard
+leadin&rsquo; down to the water side looked green and peaceable, and around
+all, and beyond all, wuz the glory of the waters. They lay stretched out
+beautiful and in heavenly calm, and the sun, which wuz low in the West, made a
+gold path acrost &rsquo;em, where it seemed as if one could walk over only a
+little ways, into Perfect Repose. The Lake somehow looked like a glowin&rsquo;
+pavement, it didn&rsquo;t look like water, but it seemed like broad fields of
+azure and palest lavender, and pinky grey, and pearly white, and every soft and
+delicate color that water could be crystalized into. And over all lay the
+glowin&rsquo;, tender sunset skies&mdash;it wuz a fair seen. And even as I
+looked on in a almost rapped way, the sun come out from behind a soft cloud,
+and lay on the water like a pillow of fire jest as I dream that pillow did,
+that went ahead of my old 4 fathers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rest on &rsquo;em seemed to be more intent on the lemonade with 2 straws in
+&rsquo;em. I didn&rsquo;t make no fuss. They are nice, clean folks, I make no
+doubt. I wouldn&rsquo;t make no fuss and tell on the hired man&mdash;women of
+the house have enough to worry &rsquo;em anyway. But he had dropped some straws
+into our tumblers, every one on &rsquo;em, I dare presume to say they had been
+a fillin&rsquo; straw ticks. I jest took mine out in a quiet way, and throwed
+&rsquo;em to one side. The rest on &rsquo;em, I see, and it wuz real good in
+&rsquo;em, drinked through &rsquo;em, as we used to at school. It wuz real good
+in Druzilla, and Ezra, and also in the Deacon. It kinder ondeared the hull on
+&rsquo;em to me. I hope this won&rsquo;t be told of, it orto be kep&mdash;for
+he wuz a goodnatured lookin&rsquo; hired man, black, but not to blame for
+that&mdash;and good land! what is a straw?&mdash;anyway they wuz clean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There wuz some tents sot up there in the back yard, lookin&rsquo; some as I
+s&rsquo;pose our old 4 fathers tents did, in the pleasant summer times of old.
+And I asked a bystander a standin&rsquo; by, whose tents they wuz, and he said
+they wuz Free Thinkers havin&rsquo; a convention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I says, &ldquo;How free?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he said &ldquo;they wuz great cases to doubt everything, they doubted
+whether they wuz or not, and if they wuz or when, and if so, why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he says, &ldquo;won&rsquo;t you stay to-night over and attend the
+meetin&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I says, &ldquo;What are they goin&rsquo; to teach tonight?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he says, &ldquo;The Whyness of the What&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I says, &ldquo;I guess that is too deep a subject for me to tackle,&rdquo; and
+says I, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t they believe anything easier than that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he says, &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t believe anything. That is their
+belief&mdash;to believe nothin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothin&rsquo;!&rdquo; says I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;Nothin&rsquo;.&rdquo; And, says he,
+&ldquo;to-morrer they are goin&rsquo; to prove beyond any question, that there
+haint any God, nor anything, and never wuz anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be they?&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;and won&rsquo;t you come and be
+convinced?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked off onto the peaceful waters, onto the hills that lay as the mountains
+did about Jerusalem, onto the pillow of fire that seemed to hold in it the
+flames of that light that had lighted the old world onto the mornin&rsquo; of
+the new day,&mdash;and one star had come out, and stood tremblin&rsquo; over
+the brow of the mountain and I thought of that star that had riz so long time
+ago, and had guided the three wise men, guided &rsquo;em jest alike from their
+three different homes, entirely unbeknown to each other, guidin&rsquo;
+&rsquo;em to the cradle where lay the infant Redeemer of the world, so long
+foretold by bard and prophet. I looked out onto the heavenly glory of the day,
+and then inside into my heart, that held a faith jest as bright and
+undyin&rsquo; as the light of that star&mdash;and I says, &ldquo;No, I guess I
+won&rsquo;t go and be convinced.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we riz up to go most immediately afterwerds, and the Deacon (he is very
+smart) observed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How highly tickled and even highlarious the man seemed in talkin&rsquo;
+about there not bein&rsquo; any future.&rdquo; And he says, &ldquo;It wuz a
+good deal like a man laughin&rsquo; and clappin&rsquo; his hands to see his
+house burn down&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;it wuz far wurse, for his home wouldn&rsquo;t stand
+more&rsquo;n a 100 years or so, and this home he wuz a tryin&rsquo; to destroy,
+wuz one that would last through eternity.&rdquo; &ldquo;But,&rdquo; says I,
+&ldquo;it hain&rsquo;t built by hands, and I guess their hands hain&rsquo;t
+strong enough to tear it down, nor high enough to set fire to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the Deacon says, &ldquo;Jest so, Miss Allen, you spoke truthfully, and
+eloquent.&rdquo; (The Deacon is very smart.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we got into the buggy to start, the Deacon says, &ldquo;I would like to
+resoom the conversation with you, Josiah Allen&rsquo;s wife, a goin&rsquo;
+back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Druzilla spoke right out and says, &ldquo;I will set on the front seat by
+Ezra.&rdquo; I says, &ldquo;Oh no, Druzilla, I can hear the Deacon from where I
+sot before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the Deacon says, Talkin&rsquo; loud towards night always offected his voice
+onpleasantly, mebby Druzilla and he had better change seats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again I demurred. And then Druzilla said she must set by Ezra, she wanted to
+tell him sumthin&rsquo; in confidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so it wuz arraigned, for I felt that I wuz not the one to come between
+pardners, no indeed. The road laid peacefuller and beautifuller than ever, or
+so it seemed under the sunset glory that sort o&rsquo; hung round it. Jest
+about half way through the woods we met the English girl, a stridin&rsquo;
+along alone, each step more&rsquo;n 3 feet long, or so it seemed to me. There
+wuz a look of health, and happy determination on her forwerd as she strided
+rapidly by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I would have fain questioned her concernin&rsquo; my pardner, as she strode by,
+but before I could call out, or begon to her she wuz far in the rearwerd, and
+goin&rsquo; in a full pressure and in a knot of several miles an hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, from that minute I felt strange and curious. And though Druzilla and Ezra
+was agreeable and the Deacon edifyin&rsquo;, I didn&rsquo;t seem to feel
+edified, and the most warm-hearted looks didn&rsquo;t seem to warm my heart
+none, it wuz oppressed with gloomy forebodings of, Where wuz my pardner? They
+had laid out to set out together. Had they sot? This question was a
+goverin&rsquo; me, and the follerin&rsquo; one: If they had sot out together,
+where wuz my pardner, Josiah Allen, now? As I thought these feerful thoughts,
+instinctively I turned around to see if I could see a trace of his companion in
+the distance. Yes, I could ketch a faint glimpse of her as she wuz
+mountin&rsquo; a diclivity, and stood for an instant in sight, but long before
+even, she disopeered agin, for her gait wuz tremendous, and at a rate of a good
+many knots she wuz a goin&rsquo;, that I knew. And the fearful thought would
+rise, Josiah Allen could not go more than half a knot, if he could that. He wuz
+a slow predestinatur any way, and then his corns was feerful, and never could
+be told&mdash;and his boots had in &rsquo;em the elements of feerful
+sufferin&rsquo;. It wuz all he could do when he had &rsquo;em on to hobble down
+to the spring, and post-office. Where? where wuz he? And she a goin&rsquo; at
+the rate of so many knots.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! the agony of them several minutes, while these thoughts wuz rampagin
+through my destracted brain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! if pardners only knew the agony they bring onto their devoted companions,
+by their onguarded and thoughtless acts, and attentions to other females, gin
+without proper reseerch and precautions, it would draw their liniments down
+into expressions of shame and remorse. Josiah wouldn&rsquo;t have gone with her
+if he had known the number of knots she wuz a goin&rsquo;, no, not one
+step&mdash;then why couldn&rsquo;t he have found out the number of them
+knots&mdash;why couldn&rsquo;t he? Why can&rsquo;t pardners look ahead and see
+to where their gay attentions, their flirtations that they call mild and
+innercent, will lead &rsquo;em to? Why can&rsquo;t they realize that it haint
+only themselves they are injurin&rsquo;, but them that are bound to &rsquo;em
+by the most sacred ties that folks can be twisted up in? Why can&rsquo;t they
+realize that a end must come to it, and it may be a fearful and a shameful one,
+and if it is a happiness that stops, it will leave in the heart when happiness
+gets out, a emptiness, a holler place, where like as not onhappiness will get
+in, and mebby stay there for some time, gaulin&rsquo; and heart-breakin&rsquo;
+to the opposite pardner to see it go on?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it is indifference, or fashion, or anything of that sort, why it don&rsquo;t
+pay none of the time, it don&rsquo;t seem to me it duz, and the end will be
+emptier and hollerer then the beginnin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the case of my pardner it wuz fashion, nothing but the butterfly of fashion
+he wuz after, to act in a high-toned, fashionable manner, like other
+fashionable men. And jest see the end on&rsquo;t why he had brought
+sufferin&rsquo; of the deepest dye onto his companion, and <i>what</i>, <i>what</i> hed he
+brought onto himself&mdash;onto his feet?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! the agony of them several moments while them thoughts was a rackin&rsquo;
+at me. The moments swelled out into a half hour, it must have been a long half
+hour, before I see far ahead, for the eyes of love is keen - a form a
+settin&rsquo; on the grass by the wayside, that I re<i>cog</i>nized as the form of my
+pardner. As we drew nearer we all re<i>cog</i>nized the figure&mdash;but Josiah Allen
+didn&rsquo;t seem to notice us. His boots was off, and his stockin&rsquo;s, and
+even in that first look I could see the agony that was a rendin&rsquo; them
+toes almost to burstin&rsquo;. Oh, how sorry I felt for them toes! He was a
+restin&rsquo; in a most dejected and melancholy manner on his hand, as if it
+wuz more than sufferin&rsquo; that ailed him&mdash;he looked a sufferer from
+remorse, and regret, and also had the air of one whom mortification has
+stricken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He never seemed to sense a thing that wuz passin&rsquo; by him, till the driver
+pulled up his horses clost by him, and then he looked up and see us. And far be
+it from me to describe the way he looked in his lowly place on the grass. There
+wuz a good stun by him on which he might have sot, but no, he seemed to feel
+too mean to get up onto that stun; grass, lowly, unassumin&rsquo; grass, wuz
+what seemed to suit him best, and on it he sot with one of his feet stretched
+out in front of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! the pitifulness of that look he gin us, oh! the meakinness of it. And even,
+when his eye fell on the Deacon a settin&rsquo; by my side, oh! the wild gleam
+of hatred, and sullen anger that glowed within his orb, and revenge! He looked
+at the Deacon, and then at his boots, and I see the wild thought wuz a
+enterin&rsquo; his sole, to throw that boot at him. But I says out of that
+buggy the very first thing the words I have so oft spoke to him in hours of
+danger:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Joisiah, be calm!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His eye fell onto the peaceful grass agin, and he says: &ldquo;Who hain&rsquo;t
+a bein&rsquo; calm? I should say I wuz calm enough, if that is what you
+want.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, oh, the sullenness of that love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says Ezra, good man&mdash;he see right through it all in a minute, and so did
+Druzilla and the Deacon&mdash;says Ezra, &ldquo;Get up on the seat with the
+driver, Josiah Allen, and drive back with us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; says Josiah, &ldquo;I have no occasion, I am a settin&rsquo;
+here,&rdquo; (looking round in perfect agony) &ldquo;I am a settin&rsquo; here
+to admire the scenery.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I leaned over the side of the buggy, and says I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, do
+you get in and ride, it will kill you to walk back; put on your boots if you
+can, and ride, seein&rsquo; Ezra is so perlite as to ask you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I see he is very perlite, I see you have set amongst very perlite
+folks, Samantha,&rdquo; says he, a glarin&rsquo; at Deacon Balch as if he would
+rend him from lim to lim, &ldquo;But as I said, I have no occasion to ride, I
+took off my boots and stockin&rsquo;s merely&mdash;merely to pass away time.
+You know at fashionable resorts,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;it is sometimes hard
+for men to pass away time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I in low, deep accents, &ldquo;Do put on your stockin&rsquo;s, and your
+boots, if you can get &rsquo;em on, which I doubt, but put your stockin&rsquo;s
+on this minute, and get in, and ride.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; says Ezra, &ldquo;hurry up and get in, Josiah Allen, it must
+be dretful oncomfortabe a settin&rsquo; down there in the grass.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; says Josiah, and he kinder whistled a few bars of no tune
+that wuz ever heard on, or ever will be heard on agin, so wild and meloncholy
+it wuz&mdash;&ldquo;I sot down here kind o&rsquo; careless. I thought
+seein&rsquo; I hadn&rsquo;t much on hand to do at this time o&rsquo; year, I
+thought I would like to look at my feet&mdash;we hain&rsquo;t got a very big
+lookin&rsquo; glass in our room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, how incoherent and over-crazed he was a becomin&rsquo;! Who ever heard of
+seein&rsquo; anybody&rsquo;s feet in a lookin&rsquo; glass&mdash;of
+dependin&rsquo; on a lookin&rsquo; glass for a sight on &rsquo;em? Oh, how I
+pitied that man! and I bent down and says to him in soothin&rsquo; axents:
+&ldquo;Josiah Allen, to please your pardner you put on your stockin&rsquo;s and
+get into this buggy. Take your boots in your hand, Josiah, I know you
+can&rsquo;t get &rsquo;em on, you have walked too far for them corns. Corns
+that are trampled on, Josiah Allen, rise up and rends you, or me, or anybody
+else who owns &rsquo;em or tramples on &rsquo;em. It hain&rsquo;t your fault,
+nobody blames you. Now get right in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, do,&rdquo; says the Deacon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! the look that Josiah Allen gin him. I see the voyolence of that look, that
+rested first on the Deacon, and then on that, boot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And agin I says, &ldquo;Josiah Allen.&rdquo; And agin the thought of his own
+feerful acts, and my warnin&rsquo;s came over him, and again mortification
+seemed to envelop him like a mantilly, the tabs goin&rsquo; down and
+coverin&rsquo; his lims&mdash;and agin he didn&rsquo;t throw that boot. Agin
+Deacon Balch escaped oninjured, saved by my voice, and Josiah&rsquo;s inward
+conscience, inside of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, suffice it to say, that after a long parley, Josiah Allen wuz a
+settin&rsquo; on the high seat with the driver, a holdin&rsquo; his boots in
+his hand, for truly no power on earth could have placed them boots on Josiah
+Allen&rsquo;s feet in the condition they then wuz.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so he rode on howewards, occasionally a lookin&rsquo; down on the Deacon
+with looks that I hope the recordin&rsquo; angel didn&rsquo;t photograph, so
+dire, and so revengeful, and jealous, and&mdash;and everything, they wuz. And
+ever, after ketchin&rsquo; the look in my eye, the look in his&rsquo;n would
+change to a heart-rendin&rsquo; one of remorse, and sorrow, and shame for what
+he had done. And the Deacon, wantin&rsquo; to be dretful perlite to him, would
+ask him questions, and I could see the side of Josiah&rsquo;s face, all
+glarin&rsquo; like a hyena at the sound of his voice, and then he would turn
+round and ossume a perlite genteel look as he answered him, and then he glare
+at me in a mad way every time I spoke to the Deacon, and then his mad look
+would change, even to one of shame and meakinness. And he in his stockin&rsquo;
+feet, and a pertendin&rsquo; that he didn&rsquo;t put his boots on, because it
+wuzn&rsquo;t wuth while to put &rsquo;em on agin so near bed-time. And he that
+sot out that afternoon a feelin&rsquo; so haughty, and lookin&rsquo; down on
+Ezra and Druzilla, and bein&rsquo; brung back by &rsquo;em, in that
+condition&mdash;and bein&rsquo; goured all the time by thoughts of the
+ignominious way his flirtin&rsquo; had ended, by her droppin&rsquo; him by the
+side of the road, like a weed she had trampled on too hardly. And a bein&rsquo;
+gourded deeper than all the rest of his agonies, by a senseless jealousy of
+Deacon Balch&mdash;and a thinkin&rsquo; for the first time in his life, what it
+would be, if her affections, that had been like a divine beacon to him all his
+life, if that flame should ever go out, or ever flicker in its earthly
+socket&mdash;oh, those thoughts that he had seemed to consider in his own mad
+race for fashion&mdash;oh, how that sass that had seemed sweet to him as a
+gander, oh how bitter and poisonous it wuz to partake of as a goose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! the agony of that ride. We went middlin&rsquo; slow back&mdash;and before
+we got to Saratoga the English girl went past us, she had been to the Sulphur
+Springs and back agin. She didn&rsquo;t pay no attention to us, for she wuz
+alayin&rsquo; on a plan in her own mind, for a moonlight pedestrian excursion
+on foot, that evenin&rsquo;, out to the old battle ground of Saratoga.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah never looked to the right hand or the left, as she passed him, at many,
+many a knot an hour. And I felt that my pardner&rsquo;s sufferin from that
+cause was over, and mine too, but oh! by what agony wuz it gained. For 3 days
+and 3 nights he never stood on any of his feet for a consecutive minute and a
+half, and I bathed him with anarky, and bathed his very soul with many a sweet
+moral lesson at the same time. And when at last Josiah Allen emerged from that
+chamber, he wuz a changed man in his demeanor and liniment, such is the power
+of love and womanly devotion.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image29.gif" height="277" width="454" alt="Sore feet" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+He never looked at a woman durin&rsquo; our hull stay at Saratoga, save with
+the eye of a philosopher and a Methodist.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image30.gif" height="283" width="443" alt="Changed man" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>Chapter X.<br/>
+MISS G. WASHINGTON FLAMM.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Miss G. Washington Flamm is a very fashionable woman. Thomas Jefferson carried
+her through a law-suit, and carried her stiddy and safe. (She wuz in the right
+on&rsquo;t, there haint no doubt of that.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had come to Jonesville for the summer to board, her husband bein&rsquo; to
+home at the time in New York village, down on Wall street. He had to stay
+there, so she said. I don&rsquo;t know why, but s&rsquo;pose sunthin&rsquo; wuz
+the matter with the wall; anyway he couldn&rsquo;t leave it. And she went round
+to different places a good deal for her health. There didn&rsquo;t seem to be
+much health round where her husband wuz, so she had to go away after it, go a
+huntin&rsquo; for it, way over to Europe and back ag&rsquo;in; and away off to
+California, and Colorado, and Long Branch, and Newport, and Saratoga, and into
+the Country. It made it real bad for Miss Flamm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now I always found it healthier where Josiah wuz than in any other place.
+Difference in folks I s&rsquo;pose. But they say there is sights and sights of
+husbands and wives jest like Miss Flamm. Can&rsquo;t find a mite of health
+anywhere near where their families is, and have to poke off alone after it. It
+makes it real bad for &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But anyway she came to Jonesville for her health. And she hearn of Thomas
+Jefferson and employed him. It wuz money that fell onto her from her father, or
+that should have fell, that she wuz a tryin&rsquo; to git it to fall. And he
+won the case. It fell. She wuz rich as a Jew before she got this money, but she
+acted as tickled over it as if she wuzn&rsquo;t worth a cent. (Human nater.)
+She paid Thomas J. well and she and Maggie and he got to be quite good friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She is a well-meanin&rsquo;, fat little creeter, what there is of her. I have
+seen folks smaller than she is, and then ag&rsquo;in we seen them that
+wuzn&rsquo;t so small. She is middlin&rsquo; good lookin&rsquo;, not old by any
+means, but there is a deep wrinkle plowed right into her forward, and down each
+side of her mouth. They are plowed deep. And I have always wondered to myself
+who held the plow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz&rsquo;nt age, for she haint old enough. Wuz it Worry? That will do as
+good a day&rsquo;s work a plowin&rsquo; as any creeter I ever see, and work as
+stiddy after it gits to doin&rsquo; day&rsquo;s works in a female&rsquo;s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waz it Dissatisfaction and Disappointment? They, too, will plow deep furrows
+and a sight of &rsquo;em. I don&rsquo;t know what it wuz. Mebby it wuz her
+waist and sleeves. Her sleeves wuz so tight that they kep&rsquo; her hands
+lookin&rsquo; a kinder bloated and swelled all the time, and must have been
+dretful painful. And her waist&mdash;it wuz drawed in so at the bottom, that to
+tell the livin&rsquo; truth it wuzn&rsquo;t much bigger&rsquo;n a pipe&rsquo;s
+tail. It beat all to see the size immegatly above and below, why it looked
+perfectly meraculous. She couldn&rsquo;t get her hands up to her head to save
+her life; if she felt her head a tottlin&rsquo; off her shoulders she
+couldn&rsquo;t have lifted her hands to have stiddied it, and, of course, she
+couldn&rsquo;t get a long breath, or short ones with any comfort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mebby that worried her, and then ag&rsquo;in, mebby it wuz dogs. I know it
+would wear me out to take such stiddy care on one, day and night. I never
+seemed to feel no drawin&rsquo;s to take care of animals, wash &rsquo;em, and
+bathe &rsquo;em, and exercise &rsquo;em, etc., etc., never havin&rsquo; been in
+the menagery line and Josiah always keepin&rsquo; a boy to take care of the
+animals when he wuzn&rsquo;t well. Mebby it wuz dogs. Anyway she took splendid
+care of hern, jest wore herself out a doin&rsquo; for it stiddy day and night
+and bein&rsquo; trampled on, and barked at almost all the time she wuz a
+bringin&rsquo; on it up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, she took perfectly wonderful care on&rsquo;t, for a woman in her health.
+She never had been able to take any care of her children, bein&rsquo; <i>very</i>
+delicate. Never had been well enough to have any of &rsquo;em in the room with
+her nights, or in the day time either. They tired her so, and she wuz one of
+the wimmen who felt it wuz her <i>duty</i> to preserve her health for her
+family&rsquo;s sake. Though <i>when</i> they wuz a goin&rsquo; to get the benefit of
+her health I don&rsquo;t know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But howsumever she never could take a mite of care of her children, they wuz
+brought up on wet nurses, and bottles, etc., etc., and wuz rather weakly, some
+on &rsquo;em. The nurses, wet and dry ones both, used to gin &rsquo;em things
+to make &rsquo;em sleep, and kinder yank &rsquo;em round and scare &rsquo;em
+nights to keep &rsquo;em in the bed, and neglect &rsquo;em a good deal, and
+keep &rsquo;em out in the brilin&rsquo; sun when they wanted to see their bows;
+and for the same reeson keepin&rsquo; em out in their little thin dresses in
+the cold, and pinch their little arms black and blue if they went to tell any
+of their tricks. And they learnt the older ones to be deceitful and sly and
+cowerdly. Learnt &rsquo;em to use jest the same slang phrases and low language
+that they did; tell the same lies, and so they wuz a spilin&rsquo; &rsquo;em in
+every way; spilin&rsquo; their brains with narcotics, their bodies by neglect
+and bad usage, and their minds and morals by evil examples.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You see some nurses are dretful good. But Miss Flamm&rsquo;s health bein&rsquo;
+so poor and her mind bein&rsquo; so took up with fashion, dogs, etc., that she
+couldn&rsquo;t take the trouble to find out about their characters and they wuz
+dretful poor unbeknown to her. She had dretful bad luck with &rsquo;em, and the
+last one drinked, so I have been told.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, it made it dretful bad for Miss Flamm that her health was so poor, and her
+fashionable engagements so many and arduous that she didn&rsquo;t have the time
+to take a little care of her children and the dog too. For you could see plain,
+by the care that she took of that dog, what a splendid hand she would be with
+the children, if she only had the time and health.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why, I don&rsquo;t believe there wuz another dog in America, either the upper
+or lower continent, that had more lovin&rsquo;, anxus, intelligent, devoted
+attention than that dog had, day and night, from Miss Flamm. She took 2 dog
+papers, so they say, to get the latest information on the subject; she compared
+notes with other dog wimmen, I don&rsquo;t say it in a runnin&rsquo; way at
+all. I mean wimmen who have gin their hull minds to dog, havin&rsquo;, some on
+&rsquo;em, renounced husbands, and mothers, and children for dog sake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You know there are sich wimmen, and Miss Flamm read up and studied with
+constant and absorbed attention all the latest things on dog. Their habits,
+their diet, their baths, their robes, their ribbons, and bells, and collars,
+their barks&mdash;nothin&rsquo; escaped her; she put the best things she
+learned into practice, and studied out new ones for herself. She said she had
+reduced the subject to a science, and she boasted proudly that her dog, the
+last one she had, went ahead of any dog in the country. And I don&rsquo;t know
+but it did. I knew it had a good healthy bark. A loud strong bark that must
+have made it bad for her in the night. It always slept with her, for she
+didn&rsquo;t dast to trust it out of her sight nights. It had had some spells
+in the night, kinder chills, or spuzzums like, and she didn&rsquo;t dast to be
+away from it for a minute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wouldn&rsquo;t let the wet nurse tech it, for her youngest child, little G.
+Washington Flamm, Jr., wuzn&rsquo;t very healthy, and Miss Flamm thought that
+mebby the dog might ketch his weakness if the nurse handled it right after she
+had been nursin&rsquo; the baby. And then she objected to the nurse, so I
+hearn, on account of her bein&rsquo; wet. She wanted to keep the dog dry. I
+hearn this; I don&rsquo;t know as it wuz so. But I hearn these things long
+enough before I ever see her. And when I did see her I see that they
+didn&rsquo;t tell me no lies about her devotion to the dog, for she jest
+worshiped it, that was plain to be seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, she has got a splendid place at Saratoga; a cottage she calls it. <i>I</i>,
+myself, should call it a house, for it is big as our house and Deacon
+Peddick&rsquo;ses and Mr. Bobbett&rsquo;ses all put together, and I don&rsquo;t
+know but bigger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, she invited Josiah and me to drive with her, and so her dog and she
+stopped for us. (I put the dog first, for truly she seemed to put him forward
+on every occasion in front of herself, and so did her high-toned relatives, who
+wuz with her.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Or I s&rsquo;pose they wuz her relatives for they sot up straight, and wuz
+dretful dressed up, and acted awful big-feelin&rsquo; and never took no notice
+of Josiah and me, no more than if we hadn&rsquo;t been there. But good land! I
+didn&rsquo;t care for that. What if they didn&rsquo;t pay any attention to us?
+But Josiah, on account of his tryin&rsquo; to be so fashionable, felt it
+deeply, and he sez to me while Miss Flamm wuz a bendin&rsquo; down over the
+dog, a talkin&rsquo; to him, for truly it wuz tired completely out a
+barkin&rsquo; at Josiah, it had barked at him every single minute sense we had
+started, and she wuz a talkin&rsquo; earnest to it a tryin&rsquo; to soothe it,
+and Josiah whispered to me, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you, Samantha, why them
+fellers feel above me; it is because I haint dressed up in sech a dressy
+fashion. Let me once have on a suit like their&rsquo;n, white legs and yellow
+trimmin&rsquo;s, and big shinin&rsquo; buttons sot on in rows, and white
+gloves, and rosettes in my hat&mdash;why I could appear in jest as good company
+as they go in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image31.gif" height="274" width="407" alt="In the Carriage" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;You are too old to be dressed up so gay, Josiah Allen. There is a
+time for all things. Gay buttons and rosettes look well with brown hair and
+sound teeth, but they ort to gently pass away when they do. Don&rsquo;t talk
+any more about it, Josiah, for I tell you plain, you are too old to dress like
+them, they are young men.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; he whispered, in deep resolve, &ldquo;I will have a white
+rosette in my hat, Samantha. I will go so far, old or not old. What a sensation
+it will create in the Jonesville meetin&rsquo;-house to see me come a
+walkin&rsquo; proudly in, with a white rosette in my hat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are goin&rsquo; to walk into meetin&rsquo; with your hat on, are
+you?&rdquo; sez I coldly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, ketch a feller up. You know what I mean. And don&rsquo;t you think
+I&rsquo;ll make a show? Won&rsquo;t it create a sensation in Jonesville?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I: &ldquo;Most probable it would. But you haint a goin&rsquo; to wear no
+bows on your hat at your age, not if I can break it up,&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked almost black at me, and sez he, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go too fur,
+Samantha! I&rsquo;ll own you&rsquo;ve been a good wife and mother and all that,
+but there is a line that you must stop at. You <i>mustn&rsquo;t</i> go too fur. There
+is some things in which a man must be footloose, and that is in the matter of
+dress. I shall have a white rosette on my hat, and some big white buttons up
+and down the back of my overcoat! That is my aim, Samantha, and I shall reach
+it if I walk through goar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He uttered them fearful words in a loud fierce whisper which made the dog bark
+at him for more&rsquo;n ten minutes stiddy, at the top of its voice, and in
+quick short yelps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it had been her young child that wuz yellin&rsquo; at a visitor in that way
+and ketchin&rsquo; holt of him, and tearin&rsquo; at his clothes, the child
+would have been consigned to banishment out of the room, and mebby punishment.
+But it wuzn&rsquo;t her babe and so it remained, and it dug its feet down into
+the satin and laces and beads of Miss Flamm&rsquo;s dress, and barked to that
+extent that we couldn&rsquo;t hear ourselves think.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she called it &ldquo;sweet little angel,&rdquo; and told it it might
+&ldquo;bark its little cunnin&rsquo; bark.&rdquo; The idee of a angel
+barkin&rsquo;; jest think on&rsquo;t. And we endured it as best we could with
+shakin&rsquo; nerves and achin&rsquo; earpans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a curius time. The dog harrowin&rsquo; our nerve, and snappin&rsquo; at
+Josiah anon, if not oftener, and ketchin&rsquo; holt of him anywhere, and she a
+callin&rsquo; it a angel; and Josiah a lookin&rsquo; so voyalent at it, that it
+seemed almost as if that glance could stun it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a curius seen. But truly worse wuz to come, for Miss Flamm in an
+interval of silence, sez, &ldquo;We will go first to the Gizer Spring, and
+then, afterwards, to the Moon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Or, that is what I understand her to say. And though I kep&rsquo; still, I wuz
+determined to keep my eyes out, and if I see her goin&rsquo; into anything
+dangerus, I wuz goin&rsquo; to reject her overtures to take us. But thinkses I
+to myself, &ldquo;We always said I believed we should travel to the stars some
+time, but I little thought it would be to-day, or that I should go in a
+buggy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah shared my feelin&rsquo;s I could see, for he whispered to me,
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t le&rsquo;s go, Samantha, it must be dangerus!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I whispered back, &ldquo;Le&rsquo;s wait, Josiah, and see. We won&rsquo;t
+do nothin&rsquo; percipitate, but,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;this is a chance that
+we most probable never will have ag&rsquo;in. Don&rsquo;t le&rsquo;s be
+hasty.&rdquo; We talked these things in secret, while Miss Flamm wuz a
+bendin&rsquo; over, and conversin&rsquo; with the dog. For Josiah would ruther
+have died than not be s&rsquo;pozed to be &ldquo;Oh Fay,&rdquo; as Maggie would
+say, in everything fashionable. And it has always been my way to wait and see,
+and count 10, or even 20, before speakin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then Miss Flamin sez sunthin&rsquo; about what beautiful fried potatoes you
+could get there in the moon, and you could always get them, any time you wanted
+&rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the very next time she went to kissin&rsquo; the dog so voyalently as not
+to notice us, my Josiah whispered to me and sez, &ldquo;Did you have any idee
+that wuz what the old man wuz a doin&rsquo;? I knew he wuz always a
+settin&rsquo; up there in the moon, but it never passed my mind that he wuz a
+fryin&rsquo; potatoes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I sez, &ldquo;Keep still, Josiah. It is a deep subject, a great
+undertakin&rsquo;, and it requires caution and deliberation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he sez,&rdquo;I haint a goin&rsquo;, Samantha! Nor I haint a goin&rsquo; to
+let you go. It is dangerus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I kinder nudged him, for she had the dog down on her lap, and was ready to
+resoom conversation. And about that time we got to the entrance of the spring,
+and one of her relatives got down and opened the carriage door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wondered ag&rsquo;in that she didn&rsquo;t introduce us. But I didn&rsquo;t
+care if she didn&rsquo;t. I felt that I wuz jest as good as they wuz, if they
+wuz so haughty. But Josiah wantin&rsquo; to make himself agreeable to &rsquo;em
+(he hankers after gettin&rsquo; into high society), he took off his hat and
+bowed low to &rsquo;em, before he got out, and sez he, &ldquo;I am proud to
+know you, sir,&rdquo; and tried to shake hands with him. But the man rejected
+his overtoors and looked perfectly wooden, and oninterested. A
+big-feelin&rsquo;, high-headed creeter. Josiah Allen is as good as he is any
+day. And I whispered to him and sez, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t demean yourself by
+tryin&rsquo; to force your company onto them any more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; he whispered back, &ldquo;I do love to move in high
+circles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Then I shouldn&rsquo;t think you would be so afraid of the
+undertakin&rsquo; ahead on us. If neighborin&rsquo; with the old man in the
+moon, and eatin&rsquo; supper with him, haint movin&rsquo; in high circles,
+then I don&rsquo;t know what is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t want to go into anything dangerus,&rdquo; sez he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But jest then Miss Flamm.spoke to me, and I moved forward by her side and into
+a middlin&rsquo; big room, and in the middle wuz a great sort of a well like,
+with the water a bubblin&rsquo; up into a clear crystal globe, and a
+sprayin&rsquo; up out of it, in a slender misty sparklin&rsquo; spray. It wuz a
+pretty sight. And we drinked a glass full of it a piece, and then we wandered
+out of the back door-way, and went down into the pretty; old-fashioned garden
+back of the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah and me and Miss Flamm went. The dog and the two relatives didn&rsquo;t
+seem to want to go. The relatives sot up there straight as two sticks, one of
+&rsquo;em holdin&rsquo; the dog, and they didn&rsquo;t even look round at us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Felt too big to go with us,&rdquo; sez Josiah, bitterly, as we went down
+the steps. &ldquo;They won&rsquo;t associate with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, I wouldn&rsquo;t care if I wuz in your place, Josiah Allen,&rdquo;
+sez I, &ldquo;you are jest as good as they be, and I know it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t make &rsquo;em think so, dumb &rsquo;em,&rdquo; sez
+he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I liked the looks of it down there. It seems sometimes as if Happiness gets
+kinder homesick, in the big dusty fashionable places, and so goes back to the
+wild, green wood, and kinder wanders off, and loafs round, amongst the pine
+trees, and cool sparklin&rsquo; brooks and wild flowers and long shinin&rsquo;
+grasses and slate stuns, and etc., etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t believe she likes it half so well up in the big hotel gardens or
+Courtin&rsquo; yards, as she does down there. You see it seems as if Happiness
+would have to be more dressed up, up there, and girted down, and stiff
+actin&rsquo;, and on her good behavior, and afraid of actin&rsquo; or
+lookin&rsquo; onfashionable. But down here by the side of the quiet little
+brook, amongst the cool, green grasses, fur away from diamonds, and satins, and
+big words, and dogs, and parasols, and so many, many that are a chasin&rsquo;
+of her and a follerin&rsquo; of her up, it seemed more as if she loved to get
+away from it all, and get where she could take her crown off, lay down her
+septer, onhook her corset, and put on a long loose gown, and lounge round and
+enjoy herself (metafor).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had a happy time there. We went over the little rustick bridges which would
+have been spilte in my eyes if they had been rounded off on the edges, or a
+mite of paint on &rsquo;em. Truly, I felt that I had seen enough of paint and
+gildin&rsquo; to last me through a long life, and it did seem such a treat to
+me to see a board ag&rsquo;in, jest a plain rough bass-wood board, and some
+stuns a lyin&rsquo; in the road, and some deep tall grass that you had to sort
+a wade through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Flamm seemed to enjoy it some down there, though she spoke of the dog,
+which she had left up with her relatives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;3 big-feelin&rsquo; ones together,&rdquo; I whispered to Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he sez, &ldquo;Yes, that dog is a big-feelin&rsquo; little cuss-tomer. And
+if I wuz a chipmunk he couldn&rsquo;t bark at me no more than he duz.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I looked severe at Josiah and sez I, &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t jine your
+syllables closer together you will see trouble, Josiah Allen. You&rsquo;ll find
+yourself swearin&rsquo; before you know it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh shaw, sez he, &ldquo;customer haint a swearin&rsquo; word; ministers
+use it. I&rsquo;ve hearn &rsquo;em many a time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;but they don&rsquo;t draw it out as you did,
+Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! wall! Folks can&rsquo;t always speak up pert and quick when they are
+off on pleasure exertions and have been barked at as long as I have been. But
+now I&rsquo;ve got a minutes chance,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;let me tell you
+ag&rsquo;in, don&rsquo;t you make no arraingments to go to the Moon. It is
+dangerus, and I won&rsquo;t go myself, nor let you go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Let</i>,&rdquo; sez I to myself. &ldquo;That is rather of a gaulin&rsquo;
+word to me. Won&rsquo;t <i>let</i> me go.&rdquo; But then I thought ag&rsquo;in, and
+thought how love and tenderness wuz a dictatin&rsquo; the term, and I thought
+to myself, it has a good sound to me, I <i>like</i> the word. I love to hear him say
+he won&rsquo;t <i>let</i> me go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And truly to me it looked hazerdus. But Miss Flamm seemed ready to go on, and
+onwillin&rsquo;ly I followed on after her footsteps. But I looked &rsquo;round,
+and said &ldquo;Good-bye&rdquo; in my heart, to the fine trees, and cleer,
+brown waters of the brook, the grass, and the wild flowers, and the sweet peace
+that wuz over all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;If I don&rsquo;t see you ag&rsquo;in,
+you&rsquo;ll find some other lover that will appreciate you, though I am fur
+away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They didn&rsquo;t answer me back, none on &rsquo;em, but I felt that they
+understood me. The pines whispered sunthin&rsquo; to each other, and the brook
+put its moist lips up to the pebbly shore and whispered sunthin&rsquo; to the
+grasses that bent down to hear it. I don&rsquo;t know exactly what it wuz, but
+it wuz sunthin&rsquo; friendly I know, for I felt it speak right through the
+soft, summer sunshine into my heart. They couldn&rsquo;t exactly tell what they
+felt towards me, and I couldn&rsquo;t exactly tell what I felt towards them,
+yet we understood each other; curi&rsquo;us, haint it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we got into the carriage ag&rsquo;in, one of her relatives gettin&rsquo;
+down to open the door. They knew what good manners is; I&rsquo;ll say that for
+&rsquo;em. And Miss Flamm took her dog into her arms seemin&rsquo;ly glad to
+get holt of him ag&rsquo;in, and kissed it several times with a deep love and
+devotedness. She takes good care of that dog. And what makes it harder for her
+to handle him is, her dress is so tight, and her sleeves. I s&rsquo;pose that
+is why she can&rsquo;t breathe any better, and what makes her face and hands
+red, and kinder swelled up. She can&rsquo;t get her hands to her head to save
+her, and if a assassin should strike her, she couldn&rsquo;t raise her arm to
+ward off the blow if he killed her. I s&rsquo;pose it worrys her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she has to put her bunnet on jest as quick as she gets her petticoats on,
+for she can&rsquo;t lift he arms to save her life after she gets her corsets
+on. She owned up to me once that it made her feel queer to be a walkin&rsquo;
+&rsquo;round her room with not much on only her bunnet all trimmed off with
+high feathers and artificial flowers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she said she wuz willing to do anythin&rsquo; <i>necessary</i>, and she felt that
+she <i>must</i> have her waist taper, no matter what stood in the way on&rsquo;t. She
+loves the looks of a waist that tapers. That wuz all the fault she found with
+the Goddus of Liberty enlightenin&rsquo; the world in New York Harber. We got
+to talkin&rsquo; about it and she said, &ldquo;If that Goddus only had corsets
+on, and sleeves that wuz skin tight, and her overskirt looped back over a
+bustle, it would be perfect!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I told her I liked her looks as well ag&rsquo;in as she wuz.
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;How could she lift her torch above her head?
+And how could she ever enlighten the world, if she wuz so held down by her
+corsets and sleeves that she couldn&rsquo;t wave her torch?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She see in a minute that it couldn&rsquo;t be done. She owned up that she
+couldn&rsquo;t enlighten the world in that condition, but as fur as looks went,
+it would be perfectly beautiful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I don&rsquo;t think so at all. But, as I say, Miss Flamm has a real hard
+time on&rsquo;t, all bard down as she is, and takin&rsquo; all the care of that
+dog, day and night. She is jest devoted to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why jest before we started a little lame girl with a shabby dress, but a face
+angel sweet, came to the side of the carriage to sell some water lilies. Her
+face looked patient, and wistful, and she jest held out her flowers silently,
+and stood with her bare feet on the wet ground and her pretty eyes
+lookin&rsquo; pitifully into our&rsquo;n. She wanted to sell &rsquo;em awfully,
+I could see. And I should have bought the hull of &rsquo;em immegitly, my
+feelin&rsquo;s was sech, but onfortionably I had left my port-money in my other
+pocket, and Josiah said he had left his (mebby he had). But Miss Flamm would
+have bought &rsquo;em in a minute, I knew, the child&rsquo;s face looked so
+mournful and appealin&rsquo;; she would have bought &rsquo;em, but she wuz so
+engrossed by the dog; she wuz a holdin&rsquo; him up in front of her a
+admirin&rsquo; and carressin&rsquo; of him, so&rsquo;s she never ketched sight
+of the lame child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No body, not the best natured creeter in the world, can see through a dog when
+it is held clost up to the eye, closer than anything else.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we drove down to what they called Vichy Spring and there on a pretty pond
+clost to the springhouse, we see a boat with a bycycle on it, and a boy a
+ridin&rsquo; it. The boat wuz rigged out to look like a swan with its wings a
+comin&rsquo; up each side of the boy. And down on the water, a sailin&rsquo;
+along closely and silently wuz another swan, a shadow swan, a follerin&rsquo;
+it right along. It wuz a fair seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Josiah sez to me, &ldquo;He should ride that boat before he left Saratoga;
+he said that wuz a undertakin&rsquo; that a man might be proud to
+accomplish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, don&rsquo;t you do anything of the kind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I <i>must</i>, Samantha,&rdquo; sez he. And then he got all animated about
+fixin&rsquo; up a boat like it at home. Sez he, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think it
+would be splendid to have one on the canal jest beyond the orchard?&rdquo; And
+sez he, &ldquo;Mebby, bein&rsquo; on a farm, it would be more appropriate to
+have a big goose sculptured out on it; don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Yes, it would be fur more appropriate, and a goose a ridin&rsquo;
+on it. But,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;you will never go into that undertakin&rsquo;
+with my consent, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;it would be a beautiful recreation; so
+uneek.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at that minute Miss Flamm gin the order to turn round and start for the
+Moon, or that is how I understood her, and I whispered to Josiah and sez,
+&ldquo;She means to go in the buggy, for the land&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Josiah sez, &ldquo;Wall, I haint a goin&rsquo; and you haint. I won&rsquo;t
+let you go into anythin&rsquo; so dangerus. She will probably drive into a
+baloon before long, and go up in that way, but jest before she drives in, you
+and I will get out, Samantha, if we have to walk back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never heard of anybody goin&rsquo; up in a baloon with two horses and
+a buggy,&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, new things are a happenin&rsquo; all the time, Samantha. And I
+heard a feller a talkin&rsquo; about it yesterday. You know they are a
+havin&rsquo; the big political convention here, and he said, (he wuz a real
+cute chap too,) he said, &lsquo;if the wind wasted in that convention could be
+utilized by pipes goin&rsquo; up out of the ruff of that buildin&rsquo; where
+it is held,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;it would take a man up to the moon.&rsquo; I
+heerd him say it. And now, who knows but they have got it all fixed. There wuz
+dretful windy speeches there this mornin&rsquo;. I hearn &rsquo;em, and
+I&rsquo;ll bet that is her idee, of bein&rsquo; the first one to try it; she is
+so fashionable. But I haint a goin&rsquo; up in no sech a way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Nor I nuther. It would be fur from my wishes to
+be carried up to the skies on the wind of a political convention.
+&ldquo;Though,&rdquo; sez I reasonably, &ldquo;I haint a doubt that there wuz
+sights, and sights of it used there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But jest at this minute Miss Flamm got through talkin&rsquo; with her relatives
+about the road, and settled down to caressin&rsquo; the dog ag&rsquo;in, and
+Josiah hadn&rsquo;t time to remark any further, only to say, &ldquo;Watch me,
+Samantha, and when I say jump, jump.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then we sot still but watchful. And Miss Flamm kissed the dog several times
+and pressed him to her heart that throbbed full of such a boundless love for
+him. And he lifted his head and snapped at a fly, and barked at my companion
+with a renewed energy, and showed his intellect and delightful qualities in
+sech remarkable ways, that filled Miss Flamm&rsquo;s soul deep with a proud joy
+in him. And then he went to sleep a layin, down in her lap, a mashin&rsquo;
+down the delicate lace and embroidery and beads. He had been a eating the
+beads, I see him gnaw off more than two dozen of &rsquo;em, and I called her
+attention to it, but she said, &ldquo;The dear little darlin&rsquo; had to have
+some such recreation.&rdquo; And she let him go on with it, a mowin&rsquo;
+&rsquo;em down, as long as he seemed to have a appetite for &rsquo;em. And
+ag&rsquo;in she called him &ldquo;angel.&rdquo; The idee of a angel a
+gnawin&rsquo; off beads and a yelpin&rsquo;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I asked her, and I couldn&rsquo;t help it. How her baby wuz that afternoon,
+and if she ever took it out to drive?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she said she didn&rsquo;t really know how it wuz this afternoon; it
+wuzn&rsquo;t very well in the mornin&rsquo;. The nurse had it out somewhere,
+she didn&rsquo;t really know just where. And she said, no, she didn&rsquo;t
+take it out with her at all&mdash;fur she didn&rsquo;t feel equal to the care
+of it, in this hot weather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Flamm haint very well I could see that. The care of that dog is jest a
+killin&rsquo; her, a carryin&rsquo; it round with her all the time daytimes,
+and a bein&rsquo; up with it so much nights. She said it had a dretful chill
+the night before, and she had to get up to warm blankets to put round it;
+&ldquo;its nerves wuz so weak,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and it wuz so sensative
+that she could not trust it to a nurse.&rdquo; She has a hard time of it; there
+haint a doubt of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, it wuz anon, or jest about anon, that Miss Flamm turned to me and sez,
+&ldquo;Moon&rsquo;s is one of the pleasantest places on the lake. I want you to
+see it; folks drive out there a sight from Saratoga.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then I looked at Josiah, and Josiah looked at me, and peace and happiness
+settled down ag&rsquo;in onto our hearts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we got there considerably before anon and we found that Moon&rsquo;s
+insted of bein&rsquo; up in another planet wuz a big, long sort a low
+buildin&rsquo; settled right down onto this old earth, with a immense piazza
+stretchin&rsquo; along the side on&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Miss Flamm and Josiah and me disembarked from the carriage right onto the
+end of it. But the dog and her relatives stayed back in the buggy and Josiah
+spoke bitterly to me ag&rsquo;in but low, &ldquo;They think it would hurt
+&rsquo;em to associate with me a little, dumb &rsquo;m; but I am jest as good
+as they be any day of the week, if I haint dressed up so fancy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s so,&rdquo; sez I, whisperin&rsquo; back to him, &ldquo;and
+don&rsquo;t let it worry you a mite. Don&rsquo;t try to act like Haman,&rdquo;
+sez I. &ldquo;You are havin&rsquo; lots of the good things of this world, and
+are goin&rsquo; to have some fried potatoes. Don&rsquo;t let them two Mordecais
+at the gate, poison all your happiness, or you may get come up with jest as
+Haman wuz.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d love to hang&rsquo;em,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;as high as
+Haman&rsquo;s gallows would let &rsquo;em hang.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;they haint injured you in any way. They seem
+to eat like perfect gentlemen. A little too exclusive and aristocratic, mebby,
+but they haint done nothin&rsquo; to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;that is the stick on it, here we be, three men
+with a lot of wimmen. And they can&rsquo;t associate with me as man with man,
+but set off by themselves too dumb proud to say a word to me, that is the dumb
+of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at this very minute, before I could rebuke him for his feerful profanity,
+Miss Flamm motioned to us to come and take a seat round a little table, and
+consequently we sot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a long broad piazza with sights and sights of folks on it a
+settin&rsquo; round little tables like our&rsquo;n, and all a lookin&rsquo;
+happy, and a laughin&rsquo;, and a talkin&rsquo; and a drinkin&rsquo; different
+drinks, sech as lemonade, etc., and eatin&rsquo; fried potatoes and sech.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image32.gif" height="293" width="372" alt="The Piazza" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And out in the road by which we had come, wuz sights and sights of vehicles and
+conveyances of all kinds from big Tally Ho coaches with four horses on
+&rsquo;em, down to a little two wheeled buggy. The road wuz full on&rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In front of us, down at the bottom of a steep though beautiful hill, lay
+stretched out the clear blue waters of the lake. Smooth and tranquil it looked
+in the light of that pleasant afternoon, and fur off, over the shinin&rsquo;
+waves, lay the island. And white-sailed boats wuz a sailin&rsquo; slowly by,
+and the shadow of their white sails lay down in the water a floatin&rsquo; on
+by the side of the boats, lookin&rsquo; some like the wings of that white dove
+that used to watch over Lake Saratoga.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as I looked down on the peaceful seen, the feelin&rsquo;s I had down in the
+wild wood, back of the Gizer Spring come back to me. The waves rolled in softly
+from fur off, fur off, bringin&rsquo; a greetin&rsquo; to me unbeknown to
+anybody, unbeknown to me. It come into my heart unbidden, unsought, from afur,
+afur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where did it come from that news of lands more beautiful than any that lay
+round Mr. Moons&rsquo;es, beautiful as it wuz.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Echoes of music sweeter fur than wuz a soundin&rsquo; from the band down by the
+shore, music heard by some finer sense than heard that, heavenly sweet,
+heavenly sad, throbbin&rsquo; through the remoteness of that country, through
+the nearness of it, and fillin&rsquo; my eyes with tears. Not sad tears, not
+happy ones, but tears that come only to them that shet their eyes and behold
+the country, and love it. The waves softly lappin&rsquo; the shore brought a
+message to me; my soul hearn it. Who sent it? And where, and when, and why?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not a trace of these emotions could be read on my countenance as I sot there
+calmly a eatin&rsquo; fried potatoes. And they <i>did</i> go beyond anything I ever
+see in the line of potatoes, and I thought I could fry potatoes with any one:
+Yes, such wuz my feelin&rsquo;s when I sot out for Mr. Moons&rsquo;es. But I
+went back a thinkin&rsquo; that potatoes had never been fried by me, sech is
+the power of a grand achievment over a inferior one, and so easy is the sails
+taken down out of the swellin&rsquo; barge of egotism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, them potatoes you could carry in your pocket for weeks right by the side of
+the finest lace, and the lace would be improved by the purity of &rsquo;em.
+Fried potatoes in that condition, you could eat &rsquo;em with the lightest
+silk gloves one and the tips of the fingers would be improved by &rsquo;em;
+<i>fried</i> potatoes, jest think on&rsquo;t!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we had some lemonade too, and if you&rsquo;ll believe it,&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t s&rsquo;pose you will but it is the truth,&mdash;there wuz straws
+in them glasses too. But you may as well believe it for I tell the truth at all
+times, and if I wuz a goin&rsquo; to lie, I wouldn&rsquo;t lie about lemons.
+And then I&rsquo;ve always noticed it, that if things git to happenin&rsquo; to
+you, lots of things jest like it will happen. That made twice in one week or
+so, that I had found straws in my tumbler. But then I have had company three
+days a runnin&rsquo;, rainy days too sometimes. It haint nothin&rsquo; to
+wonder at too much. Any way it is the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we drinked our lemonade, I a quietly takin&rsquo; out the straws and
+droppin&rsquo; &rsquo;em on the floor at my side in a quiet ladylike manner,
+and Josiah, a bein&rsquo; wunk at by me, doin&rsquo; the same thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And anon, our carriage drove up to the end of the piazza agin and we sot sail
+homewards. And the dog barked at Josiah almost every step of the way back, and
+when we got to our boardin&rsquo; place, Miss Flamm shook hands with us both,
+and her relatives never took a mite of notice of us, further than to jump down
+and open the carriage door for us as we got out. (They are genteel in their
+manners, and Josiah had to admit that they wuz, much as his feelin&rsquo;s wuz
+hurt by their haughtiness towards him.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then the dog, and Miss Flamm and Miss Flamm&rsquo;s relatives drove off.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>Chapter XI.<br/>
+VISIT TO THE INDIAN ENCAMPMENT.</h2>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a fair sunshiny mornin&rsquo; (and it duz seem to me that the fairness
+of a Saratoga mornin&rsquo; seems fairer, and the sunshine more sunshiny than
+it duz anywhere else), that Josiah and Ardelia and me sot sail for the Indian
+Encampment, which wuz encamped on a little rise of ground to the eastward of
+where we wuz.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ardelia wuz to come to our boardin&rsquo; place at halfpast 9 A. M., forenoon,
+and we wuz to set out together from there. And punctual to the very half minute
+I wuz down on the piazza, with my mantilly hung over my arm and my umberel in
+my left hand. Josiah Allen was on the right side on me. And as Ardelia
+hadn&rsquo;t come yet we sot down in a middlin&rsquo; quiet part of the piazza,
+and waited for her. And as we sot there, I sez to Josiah, as I looked out on
+the fair pleasant mornin&rsquo; and the fair pleasant faces environin&rsquo; of
+us round, sez I, &ldquo;Saratoga is a good-natured place, haint it,
+Josiah?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he said (I mistrust his corns ached worse than common, or sunthin&rsquo;),
+he said, he didn&rsquo;t see as it wuz any better-natured than Jonesville or
+Loontown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;Yes it is, Josiah Allen.&rdquo; Sez I, folks are happier here
+and more generous, the rich ones seem inclined to help them that need help to a
+little comfort and happiness. Jest as I have always said, Josiah Allen. When
+folks are happy, they are more inclined to do good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh shaw!&rdquo; sez Josiah. &ldquo;That never made no difference with
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What didn&rsquo;t?&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m always good,&rdquo; sez he, and he snapped out the words real
+snappish, and loud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez mildly, &ldquo;Wall, you needn&rsquo;t bring the ruff down to prove
+your goodness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he went on: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see as they are so pesky good here; I
+haint seen nothin&rsquo; of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;when I look over Yaddo, and Hilton Park, it
+makes me reconciled, Josiah, to have men get rich; it makes me willin&rsquo;,
+Josiah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he sez (cross), He guessed men would get rich whether I wuz willin&rsquo;
+or not; he guessed they wouldn&rsquo;t ask me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, you needn&rsquo;t snap my head off, Josiah Allen,&rdquo; sez I,
+&ldquo;because I love to see folks use their wealth to make pleasant places for
+poor folks to wander round in, and forget their own narrow rocky roads for a
+spell. It is a noble thing to do, Josiah Allen; they might have built high
+walls round &rsquo;em if they had been a mind to, and locked the gates and shet
+out all the poor and tired-out ones, But they didn&rsquo;t, and I am highly
+tickled at the thought on&rsquo;t, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, I don&rsquo;t shet up our sugar lot, do I? and I have never heerd
+you say one word a praisin&rsquo; me up for that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is far different, Josiah Allen,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;there is
+nothin&rsquo; there that can git hurt, only stumps. And you have never laid out
+a cent of money on it. And they have spent thousands and thousands of dollars;
+and the poorest little child in Saratoga, if it has beauty-lovin&rsquo; eyes,
+can go in and enjoy these places jest as much as the owners can. And it is a
+sweet thought to me, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh wall,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;you have probable said enough about
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now I never care for the last word, some wimmen do, but I never do. But still I
+wuzn&rsquo;t goih&rsquo; to be shet right eff from talkin&rsquo; about these
+places, and I intimated as much to him, and he said, &ldquo;Dumb it all! I
+could talk about &rsquo;em all day, if I wanted to, and about Demorist&rsquo;s
+Woods too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;that is another place, Josiah Allen, that is
+a likely well-meanin&rsquo; spot. Middlin&rsquo; curius to look at,&rdquo; sez
+I, reesonably. &ldquo;It makes one&rsquo;s head feel sort a strange to see them
+criss-cross, curius poles, and floors up in trees, and ladders, and
+teterin&rsquo; boards, and springs, etc., etc., etc. But it is a
+well-meanin&rsquo; spot, Josiah Allen. And it highly tickled me to think that
+the little fresh air children wuz brung up there by the owner of the woods and
+the poor little creeters, out of their dingy dirty homes, and filthy air,
+wandered round for one happy day in the green woods, in the fresh air and
+sunshine. That wuz a likely thing to do, Josiah Allen, and it raises a man more
+in my estimation when he&rsquo;s doin&rsquo; sech things as that, than to set
+up in a political high chair, and have a lot of dirty hands clapped, and beery
+breaths a cheerin&rsquo; him on up the political arena.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh wall,&rdquo; sez Josiah, &ldquo;the doin&rsquo;s in them woods is
+enough to make anybody a dumb lunatick. The crazyest lookin&rsquo; lot of stuff
+I ever set eyes on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, anyway,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;it is a <i>good</i> crazy, if it is, and a
+well-meanin&rsquo; one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, how cross Josiah Allen did look as he heered me say these words.
+That man can&rsquo;t bear to hear me say one word a praisin&rsquo; up another
+man, and it grows on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But good land! I am a goin&rsquo; to speak out my mind as long as my breath is
+spared. And I said quite a number of words more about the deep enjoyment it
+gin&rsquo; me to see these broad, pleasure grounds free for all, rich and poor,
+bond and free, hombly and handsome, etc., etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I spoke about the charitable houses, St. Christiana&rsquo;s home, and the
+Home for Old Female Wimmen, and mentioned the fact in warm tones of how a good,
+noble-hearted woman had started that charity in the first on&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Josiah, while I wuz talkin&rsquo; about these wimmen, became meak as a
+lamb. They seemed to quiet him. He looked real mollyfied by the time Ardelia
+got there, which wuz anon. And then we sot sail for the Encampment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Encampment is encamped on one end of a big, square, wild-lookin&rsquo; lot
+right back of one of the biggest tarvens in Saratoga. It is jest as wild
+lookin&rsquo; and appeerin&rsquo; a field as there is in the outskirts of
+Loontown or Jonesville. Why Uncle Grant Hozzleton&rsquo;s stunny pasture
+don&rsquo;t look no more sort a broke up and rural than that duz. I wondered
+some why they had it there, and then I thought mebby they kep&rsquo; it to
+remember Nater by, old Nater herself, that runs a pretty small chance to be
+thought on in sech a place as this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You know there is so much orniment and gildin&rsquo; and art in the landscape
+and folks, that mebby they might forget the great mother of us all, that is,
+right in the thickest of the crowd they might, but they have only to take these
+few steps and they will see Ma Nater with her every-day dress on, not fixed up
+a mite. And I s&rsquo;pose she looks good to &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I myself think that Mother Nater might smooth herself out a little there with
+no hurt to herself or her children. I don&rsquo;t believe in Mas goin&rsquo;
+round with their dresses onhooked, and slip-shod, and their hair all
+stragglin&rsquo; out of their combs. (I say this in metafor. I don&rsquo;t
+spose Ma Nater ever wore a back comb or had hooks and eyes on her gown; I say
+it for oritory, and would wish to be took in a oritorius way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I don&rsquo;t say right out, that the reeson I have named is the one why
+they keep that place a lookin&rsquo; so like furey, I said, <i>mebby</i>. But I will
+say this, that it is a wild-lookin&rsquo; spot, and hombly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, on the upper end on&rsquo;t, standin&rsquo; up on the top of a sort of a
+hill, the Indian Encampment is encamped. There is a hull row of little stores,
+and there is swings, and public diversions of different kinds, krokay grounds,
+etc., etc., etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Ardelia stopped at one of these stores kep&rsquo; by a Injun, not a West,
+but a East one, and began to price some wooden bracelets, and try &rsquo;em on,
+and Josiah and me wandered on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And anon, we came to a tent with some good verses of Scripter on it; good solid
+Bible it wuz; and so I see it wuz a good creeter in there anyway. And I asked a
+bystander a standin&rsquo; by, Who wuz in there, and Why, and When?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he said it wuz a fortune-teller who would look in the pamm of my hand, and
+tell me all my fortune that wuz a passin&rsquo; by. And I said I guessed I
+would go in, for I would love to know how the children wuz that mornin&rsquo;
+and whether the baby had got over her cold. I hadn&rsquo;t heerd from &rsquo;em
+in over two days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah kinder hung &rsquo;round outside though he wuz willin&rsquo; to have me
+go in. He jest worships the children and the baby. And he sees the texts from
+Job on it, with his own eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I bid him a affectionate farewell, and we see the woman a lookin&rsquo; out
+of the tent and witnessin&rsquo; on&rsquo;t. But I didn&rsquo;t care. If a pair
+of companions and a pair of grandparents can&rsquo;t act affectionate, who can?
+And the world and the Social Science meetin&rsquo; might try in vain to bring
+up any reeson why they shouldn&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I went in, with my mind all took up with the grandchildern. But the first
+words she sez to me wuz, as she looked close at the pamm of my hand,
+&ldquo;Keep up good spirits, Mom; you will get him in spite of all
+opposition.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get who?&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;And what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A man you want to marry. A small baldheaded man, a
+amiable-lookin&rsquo;, slender man. His heart is sot on you. And all the
+efferts of the light-complected woman in the blue hat will be in vain to break
+it up. Keep up good courage, you will marry him in spite of all,&rdquo; sez
+she, porin&rsquo; over my pamm and studyin&rsquo; it as if it wuz a jography.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image33.gif" height="310" width="282" alt="The Fortuneteller" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For the land&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo; sez I, bein&rsquo; fairly stunted with
+the idees she promulgated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, you will marry him, and be happy. But you have had a sickness in
+the past and your line of happiness has been broken once or twice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;I should think as much; let a woman live with a man, the best man
+in the world for 20 years, and if her line of happiness haint broke more than
+once or twice, why it speaks well for the line, that is all. It is a good,
+strong line.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you have been married?&rdquo; says she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Mom,&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I see, down in the corner of your hand is a coffin, you are a widow,
+you have seen trouble. But you will be happy. The mild, bald gentleman will
+make you happy. He will lead you to the altar in spite of the light-complected
+woman with the blue bat on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ardelia Tutt had on a blue hat, the idee! But I let her go on. Thinkses I,
+&ldquo;I have paid my money and now it stands me in hand to get the worth
+on&rsquo;t.&rdquo; So she comferted me up with the hope of gettin&rsquo; my
+Josiah for quite a spell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gettin&rsquo; my pardner! Gettin&rsquo; the father of my childern, and the
+grandparent of my grandchildren! Jest think on&rsquo;t, will you?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But then she branched off and told me things that wuz truly wonderful. Where
+and how she got &rsquo;em wuz and is a mistery to me. True things, and strange.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why it seemed same as if them tall pines, that wuz a whisperin&rsquo; together
+over the Encampment wuz a peerin&rsquo; over into my past, and a
+whisperin&rsquo; it down to her. Or, in some way or other, the truth wuz a
+bein&rsquo; filtered down to her comprehension through some avenue beyond our
+sense or sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a curious thing, so I think, and so Josiah thinks. We talked it over
+after I came out, and we wuz a wanderin&rsquo; on about the Encampment. I told
+him some of the wonderful things she had told me and he didn&rsquo;t believe
+it. &ldquo;For,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be hanged if I can understand
+and I won&rsquo;t believe anything that I can&rsquo;t understand!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I pointed with the top of my umberel at a weed growin&rsquo; by the side of
+the road, and sez I, &ldquo;When you tell me jest how that weed draws out of
+the back ground jest the ingredients she needs to make her blue foretop, and
+her green gown, then I&rsquo;ll tell you all about this secret that Nater holds
+back from us a spell, but will reveel to us when the time comes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh shaw!&rdquo; sez Josiah, &ldquo;I guess I know all about a jimson
+weed. Why they <i>grow;</i> that is all there is about them. They grow, dumb
+&rsquo;em. I guess if you&rsquo;d broke your back as many times as I have a
+pullin&rsquo; &rsquo;em up, yon would know all about&rsquo; em. Dumb their dumb
+picters,&rdquo; sez he, a scowlin&rsquo; at &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz the same kind of weed that growed in our onion beds. I re<i>cog</i>nized it.
+Them and white daisies, our garden wuz overrun by &rsquo;em both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I sez, &ldquo;Can you tell how the little seed of this weed goes down into
+the earth and <i>selects</i> jest what she wants out of the great storehouse below?
+She never comes out in a pink head-dress or a yellow gown. No, she always
+selects what will make the blue. It shows that it has life, intelligence, or
+else it couldn&rsquo;t think, way down under the ground, and grope in the dark,
+but always gropin&rsquo; jest right, always a thinkin&rsquo; the right thing,
+never, never in the hundreds and thousands of years makin&rsquo; a mistake.
+Why, you couldn&rsquo;t do it, Josiah Allen, nor I couldn&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And we set and see these silent mysteries a goin&rsquo; on right at our
+door-step day by day, and year by year, and think nothin&rsquo; of it, because
+it is so common. But if anything else, some new law, some new wonder we
+don&rsquo;t understand comes in our way, we are ready to reject it and say it
+is a lie. But you know, Josiah Allen,&rdquo; sez I, jest ready to go on
+eloquent -
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I wuz interrupted jest here by my companion hollerin&rsquo; up in a loud
+voice to a boy, &ldquo;Here! you stop that, you young scamp! Don&rsquo;t you
+let me see you a doin&rsquo; that agin!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;What is it, Josiah Allen?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why look at them young imps, a throwin&rsquo; sticks at that feeble old
+woman, over there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked, and my own heart wuz rousted up with indignation. I stood where I
+couldn&rsquo;t see her face, but I see she wuz old, feeble, and bent, a
+withered poor old creeter, and they had marked up over her, her name, Aunt
+Sally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I too wuz burnin&rsquo; indignant to see a lot of young creeters a
+throwin&rsquo; sticks at her, and I cried out loud, &ldquo;Do you let Sarah
+be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They turned round and laughed in our faces, and I went on: &ldquo;I&rsquo;d be
+ashamed of myself if I wuz in your places to be a throwin&rsquo; sticks at that
+feeble old woman. Why don&rsquo;t you spend your strengths a tryin&rsquo; to do
+sunthin&rsquo; for her? Git her a home, and sunthin&rsquo; to eat, and a better
+dress. Before I&rsquo;d do what you are a doin&rsquo; now, I&rsquo;d growvel in
+the dust. Why, if you wuz my boys I&rsquo;d give you as good a spankin&rsquo;
+as you ever had.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But they jest laughed at us, the impudent Greeters. And one of the boys at that
+minute took up a stick and threw it, and hit Sarah right on her poor old head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez Josiah, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you hit Sarah agin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image34.gif" height="267" width="442" alt="Aunt Sally" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Sez the boys, &ldquo;We will,&rdquo; and two of &rsquo;em hit her at one time.
+And one of &rsquo;em knocked the pipe right out of her mouth. She wuz a
+smokin&rsquo;, poor old creeter. I s&rsquo;pose that wuz all the comfort she
+took. But did them little imps care? They knocked her as if they hated the
+sight of her. And my Josiah (I wuz proud of that man) jest advanced onto
+&rsquo;em, and took &rsquo;em one in each hand, and gin &rsquo;em sech a
+shakin&rsquo;, that I most expected to see their bones drop out, and sez he
+between each shake, &ldquo;Will you let Sarah alone now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wuz proud of my Josiah, but fearful of the effect of so much voyalence onto
+his constitution, and also onto the boys&rsquo; frames. And I advanced onto the
+seen of carnage and besought him to be calm. Sez he, &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t be
+calm!&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;I haint the man, Samantha, to stand by and see one
+of your sect throwed at, as I have seen Sarah throwed at, without
+avengin&rsquo; of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And agin he shook them boys with a vehemence. The pennies and marbles in their
+pockets rattled and their bones seemed ready to part asunder. I wuz proud of
+that noble man, my pardner. But still I knew that if their bones was shattered
+my pardner would be avenged upon by incensed parents. And I sez,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d let &rsquo;em go now, Josiah. I don&rsquo;t believe
+they&rsquo;ll ever harm Sarah agin.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;Boys, you won&rsquo;t,
+will you ever strike a poor feeble old woman agin?.&rdquo; Sez I,
+&ldquo;promise me, boys, not to hurt Sarah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image35.gif" height="350" width="300" alt="Josiah&rsquo;s Anger" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t know what the effect of my words would have been, but a man came
+up just then and explained to me, that Aunt Sally wuz a image that they throwed
+at for one cent apiece to see if they could break her pipe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I see how it wuz, and cooled right down, and so did Josiah. And he gin the boys
+five cents apiece, and quiet rained down on the Encampment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I sez to the man, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like the idee of havin&rsquo; my
+sect throwed at from day to day, and week to week.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;Why
+didn&rsquo;t you have a man fixed up to throw at, why didn&rsquo;t you have a
+Uncle Sam?&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t over and above like it; it seems
+to be a sort of a slight onto my sect.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez the man winkin&rsquo; kind a sly at Josiah, &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t do to
+make fun of men, men have the power in their hands and would resent it mebby.
+Uncle Sam can&rsquo;t be used jest like Aunt Sally.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;That haint the right spirit. There haint nothin&rsquo; over and
+above noble in that, and manly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wuz kinder rousted up about it, and so wuz Josiah. And that is I s&rsquo;pose
+the reasun of his bein&rsquo; so voyalent, at the next place of recreation we
+halted at Josiah see the picture of the mermaid; that beautiful female, a,
+settin&rsquo; on the rock and combin&rsquo; her long golden hair. And he
+proposed that we should go in and see it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;It costs ten cents apiece, Josiah Allen. Think of the cost before
+it is too late.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;Your expenditure of money today has been
+unusial.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;The sum of ten cents has jest been raised by you
+for noble principles, and I honer you for it. But still the money has
+gone.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;Do you feel able to incur the entire expense?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he, &ldquo;All my life, Samantha, I have jest hankered after seein&rsquo; a
+mermaid. Them beautiful creeters, a settin&rsquo; and combin&rsquo; their long
+golden tresses. I feel that I must see it. I fairly long to see one of them
+beautiful, lovely bein&rsquo;s before I die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;if you feel like that, Josiah Allen, it is
+not fur from me to balk you in your search for beauty. I too admire loveliness,
+Josiah Allen, and seek after it.&rdquo; And sez I, &ldquo;I will faithfully
+follow at your side, and together we will bask in the rays of beauty, together
+will we be lifted up and inspired by the immortal spirit of loveliness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So payin&rsquo; our 30 cents we advanced up the steps, I expectin&rsquo; soon
+to be made happy, and Josiah held up by the expectation of soon havin&rsquo;
+his eyes blest by that vision of enchantin&rsquo; beauty, he had so long dremp
+of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He advanced onto the pen first and before I even glanced down into the deep
+where as I s&rsquo;posed she set on a rock a combin&rsquo; out her long golden
+hair, a singin&rsquo; her lurin&rsquo; and enchanted song, to distant mariners
+she had known, and to the one who wuz a showin&rsquo; of her off, before I had
+time to even glance at her, the maid, I was dumbfounded and stood aghast, at
+the mighty change that came over my pardner&rsquo;s linement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He towered up in grandeur and in wrath before me. He seemed almost like a
+offended male fowl when ravenin&rsquo; hawks are angerin&rsquo; of it beyond
+its strength to endure. I don&rsquo;t like that metafor; I don&rsquo;t love to
+compare my pardner to any fowl, wild or tame; but my frenzied haste to describe
+the fearful seen must be my excuse, and also my agitation in recallin&rsquo; of
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He towered up, he fluttered so to speak majestically, and he says in loud wild
+axents that must have struck terror to the soul of that mariner, &ldquo;Where
+is the hair-comb?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then he shook his fist in the face of that mariner, and cries out once
+agin, &ldquo;Where is them long golden tresses? Bring &rsquo;em on this
+instant! Fetch on that hair-comb, in a minute&rsquo;s time, or I&rsquo;ll
+prosecute you, and sue you, and take the law to you - !&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mariner quailed before him and sez I, &ldquo;My dear pardner, be calm! Be
+calm!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t be calm!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I mildly, but firmly, &ldquo;You must, Josiah Allen; you must! or you will
+break open your own chest. You must be calm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I tell you I won&rsquo;t be calm. And I tell you,&rdquo; says he, a
+turnin&rsquo; to that destracted mariner agin &ldquo;I tell you to bring on
+that comb and that long hair, this instant. Do you s&rsquo;pose I&rsquo;m
+goin&rsquo; to pay out my money to see that rack-a-bone that I wouldn&rsquo;t
+have a layin&rsquo; out in my barn-yard for fear of scerin&rsquo; the dumb
+scere-crows out in the lot. Do you s&rsquo;pose I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to pay
+out my money for seein&rsquo; that dried-up mummy of the hombliest thing ever
+made on earth, the dumbdest, hombliest; with 2 or 3 horse hairs pasted onto its
+yellow old shell! Do you spose I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to be cheated by
+seein&rsquo; that, into thinkin&rsquo; it is a beautiful creeter a
+playin&rsquo; and combin&rsquo; her hair? Bring on that beautiful creeter a
+combin&rsquo; out her long, golden hair this instant, and bring out the comb
+and I&rsquo;ll give you five minutes to do it in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wuz hoorse with emotion, and he wuz pale round his lips as anything and leis
+eyes under his forward looked glassy. I wuz fearful of the result.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thinkses I, I will look and see what has wrecked my pardner&rsquo;s happiness
+and almost reasen. I looked in and I see plain that his agitation was
+nothin&rsquo; to be wondered at. It did truly seem to be the hombliest,
+frightfulest lookin&rsquo; little thing that wuz ever made by a benignant
+Providence or a taxy-dermis. I couldn&rsquo;t tell which made it. I see it all,
+but I see also, so firm, sot is my reasun onto its high throne on my heart, I
+see that to preserve my pardner&rsquo;s sanity, I must control my reasun at the
+sight that had tottered my pardner&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I turned to him, and tried to calm the seethin&rsquo; waters, but he loudly
+called for the comb, and for the tresses, and the lookin&rsquo; glass. And,
+askin&rsquo; in a wild&rsquo; sarcastic way where the song wuz that she sung to
+mariners? And hollerin&rsquo; for him to bring on that rock at that minute, and
+them mariners, and ordered him to set her to singin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The idee! of that little skeletin with her skinny lips drawed back from her
+shinin&rsquo; fish teeth, a singin&rsquo;. The idee on&rsquo;t!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But truly, he wuz destracted and knew not what he did. The mariner in charge
+looked destracted. And the bystanders a standin&rsquo; by wuz amazed, and
+horrowfied by the spectacle of his actin&rsquo; and behavin&rsquo;. And I knew
+not how I should termonate the seen, and withdraw him away from where he wuz.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in my destraction and agony of sole, I bethought me of one meens of
+quietin&rsquo; him and as it were terrifyin&rsquo; him into silence and be the
+meens of gettin&rsquo; on him to leave the seen. I begoned to Ardelia to come
+forward and I sez in a whisper to her, &ldquo;Take out your pencil and a piece
+of paper and stand up in front of him and go to writin&rsquo; some of your
+poetry,&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then I sez agin in tender agents, &ldquo;Be calm, Josiah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I tell you that I won&rsquo;t be calm! And I tell you,&rdquo; a
+shakin&rsquo; his fist at that pale mariner, &ldquo;I tell you to bring
+out&mdash;&ldquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that very minute he turned his eyes onto Ardelia, who stood with a kind of a
+fur-away look in her eyes in front of him with the paper in her hand, and sez
+he to me, &ldquo;What is she doin&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is composin&rsquo; some poetry onto you, Josiah Allen,&rdquo; sez I,
+in tremblin&rsquo; axents; for I felt that if that skeme failed, I wuz undone,
+for I knew I had no ingredients there to get him a extra good meal. No, I felt
+that my tried and true weepon wuz fur away, and this wuz my last hope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as I thought these thoughts with almost a heatlightnin&rsquo; rapidety, I
+see a change in his liniment. It did not look so thick and dark; it began to
+look more natural and clear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And sez he in the same old way I have heerd him say it so many times,
+&ldquo;Dumb it all! What duz she want to write poetry on me for? It is time to
+go home.&rdquo; And so sayin&rsquo;, he almost tore us from the seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gin Ardelia that night 2 yards of lute-string ribbon, a light pink, and
+didn&rsquo;t begrech it. But I have never dast, not in his most placid and
+serene moments - I have never dast, to say the word &ldquo;Mermaid&rsquo; to
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Truly there is something that the boldest female pardner dassent do. Mermaids
+is one of the things I don&rsquo; dast to bring up. No! no, fur be it from me
+to say &ldquo;Mermaid&rdquo; to Josiah Allen.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image36.gif" height="285" width="335" alt="On the Porch" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>Chapter XII.<br/>
+A DRIVE TO SARATOGA LAKE.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Josiah and me took a short drive this afternoon, he hirin&rsquo; a buggy for
+the occasion. He called it &ldquo;goin&rsquo; in his own conveniance,&rdquo;
+and I didn&rsquo;t say nothin&rsquo; aginst his callin&rsquo; it so. I
+didn&rsquo;t break it up for this reasun, thinkses I it is a conveniance for us
+to ride in it, for us 2 tried and true souls to get off for a minute by
+ourselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Josiah wuz dretful good behaved this afternoon. He helped me in a good
+deal politer than usual and tucked the bright lap-robe almost tenderly round my
+form.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Men do have sech spells. They are dretful good actin&rsquo; at times. Why they
+act better and more subdueder and mellerer at sometimes than at others, is a
+deep subject which we mortals cannot as yet fully understand. Also visey
+versey, their cross, up headeder times, over bearin&rsquo; and actin&rsquo;. It
+is a deep subject and one freighted with a great deal of freight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Josiah&rsquo;s goodness on this afternoon almost reached the Scripteral and
+he sez, when we first sot out, and I see that the horse&rsquo;s head wuz turned
+towards the Lake. Sez he, &ldquo;I guess we&rsquo;ll go to the Lake, but where
+do you want to go, Samantha? I will go anywhere you want to go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he still drove almost recklessly on lakewards. And sez he, &ldquo;We had
+better go straight on, but say the word, and you can go jest where you want
+to.&rdquo; And he urged the horse on to still greater speed. And he sez agin,
+&ldquo;Do you want to go any particular place, Samantha?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I had jest as leves go there as not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, I knew there would be where you would want to go.&rdquo; And he
+drove on at a good jog. But no better jog than we had been a goin&rsquo; on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall the weather wuz delightful. It wuz soft and balmy. And my feelin&rsquo;s
+towered my pardner (owin&rsquo; to his linement) wuz soft and balmy as the air.
+And so we moved onwards, past the home of one who wuz true to his country, when
+all round him wuz false, who governed his state wisely and well, held the lines
+firm, when she wuz balky, and would have been glad to take the lines in her
+teeth and run away onto ruin; past the big grand house of him who carried a
+piece of our American justice way off into Egypt and carried it firm and square
+too right there in the dark. I s&rsquo;pose it is dark. I have always hearn
+about its bein&rsquo; as dark as Egypt. Wall, anyway he is a good lookin&rsquo;
+man. They both on &rsquo;em are and Josiah admitted it - after some words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall anon, or perhaps a little after, we came to where we could see the face of
+Beautiful Saratoga Lake, layin&rsquo; a smilin&rsquo; up into the skies. A
+little white cloud wuz a restin&rsquo; up on the top of the tree-covered
+mountain that riz up on one side of the lake, and I felt that it might be the
+shadow form of the sacred dove Saderrosseros a broodin&rsquo; down over the
+waters she loved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That she loved still, though another race wuz a bathin&rsquo; their weary
+forwards in the tide. And I wondered as I looked down on it, whether the great
+heart of the water wuz constant; if it ever heaved up into deep sithes a
+thinkin&rsquo; of the one who had passed away, of them who once rested lightly
+on her bosem, bathed their dark forwards and read the meanin&rsquo; of the
+heavens, in the moon and stars reflected there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t know as she remembered &rsquo;em, and Josiah don&rsquo;t. But I
+know as we stood there, a lookin&rsquo; down on her, the lake seemed to give a
+sort of a sithe and a shiver kind a run over her, not a cold shiver exactly,
+but a sort of a shinin&rsquo;, glorified shiver. I see it a comin&rsquo; from
+way out on the lake and it swept and sort a shivered on clean to the shore and
+melted away there at our feet. Mebby it wuz a sort o&rsquo; sithe, and mebby
+agin it wuzn&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I guess it felt that it wuz all right, that a fairer race had brought fairer
+customs and habits of thoughts, and the change wuz not a bad one. I guess she
+looked forward to the time when a still grander race should look down into her
+shinin&rsquo; face, a race of free men, and free wimmen; sons and daughters of
+God, who should hold their birthright so grandly and nobly that they will look
+back upon the people of to-day, as we look back upon the dark sons and
+daughters of the forest, in pity and dolor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I guess she thought it wuz all right. Any way she acted as if she did. She
+looked real sort o&rsquo; serene and calm as we left her, and sort o&rsquo;
+prophetic too, and glowin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we went by a long first rate lookin&rsquo; sort of a tarven, I guess. It
+wuz a kind of a dark red color, and dretfully flowered off in wood - red wood.
+And there we see standin&rsquo; near the house, a great big round sort of a
+buildin&rsquo;, and my Josiah sez,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There! that is a buildin&rsquo; I like the looks on. That is a barn I
+like; built perfectly round. That is sunthin&rsquo; uneek. I&rsquo;ll have a
+barn like that if I live. I fairly love that barn.&rdquo; And he stopped the
+horse stun still to look at it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez in sort o&rsquo; cool tones, not entirely cold, but coolish:
+&ldquo;What under the sun do you want with a round barn? And you don&rsquo;t
+need another one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, I don&rsquo;t exactly need it, Samantha, but it would be a comfert
+to me to own one. I should dearly love a round barn.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he went on pensively, - &ldquo;I wonder how much it would cost. I
+wouldn&rsquo;t have it quite so big as this is. I&rsquo;d have it for a horse
+barn, Samantha. It would look so fashionable, and genteel. Think what it would
+be, Samantha, to keep our old mair in a round barn, why the mair would renew
+her age.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image37.gif" height="285" width="330" alt="A Round Barn" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t pay no attention to it,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;She
+knows too much.&rdquo; And I added in cooler, more dignifieder tones, but
+dretful meanin&rsquo; ones, &ldquo;The old mair, Josiah Allen, don&rsquo;t run
+after every new fancy she hears on. She don&rsquo;t try to be fashionable, and
+she haint high-headed, except,&rdquo; sez I, reasenably, &ldquo;when you check
+her up too much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;I am bound to make some enquiries.
+Hello!&rdquo; says he to a bystander a comin&rsquo; by. &ldquo;Have you any
+idee what such a barn as that would cost? A little smaller one, I don&rsquo;t
+need so big a one. How many feet of lumber do you s&rsquo;pose it would take
+for it? I ask you,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;as between man and man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I nudged him there, for as I have said, I didn&rsquo;t believe then, and I
+don&rsquo;t believe now, that he or any other man ever knew or mistrusted what
+they meant by that term &ldquo;as between man and man.&rdquo; I think it sounds
+kind o&rsquo; flat, and I always oppose Josiah&rsquo;s usin&rsquo; it; he loves
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the man broke out a&rsquo; laughin&rsquo; and sez he, &ldquo;That haint a
+barn, that is a tree.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A tree!&rdquo; sez I, a sort o&rsquo; cranin&rsquo; my neck forward in
+deep amaze. And what exclamation Josiah Allen made, I will not be coaxed into
+revealin&rsquo;; no, it is better not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But suffice it to say that after a long explanation my companion at last gin in
+that the man wuz a tellin&rsquo; the truth, and it wuz the lower part of a
+tree-trunk, that growed once near the Yo Semity valley of California. Good
+land! good land!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah drove on quick after the man explained it, he felt meachin&rsquo;, but I
+didn&rsquo;t notice his linement so much, I wuz so deep in thought, and a
+wonderin&rsquo; about it; a wonderin&rsquo; how the old tree felt with her feet
+a restin&rsquo; here on strange soil - her withered, dry old feet a
+standin&rsquo; here, as if jest ready to walk away restless like and feverish,
+a wantin&rsquo; to get back by the rushin&rsquo; river that used to bathe them
+feet in the spring overflow of the pure cold mountain water. It seemed to me
+she felt she was a alien, as if she missed her strong sturdy grand old body,
+her lofty head that used to peer up over the mountains, and as if some day she
+wuz a goin&rsquo; to set off a walkin&rsquo; back, a tryin&rsquo; to find
+&rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought of how it had towered up, how the sun had kissed its branches, how
+the birds had sung and built their nests against her green heart, hovered in
+her great, outstretched arms. The birds of a century, the birds of a thousand
+years. How the storms had beat upon her; the first autumn rains of a thousand
+years, the first snow-flakes that had wavered down in a slantin&rsquo; line and
+touched the tips of her outstretched fingers, and then had drifted about her
+till her heart wuz almost frozen and she would clap her cold hands together to
+warm &rsquo;em, and wail out a dretful moanin&rsquo; sound of desolation, and
+pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the first warm rain drops of Spring would come, the sunshine warmed her,
+she swung out her grand arms in triumph agin, and joined the majestic psalm of
+victory and rejoicing with all her grand sisterhood of psalmists. The stars
+looked down on her, the sun lit her lofty forward, the suns and stars of a
+thousand years. Strange animals, that mebby we don&rsquo;t know anything about
+now, roamed about her feet, birds of a different plumage and song sung to her
+(mebby).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strange faces of men and women looked up to her. What faces had looked up to
+her in sorrow and in joy? I&rsquo;d gin a good deal to know. I&rsquo;d have
+loved to see them strange faces touched with strange pains and hopes.
+Tribulations and joys of a thousand years ago. What sort of tribulations wuz
+they, and what sort of joys? Sunthin&rsquo; human, sunthin&rsquo; that we hold
+in common, no doubt. The same pain that pained Eve as she walked down out of
+Eden, the same joy that Adam enjoyed while they and the garden wuz prosperus,
+wuz in their faces most probable whether their forwards wuz pinted or broad,
+their faces black, copper colored or white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the changes, the changes of a thousand years, all these the old tree had
+seen, and I respected her dry dusty old feet and wuz sorry for &rsquo;em. And I
+reveryed on the subject more&rsquo;n half the way home, and couldn&rsquo;t help
+it. Anyway my revery lasted till jest before we got to the big gate of the Race
+Course.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And right there, right in front of them big ornamental doors, we see Miss G.
+Washington Flamm, with about a thousand other carriages and wagons and Tally
+ho&rsquo;s and etcetry, and etcetry. Josiah thinks there wuz a million teams,
+but I don&rsquo;t. I am mejum; there wuzn&rsquo;t probable over a thousand
+right there in the road.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image38.gif" height="333" width="303" alt="Race Course Entry" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Miss Flamm re<i>cog</i>nized us and asked us if we didn&rsquo;t want to go in. Wall,
+Josiah wuz agreeable to the idee and said so. And then she said sunthin&rsquo;
+to the man that tended to the gate, probably sunthin&rsquo; in our praise, and
+handed him sunthin&rsquo;, it might have been a ten cent piece, for all I know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But anyway he wuz dretful polite to us, and let us through. And my land! if it
+wuzn&rsquo;t a sight to behold! Of all the big roomy places I ever see all
+filled with vehicles of all shapes and sizes and folks on foot and big high
+platforms, all filled with men and wimmen and children! And Josiah sez to me,
+&ldquo;I thought the hull dumb world wuz there outside in the road, and here
+there is ten times as many in here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;Yes, Josiah, be careful and not lose me, for I feel like a
+needle in a hay mow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked down on me and sort a smiled. I s&rsquo;pose it wuz because I
+compared myself to a needle, and he sez, &ldquo;A cambric needle, or a
+darnin&rsquo; needle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t laugh in such a time as this, Josiah
+Allen.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;Do jest look over there on the race course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it wuz a thrillin&rsquo; seen. It wuz a place big enough for all the horses
+of our land to run &rsquo;round in and from Phario&rsquo;s horses down to them
+of the present time. And beautiful broad smooth roads cut in the green velvet
+of the grass, and horses goin&rsquo; &rsquo;round jest like lightnin&rsquo;,
+with little light buggys hitched to &rsquo;em, some like the quiver on sheet
+lightnin&rsquo; (only different shape) and men a drivin&rsquo; &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then there wuz a broad beautiful race course with little clusters of trees
+and bushes, every little while right in the road, and if you&rsquo;ll believe
+it, I don&rsquo;t s&rsquo;pose you will, but it is the livin&rsquo; truth, when
+them horses, goin&rsquo; jest like a flash of light, with little boys all
+dressed in gay colors a ridin&rsquo; &rsquo;em&mdash;when them horses came to
+them trees instid of goin&rsquo; &rsquo;round &rsquo;em, or pushin&rsquo; in
+between &rsquo;em, or goin&rsquo; back agin, they jumped right over &rsquo;em.
+I don&rsquo;t spose this will be believed by lots of folks in Jonesville and
+Loontown, but it is the truth, for I see it with both my eyes. Josiah riz right
+up in the buggy and cheered jest as the rest of &rsquo;em did, entirely
+unbeknown to himself, so he said, to see it a goin&rsquo; on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why he got nearly rampant with excitement. And so did I, though I
+wouldn&rsquo;t want it known by Tirzah Ann&rsquo;s husband&rsquo;s folks and
+others in Jonesville. They call it &ldquo;steeple chasin&rsquo;&rdquo; so if
+they should hear on&rsquo;t, it wouldn&rsquo;t sound so very wicked any way. I
+should probable tell &rsquo;em if they said <i>too</i> much, &ldquo;That it wuz a pity
+if folks couldn&rsquo;t get interested in a steeple and chase it up.&rdquo; But
+between you and me I didn&rsquo;t see no sign of a steeple, nor meetin&rsquo;
+house nor nuthin&rsquo;. I s&rsquo;pose they gin it that name to make it seem
+more righter to perfessors. I know it wuz a great comfort to me. (But I
+don&rsquo;t think they chased a steeple, and Josiah don&rsquo;t, for we think
+we should have seen it if they had.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, as I say, we wuz both dretfully interested, excited, and wrought up, I
+s&rsquo;pose I ort to say, when a chap accosted me and says to me
+sunthin&rsquo; about buyin&rsquo; a pool. And I shook my head and sez,
+&ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t want to buy no pool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he kep&rsquo; on a talkin&rsquo; and a urgin&rsquo;, and sez,
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you buy a French pool, mom, you can make lots of money out
+of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A pool,&rdquo; sez I in dignified axents, and some stern, for I wuz
+weary with his importunities. &ldquo;What do I want a pool for? Don&rsquo;t you
+s&rsquo;pose there&rsquo;s any pools in Jonesville, and I never thought
+nothin&rsquo; on &rsquo;em, I always preferred runnin&rsquo; water. But if I
+wuz a goin&rsquo; to buy one, what under the sun do you s&rsquo;pose I would
+buy one way off here for, hundreds of miles from Jonesville?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I might possibly,&rdquo; sez I, not wantin&rsquo; to hurt his
+feelin&rsquo;s and tryin&rsquo; to think of some use I could put it tot &ldquo;
+<i>might</i> if you had a good small American pool, that wuz a sellin&rsquo; cheap;
+and I could have it set right in our back yard, clost to the horse barn, why I
+might possibly try to make a dicker with you for it. I might use it for
+raisin&rsquo; ducks and geese, though I&rsquo;d rather have a runnin&rsquo;
+stream then. But how under the sun you think I could take a pool home on a
+tower, how I could pack it, or transport it, or drive it home is a mystery to
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he sez mechinecally, &ldquo;Lots of wimmen do get &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, some wimmen,&rdquo; sez I mildly, for I see he wuz a lookin&rsquo;
+at me perfect dumbfoundered. I see I wuz fairly stuntin&rsquo; him with my
+eloquence. &ldquo;Some wimmen will buy anything if it has a French name to it.
+But I prefer my own country, land or water. And some wimmen,&rdquo; sez I,
+&ldquo;will buy anything if they can get it cheap, things they don&rsquo;t
+need, and would be better off without, from a eliphant down to a magnificent
+nothin&rsquo; to call husband. They&rsquo;ll buy any worthless and troublesome
+thing jest to get &rsquo;em to goin&rsquo;. Now such wimmen would jest jump at
+that pool. But that haint my way. No, I don&rsquo;t want to purchase your
+pool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he, &ldquo;You are mistaken, mom!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No I haint,&rdquo; sez I firmly and with decesion. &ldquo;No I haint. I
+don&rsquo;t need no pool. It wouldn&rsquo;t do me no good to keep it on my
+hands, and I haint no notion of settin&rsquo; up in the pool or pond business,
+at my age.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then,&rdquo; sez I reasonably, &ldquo;the canal runs jest down below
+our orchard, and if we run short, we could get all the water we wanted from
+there. And we have got two good cisterns and a well on the place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he, &ldquo;What I mean is, bettin&rsquo; on a horse. Do you want to bet on
+which horse will go the fastest, the black one or the bay one?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to bet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he kep&rsquo; on a urgin&rsquo; me, and thinkin&rsquo; I had disappinted
+him in sellin&rsquo; a pool, or rather pond, I thought it wouldn&rsquo;t hurt
+me to kinder gin in to him in this, so I sez mildly, &ldquo;Bettin&rsquo; is
+sunthin&rsquo; I don&rsquo;t believe in, but seein&rsquo; I have disappinted
+you in sellin&rsquo; your water power, I don&rsquo;t know as it would be wicked
+to humor you in this and say it to please you. You say the bay horse is the
+best, so I&rsquo;ll say for jest this once - There! I&rsquo;ll bet the bay one
+will go the best.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is your money?&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;It is five dollars for a bet.
+You pay five dollars and you have a chance to get back mebby 100.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I riz right up in feerful dignity, and the buggy and I sez that one feerful
+word to him, &ldquo;Gamblin&rsquo;!&rdquo; He sort a quailed. But sez he,
+&ldquo;you had better take a five-dollar chance on the bay horse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image39.gif" height="361" width="213" alt="Feerful Dignity" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez I, with a freezin&rsquo; coldness, that must have made
+his ears fairly tingle it wuz so cold, &ldquo;no I shall not gamble, neither on
+foot nor on horseback.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I sot down and I sez in the same lofty tones to Josiah Allen, &ldquo;Drive
+on, Josiah, instantly and to once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He too had heerd the fearful word and his princeples too wuz rousted up. He
+driv right on rapidly, out of the gate and into the highway. But as he druv on
+fast and almost furius I heerd him murmur words to himself, that accounted for
+his eager looks while the man wuz dickerin&rsquo; about the pool. He sez,
+&ldquo;It is dumb hard work pumpin&rsquo; water for so many head of
+cattle.&rdquo; He thought a pool would come handy, so I see. But it wuz all
+done and I would have done the same thing if it was to do over agin, so I
+didn&rsquo;t say nuthin&rsquo;, but kep&rsquo; a serene silence, and let him
+drive along in quiet; and anon, I see the turbelence of his feelin&rsquo;s
+subsided in a measure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a gettin&rsquo; along towards sundown and the air wuz a growin&rsquo;
+cool and balmy, as if it wuz a blowin&rsquo; over some balm flowers, and we
+begun to feel quite well in our minds, though the crowd in the road wuz too big
+for comfert. The crowd of carriages and horses, and vehicles of all kinds,
+seemed to go in two big full rows or streams, one a goin&rsquo; down on one
+side of the road, and the other a goin&rsquo; up on the other. So the 2 tides
+swept past each other constantly&mdash;but the bubbles on the tide wuzn&rsquo;t
+foam but feathers, and bows, and laces, and parasols, and buttons, and
+diamonds, and etcetry, etcetry, etcetry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all of a sudden my Josiah jest turned into a big gate that wuz a
+standin&rsquo; wide open and we drove into a beautiful quiet road that went a
+windin&rsquo; in under the shadows of the tall grand old trees. He did it
+without askin&rsquo; my advice or sayin&rsquo; a word to me. But I wuzn&rsquo;t
+sorry. Fur it wuz beautiful in there. It seemed as if we had left small cares
+and vexations and worryments out there in the road and dust, and took in with
+us only repose and calmness, and peace, and they wuz a journeyin&rsquo; along
+with us on the smooth road under the great trees, a bendin&rsquo; down on each
+side on us. And pretty soon we came to a beautiful piece of water crossed by a
+rustick bridge, and all surrounded by green trees on every side. Then up on the
+broad road agin, sweepin&rsquo; round a curve where we could see a little ways
+off a great mansion with a wall built high round it as if to shet in the repose
+and sweet home-life and shet out intrusion, sort a protect it from the too
+curius glances of a curius generation. Some as I hold my hand up before my face
+to keep off the too-scorchin&rsquo; rays of the sun, when I am a lookin&rsquo;
+down the western road for my Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a good lookin&rsquo; spot as I ever want to see, sheltered, quiet and
+lovely. But we left it behind us as we rode onwards, till we came out along
+another broad piece of the water, and we rode along by the side of it for some
+time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beautiful water with the trees growin&rsquo; up on every side of it, and their
+shadows reflected so clearly in the shinin&rsquo; surface, that they seemed to
+be trees a growin&rsquo; downwards, tall grand trees, wavin&rsquo; branches,
+goin&rsquo; down into the water and livin&rsquo; agin in another world,&mdash;a
+more beautiful one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun wuz a gettin&rsquo; low and piles of clouds wuz in the west and all
+their light wuz reflected in the calm water. And the beautiful soft shadows
+rested there on that rosy and golden light, some like the shadow of a beautiful
+and sorrowful memory, a restin&rsquo; down and reposin&rsquo; on a divine hope,
+an infinite sweetness.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image40.gif" height="195" width="275" alt="The Race Course" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>Chapter XIII.<br/>
+VISITS TO NOTABLE PLACES.</h2>
+
+<p>
+It is a perfect sight to behold, to set on the piazzas at Saratoga, and see the
+folks a goin&rsquo; past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now in Jonesville, when there wuz a 4th of July, or campmeetin&rsquo;, or
+sunthin&rsquo; of that kind a goin&rsquo; on, why, I thought I had seen the
+streets pretty full. Why, I had counted as many as seven teams in the road at
+one time, and I had thought that wuz pretty lively times. But good land? Good
+land! You would have gin up in ten minutes time here, that you had never seen a
+team (as it were).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why I call my head a pretty sound one, but I declare, it did fairly make my
+head swim to set there kinder late in the afternoon, and see the drivin&rsquo;
+a goin&rsquo; on. See the carriages a goin&rsquo; this way, and a goin&rsquo;
+that way; horses of all colers, and men and wimmen of all colers, and parasols
+of all colers, and hats, and bonnets and parasols, and satins, and laces, and
+ribbins, and buttons, and dogs, and flowers, and plumes, and parasols. And
+horses a turnin&rsquo; out to go by, and horses havin&rsquo; gone by, and
+horses that hadn&rsquo;t gone by. And big carriages with folks inside all
+dressed up in every coler of the rain beaux. And elligent gentlemen dressed
+perfectly splendid, a settin&rsquo; up straight behind. With thin yellow legs,
+or stripes down the side on &rsquo;em, and their hats all trimmed off with
+ornaments and buttons up and down their backs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Haughty creeters they wuz, I make no doubt. They showed it in their looks. But
+I never loved so much dress in a man. And I would jest as soon have told them
+so; as to tell you. I hain&rsquo;t one to say things to a man&rsquo;s back that
+I won&rsquo;t say to his face, whether it be a plain back or buttoned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, as I say, it wuz a dizzy sight to set there on them piazzas and see the
+seemin&rsquo;ly endless crowd a goin&rsquo; by; back and forth, back and forth;
+to and fro, to and fro. I didn&rsquo;t enjoy it so much as some did, though for
+a few minutes at a time I looked upon it as a sort of a recreation, some like a
+circus, only more wilder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But some folks enjoyed it dretfully. Yes, they set a great deal on piazzas at
+Saratoga. And when I say set on &rsquo;em, I mean they set a great store on
+&rsquo;em, and they set on &rsquo;em a great deal. Some folks set on &rsquo;em
+so much, that I called them setters. Real likely creeters they are too, some on
+&rsquo;em, and handsome; some pious, sober ones, some sort a gay. Some not
+married at all, and some married a good deal, and when I say a good deal I
+meen, they have had various companions and lost &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now there wuz one woman that I liked quite well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had had 4 husbands countin&rsquo; in the present one. She wuz a good
+lookin&rsquo; woman and had seen trouble. It stands to reeson she had with 4
+husbands. Good land!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She showed me one day a ring she wore. She had took the weddin&rsquo; rings of
+her 4 pardners and had &rsquo;em all run together, and the initials of their
+first names carved inside on it. Her first husband&rsquo;s name wuz Franklin,
+her next two wuz Orville and Obed, and her last and livin&rsquo; one Lyman.
+Wall, she meant well, but she never see what would be the end on&rsquo;t and
+how it would read till she had got their initials all carved out on it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wuz dretfully worked up about it, but I see that it wuz right. For nobody
+but a fool would want to run all these recollections and memories together, all
+the different essociations and emotions, that must cluster round each of them
+rings. The idee of runnin&rsquo; &rsquo;em all together with the livin&rsquo;
+one! It wuz ectin&rsquo; like a fool and it seemed fairly providential that
+their names run in jest that way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why, if I had had 2 husbands, or even 4, I should want to keep &rsquo;em apart
+- settin&rsquo; up in high chairs on different sides of my heart. Why, if
+I&rsquo;d had 4, I&rsquo;d have &rsquo;em to the different pints of the
+compass, east, west, north, south, as far apart from each other as my heart
+would admit of. Ketch me a lumpin&rsquo; in all the precious memories of my
+Josiah with them of any other man, bond or free, Jew or Genteel; no, and
+I&rsquo;d refrain from tellin&rsquo; to the new one about the other ones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, when a pardner dies and you set out to take another one, bury the one that
+has gone right under his own high chair in your heart, don&rsquo;t keep him up
+there a rattlin&rsquo; his bones before the eyes of the 2d, and angerin&rsquo;
+him, and agonizen&rsquo; your own heart. Bury him before you bring a new one
+into the same room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And never! never! even in moments of the greatest anger, dig him up agin or
+even weep over his grave, before the new pardner. No; under the moonlight, and
+the stars, before God only, and your own soul, you may lay there in spirit on
+that grave, weep over it, keep the turf green. But not before any one else. And
+I wouldn&rsquo;t advise you to go there alone any too often. I would advise you
+to spend your spare time ornementin&rsquo; the high chair where the new one
+sets, wreathin&rsquo; it round with whatever blossoms and trailin&rsquo; vines
+of tenderness and romance you have left over from the first great romance of
+life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It would be better for you in the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I said some few of these little thoughts to the female mentioned; and I
+s&rsquo;pose I impressed her dretfully, I s&rsquo;pose I did. But I
+couldn&rsquo;t stay to see the full effects on&rsquo;t, for another female
+setter came up at that minute to talk with her, and my companion came up at
+that very minute to ask me to go a walkin&rsquo; with him up to the cemetery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That is a very favorite place for Josiah Allen. He often used to tell the
+children when they wuz little, that if they wuz real good he would take
+&rsquo;em out on a walk to the grave-yard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when I first married to him, if I hadn&rsquo;t broke it up, that would have
+been the only place of resort that he would have took me to Summers. But I
+broke it up after a while. Good land! there is times to go any where and times
+to stay away. I didn&rsquo;t want to go a trailin&rsquo; up there every day or
+two; jest married too!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But to-day I felt willin&rsquo; to go. I had been a lookin&rsquo; so long at
+the crowd a fillin&rsquo; the streets full, and every one on &rsquo;em in
+motion, that I thought it would be sort a restful to go out to a place where
+they wuz still. And so after a short walk we came to the village that haint
+stirred by any commotion or alarm. Where the houses are roofed with green grass
+and daisies, and the white stun doors don&rsquo;t open to let in trouble or
+joy, and where the inhabitants don&rsquo;t ride out in the afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, if I should tell the truth which I am fur from not wantin&rsquo; to do, I
+should say that at first sight, it wuz rather of a bleak, lonesome
+lookin&rsquo; spot, kinder wild and desolate lookin&rsquo;. But as we went
+further along in it, we came to some little nooks and sheltered paths and
+spots, that seemed more collected together and pleasant. There wuz some big
+high stuns and monuments, and some little ones but not one so low that it
+hadn&rsquo;t cast a high, dark shadow over somebody&rsquo;s life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There wuz one in the shape of a big see shell. I s&rsquo;pose some mariner lay
+under that, who loved the sea. Or mebby it wuz put up by some one who had the
+odd fancy that put a shell to your ear you will hear a whisperin&rsquo; in it
+of a land fur away, fur away. Not fur from this wuz a stun put up over a young
+engineer who had been killed instantly by his engine. There wuz a picture of
+the locomotive scraped out on the stun, and in the cab of the engine wuz his
+photograph, and these lines wuz underneath:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+My engine now lies still and cold,<br/>
+No water does her boiler hold;<br/>
+The wood supplies its flames no more,<br/>
+My days of usefulness are o&rsquo;er.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We wended our way in and out of the silent streets for quite a spell, and then
+we went and sot down on the broad piazza of the sort of chapel and green-house
+that stood not fur from the entrance. And while we sot there we see another
+inhabitent come there to the village to stay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a long procession, fur it wuz a good man who had come. And many of his
+friends come with him jest as fur as they could: wife, children, and friends,
+they come with him jest as fur as they could, and then he had to leave
+&rsquo;em and go on alone. How weak love is, and how strong. It wuz too weak to
+hold him back, or go with him, though they would fain have done so. But it wuz
+strong enough to shadow the hull world with its blackness, blot out the sun and
+the stars, and scale the very mounts of heaven with its wild complaints and
+pleadin&rsquo;s. A strange thing love is, haint it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we sot there for quite a spell and my companion wantin&rsquo;, I spose,
+to make me happy, took out a daily paper out of his pocket and went to
+readin&rsquo; the deaths to me. He always loves to read the deaths and
+marriages in a paper. He sez that is the literature that interests him. And
+then I s&rsquo;pose he thought at such a time, it wuz highly appropriate. So I
+didn&rsquo;t break it up till he began to read a long obituary piece about a
+child&rsquo;s death; about its being cut down like a flower by a lightin&rsquo;
+stroke out of a cloudless sky, and about what a mysterious dispensation of
+Providence it wuz, etc., etc. And then there wuz a hull string of poetry
+dedicated to the heart-broken mother bewailin&rsquo; the mystery on&rsquo;t,
+and wonderin&rsquo; why Providence should do such strange, onlookedfor things,
+etc., and etcetery, and so 4th.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I spoke right up and sez, &ldquo;That is a slander onto Providence and ort
+to be took as such by every lover of justice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah wuz real horrified, he had been almost sheddin&rsquo; tears he wuz so
+affected by it; to think the little creeter should be torn away by a strange
+chance of Providence from a mother who worshipped her, and whose whole life and
+every thought wuz jest wrapped up in the child, and who never had thought nor
+cared for anything else only just the well bein&rsquo; of the child and
+wardin&rsquo; trouble off of her, for so the piece stated. And he sez in wild
+amaze, &ldquo;What do you mean, Samantha? What makes you talk so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I know it is the truth. I know the hull
+story;&rdquo; and then I went on and told it to him, and he agreed with me and
+felt jest as I did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You see, the mother of the child wuz a perfect high flyer of fashion and she
+always wore dresses so tight, that she couldn&rsquo;t get her hands up to her
+head to save her life, after her corset wuz on. Wall, she wuz out a
+walkin&rsquo; with the child one day, or rather toddlin&rsquo; along with it,
+on her high-heeled sboes. They wuz both dressed up perfectly beautiful, and
+made a most splendid show. Wall, they went into a store on their way to the
+park, and there wuz a big crowd there, and the mother and the little girl got
+into the very middle of the crowd. They say there wuz some new storks for sale
+that day, and some cattail flags, and so there wuz naturelly a big crowd of
+wimmen a buyin&rsquo; &rsquo;em, and cranes. And some way, while they stood
+there a heavy vase that stood up over the child&rsquo;s head fell down and fell
+onto it, and hurt the child so, that it died from the effects of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mother see the vase when it flrst begun to move, she could have reached up
+her hands and stiddied it, and kep&rsquo; it from fallin&rsquo;, if she could
+have got &rsquo;em up, but with that corset on, the hull American continent
+might have tumbled onto the child&rsquo;s head and she couldn&rsquo;t have
+moved her arms up to keep it off; couldn&rsquo;t have lifted her arms up over
+the child&rsquo;s head to save her life. No, she couldn&rsquo;t have kep&rsquo;
+one of the States off, nor nothin&rsquo;. And then talk about her wardin&rsquo;
+trouble offen the child, why she <i>couldn&rsquo;t</i> ward trouble off, nor
+nothin&rsquo; else with that corset on. She screemed, as she see it a
+comin&rsquo; down onto the head of her beloved little child, but that wuz all
+she could do. The child wuz wedged in by the throng of folks and couldn&rsquo;t
+stir, and they wuz all engrossed in their own business which wuz
+pressin&rsquo;, and very important, a buyin&rsquo; plates, and plaks, with
+bull-rushes, and cranes, and storks on &rsquo;em, so naturelly, they
+didn&rsquo;t mind what wuz a goin&rsquo; on round &rsquo;em. And down it come!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there it wuz put down in the paper, &ldquo;A mysterious dispensation of
+Providence.&rdquo; Providence slandered shamefully and I will say so with my
+last breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What are mothers made for if it haint to take care of the little ones God gives
+&rsquo;em. What right have they to contoggle themselves up in a way that they
+can see their children die before &rsquo;em, and they not able to put out a
+hand to save &rsquo;em. Why, a savage mother is better than this, a heathen
+one. And if I had my way, there would be a hull shipload of savages and
+heathens brought over here to teach and reform our too civilized wimmen.
+I&rsquo;d bring &rsquo;em over this very summer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we sot there on the stoop for quite a spell and then we wended our way
+down to the highway, and as we arrived there my companion proposed that we
+should take a carriage and go to the Toboggen slide. Sez I, &ldquo;Not after
+where we have been today, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he sez, &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t look well, after visitin&rsquo; the folks
+we have jest now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;they won&rsquo;t speak on&rsquo;t to
+anybody, if that is what you are afraid on, or sense it themselves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I see in a minute, he had some sense on his side, though his words shocked
+me some at first, kinder jarred aginst some sensitive spot in my nater, jest as
+pardners will sometimes, however devoted they may be to each other. Yet I see
+he wuz in the right on&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They wouldn&rsquo;t sense anything about it. And as for us, we wuz in the world
+of the livin&rsquo; still, and I still owed a livin&rsquo; duty to my
+companion, to make him as happy as possible. And so I sez, mildly, &ldquo;Wall,
+I don&rsquo;t know as there is anything wrong in slidin&rsquo; down hill,
+Josiah. I s&rsquo;pose I can go with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;there haint nothin&rsquo; wrong about
+slidin&rsquo; down hill unless you strike too hard, or tip over, or
+sunthin&rsquo;.&rdquo; So he bagoned to a carriage that wuz passin&rsquo;, and
+we got into it, and sot sail for the Toboggen slide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We passed through the village. (Some say it is a city, but if it is, it is a
+modest, retirin&rsquo; one as I ever see; perfectly unassumin&rsquo;, and
+don&rsquo;t put on a air, not one.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But howsumever, we passed through it, through the rows and rows of summer
+tarvens and boardin&rsquo; houses, good-lookin&rsquo; ones too; past some
+good-lookin&rsquo; private houses&mdash;a long tarven and a pretty red brick
+studio and rows of summer stores, little nests that are filled up summers, and
+empty winters, then by some more of them monster big tarvens where some of the
+200,000 summer visitors who flock here summers, find a restin&rsquo; place; and
+then by the large respectable good-lookin&rsquo; stores and shops of the
+natives, that stand solid, and to be depended on summer and winter; by churches
+and halls, and etc., and good-lookin&rsquo; houses and then some
+splendid-lookin&rsquo; houses all standin&rsquo; back on their grassy lawns
+behind some trees, and fountains, and flower beds, etc., etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Better-lookin&rsquo; houses, I don&rsquo;t want to see nor broader, handsomer
+streets. And pretty soon fur away to the east you could see through the trees a
+glimpse of a glorious landscape, a broad lovely view of hill and valley,
+bounded by blue mountain tops. It was a fair seen - a fair seen. To be
+perfectly surrounded by beauty where you, wuz, and a lookin&rsquo; off onto
+more. There I would fain have lingered, but time and wagons roll stidily
+onward, and will not brook delay, nor pause for women to soar over seenery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So we rolled onwards through still more beautiful, and quiet pictures. Pictures
+of quiet woods and bendin&rsquo; trees, and a country road windin&rsquo;
+tranquilly beneath, up and down gentle hills, and anon a longer one, and then
+at our feet stood the white walls of a convent, with 2 or 3 brothers, a
+strollin&rsquo; along in their long black gowns, and crosses, a readin&rsquo;
+some books.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t know what it wuz, what they wuz a readin&rsquo; out of their
+books, or a readin&rsquo; out of their hearts. Mebby sunthin&rsquo; kinder sad
+and serene. Mebby it wuz sunthin&rsquo; about the gay world of human happiness,
+and human sorrows, they had turned backs to forever. Mebby it wuz about the
+other world that they had sot out for through a lonesome way. Mebby it wuz
+&ldquo;Never&rdquo; they wuz a readin&rsquo; about, and mebby it wuz
+&ldquo;Forever.&rdquo; I don&rsquo;t know what it wuz. But we went by
+&rsquo;em, and anon, yes it wuz jest anon, for it wuz the very minute that I
+lifted my eyes from the Father&rsquo;s calm and rather sad-lookin&rsquo; face,
+that I ketched sight on&rsquo;t, that I see a comin&rsquo; down from the high
+hills to the left on us, an immense sort of a trough, or so it looked, a
+comin&rsquo; right down through the trees, from the top of the mountain to the,
+bottom. And then all acrost the fields as fur, as fur as from our house way
+over to Miss Pixley&rsquo;s wuz a sort of a road, with a row of electric lights
+along the side on&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We drove up to a buildin&rsquo; that stood at the foot of that immense slide,
+or so they called it, and a female woman who wuz there told us all about it.
+And we went out her back door, and see way up the slide, or trough. There wuz a
+railin&rsquo; on each side on&rsquo;t, and a place in the middle where she said
+the Toboggen came down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And sez Josiah, &ldquo;Who is the Toboggen, anyway? Is he a native of the place
+or a Injun? Anyway,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d give a dollar bill to see
+him a comin&rsquo; down that place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the woman said, &ldquo;A Toboggen wuz a sort of a long sled, that two or
+three folks could ride on, and they come down that slide with such force that
+they went way out acrost the fields as far as the row of lights, before it
+stopped.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, did you ever see the beat on&rsquo;t?&rdquo; Sez I,
+&ldquo;Haint that as far as from our house to Miss Pixley&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;and further too. It is as far as Uncle Jim
+Hozzleton&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;I believe you are in the right
+on&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And sez Josiah, &ldquo;How do they get back agin? Do they come in the cars, or
+in their own conveniences?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a sleigh to bring &rsquo;em back, but sometime they walk
+back,&rdquo; sez the woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Walk back!&rdquo; sez I, in deep amaze. &ldquo;Do they walk from way out
+there, and cleer up that mountain agin?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez she. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see the place at the side
+for &rsquo;em to draw the Toboggen up, and the little flights of steps for
+&rsquo;em to go up the hill?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, in deep amaze, and auxins as ever to get information
+on deep subjects, &ldquo;where duz the fun come in, is it in walkin&rsquo; way
+over the plain and up the hills, or is it in comin&rsquo; down?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she said she didn&rsquo;t know exactly where the fun lay, but she
+s&rsquo;posed it wuz comin&rsquo; down. Anyway, they seemed to enjoy it first
+rate. And she said it wuz a pretty sight to see &rsquo;em all on a bright clear
+night, when the sky wuz blue and full of stars, and the earth white and
+glistenin&rsquo; underneath to see 7 or 800, all dressed up in to gayest way,
+suits of white blankets, gay borders and bright tasseled caps of every color,
+and suits of every other pretty color all trimmed with fur and embroideries, to
+see &rsquo;em all a laughin&rsquo; and a talkin&rsquo;, with their cheeks and
+eyes bright and glowin&rsquo;, to see &rsquo;em a comin&rsquo; down the slide
+like flashes of every colored light, and away out over the white
+glistenin&rsquo; plains; and then to see the long line of happy laughin&rsquo;
+creeters a walkin&rsquo; back agin&rsquo; drawin&rsquo; the gay Toboggens. She
+said it wuz a sight worth seein&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do they come down alone?&rdquo; sez Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no!&rdquo; sez she. &ldquo;Boys and their sweethearts, men and wives,
+fathers and mothers and children, sometimes 4 on a Toboggan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez Josiah, lookin&rsquo; anamated and clever, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d love to take
+you on one on &rsquo;em, Samantha.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no!&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t want to be took.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But a bystander a standin&rsquo; by said it wuz a sight to behold to stand up
+on top and start off. He said the swiftness of the motion, the brightness of
+the electric lights ahead, the gleam of the snow made it seem like
+plungin&rsquo; down a dazzlin&rsquo; Niagara of whiteness and glitterin&rsquo;
+light; and some, like bein&rsquo; shot out of a cannon. Why, he said they went
+with such lightnin&rsquo; speed, that if you stood clost by the slide a
+waitin&rsquo; to see a friend go by, you might stand so near as to touch her,
+but you couldn&rsquo;t no more see her to recognize her, than you could
+recognize one spoke from another in the wheel of a runaway carriage. You would
+jest see a red flash go by, if so be it wuz a red gown she had on. A red flash
+a dartin&rsquo; through the air, and a disappearin&rsquo; down the long
+glitterin&rsquo; lane of light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You could see her a goin&rsquo; back, so they said, a laughin&rsquo; and a
+jokin&rsquo; with somebody, if so be she walked back, but there wuz long
+sleighs to carry &rsquo;em back, them and their Toboggens, if they wanted to
+ride, at the small expenditure of 10 cents apiece. They go, in the fastest time
+anybody can make till they go on the lightnin&rsquo;, a way in which they will
+go before long, I think, and Josiah duz too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They said there wuzn&rsquo;t nothin&rsquo; like it. And I said,
+&ldquo;Like as not.&rdquo; I believed &rsquo;em. And then the woman said,
+&ldquo;This long room we wuz a standin&rsquo; in,&rdquo; for we had gone back
+into the house, durin&rsquo; our interview, this long room wuz all warm and
+light for &rsquo;em to come into and get warm, and she said as many as 600 in a
+night would come in there and have supper there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then she showed us the model of a Toboggen, all sculped out, with a man and
+a woman on it. The girl wuz ahead sort a drawin&rsquo; the Toboggen, as you may
+say, and her lover. (I know he wuz, from his looks.) He wuz behind her, with
+his face right clost to her shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I&rsquo;ll bet that when they started down that gleamin&rsquo; slide, they
+felt as if they 2 wuz alone under the stars and the heavens, and wuz a
+glidin&rsquo; down into a dazzlin&rsquo; way of glory. You could see it in
+their faces. I liked their faces real well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the sight on &rsquo;em made Josiah Allen crazier&rsquo;n ever to go too,
+and he sez, &ldquo;I feel as if I <i>must</i> Toboggen, Samantha!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Be calm! Josiah, you <i>can&rsquo;t</i> slide down hill in July.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m bound to
+enquire.&rdquo; And he asked the woman if they ever Toboggened in the summer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, never!&rdquo; sez she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;You see it can&rsquo;t be done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She never see it tried,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;How can you tell what you
+can do without tryin&rsquo;?&rdquo; sez he lookin&rsquo; shrewdly, and
+longingly, up the slide. I trembled, for I knew not what the next move of his
+would be. But I bethought me of a powerful weepon I had by me. And I sez,
+&ldquo;The driver will ask pay for every minute we are here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image41.gif" height="331" width="213" alt="Down the Steps" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And as I sez this, Josiah turned and almost flew down the steps and into the
+buggy. I had skairt him. Truly I felt relieved, and sez I to myself,
+&ldquo;What would wimmen do if it wuzn&rsquo;t for these little weepons they
+hold in their hands, to control their pardners with.&rdquo; I felt happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the next words of Josiah knocked down all that palace of Peace, that my
+soul had betook herself to. Sez he, &ldquo;Samantha Allen, before I leave
+Saratoga I shall Toboggen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I immegetly turned the subject round and talked wildly and almost
+incoherently on politicks. I praised the tariff amost beyond its deserts. I
+brung up our foreign relations, and spoke well on &rsquo;em. I tackled revenues
+and taxation, and hurried him from one to the other on &rsquo;em, almost
+wildly, to get the idee out of his head. And I congratulated myself on
+havin&rsquo; succeeded. Alas! how futile is our hopes, sometimes futiler than
+we have any idee on!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By night all thoughts of danger had left me, and I slept sweetly and
+peacefully. But early in the mornin&rsquo; I had a strange dream. I dreamed I
+wuz in the woods with my head a layin&rsquo; on a log, and the ground felt cold
+that I wuz a layin&rsquo; on. And then the log gin way with me, and my head
+came down onto the ground. And then I slept peaceful agin, but chilly, till
+anon, or about that time, I beard a strange sound and I waked up with a start.
+It wuz in the first faint glow of mornin&rsquo; twilight. But as faint as the
+light wuz, for the eye of love is keen, I missed my beloved pardner&rsquo;s
+head from the opposite pillow, and I riz up in wild agitation and thinkses I,
+&ldquo;Has rapine took place here; has Josiah Allen been abducted away from me?
+Is he a kidnapped Josiah?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that fearful thought my heart begun to beat so voyalently as to almost stop
+my breath, and I felt I wuz growin&rsquo; pale and wan, wanner, fur wanner than
+I had been sense I came to Saratoga. I love Josiah Allen, he is dear to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I riz up feelin&rsquo; that I would find that dear man and rescue him or
+perish in the attempt. Yes, I felt that I <i>must</i> perish if I did not find him.
+What would life be to me without him? And as I thought that thought the light
+of the day that wuz a breakin&rsquo;, looked sort of a faint to me, and
+sickish. And like a flash it came to me, the thought that that light seemed
+like the miserable dawns of wretched days without him, a pale light with no
+warmth or brightness in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at that very minute I heard a noise outside the door, and I heard that
+beloved voice a sayin&rsquo; in low axents the words I had so often heard him
+speak, words I had oft rebuked him for, but now, so weak will human love make
+one, now, I welcome them gladly&mdash;they sounded exquisitely sweet to me. The
+words wuz, &ldquo;Dumb &rsquo;em!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I joyfully opened the door. But oh! what a sight met my eye. There stood
+Josiah Allen, arrayed in a blanket he had took from our bed (that accounted for
+my cold feelin&rsquo; in my dream). The blanket wuz white, with a gay border of
+red and yellow. He had fixed it onto him in a sort of a dressy way, and
+strapped it round the waist with my shawl strap. And he had took a bright
+yeller silk handkerchief of hisen, and had wrapped it round his head so&rsquo;s
+it hung down some like a cap, and he wuz a tryin&rsquo; to fasten it round his
+forward with one of my stockin&rsquo; supporters. He couldn&rsquo;t buckle it,
+and that is what called forth his exclamations. At his feet, partly upon the
+stairs, wuz the bolster from our bed (that accounted for the log that had gin
+way). And he had spread a little red shawl of mine over the top on&rsquo;t, and
+as I opened the door he wuz jest ready to embark on the bolster, he waz jest a
+steppin&rsquo; onto it. But as he see me he paused, and I sez in low axents,
+&ldquo;What are you a goin&rsquo; to do, Josiah Allen?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a goin&rsquo; to Toboggen,&rdquo; sez he.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image42.gif" height="283" width="451" alt="toboggening" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Do you stop at once, and come back into your room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; sez he firmly, and preparin&rsquo; to embark on the
+bolster, &ldquo;I am a goin&rsquo; to Toboggen. And you come and go to. It is
+so fashionable,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;such a genteel diversion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Do you stop it at once, and come back to your room. Why,&rdquo;
+sez I, &ldquo;the hull house will be routed up, and be up here in a
+minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;they&rsquo;ll see fun if they do and
+fashion. I am a goin&rsquo;, Samantha!&rdquo; and be stepped forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll see sunthin&rsquo; else that begins with a f, but
+it haint fun or fashion.&rsquo; And agin I sez, &ldquo;Do you come back, Josiah
+Allen. You&rsquo;ll break your neck and rout up the house, and be called a
+fool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, Samantha! I must Toboggen. I must go down the slide once.&rdquo;
+And he fixed the bolster more firmly on the top stair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, feelin&rsquo; that I wuz drove to my last ambush by
+him, sez I, &ldquo;probably five dollars won&rsquo;t make the expenses good,
+besides your doctor&rsquo;s bill, and my mornin&rsquo;. And I shall put on the
+deepest of crape, Josiah Allen,&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I see he wavered and I pressed the charge home. Sez I, &ldquo;That bolster is
+thin cloth, Josiah Allen, and you&rsquo;ll probably have to pay now for
+draggin&rsquo; it all over the floor. If anybody should see you with it there,
+that bolster would be charged in your bill. And how would it look to the
+neighbors to have a bolster charged in your bill? And I should treasure it,
+Josiah Allen, as bein&rsquo; the last bill you made before you broke your neck
+!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, wall,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;I s&rsquo;pose I can put the bolster
+back.&rdquo; But he wuz snappish, and he kep&rsquo; snappish all day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wuzn&rsquo;t quelled. Though he had gin in for the time bein&rsquo; I see he
+wuzn&rsquo;t quelled down. He acted dissatisfied and highheaded, and I felt
+worried in my mind, not knowin&rsquo; what his next move would be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! the tribulations it makes a woman to take care of a man. But then it pays.
+After all, in the deepest of my tribulations I feel, I do the most of the time
+feel, that it pays. When he is good he is dretful good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I went over to see Polly Pixley the next night, and when I got back to my
+room, there stood Josiah Allen with both of his feet sort a bandaged and tied
+down onto sumthin&rsquo;, which I didn&rsquo;t at first recognize. It waz big
+and sort a egg shaped, and open worked, and both his feet wuz strapped down
+tight onto it, and he wuz a pushin&rsquo; himself round the room with his
+umberell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;What is the matter now, Josiah Allen; what are you a
+doin&rsquo; now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I am a walkin&rsquo; on snow-shoes, Samantha! But I don&rsquo;t
+see,&rdquo; sez he a stoppin&rsquo; to rest, for he seemed tuckered out,
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how the savages got round as they did and performed
+such journeys. You put &rsquo;em on, Samantha,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;and see if
+you can get on any faster in &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image43.gif" height="325" width="218" alt="Snowshoes" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, coldly, &ldquo;The savages probable did&rsquo;nt have both feet on one
+shoe, Josiah Allen, as you have. I shall put on no snowshoes in the middle of
+July; but if I did, I should put &rsquo;em on accordin&rsquo; to a little mite
+of sense. I should try to use as much sense as a savage any way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, how it would look to have one foot on that great big snow-shoe. I
+always did like a good close fit in my shoes. And you see I have room enough
+and to spare for both on &rsquo;em on this. Why it wouldn&rsquo;t look dressy
+at all, Samantha, to put &rsquo;em on as you say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I very coldly, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see anything over and above dressy in
+your looks now, Josiah Allen, with both of your feet tied down onto that one
+shoe, and you a tryin&rsquo; to move off when you can&rsquo;t. I can&rsquo;t
+see anything over and above ornamental in it, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! you are never willin&rsquo; to give in that I look dressy, Samantha.
+But I s&rsquo;pose I can put my feet where you say. You are so sot, but they
+are too big for me&mdash;I shall look like a fool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked at him calmly over my specks, and sez I, &ldquo;I guess I
+sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t notice the difference or realize the change. I
+wonder,&rdquo; sez I, in middlin&rsquo; cold axents, &ldquo;how you think you
+are a lookin&rsquo; now, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! keep a naggin&rsquo; at me!&rdquo; sez he. But I see he wuz a
+gittin&rsquo; kinder sick of the idee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What you mean by puttin&rsquo; &rsquo;em on at all is more than I can
+say,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;a tryin to walk on snowshoes right in
+dog-days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I put &rsquo;em on,&rdquo; Samantha, sez he, a beginnin&rsquo; to
+unstrap &rsquo;em, &ldquo;I put &rsquo;em on because I wanted to feel like a
+savage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I have seen you at times durin&rsquo; the
+last 20 years, when I thought you realized how they felt without snow-shoes on,
+either.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(These little interchanges of confidence will take place in every-day life.)
+But at that very minute Ardelia Tutt rapped at the door, and Josiah hustled
+them snow-shoes into the closet, and that wuz the last trial I had with him
+about &rsquo;em. He had borrowed &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Ardelia wuz dretful pensive, and soft actin&rsquo; that night, she seemed
+real tickled to see us, and to get where we wuz. She haint over and above
+suited with the boardin&rsquo; place where she is, I think. I don&rsquo;t
+believe they have very good food, though she won&rsquo;t complain, bein&rsquo;
+as they are relations on her own side. And then she is sech a good little
+creeter anyway. But I had my suspicions. She didn&rsquo;t seem very happy. She
+said she had been down to the park that afternoon, she and the young chap that
+has been a payin&rsquo; her so much attention lately, Bial Flamburg. She said
+they had sot down there by the deer park most all the afternoon a
+watchin&rsquo; the deer. She spoke dretful well of the deer. And they are
+likely deer for anything I know. But she seemed sort a pensive and low
+spirited. Mebby she is a beginnin&rsquo; to find Bial Flamburg out. Mebby she
+is a beginnin&rsquo; to not like his ways. He drinks and smokes, that I know,
+and I&rsquo;ve mistrusted worse things on him. Before Ardelia went away, she
+slipped the followin&rsquo; lines into my hand, which I read after she had
+left. They wuz rather melancholy and ran as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;STANZAS WROTH ON A DEER IN CENTRAL PARK.<br/>
+&ldquo;BY ARDELIA TUTT.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh deer, sweet deer that softly steppeth out<br/>
+From out thy rustick cot beneath the hill;<br/>
+We would not meet thee with a wild, wild shout,<br/>
+But with the low voice, low and sweet, and still<br/>
+As anything.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;And in thine ear would whisper thoughts that swell<br/>
+Our bosom nigh beyond our corset&rsquo;s bound;<br/>
+As lo! we see thee step along the dell<br/>
+And with thy horns, and eyes look all around<br/>
+And up, and down.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;We think of all thy virtue, and thy ways,<br/>
+Thy simple ways of eating hay and grass;<br/>
+We would not cause thy cheek to blush with praise,<br/>
+Yet we have marked thee, marked thee as thou pass<br/>
+We could but fain.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;And lo! our admiration thou dost win<br/>
+Thou in the haunts of fashion keep afar,<br/>
+Thou dost not lo! imbibe vile beer or gin,<br/>
+Or smoke with pipe, or with a bad cigar,<br/>
+Or cigarette.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Thou dost not flirt nor cast sheep eyes on her<br/>
+Who is bound unto another by a vow&mdash;<br/>
+Thou dost not murmur love words in her ear,<br/>
+While husband&rsquo;s prowl about, to make a row<br/>
+Or shoot with gun.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Thou dost not drive in tandem, or on high&mdash;<br/>
+In stately loneliness, in Tally Ho go round,<br/>
+Thou dost not on a horse back nobly canter by,<br/>
+Or drive in dog carts up and down the land,<br/>
+By day or night.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;For ice cream, or for custard pie thou hankerest not,<br/>
+Yearn not for caramels, nor apple sass,<br/>
+Thou dost not eat pop corn, or peanuts down the grot,<br/>
+Ah! no, sweet deer, thou meekly eatest grass<br/>
+In peace.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;A lesson man might learn of thee full well,<br/>
+To eat with sweet content tough steak, or thin;<br/>
+Cold toast, or hot imbibe, think of that dell&mdash;<br/>
+That patient deer, and eat in peace, nor sin<br/>
+With profane word.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;If waiters do not come with food, think on that deer,<br/>
+If food be bad and cold, think on that dell,<br/>
+Strike not for vengeance with a deadly spear,<br/>
+Learn of that angel deer and murmur, all is well,<br/>
+While eating grass.”<br/>
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>Chapter XIV.<br/>
+LAKE GEORGE AND MOUNT McGREGOR.</h2>
+
+<p>
+It wuz on a nice pleasant day that Ardelia Tuit, Josiah Allen, and me, met by
+previous agreement quite early in the mornin&rsquo;, A. M., and sot out for
+Lake George. It is so nigh, that you can step onto the cars, and go out and see
+George any time of day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to me jest as if George wuz glad we had come, for there wuz a broad
+happy smile all over his face, and a sort of a dimplin&rsquo; look, as if he
+wanted to laugh right out. All the beckonin&rsquo; shores and islands, with
+their beautiful houses on &rsquo;em, and the distant forests, and the trees a
+bendin&rsquo; over George, all seemed to sort a smile out a welcome to us. We
+had a most beautiful day, and got back quite late in the afternoon, P. M.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the next day, a day heavenly calm and fair, Josiah Allen and me sot sail
+for Mount McGregor&mdash;that mountain top that is lifted up higher in the
+hearts of Americans than any other peak on the continent&mdash;fur higher. For
+it is the place where the memory of a Hero lays over all the peaceful landscape
+like a inspiration and a benediction, and will rest there forever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The railroad winds round and round the mountain sometimes not seemin&rsquo;ly
+goin&rsquo; up at all, but gradually a movin&rsquo; in&rsquo; on towards the
+top, jest as this brave Hero did in his career. If some of the time he
+didn&rsquo;t seem to move on, or if some of the time he seemed to go back for a
+little, yet there wuz a deathless fire inside on him, a power, a strength that
+kep&rsquo; him a goin&rsquo; up, up, up, and drawin&rsquo; the nation up with
+him onto the safe level ground of Victory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We got pleasant glimpses of beauty, pretty pictures on&rsquo;t, every little
+while as we wended our way on up the mountains. Anon we would go round a curve,
+a ledge of rocks mebby, and lo! far off a openin&rsquo; through the woods would
+show us a lovely picture of hill and dell, blue water and blue mountains in the
+distance. And then a green wood picture, shut in and lonely, with tall ferns,
+and wild flowers, and thick green grasses under the bendin&rsquo; trees. Then
+fur down agin&rsquo; a picture of a farmhouse, sheltered and quiet, with fields
+layin&rsquo; about it green and golden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But anon, we reached the pretty little lonesome station, and there we wuz on
+top of Mount McGregor. We disembarked from the cars and wended our way up the
+hill up the windin&rsquo; foot path, wore down by the feet of pilgrims from
+every land, quite a tegus walk though beautiful, up to the good-lookin&rsquo;,
+and good appearin&rsquo; tarven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I would fain have stopped at that minute at the abode the Hero had sanctified
+by his last looks. But my companion said to me that he wuz in nearly a
+starvin&rsquo; state. Now it wuzn&rsquo;t much after 11 A. M. forenoon, and I
+felt that he would not die of starvation so soon. But his looks wuz pitiful in
+the extreme and he reminded me in a sort of a weak voice that he didn&rsquo;t
+eat no breakfast hardly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sez truthfully, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t notice it, Josiah.&rdquo; But sez I,
+&ldquo;I will accompany you where your hunger can be slaked.&rdquo; So we went
+straight up to the tarven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I would stop a minute in front of it, to see the lovely, lovely seen that
+wuz spread out before our eyes. For fur off could we see milds and milds of the
+beautiful country a layin&rsquo; fur below us. Beautiful landscape, dotted with
+crystal lakes, laved by the blue Hudson and bordered by the fur-away mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a fair seen, a fair seen. Even Josiah wuz rousted up by it, and forgot
+his hunger. I myself wuz lost in the contemplation on it, and entirely by the
+side of myself. So much so, that I forgot where I wuz, and whether I wuz a wife
+or a widow, or what I wuz.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But anon, as my senses came back from the realm of pure beauty they had been a
+traversin&rsquo;, I recollected that I wuz a wife, that Providence and Elder
+Minkley had placed a man in my hands to take care on; and I see he wuz gone
+from me, and I must look him up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I found that man in one of the high tallish lookin&rsquo; swing chairs that
+wuz a swingin&rsquo; from high poles all along the brow of the hill. They
+looked some like a stanchol for a horse, and some like a pair of galluses that
+criminals are hung on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah wuzn&rsquo;t able to work it right and it did require a deep mind to get
+into one without peril. And he wuz on the brink of a catastrophe. I got him out
+by siezin&rsquo; the chair and holdin&rsquo; it tight, till he dismounted from
+it&mdash;which he did with words unadapted to the serenity of the atmosphere.
+And then we went out the broad pleasant door-yard up into the tarven, and my
+companion got some coffee, and some refreshments, to refresh ourselves with.
+And then he, feelin&rsquo; clever and real affectionate to me (owin&rsquo;
+partly I s&rsquo;pose to the good dinner), we wended our way down to the
+cottage where the Hero met his last foe and fell victorious.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image44.gif" height="333" width="317" alt="The Swing Chair" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+We went up the broad steps onto the piazza, and I looked off from it, and over
+all the landscape under the soft summer sky, lay that same beautiful tender
+inspired memory. It lay like the hush that follows a prayer at a dyin&rsquo;
+bed. Like the glow that rests on the world when the sun has gone down in glory.
+Like the silence full of voices that follows a oriter&rsquo;s inspired words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The air, the whole place, thrilled with that memory, that presence that wuz
+with us, though unseen to the eyes of our spectacles. It followed us through
+the door way, it went ahead on us into the room where the pen wuz laid down for
+the last time, where the last words wuz said. That pen wuz hung up over the bed
+where the tired head had rested last. By the bedside wuz the candle blowed out,
+when he got to the place where it is so light they don&rsquo;t need candles.
+The watch stopped at the time when he begun to recken time by the deathless
+ages of immortality. And as I stood there, I said to myself, &ldquo;I wish I
+could see the faces that wuz a bendin&rsquo; over this bed, August 11th,
+1885.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the ministerin&rsquo; angels, and heroes, and conquerors, all a
+waitin&rsquo; for him to join &rsquo;em. All the Grand Army of the Republic,
+them who fell in mountain and valley; the lamented and the nameless, all, all a
+waitin&rsquo; for the Leader they loved, the silent, quiet man, whose soul
+spoke, who said in deeds what weaker spirits waste in language.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wished I could see the great army that stood around Mount McGregor that day.
+I wished I could hear the notes of the immortal revelee, which wuz a
+soundin&rsquo; all along the lines callin&rsquo; him to wake from his earth
+sleep into life&mdash;callin&rsquo; him from the night here, the night of
+sorrow and pain, into the mornin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as I lifted my eyes, the eyes of the General seemed to look cleer down into
+my soul, full of the secrets that he could tell now, if he wanted to, full of
+the mysteries of life, the mysteries of death. The voiceless presence that
+filled the hull landscape, earth and air, looked at us through them eyes, half
+mournful, prophetic, true and calm, they wuz a lookin&rsquo; through all the
+past, through all the future. What did they see there? I couldn&rsquo;t tell,
+nor Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In another room wuz the flowers from many climes. Flowers strewed onto the
+stage from hands all over the world, when the foot lights burned low, and the
+dark curtain went down for the last time on the Hero. Great masses of flowers,
+every one on &rsquo;em, bearin&rsquo; the world&rsquo;s love, the world&rsquo;s
+sorrow over our nation&rsquo;s loss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had a large quantity of emotions as I stood there, probably as many as 48 a
+minute for quite a spell, and that is a large number of emotions to have, when
+the size of &rsquo;em is as large as the sizes of &rsquo;em wuz. I thought as I
+stood there of what I had hearn the Hero said once in his last illness, that,
+liftin&rsquo; up his grand right arm that had saved the Nation, he said,
+&ldquo;I am on duty from four to six.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, thinkses I, he wuz on duty all through the shadows and the darkness of
+war, all through the peril, and the heartache, and the wild alarm of war, calm
+and dauntless, he wuz on duty till the mornin&rsquo; of peace came, and the
+light wuz shinin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On duty through the darkness. No one believed, no one dared to think that if
+peril had come again to the country, he would not have been ready,&mdash;ready
+to face danger and death for the people he had saved once, the people whom he
+loved, because he had dared death for &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, he wuz on duty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There wuz a darker shadow come to him than any cloud that ever rose over a
+battle-field when, honest and true himself as the light, he still stood under
+the shadow of blame and impendin&rsquo; want, stood in the blackest shadow that
+can cover generous, faithful hearts, the heart-sickenin&rsquo; shadow of
+ingratitude; when the people he had saved from ruin hesitated, and refused to
+give him in the time of his need the paltry pension, the few dollars out of the
+millions he had saved for them, preferring to allow <i>him</i>, the greatest hero of
+the world, the man who had represented them before the nations, to sell the
+badges and swords he had worn in fightin&rsquo; their battles, for bread for
+himself and wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he wuz on duty all through this night. Patient, uncomplainin&rsquo;. And
+not one of these warriors fightin&rsquo; their bloodless battle of words aginst
+him, would dare to say that he would not have been ready at any minute, to give
+his life agin for these very men, had danger come to the country and they had
+needed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when hastened on by the shock, and the suspense, death seemed to be near
+him, so near that it seemed as if the burden must needs be light&mdash;the
+tardy justice that came to him must have seemed like an insult, but if he
+thought so he never said it; no, brave and patient, he wuz on duty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all through the long, long time that he looked through the shadows for a
+more sure foe than had ever lain in Southern ambush for him, he wuz on duty.
+Not an impatient word, not an anxious word. Of all the feerin&rsquo;,
+doubtin&rsquo;, hopin&rsquo;, achin&rsquo; hearts about him, he only wuz calm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For, not only his own dear ones, but the hull country, friends and foes alike,
+as if learnin&rsquo; through fear of his loss how grand a hero he wuz, and how
+greatly and entirely he wuz beloved by them all, they sent up to Heaven such a
+great cloud of prayers for his safety as never rose for any man. But he only
+wuz calm, while the hull world wuz excited in his behalf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the sight of his patient work, the sight of him who stopped dyin&rsquo; (as
+it were) to earn by his own brave honest hand the future comfort of his family,
+amazed, and wonderin&rsquo; at this spectacle, one of the greatest it seems to
+me that ever wuz seen on earth, the hull nation turned to him in such a full
+hearted love, and admiration, and worship, that they forgot in their quicker
+adorin&rsquo; heart-throbs, the slower meaner throbs they had gin him, this
+same brave Hero, jest as brave and true-hearted in the past as he wuz on his
+grand death-bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They forgot everything that had gone by in their worship, and I don&rsquo;t
+know but I ort to. Mebby I had. I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder a mite if I had. But
+all the while, all through the agony and the labor, and when too wearied he lay
+down the pen,&mdash;he wuz on duty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waitin&rsquo; patiently, fearlessly, till he should see in the first glow of
+the sunrise the form of the angel comin&rsquo; to relieve his watch, the tall,
+fair angel of Rest, that the Great Commander sent down in the mornin&rsquo;
+watches to relieve his weary soldier,that divinest angel that ever comes to the
+abode of men, though her beauty shines forever through tears, led by her hand,
+he has left life&rsquo;s battle-field forever; and what is left to this nation
+but memory, love, and mebby remorse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But little matters it to him, the Nation&rsquo;s love or the Nation&rsquo;s
+blame, restin&rsquo; there by the calm waters he loved. The tides come in, and
+the tides go out; jest as they did in his life; the fickle tide of public favor
+that swept by him, movin&rsquo; him not on his heavenly mission of duty and
+patriotism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tides go out, and the tides come in; the wind wails and the wind sings its
+sweet summer songs; but he does not mind the melody or the clamor. He is
+resting. Sleep on, Hero beloved, while the world wakes to praise thee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we sot sail from Mount McGregor about half-past four P. M., afternoon.
+And we wound round and round the mountain side jest as he did, only goin&rsquo;
+down into the valley instid of upwards. But the trees that clothed the bare
+back of the mountain looked green and shinin&rsquo; in the late afternoon
+sunlight, and the fields spread out in the valley looked green and peaceful
+under the cool shadows of approachin&rsquo; sunset.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And right in the midst of one of these fields, all full of white daisies, the
+cars stopped and the conductor sung out: &ldquo;Five minutes&rsquo; stop at
+Daisy station. Five minutes to get out and pick daisies.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And sez Josiah to me in gruff axents, when I asked him if he wuz goin&rsquo; to
+get out and pick some. Sez he, &ldquo;Samantha, no man can go ahead of me in
+hatin&rsquo; the dumb weeds, and doin&rsquo; his best towards uprootin&rsquo;
+&rsquo;em in my own land; and I deeply sympathize with any man who is over run
+by &rsquo;em. But why am I beholdin&rsquo; to the man that owns this lot? Why
+should I and all the rest of this carload of folks, all dressed up in our best
+too, lay hold and weed out these infernal nuisances for nothin&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, he said these fearfully profane words to me and I herd him in silence, for
+I did not want to make a seen in public. Sez I, &ldquo;Josiah, they are
+pickin&rsquo; &rsquo;em because they love &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Love &rsquo;em!&rdquo; Oh, the fearful, scornful unbelievin&rsquo; look
+that came over my pardner&rsquo;s face, as I said these peaceful words to him.
+And he added a expletive which I am fur from bein&rsquo; urged to ever repeat.
+It wuz sinful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Love &rsquo;em!&rdquo; Agin he sez. And agin follerd a expletive that
+wuz still more forcible, and still more sinful. And I felt obliged to check him
+which I did. And after a long parlay, in which I used my best endeavors of
+argument and reason to convince him that I wuz in the right on&rsquo;t, I see
+he wuzn&rsquo;t convinced. And then I spoke about its bein&rsquo; fashionable
+to get out and pick &rsquo;em, and he looked different to once. I could see a
+change in him. All my arguments of the beauty and sweetness of the posies had
+no effect, but when I said fashionable, he faltered, and he sez, &ldquo;Is it
+called a genteel diversion?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And finally he sez, &ldquo;Wall, I s&rsquo;pose I can go out and pick some for
+you. Dumb their dumb picters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go in that spirit, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, I shall go in jest that sprit,&rdquo; he snapped out, &ldquo;if I
+go at all.&rdquo; And he went.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But oh! it wuz a sight to set and look on, and see the look onto his face, as
+he picked the innocent blossoms. It wuz a look of such deep loathin&rsquo;, and
+hatred, combined with a sort of a genteel, fashionable air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Altogether it wuz the most curius, and strange look, that I ever see outside of
+a menagery of wild animals. And he had that same look onto his face as he came
+in and gin &rsquo;em to me. He had yanked&rsquo;em all up by their roots too,
+which made the Bokay look more strange. But I accepted of it in silence, for I
+see by his mean that he wuz not in a condition to brook another word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I trembled when a bystander a standin&rsquo; by who wuz arrangin&rsquo; a
+beautiful bunch of &rsquo;em, a handlin&rsquo; &rsquo;em as flowers ort to be
+handled, as if they had a soul, and could feel a rough or tender
+touch,&mdash;this man sez to Josiah, &ldquo;I see that you too love this
+beautiful blossom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wuz glad the man&rsquo;s eyes wuz riveted onto his Bokay, for the ferocity of
+Josiah Allen&rsquo;s look wuz sunthin&rsquo; fearful. He looked as if he could
+tear him lim&rsquo; from lim&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I hastily drawed Josiah to a seat at the other end of the car, and
+voyalently, but firmly, I drawed his attention off onto Religion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sez, &ldquo;Josiah, do you believe we had better paint the steeple of the
+meetin&rsquo;-house, white or dark colered?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This wuz a subject that had rent Jonesville to its very twain. And Josiah had
+been fearfully exercised on it. And this plan of mine succeeded. He got
+eloquent on it, and I kinder held off, and talked offish, and let him convince
+me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did it from principle.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>Chapter XV.<br/>
+ADVENTURES AT VARIOUS SPRINGS.</h2>
+
+<p>
+A few days after this, Josiah Allen came in, and sez he, &ldquo;The
+Everlastin&rsquo; spring is the one for me, Samantha! I believe it will keep me
+alive for hundreds and hundreds of years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe that, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, it is so, whether you believe it or not. Why, I see a feller just
+now who sez he don&rsquo;t believe anybody would ever die at all, if they
+kep&rsquo; themselves&rsquo; kind a wet through all the time with this
+water.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, you are not talkin&rsquo; Bible. The Bible sez,
+&lsquo;all flesh is as grass.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, that is what he meant; if the grass wuz watered with that water
+all the time, it would never wilt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, shaw!&rdquo; sez I. (I seldom say shaw, but this seemed to me a time
+for shawin&rsquo;.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Josiah kep&rsquo; on, for he wuz fearfully excited. Sez he, &ldquo;Why, the
+feller said, there wuz a old man who lived right by the side of this spring,
+and felt the effects of it inside and out all the time, it wuz so healthy
+there. Why the old man kep&rsquo; on a livin&rsquo;, and a livin&rsquo; till he
+got to be a hundred. And he wuz kinder lazy naturally and he got tired of
+livin&rsquo;. He said he wuz tired of gettin&rsquo; up mornin&rsquo;s and
+dressin&rsquo; of him, tired of pullin&rsquo; on his boots and drawin&rsquo; on
+his trowsers, and he told his grandson Sam to take him up to Troy and let him
+die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, Sam took him up to Troy, and he died right away, almost. And Sam
+bein&rsquo; a good-hearted chap, thought it would please the old man to he
+buried down by the spring, that healthy spot. So he took him back there in a
+wagon he borrowed. And when he got clost to the spring, Sam heard a sithe, and
+he looked back, and there the old gentleman wuz a settin&rsquo; up a
+leanin&rsquo; his head on his elbo and he sez, in a sort of a sad way, not mad,
+but melanecolly, &lsquo;You hadn&rsquo;t ort to don it, Sam. You hadn&rsquo;t
+ort to. I&rsquo;m in now for another hundred years.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image45.gif" height="275" width="395" alt="The Everlastin’ Spring" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+I told Josiah I didn&rsquo;t believe that. Sez I, &ldquo;I believe the waters
+are good, very good, and the air is healthy here in the extreme, but I
+don&rsquo;t believe that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he said it wuz a fact, and the feller said he could prove it.
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; Josiah sez, &ldquo;with the minerals there is in that
+spring, if you only take enough of it, I don&rsquo;t see how anybody can
+die.&rdquo; And sez Josiah, &ldquo;I am a goin&rsquo; to jest live on that
+water while I am here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;you must do as you are a mind to, with fear
+and tremblin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought mebby quotin&rsquo; Scripture to him would kinder quell him down, for
+he wuz fearfully agitated and wrought up about the Everlastin&rsquo; spring.
+And he begun at once to calculate on it, on how much he could drink of it, if
+he begun early in the mornin&rsquo; and drinked late at night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I kep&rsquo; on megum. I drinked the waters that seemed to help me and made
+me feel better, but wuz megum in it, and didn&rsquo;t get over excited about
+any on &rsquo;em. But oh! oh! the quantities of that water that Josiah Allen
+took! Why, it seemed as if he would make a perfect shipwreck of his own body,
+and wash himself away, till one day he came in fearful excited agin, and sez
+he, in agitated axents, &ldquo;I made a mistake, Samantha. The Immortal spring
+is the one for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I have jest seen a feller that has been a tellin&rsquo; me about
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; sez I, in calm axents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, I&rsquo;ll tell you. It has acted on my feelin&rsquo;s
+dretful.&rdquo; Says he, &ldquo;I have shed some tears.&rdquo; (I see Josiah
+Allen had been a cryin&rsquo; when he came in.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez agin, &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;this man had a dretful sick wife. And he
+wuz a carryin&rsquo; her to the Immortal spring jest as fast as he could, for
+he felt it would save her, if he could get her to it. But she died a mile and a
+half from the spring. It wuz night, for he had traveled night and day to get
+her there, and the tarvens wuz all shut up, and he laid her on the spring-house
+floor, and laid down himself on one of the benches. He took a drink himself,
+the last thing before he laid down, for he felt that he must have
+sunthin&rsquo; to sustain him in his affliction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, in the night he heard a splashin&rsquo;, and he rousted up, and he
+see that he had left the water kinder careless the night before, and it had
+broke loose and covered the floor and riz up round the body, and there she wuz,
+all bright and hearty, a splashin&rsquo; and a swimmin&rsquo; round in the
+water.&rdquo; He said the man cried like a child when he told him of it.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image46.gif" height="266" width="387" alt="The Immortal Spring" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And sez Josiah, &ldquo;It wuz dretful affectin&rsquo;. It brought tears from
+me, to hear on&rsquo;t. I thought what if it had been you, Samantha!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see no occasion for tears,
+unless you would have been sorry to had me brung to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; sez Josiah, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think! I guess I have cried
+in the wrong place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I coldly, &ldquo;I should think as much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Josiah put on his hat and hurried out. He meant well. But it is quite a
+nack for pardners to know jest when to cry, and when to laff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, he follered up that spring, and drinked more, fur more than wuz good for
+him of that water. And then anon, he would hear of another one, and some
+dretful big story about it, and he would foller that up, and so it went on, he
+a follerin&rsquo; on, and I a bein&rsquo; megum, and drinkin&rsquo; stiddy, but
+moderate. And as it might be expected, I gained in health every day, and every
+hour. For the waters is good, there haint no doubt of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Josiah takin&rsquo; em as he did, bobbin&rsquo; round from one to the
+other, drinkin&rsquo; &rsquo;em at all hours of day and night, and
+floodin&rsquo; himself out with &rsquo;em, every one on &rsquo;em&mdash;why, he
+lost strength and health every day, till I felt truly, that if it went on much
+longer, I should go home in weeds. Not mullein, or burdock, or anything of that
+sort, but crape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at last a event occurred that sort a sot him to thinkin&rsquo; and quelled
+him down some. One day we sot out for a walk, Josiah and Ardelia Tutt and me.
+And in spite of all my protestations, my pardner had drinked 11 glasses full of
+the spring he wuz a follerin&rsquo; then. And he looked white round the lips as
+anything. And Ardelia and I wuz a sittin&rsquo; in a good shady place, and
+Josiah a little distance off, when a man ackosted him, a man with black eyes
+and black whiskers, and sez, &ldquo;You look pale, Sir. What water are you a
+drinkin&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Josiah told him that at that time he wuz a drinkin&rsquo; the water from
+the Immortal spring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Drinkin&rsquo; that water?&rdquo; sez the man, startin&rsquo; back
+horrefied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez Josiah, turnin&rsquo; paler than ever, for the
+man&rsquo;s looks wuz skairful in the extreme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! oh!&rdquo; groaned the man. &ldquo;And you are a married man?&rdquo;
+he groaned out mournfully, a lookin&rsquo; pitifully at him. &ldquo;With a
+family?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez Josiah, faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh dear,&rdquo; sez the man, &ldquo;must it be so, to die, so&mdash;so
+lamented?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To die!&rdquo; sez Josiah, turnin&rsquo; white jest round the lip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, to die! Did you not say you had been a drinkin&rsquo; the water
+from the Immortal spring?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, it is a certain, a deadly poison.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haint there no help for me?&rdquo; sez Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez the man, &ldquo;You must drink from the Live-forever
+spring, at the other end of the village. That water has the happy effect of
+neutralizin&rsquo; the poisons of the Immortal spring. If anything can save you
+that can. Why,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;folks that have been entirely broke down,
+and made helpless and hopeless invalids, them that have been brung down on
+their death-beds by the use of that vile Immortal water, have been cured by a
+few glasses of the pure healin&rsquo; waters of the Live-forever spring.
+I&rsquo;d advise you for your own sake, and the sake of your family, who would
+mourn your ontimely decese, to drink from that spring at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; sez Josiah, with a agonized and hopeless look, &ldquo;I
+can&rsquo;t drink no more now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; sez the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I don&rsquo;t hold any more. I don&rsquo;t hold but two quarts,
+and I have drinked 11 tumblers full now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eleven glasses of that poison?&rdquo; sez the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, if it is too late I am not to blame. I&rsquo;ve warned you.
+Farewell,&rdquo; sez he, a graspin&rsquo; holt of Josiah&rsquo;s hand.
+&ldquo;Farewell, forever. But if you <i>do</i> live,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;if by a
+miricle you are saved, remember the Live-forever spring. If there is any help
+for you it is in them waters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image47.gif" height="288" width="326" alt="The Live-forever Spring" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And he dashed away, for another stranger wuz approachin&rsquo; the seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I, myself, didn&rsquo;t have no idee that Josiah wuz a goin&rsquo; to die. But
+Ardelia whispered to me, she must go back to the hotel, so she went. I see she
+looked kinder strange, and I didn&rsquo;t object to it. And when we got back
+she handed me some verses entitled:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stanzas on the death of Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She handed &rsquo;em to me, and hastened away, quick. But Josiah Allen
+didn&rsquo;t die. And this incident made him more megum. More as I wanted him
+to be. Why, you have to be megum in everything, no matter how good it is. Milk
+porridge, or the Bible, or anything. You can kill yourself on milk porridge if
+you drink enough. And you can set down and read the Bible, till you grow to
+your chair, and lose your eyesight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now these waters are dretful good, but you have got to use some megumness <i>with</i>
+&rsquo;em, it stands to reason you have. Taint megum to drink from 10 to 12
+glasses at a time, and mix your drinks goin&rsquo; round from spring to spring
+like a luny. No; get a good doctor to tell you what minerals you seem to stand
+in need on the most, and then try to get &rsquo;em with fear and
+tremblin&rsquo;. You&rsquo;ll get help I haint a doubt on&rsquo;t. For they are
+dretful good for varius things that afflict the human body. Dretful!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These are the verses of Ardelia:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF JOSIAH ALLEN.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh! angel man that erst did live and move,<br/>
+Thy wings close furled within a broad cloth vest,<br/>
+With cambric back, oh, soul of love<br/>
+That in those depths reposed&mdash;Alas why wrest<br/>
+Why wildly tear,<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh death, that soul, white nigh upon as snow,<br/>
+From body, small perhaps, by stillyards weighed,<br/>
+And full as light complexioned, as men go,<br/>
+As is the common run of men, arrayed,<br/>
+Oh yes, arrayed,<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;In graces full he wentest to his fate,<br/>
+His doom wuz pure as men&rsquo;s dooms ever are;<br/>
+Not by the brandy bottle fell he desolate<br/>
+No, by sweet water fell he, with a noble air,<br/>
+And breath of balm,<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Not with a feud with neighbor foe he fell<br/>
+Nor scaffolds did he tread with aching feet<br/>
+Nor arson he, nor rapine down the dell,<br/>
+No, pure white soul, he fell by water sweet;<br/>
+All innocent.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Had whisky strong his slight form overthrew&mdash;<br/>
+We&rsquo;d weep with finger hiding all our face,<br/>
+To think a sling should slung at him and slew,<br/>
+But no, by water fell he, no disgrace&mdash;<br/>
+No direful shame.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Rests on his tomb, his bride; the world around,<br/>
+Methinks a world might wish to fall like him<br/>
+The prophets of old time who smiled and frowned<br/>
+Could court such fate, we feel Abim&mdash;<br/>
+We feel Abim&mdash;<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;ilek, or Job, might be content to die<br/>
+With crystal water, drunken from a glass,<br/>
+Held by a boy, and no great quantitie<br/>
+Drunk he, not over nine in all, alas,<br/>
+Or ten, or &rsquo;leven.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh, spring, oh, magnesie percipitate<br/>
+And sodium and iron&mdash;and everything,<br/>
+Methinks ye&rsquo;ll sadder feel, since his sad fate<br/>
+Who drunk thee up, not thinking anything&mdash;<br/>
+We do suppose&mdash;<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Not anything of poison ye might keep<br/>
+Might hold within thy crystal foaming breast<br/>
+Why did he not the other spring drink deep,<br/>
+And live? But oh! why ask? sweet angel spirit rest<br/>
+From water far.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Dear man, we raise this mound of verse o&rsquo;er thee,<br/>
+Would that &rsquo;twere higher, and more fiery bright.<br/>
+We will, we will, while nations disagree,<br/>
+Sit down and write as many as it seemeth right<br/>
+Unto his wife.&rdquo;<br/>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the other side of the paper, as if wrote later, wuz the follerin&rsquo;
+lines. Ardelia is truthful. This is her strong point, that and her ambition.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;MY OWN LAY ON A SPRING.<br/>
+&ldquo;BV ARDELIA TUTT.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh who can tell when air is full of warn<br/>
+What crystal drop shall speed us to our fate,<br/>
+And I alas, so blind, shall still drink on,<br/>
+Shall drink thee early, and shall drink thee late<br/>
+From every spring.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Shall drink as many glasses as I hold,<br/>
+One quart, or two, as fate shall thus decree,<br/>
+Some are but vessels weak, some bold<br/>
+And dauntless, hold from two quarts up to three,<br/>
+Or thereabouts.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Shall drink from wells all gemmed with crystal rays<br/>
+With golden sheen, up sparkling to the rim,<br/>
+And that is pure and clear to outward gaze<br/>
+With hathorn bending gently o&rsquo;er the brim<br/>
+And every sort.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>Chapter XVI.<br/>
+AT A LAWN PARTY.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the very next mornin&rsquo; Miss Flamm sent word for Josiah and me to
+come that night to a lawn party. And I sez at once, &ldquo;I must go and get
+some lawn.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez Josiah, &ldquo;What will you do with it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;Oh, I s&rsquo;pose I shall wrap it round me, I&rsquo;ll do
+what the rest do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And sez Josiah, &ldquo;Hadn&rsquo;t I ort to have some too? If it is a lawn
+party and everybody else has it, I shall feel like a fool without any
+lawn.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I looked at him in deep thought, and through him into the causes and
+consequences of things, and sez I, &ldquo;I s&rsquo;pose you do ort to have a
+lawn necktie, or handkerchief, or sunthin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he, &ldquo;How would a vest look made out of it, a kinder sprigged one,
+light gay colors on a yaller ground-work?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I sez at once, &ldquo;You never will go out with me, Josiah, with a lawn
+vest on.&rdquo; And I settled it right there on the spot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he proposed to have some wrapped round his hat, sort a festooned. But I
+stood like marble aginst that idee. But I knew I had got to have some lawn, and
+pretty soon we sallied out together and wended our way down to where I should
+be likely to find a lawn store.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And who should we meet a comin&rsquo; out of a store but Ardelia. Her 3d cousin
+had sent her over to get a ingregient for cookin&rsquo;. Good, willin&rsquo;
+little creeter! She walked along with us for a spell. And while she wuz a
+walkin&rsquo; along with us, we come onto a sight that always looked pitiful to
+me, the old female that wuz always a&rsquo; sittin&rsquo; there a singin&rsquo;
+and playin&rsquo; on a accordeun. And it seemed to me that she looked
+pitifuller and homblier than ever, as she sot there amongst the dense crowd
+that mornin&rsquo; a singin&rsquo; and a playin&rsquo;. Her tone wuz thin, thin
+as gauze, hombly gause too. But I wondered to myself how she wuz a
+feelin&rsquo; inside of her own mind, and what voices she heard a
+speakin&rsquo; to her own soul, through them hombly strains. And, ontirely
+unbeknown to myself, I fell into a short revery (short but deep) right there in
+the street, as I looked down on her, a settin&rsquo; there so old, and patient
+and helpless, amongst the gay movin&rsquo; throng.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I wondered what did she see, a settin&rsquo; there with her blind eyes,
+what did she hear through them hombly tones that she wuz a singin&rsquo; day
+after day to a crowd that wuz indifferent to her, or despised her? Did she hear
+the song of the mornin&rsquo;, the spring time of life? Did the song of a lark
+come back to her, a lark flyin&rsquo; up through the sweet mornin&rsquo; sky
+over the doorway of a home, a lark watched by young eyes, two pairs of
+&rsquo;em, that made the seein&rsquo; a blessedness? Did a baby&rsquo;s first
+sweet blunders of speech, and happy laughter come back to her, as she sot there
+a drawin&rsquo; out with her wrinkled hands them miserable sounds from the
+groanin&rsquo; instrument? Did home, love, happiness sound out to her, out of
+them hombly strains? I&rsquo;d have gin a cent to know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I&rsquo;d have gin a cent quick to know if the
+tread&mdash;tread&mdash;tread of the crowd goin&rsquo; past her day after day,
+hour after hour, seems to her like the trample of Time a marchin&rsquo; on. Did
+she hear in &rsquo;em the footsteps of child, or lover, or friend, a
+steppin&rsquo; away from her, and youth and happiness, and hope, a stiddy
+goin&rsquo; away from her?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Did she ever listen through the constant sound of them steps, listen to hear
+the tread of them feet that she must know wuz a comin&rsquo; nigh to
+her&mdash;the icy feet that will approach us, if their way leads over rocks or
+roses?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Did she hate to hear them steps a comin&rsquo; nearer to her, or did she strain
+her ears to hear &rsquo;em, to welcome &rsquo;em? I thought like as not she
+did. For thinkses I to myself, and couldn&rsquo;t help it, if she is a
+Christian she must be glad to change that old accordeun for a harp of any size
+or shape. For mournfuller and more melancholy sounds than her voice and that
+instrument made I never hearn, nor ever expect to hear, and thin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor, old, hombly critter, I gin her quite a lot of change one day, and she
+braced up and sung and drawed out faster than ever, and thinner. Though
+I&rsquo;d have gladly hearn her stop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I come up out of my revery, I see Ardelia lookin&rsquo; at her stiddy and
+kind a sot. And I mistrusted trouble wuz ahead on me, and I hurried Josiah down
+the street. Ardelia a sayin&rsquo; she had got to turn the corner, to go to
+another place for her 3d cousin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jest as we wuz a crossin&rsquo; a street my companion drawed my attention to a
+sign that wuz jest overhead, and sez lie, &ldquo;That means me, I&rsquo;m spoke
+of right out, and hung up overhead.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And sez I, &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he, &ldquo;Read it&mdash;&lsquo;The First Man-I-Cure Of The Day.&rsquo;
+That&rsquo;s me, Samantha; I haint a doubt of it. And I s&rsquo;pose I ort to
+go in and be cured. I s&rsquo;pose probably it will be expected of me, that I
+should go in, and let him look at my corns.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, I&rsquo;ve heerd you talk time and agin aginst big
+feelin&rsquo; folks, and here you be a talkin&rsquo; it right to yourself, and
+callin&rsquo; yourself the first man of the day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez he firmly, &ldquo;I believe it, and I believe you do,
+and you&rsquo;d own up to it, if you wuzn&rsquo;t so aggravatin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, sez I mildly, &ldquo;I do think you are the first in some things,
+though what them things are, I would be fur from wantin&rsquo; to tell you.
+But,&rdquo; I continued on, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see you should think that
+means you. Saratoga is full of men, and most probable every man of &rsquo;em
+thinks it means him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t <i>think</i> it means me, I <i>know</i> it.
+And I s&rsquo;pose,&rdquo; he continued dreamily, &ldquo;they&rsquo;d cure me,
+and not charge a cent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;wait till another time, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+And jest at this minute, right down under our feet, we see the word
+&ldquo;Pray,&rdquo; in big letters scraped right out in stun. And Josiah sez,
+&ldquo;I wonder if the dumb fools think anybody is goin to kneel down right
+here in the street, and be run over. Why a man would be knocked over a dozen
+times, before he got through one prayer, Now I lay me down to sleep, or
+anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, mildly, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think that would be a
+very suitable prayer under the circumstances. It haint expected that
+you&rsquo;d lay down here for a nap&mdash;howsumever,&rdquo; sez I reesunably
+&ldquo;their puttin&rsquo; the word there shows what good streaks the folks
+here have, and I don&rsquo;t want you to make light on&rsquo;t, and if you
+don&rsquo;t want to act like a perfect backslider you&rsquo;ll ceese
+usin&rsquo; such profane language on sech a solemn subject.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we went into a good lookin&rsquo;store and I wuz jest a lookin&rsquo; at
+some lawn and a wonderin&rsquo; how many yards I should want, when who should
+come in but Miss Flamm to get a rooch for her neck.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image48.gif" height="296" width="323" alt="Looking at some lawn" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And she told me that I didn&rsquo;t need any lawn, and that it wuz a Garden
+party, and folks dressed in anything they wuz a mind to, though sez she,
+&ldquo;A good many go in full dress.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I calmly, &ldquo;I have got one.&rdquo; And she told me
+to come in good season.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That afternoon, Josiah a bein&rsquo; out for a walk, I took out of my trunk a
+dress that Alminy Hagidon had made for me out of a very full pattern I had got
+of a peddler, and wanted it all put in, so&rsquo;s it would fade all alike, for
+I mistrusted it wouldn&rsquo;t wash. It wuz gethered-in full round the waist,
+and the sleeves wuz set in full, and the waist wuz kinder full before, and it
+had a deep high ruffle gathered-in full round the neck. It wuz a very full
+dress, though I haint proud, and never wuz called so. Yet anybody duz take a
+modest pleasure in bein&rsquo; equal to any occasion and comin&rsquo; up nobly
+to a emergency. And I own that I did say to myself, as I pulled out the gethers
+in front, &ldquo;Wall, there may be full dresses there to-night, but there will
+be none fuller than mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I wuz glad that Alminy had made it jest as she had. She had made it a
+little fuller than even I had laid out to have it, for she mistrusted it would
+shrink in washin&rsquo;. It wuz a very full dress. It wuz cambrick dark
+chocolate, with a set flower of a kind of a cinnamon brown and yellow, it wuz
+bran new and looked well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I had got it on, and wuz contemplatin&rsquo; its fullness with
+complacency and a hand-glass, a seein&rsquo; how nobly it stood out behind, and
+how full it wuz, when Josiah Allen came in. I had talked it over with him,
+before he went out&mdash;and he wuz as tickled as I wuz, and tickleder, to
+think I had got jest the right dress for the occasion. But he sez to me the
+first thing&mdash;&ldquo;You are all wrong, Samantha, full dress means low neck
+and short sleeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;I know better!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he, &ldquo;It duz.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Somebody has been a foolin&rsquo; you, Josiah Allen! There
+ain&rsquo;t no sense in it. Do you s&rsquo;pose folks would call a dress full,
+when there wuzn&rsquo;t more&rsquo;n half a waist and sleeves to it. I&rsquo;d
+try to use a little judgment, Josiah Allen! &ldquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he contended that he wuz in the right on&rsquo;t. And he took up his best
+vest that lay on the bed, and sot down, and took out his jack knife and went a
+rippin&rsquo; open one of the shoulders, and sez I, &ldquo;What are you
+doin&rsquo;, Josiah Allen?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, you can do as you are a mind to, Samantha Allen,&rdquo; sez he.
+&ldquo;But I shall go fashionable, I shall go in full dress.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen do you look me in the face and say you are a
+goin&rsquo; in a low neck vest, and everything, to that party to-night?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, mom, I be. I am bound to be fashionable.&rdquo; And he went to
+rollin&rsquo; up his shirt sleeves and turnin&rsquo; in the neck of his shirt,
+in a manner that wuz perfectly immodest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I turned my head away instinctively, for I felt that my cheek wuz a
+gettin&rsquo; as red as blood, partly through delicacy and partly through
+righteous anger. Sez I, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, be you a calculatin&rsquo; to go
+there right out in public before men and wimmen, a showin&rsquo; your bare
+bosom to a crowd? Where is your modesty, Josiah Allen? Where is your
+decency?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he firmly, &ldquo;I keep &rsquo;em where all the rest do, who go in full
+dress.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sot right down in a chair and sez I, &ldquo;Wall there is one thing certain;
+if you go in that condition, you will go alone. Why,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;to
+home, if Tirzah Ann, your own daughter, had ketched you in that perdickerment,
+a rubbin&rsquo; on linement or anything, you would have jumped and covered
+yourself up, quicker&rsquo;n a flash, and likeways me, before Thomas Jefferson.
+And now you lay out to go in that way before young girls, and old ones, and men
+and wimmen, and want me to foller on after your example. What in the world are
+you a thinkin&rsquo; on, Josiah Allen?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image49.gif" height="300" width="260" alt="Full Dress" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why I&rsquo;m a thinkin, on full dress,&rdquo; sez be in a pert tone, a
+kinder turnin&rsquo; himself before the glass, where he could get a good view
+of his bones. His thin neck wuzn&rsquo;t much more than bones, anyway, and so I
+told him. And I asked him if he could see any beauty in it, and sez I,
+&ldquo;Who wants to look at our old bare necks, Josiah Allen? And if there
+wuzn&rsquo;t any other powerful reeson of modesty and decency in it,
+you&rsquo;d ketch your death cold, Josiah Allen, and be laid up with the
+newmoan. You know you would,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;you are actin&rsquo; like a
+luny, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is you that are actin&rsquo; like a luny,&rdquo; sez he bitterly.
+&ldquo;I never propose anything of a high fashionable kind but what you want to
+break it up. Why, dumb it all, you know as well as I do, that men haint called
+as modest as wimmen anyway. And if they have the name, why shouldn&rsquo;t they
+have the game? Why shouldn&rsquo;t they go round half dressed as well as wimmen
+do? And they are as strong agin; if there is any danger to health in it they
+are better able to stand it. But,&rdquo; sez he, in the same bitter axents,
+&ldquo;you always try to break up all my efforts at high life and fashion. I
+presume you won&rsquo;t waltz to-night, nor want me to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I groaned several times in spite of myself, and sithed, &ldquo;Waltz!&rdquo;
+sez I in awful axents. &ldquo;A classleader! and a grandfather! and
+talkin&rsquo; about waltzin&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez Josiah, &ldquo;Men older than me waltz, and foller it up. Put their arms
+right round the prettiest girls in the room, hug &rsquo;em, and swing &rsquo;em
+right round&rdquo;&mdash;sez he kinder spoony like.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I said nothin&rsquo; at them fearful words, only my groans and sithes became
+deeper and more voyalent. And in a minute I see through the fingers with which
+I had nearly covered my face, that he wuz a pullin&rsquo; down his shirt
+sleeves and a puttin&rsquo; his jack knife in his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That man loves me. And love sways him round often times when reesun and sound
+argument are powerless. Now, the sound reesun of the case didn&rsquo;t move
+him, such as the indelicacy of makin&rsquo; a exhibition of one&rsquo;s self in
+a way that would, if displayed in a heathen, be a call for missionarys to
+convert &rsquo;em, and that makes men blush when they see it in a Christian
+woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sound reason of its bein&rsquo; the fruitful cause of disease and death,
+through the senseless exposure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sound reason of the worse than folly of old and middle-aged folks
+thinkin&rsquo; that the exhibition is a pretty one when it haint.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sound reason of its bein&rsquo; inconsistent for a woman to allow the
+familiarity of a man and a stranger, a walkin&rsquo; up and puttin&rsquo; his
+arm round her, and huggin&rsquo; her up to him as clost as he can; that act,
+that a woman would resent as a deadly insult and her incensed relatives avenge
+with the sword, if it occurred in any other place than the ball-room and at the
+sound of the fiddle. The utter inconsistency of her meetin&rsquo; it with
+smiles, and making frantic efforts to get more such affronts than any other
+woman present&mdash;her male relatives a lookin&rsquo; proudly on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The inconsistency of a man&rsquo;s bein&rsquo; not only held guiltless but
+applauded for doin&rsquo; what, if it took place in the street, or church,
+would make him outlawed, for where is there a lot of manly men who would look
+on calmly, and see a sweet young girl insulted by a man&rsquo;s ketchin&rsquo;
+hold of her and embracin&rsquo; of her tightly for half an hour,&mdash;why, he
+would be turned out of his club and outlawed from Christian homes if it took
+place in silence, but yet the sound of a fiddle makes it all right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez to myself mildly, as I sot there, &ldquo;Is it that men and wimmen
+lose their senses, or is there a sacredness in the strains of that fiddle, that
+makes immodesty modest, indecency decent, and immorality moral?&rdquo; And agin
+I sithe heavy and gin 3 deep groans. And I see Josiah gin in. All the sound
+reasons weighed as nothin&rsquo; with him, but 2 or 3 groans, and a few sithes
+settled the matter. Truly Love is a mighty conqueror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And anon Josiah spoke and sez, &ldquo;Wall, I s&rsquo;pose I can gin it all up,
+if you feel so about it, but we shall act like fools, Samantha, and look like
+&rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I sternly, &ldquo;Better be fools than naves, Josiah Allen! if we have got
+to be one or the other, but we haint. We are a standin&rsquo; on firm ground,
+Josiah Allen,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;The platform made of the boards of
+consistency, and common sense, and decency, is one that will never break down
+and let you through it, into gulfs and abysses. And on that platform we will
+both stand to-night, dear Josiah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I think it is always best when a pardner has gin in and you have had a triumph
+of principle, to be bland; blander than common to him. I always love at such
+times to round my words to him with a sweet affectionateness of mean. I love
+to, and he loves it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We sot out in good season for the Garden party. And it wuz indeed a sight to
+behold! But I did not at that first minute have a chance to sense it, for Miss
+Flamm sent her hired girl out to ask me to come to her room for a few minutes.
+Miss Flamm&rsquo;s house is a undergoin&rsquo; repairs for a few weeks,
+sunthin&rsquo; had gin out in the water works, so she and her hired girl have
+been to this tarven for the time bein&rsquo;. The hired girl got us some good
+seats and tellin&rsquo; Josiah to keep one on &rsquo;em for me, I follered the
+girl, or &ldquo;maid,&rdquo; as Miss Flamm calls her. But good land! if she is
+a old maid, I don&rsquo;t see where the young ones be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Flamm had sent for me, so she said, to see if I wanted to ride out the
+next day, and what time would be the most convenient to me, and also, to see
+how I liked her dress. She didn&rsquo;t know as she should see me down below,
+in the crowd, and she wanted me to see it. (Miss Flamm uses me dretful well,
+but I s&rsquo;pose 2/3ds of it, is on Thomas J&rsquo;s account. Some folks
+think she is goin&rsquo; to have another lawsuit, and I am glad enough to have
+him convey her lawsuits, for they are good, honerable ones, and she pays him
+splendid for carryin&rsquo; &rsquo;em.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, she had her skirts all on when I went in, all a foamin&rsquo; and a
+shinin&rsquo;, down onto the carpet, in a glitterin&rsquo; pile of pink satin
+and white lace and posys. Gorgus enough for a princess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I didn&rsquo;t mind it much, bein&rsquo; only females present, if she wuz
+exposin&rsquo; of herself a good deal. I kinder blushed a little as I looked at
+her, and kep&rsquo; my eyes down on her skirts all I could, and thinkses I to
+myself,&mdash;&ldquo;What if G. Washington should come in? I shouldn&rsquo;t
+know which way to look.&rdquo; But then the very next minute, I says to myself,
+&ldquo;Of course he won&rsquo;t be in till she gets her waist on. I&rsquo;m a
+borrowin&rsquo; trouble for nothin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Miss Flamm spoke and says she, as she kinder craned herself before the
+glass, a lookin&rsquo; at her back (most the hull length on it bare, as I am a
+livin&rsquo; creeter); and says she, &ldquo;How do you like my dress?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image50.gif" height="275" width="425" alt="How do you like my
+dress?" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; says I, wantin&rsquo; to make myself agreeable (both on
+account of principle, and the lawsuit), &ldquo;the skirts are beautiful but I
+can&rsquo;t judge how the hull dress looks, you know, till you get your waist
+on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My waist?&rdquo; says she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; says I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have got it on,&rdquo; says she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is it?&rdquo; says I, a lookin&rsquo; at her closer through my
+specks, &ldquo;Where is the waist?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here,&rdquo; says she, a pintin&rsquo; to a pink belt ribbon, and a
+string of beads over each shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I, &ldquo;Miss Flamm, do you call that a waist?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; says she, and she balanced herself on her little pink
+tottlin&rsquo; slippers. She couldn&rsquo;t walk in &rsquo;em a good honerable
+walk to save her life. How could she, with the instep not over two inches
+acrost, and the heels right under the middle of her foot, more&rsquo;n a finger
+high? Good land, they wuz enuff to lame a Injun savage, and curb him in. But
+she sort o&rsquo; balanced herself unto &rsquo;em, the best she could, and put
+her hands round her waist&mdash;it wuzn&rsquo;t much bigger than a pipe-stem,
+and sort o&rsquo; bulgin&rsquo; out both ways, above and below, some like a
+string tied tight round a piller, - and says she complacently, &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t believe there will be a dress shown to-night more stylish and
+beautiful than mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I, &ldquo;Do you tell me, Miss Flamm, that you are a goin&rsquo; down into
+that crowd of promiscus men and women, with nothin&rsquo; but them strings on
+to cover you?&rdquo; Says I, &ldquo;Do you tell me that, and you a perfesser
+and a Christian?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; says she, &ldquo;I paid 300 dollars for this dress, and it
+haint likely I am goin&rsquo; to miss the chance of showin&rsquo; it off to the
+other wimmen who will envy me the possession of it. To be sure,&rdquo; says
+she, &ldquo;it is a little lower than Americans usually wear. But in fashion,
+as in anything else, somebody has got to go ahead. This is the very heighth of
+fashion,&rdquo; says she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says I in witherin&rsquo; and burnin&rsquo; skorn, &ldquo;It is the heighth of
+immodesty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I jest turned my back right ont&rsquo; her, and sailed out of the room. I
+wuzn&rsquo;t a a goin&rsquo; to stand that, lawsuit or no lawsuit. I wuz all
+worked up in my mind, and by the side of myself, and I didn&rsquo;t get over it
+for some time, neither.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I found my companion seated in that comfertable place, and a
+keepin&rsquo; my chair for me, and so I sot down by him, and truly we sot
+still, and see the glory, and the magnificence on every side on us. There wuz 3
+piazzas about as long as from our house to Jonesville, or from Jonesville to
+Loontown, all filled with folks magnificently dressed, and a big garden
+layin&rsquo; between &rsquo;em about as big as from our house to Miss
+Gowdey&rsquo;s, and so round crossways to Alminy Hagidone&rsquo;s
+brother&rsquo;s, and back agin&rsquo;. It wuz full as fur as that, and you know
+well that that is a great distance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There wuz some big noble trees, all twinklin&rsquo; full of lights, of every
+coler, and rows of shinin&rsquo; lights, criss-crossed every way, or that is,
+every beautiful way, from the high ornimental pillers of the immense house,
+that loomed up in the distance round us on every side, same as the mountains
+loom up round Loontown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There wuz a big platform built in the middle of the garden, with sweet music
+discoursin&rsquo; from it the most enchantin&rsquo; strains. And the fountains
+wuz sprayin&rsquo; out the most beautiful colers you ever see in your life, and
+fallin&rsquo; down in pink, and yellow, and gold, and green, and amber, and
+silver water; sparklin&rsquo; down onto the green beautiful ferns and flowers
+that loved to grow round the big marble basin which shone white, risin&rsquo;
+out of the green velvet of the grass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah looked at that water, and sez he, &ldquo;Samantha, I&rsquo;d love to get
+some of that water to pass round evenin&rsquo;s when we have company.&rdquo;
+Sez he, &ldquo;It would look so dressy and fashionable to pass round pink
+water, or light blue, or light yeller. How it would make Uncle Nate Gowdey open
+his eyes. I believe I shall buy some bottles of it, Samantha, to take home.
+What do you say? I don&rsquo;t suppose it would cost such a dretful sight, do
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he, &ldquo;I s&rsquo;pose all they have to do is to put pumps down into a
+pink spring, or a yeller one, as the case may be, and pump. And I would be
+willin&rsquo; to pump it up myself, if it would come cheaper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my companion soon forgot to follow up the theme in lookin&rsquo; about him
+onto the magnificent, seen, and a seein&rsquo; the throngs of men and wimmen
+growin&rsquo; more and more denser, and every crowd on &rsquo;em that swept by
+us, and round us, and before us, a growin&rsquo; more gorgus in dress, or so it
+seemed to us. Gemms of every gorgus coler under the heavens and some jest the
+coler of the heavens when it is blue and shinin&rsquo; or when it is purplish
+dark in the night time, or when it is full of white fleecy clouds, or when it
+is a shinin&rsquo; with stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why, one woman had so many diamonds on that she had a detective follerin&rsquo;
+her all round wherever she went. She wuz a blaze of splendor and so wuz lots of
+&rsquo;em, though like the stars, they differed from each other in glory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But whatever coler their gowns wuz, in one thing they wuz most all
+alike&mdash;most all of &rsquo;em had waists all drawed in tight, but a
+bulgin&rsquo; out on each side, more or less as the case might be. Why some of
+them waists wuzn&rsquo;t much bigger than pipe&rsquo;s tails and so I told
+Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he whispered back to me, and sez he, &ldquo;I wonder if them wimmen with
+wasp waists, think that we men like the looks on &rsquo;em. They make a dumb
+mistake if they do. Why,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;we men know what they be; we
+know they are nothin&rsquo; but crushed bones and flesh.&rdquo; Sez he,
+&ldquo;I could make my own waist look jest like &rsquo;em, if I should take a
+rope and strap myself down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, in agitated axents, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you try to go
+into no such enterprise, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I remembered the eppisode of the afternoon, and I sez in anxins axents, and
+affectionate, &ldquo;Besides not lookin&rsquo; well, it is dangerous, awful
+dangerous. And how I should blush,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;if I wuz to see you
+with a leather strap or a rope round your waist under your coat, a
+drawin&rsquo; you in ; a changin&rsquo; your good honerable shape. And God made
+men&rsquo;s and wimmen&rsquo;s waists jest alike in the first place, and it is
+jest as smart for men to deform themselves in that way as it is for wimmen. But
+oh, the agony of my soul if I should see you a tryin&rsquo; to disfigure
+yourself in that way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t be afraid, Samantha,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;I am
+dressy, and always wuz, but I haint such a fool as that, as to kill myself in
+perfect agony, for fashion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t say nothin&rsquo; but instinctively I looked down at his feet,
+&ldquo;Oh, you needn&rsquo;t look at my feet, Samantha, feet are very different
+from the heart, and lungs, and such. You can squeeze your feet down, and not
+hurt much moren the flesh and bones. But you are a destroyin&rsquo; the very
+seat of life when you draw your waist in as them wimmen do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;but I wouldn&rsquo;t torture myself in
+any way if I wuz in your place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t lay out to,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;I haint a goin&rsquo; to
+wear corsets, it haint at all probable I shall, though I am better able to
+stand it, than wimmen be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know that,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;I know men are stronger and better
+able to bear the strain of bein&rsquo; drawed in and tapered.&rdquo; I am
+reesonable, and will ever speak truthful and honest, and this I couldn&rsquo;t
+deny and didn&rsquo;t try to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, dumb it, what makes men stronger?&rdquo; sez he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I s&rsquo;pose one great thing is their
+dressin&rsquo; comfortable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, I am glad you know enough to know it,&rdquo; sez he.
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;jest imagine a man tyin&rsquo; a rope round
+his waist, round and round; or worse yet, take strong steel, and whalebones,
+and bind and choke himself down with &rsquo;em, and tottlin&rsquo; himself up
+on high heel slippers, the high heels comin&rsquo; right up in the ball of his
+foot&mdash;and then havin&rsquo; heavy skirts a holdin&rsquo; him down, tied
+back tight round his knees and draggin&rsquo; along on the ground at his
+feet&mdash;imagine me in that perdickerment, Samantha.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shuddered, and sez I, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t bring up no such seen to harrow up
+my nerve.&rdquo; Sez I, &ldquo;You know I couldn&rsquo;t stand it, to see you a
+facin&rsquo; life and its solemn responsibilities in that condition. It would
+kill me to witness your sufferin&rsquo;,&rdquo; sez I. And agin&rsquo; I
+shuddered, and agin I sithed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he sez, &ldquo;Wall, it is jest as reasonable for a man to do it as for a
+woman; it is far worse and more dangerous for a woman than a man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; sez I, between my sithes. &ldquo;I know it, but I
+can&rsquo;t, I can&rsquo;t stand it, to have you go into it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, you needn&rsquo;t worry, Samantha, I haint a fool. You won&rsquo;t
+ketch men a goin&rsquo; into any such performances as this, they know too
+much.&rdquo; And then he resumed on in a lighter agent, to get my mind still
+further off from his danger, for I wuz still a sithin&rsquo;, frequent and
+deep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez he, as he looked down and see some wimmen a passin&rsquo; below; sez hey
+&ldquo;I never see such a sight in my life, a man can see more here in one
+evenin&rsquo; than he can in a life time at Jonesville.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is so, Josiah,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;you can.&rdquo; And I felt
+every word I said, for at that very minute a lady, or rather a female woman,
+passed with a dress on so low in the neck that I instinctively turned away my
+head, and when I looked round agin, a deep blush wuz mantlin&rsquo; the cheeks
+of Josiah Allen, a flushin&rsquo; up his face, clear up into his bald head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t believe I had ever been prouder of Josiah Allen, than I wuz at
+that minute. That blush spoke plainer than words could, of the purity and
+soundness of my pardner&rsquo;s morals. If the whole nation had stood up in
+front of me at that time, and told me his morals wuz a tottlin&rsquo; I would
+have scorned the suggestion. No, that blush telegraphed to me right from his
+soul, the sweet tidin&rsquo;s of his modesty and worth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I couldn&rsquo;t refrain from sayin&rsquo; in encouragin&rsquo;, happy
+axents, &ldquo;Haint you glad now, Josiah Allen, that you listened to your
+pardner; haint you glad that you haint a goin&rsquo; round in a low necked coat
+and vest, a callin&rsquo; up the blush of skern and outraged modesty to the
+cheeks &lsquo;of noble and modest men?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez he, graspin&rsquo; holt of my hand in the warmth of his
+gratitude, for he see what I had kep&rsquo; him from. &ldquo;Yes, you wuz in
+the right on&rsquo;t, Samantha. I see the awfulness of the peril from which you
+rescued of me. But never,&rdquo; sez he, a lookin&rsquo; down agin over the
+railin&rsquo;, onto some more wimmen a passin&rsquo; beneath, &ldquo;never did
+I see what I have seen here to-night. Not,&rdquo; sez he dreemily, &ldquo;sense
+I wuz a baby.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t try to look, Josiah; turn your
+eyes away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I believe he did try to&mdash;though such is the fascination of a known
+danger in front of you, that it is hard to keep yourself from
+contemplatin&rsquo; of it. But he tried to. And he tried to not look at the
+waltzin&rsquo; no more than he could help, and I did too. But in spite of
+himself he had to see how clost the young girls wuz held; how warmly the young
+men embraced &rsquo;em. And as he looked on, agin I see the hot blush of shame
+mantillied Josiah&rsquo;s cheeks, and again he sez to me in almost warm axents,
+&ldquo;I realize what you have rescued me from, Samantha.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t have looked Elder Minkley in the face,
+could you? if you had gone into that shameful diversion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I couldn&rsquo;t, nor into yourn nuther. I couldn&rsquo;t have
+looked nobody in the face, if I had gone on and imposed on any young girl as
+they are a doin&rsquo;, and insulted of her. Why,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;if it
+wuz my Tirzah Ann that them, men wuz a embracin&rsquo;, and huggin&rsquo;, and
+switchin&rsquo; her round, as if they didn&rsquo;t have no respect for her at
+all,&mdash;why, if it wuz Tirzah Ann, I would tear &rsquo;em &rsquo;em from
+lim.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he looked capable on&rsquo;t. He looked almost sublime (though small). And
+I hurried him away from the seen, for I didn&rsquo;t know what would ensue and
+foller on, if I let him linger there longer. He looked as firm and warlike as
+one of our bantam fowls, a male one, when hawks are a hoverin&rsquo; over the
+females of the flock. And when I say Bantam I say it with no disrespect to
+Josiah Allen. Bantams are noble, and warlike fowls, though small boneded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I got one more glimps of Miss Flamm jest as we left the tarven. She wuz a
+standin&rsquo; up in the parlor, with a tall man a standin&rsquo; up in front
+of her a talkin&rsquo;. He seemed to be biddin&rsquo; of her good-bye, for he
+had holt of her hand, and be wuz a sayin&rsquo; as we went by &rsquo;em, sez
+he, &ldquo;I am sorry not to see more of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good land!&rdquo; thinkses I, &ldquo;what can the man be a
+thinkin&rsquo; on? the mean, miserable creeter! If there wuz ever a deadly
+insult gin to a woman, then wuz the time it wuz gin. Good land! good
+land!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t know whether Miss Flamm resented it, or not, for I hurried Josiah
+along. I didn&rsquo;t want to expose him to no sich sights, good, innocent old
+creeter. So I kep&rsquo; him up on a pretty good jog till I got him home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next mornin&rsquo; Ardelia Tutt sent me over a copy of the followin&rsquo;
+verses, which wuz as follers:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;LINES WROTE ON A OLD WOMAN; OR,<br/>
+STANZAS ON A ACKORDEUN.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh mournful sounds that riseth through the air,<br/>
+Not very far, but far enough to hear.<br/>
+We fain would say to thee forbear, forbear!<br/>
+As we adown the road, our pathway steer.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh! had thy voice not been so low and thin<br/>
+It would have been more high, and loud and deep&mdash;<br/>
+And thine Ackordeun, oh could it, could it win,<br/>
+A glorious voice of soul, methinks I&rsquo;d weep&mdash;<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;With joy. But now I weep not, nay, nor fain<br/>
+Would set me down beneath thy song-tree blest;<br/>
+More fain I would relate, it giveth me pain<br/>
+To list the strains, and listening lo! I sigh for rest, sweet rest.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;For ah! no nightingale art thou, nor lark,<br/>
+Nor thrush, nor any other bird, afar or nigh<br/>
+Thy instrument hath not the thunder shock<br/>
+That calleth nation&rsquo;s wildly, wet or dry.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;A lesson thou mightest learn oh! female sweet!<br/>
+If thou no voice hast got, soar not in song,<br/>
+Much noise the lonely aching ear doth greet,<br/>
+That maketh sad, and &rsquo;tis a fearful wrong.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;A fearful wrong to pound pianos with a fiendish will<br/>
+Misuse them far above their feeble power to bear,<br/>
+Ah! could pianos cower down, and lo! be still,<br/>
+&rsquo;Twould calm the savage breast, and smooth the brow of care.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>Chapter XVII.<br/>
+A TRIP TO SCHUYLERVILLE.</h2>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a lovely mornin&rsquo; when my companion and me sot out to visit
+Schuylerville to see the monument that is stood up there in honor of the Battle
+of Saratoga, one of 7 great decisive battles of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the cars rolled on peacefully, though screechin&rsquo; occasionally, for,
+as the poet says, &ldquo;It is their nater to,&rdquo; and rolled us away from
+Saratoga. And at first there wuzn&rsquo;t nothin&rsquo; particularly
+insperin&rsquo; in the looks of the landscape, or ruther woodscape. It wuz
+mostly woods and rather hombly woods too, kinder flat lookin&rsquo;. But pretty
+soon the scenery became beautiful and impressive. The rollin&rsquo; hills
+rolled down and up in great billowy masses of green and pale blue,
+accordin&rsquo; as they wuz fur or near, and we went by shinin&rsquo; water,
+and a glowin&rsquo; landscape, and pretty houses, and fields of grain and corn,
+etc., etc. And anon we reached a place where &ldquo;Victory Mills&rdquo; wuz
+printed up high, in big letters. When Josiah see this, he sez, &ldquo;Haint
+that neighborly and friendly in Victory to come over here and put up a mill?
+That shows, Samantha,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;that the old hardness of the
+Revolution is entirely done away with.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wuz jest full of Revolutionary thoughts that mornin&rsquo;, Josiah Allen
+wuz. And so wuz I too, but my strength of mind is such, that I reined &rsquo;em
+in and didn&rsquo;t let &rsquo;em run away with me. And I told him that it
+didn&rsquo;t mean that. Sez I, &ldquo;The Widder Albert wouldn&rsquo;t come
+over here and go to millin&rsquo;, she nor none of her family.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;the name must mean sunthin&rsquo;. Do you
+s&rsquo;pose it is where folks get the victory over things? If it is, I&rsquo;d
+give a dollar bill to get a grist ground out here, and,&rdquo; sez he, in a
+sort of a coaxin&rsquo; tone, &ldquo;le&rsquo;s stop and get some victory,
+Samantha.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I told him, that I guessed when he got a victory over the world, the flesh,
+or the&mdash;David, he would have to work for it, he wouldn&rsquo;t get it
+ground out for him. But anon, he cast his eyes on sunthin&rsquo; else and so
+forgot to muse on this any further. It wuz a fair seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anon, a big manufactory, as big as the hull side of Jonesville almost, loomed
+up by the side of us. And anon, the fair, the beautiful country spread itself
+out before our vision. While fur, fur away the pale blue mountains peeked up
+over the green ones, to see if they too could see the monument riz up to our
+National Liberty. It belonged to them, jest as much as to the hill it wuz a
+standin&rsquo; on, it belongs to the hull liberty-lovin&rsquo; world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the cars stopped in a pretty little village, a clean, pleasant little
+place as I ever see, or want to see. And Josiah and me wended our way up the
+broad roomy street, up to where the monument seemed to sort a beegon to us to
+come. And when we got up to it; we see it wuz a sight, a sight to behold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The curius thing on&rsquo;t wuz, it kep a growin&rsquo; bigger and bigger all
+the time we wuz approachin&rsquo; it, till, as we stood at its base, it seemed
+to tower up into the very skies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There wuz some flights of stun steps a leadin&rsquo; up to some doors in the
+side on&rsquo;t. And we went inside on&rsquo;t after we had gin a good look at
+the outside. But it took us some time to get through gazin&rsquo; at the
+outside on&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Way up over our heads wuz some sort a recesses, some like the recess in my
+spare bed-room, only higher and narrower, and kinder nobler lookin&rsquo;. And
+standin&rsquo; up in the first one, a lookin&rsquo; stiddy through storm and
+shine at the North star, stood General Gates, bigger than life considerable,
+but none too big; for his deeds and the deeds of all of our old 4 fathers stand
+out now and seem a good deal bigger than life. Yes, take &rsquo;em in all their
+consequences, a sight bigger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, there he stands, a leanin&rsquo; on his sword. He&rsquo;ll be ready when
+the enemy comes, no danger but what he will.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the east side, is General Schuyler a horsback, ready to dash forward against
+the foe, impetuous, ardent, gallant. But oh! the perils and dangers that
+obstruct his pathway; thick underbrush and high, tall trees stand up round him
+that he seemin&rsquo;ly can&rsquo;t get through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his gallant soldiers are a helpin&rsquo; him onward, they are a
+cuttin&rsquo; down the trees so&rsquo;s he can get through &rsquo;em and dash
+at the enemy. You see as you look on him that he will get through it all. No
+envy, nor detraction, nor jealousy, no such low underbrush full of
+crawlin&rsquo; reptiles, nor no high solid trees, no danger of any sort can
+keep him back. His big brave, generous heart is sot on helpin&rsquo; his
+country, he&rsquo;ll do it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the south side, is the saddest sight that a patriotic American can see. On a
+plain slab stun, lookin&rsquo; a good deal like a permanent grave-stun, sot up
+high there, for Americans to weep over forever, bitter tears of shames, is the
+name, &ldquo;Arnold.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wuz a brave soldier; his name ort to be there; it is all right to have it
+there and jest where it is, on a gravestun. All through the centuries it will
+stand there, a name carved by the hand of cupidity, selfishness, and treachery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the west side, General Morgan is standin&rsquo; up with his hands over his
+eyes; lookin&rsquo; away into the sunset. He looked jest like that when he wuz
+a lookin&rsquo; after prowlin&rsquo; red skins and red coats; when the sun wuz
+under dark clouds, and the day wuz dark 100 years ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now, all he has to do is to stand up there and look off into the
+glowin&rsquo; heavens, a watchin&rsquo; the golden light of the sun of Liberty
+a rollin&rsquo; on westward. He holds his hand over his eyes; its rays most
+blind him, he is most lost a thinkin&rsquo; how fur, how fur them rays are a
+spreadin&rsquo;, and a glowin&rsquo;,way, way off, Morgan is a lookin&rsquo;
+onto our future, and it dazzles him. Its rays stretch off into other lands;
+they strike dark places; they burn! they glow! they shine! they light up the
+world!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hold up your head, brave old General, and your loyal steadfast eyes. You helped
+to strike that light. Its radience half-frights you. It is so heavenly bright,
+its rays, may well dazzle you. Brown old soldiers, I love to think of you
+always a standin&rsquo; up there, lifted high up by a grateful Nation, a
+lookin&rsquo; off over all the world, a lookin&rsquo; off towards the
+glowin&rsquo; west, toward our glorious future.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the inside too, it wuz a noble seen. After you rose up the steps and went
+inside, you found yourself in a middlin&rsquo; big room all surrounded by
+figures in what they called Alto Relief, or sunthin&rsquo; to that effect. I
+don&rsquo;t know what Alto they meant. I don&rsquo;t know nobody by that name,
+nor I don&rsquo;t know how they relieved him. But I s&rsquo;pose Alto when he
+wuz there wuz relieved to think that the figures wuz all so noble and
+impressive. Mebby he had been afraid they wouldn&rsquo;t suit him and the
+nation. But they did, they must have. He must have been hard to suit, Alto
+must, if he wuzn&rsquo;t relieved, and pleased with these.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On one side wuz George the 3d of England, in his magnificent palace, all
+dressed up in velvet and lace, surrounded by his slick drestup nobles, and all
+of &rsquo;em a sittin&rsquo; there soft and warm, in the lap of Luxury, a
+makin&rsquo; laws to bind the strugglin&rsquo; colonies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And right acrost from that, wuz a picture of them Colonists, cold and hungry, a
+havin&rsquo; a Rally for Freedom, and a settin&rsquo; up a Town meetin! right
+amongst the trees, and under-brush that hedged &rsquo;em all in and tripped
+&rsquo;em up at every step; and savages a hidin&rsquo; behind the trees, and
+fears of old England, and dread of a hazerdous unknown future, a hantin&rsquo;
+and cloudin&rsquo; every glimpse of sky that came down on &rsquo;em through the
+trees. But they looked earnest and good, them old 4 fathers did, and the Town
+meetin&rsquo; looked determined, and firm principled as ever a Town
+meetin&rsquo; looked on the face of the earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then there wuz some of the women of the court, fine ladies, all silk, and
+ribbons, and embroideries, and paint, and powder, a leanin&rsquo; back in their
+cushioned arm-chairs, a wantin&rsquo; to have the colonies taxed still further
+so&rsquo;s to have more money to buy lace with and artificial flowers. And
+right acrost from &rsquo;em wuz some of our old 4 mothers, in a rude, log hut,
+not strong enough to keep out the cold, or the Injuns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One wuz a cardin&rsquo; wools, one of &rsquo;em wuz a spinnin&rsquo; &rsquo;em,
+a tryin&rsquo; to make clothes to cover the starved, half-naked old 4 fathers
+who wuz a tramplin&rsquo; round in the snow with bare feet and shiverin&rsquo;
+lims. And one of &rsquo;em had a gun in her hand. She had smuggled the children
+all in behind her and she wuz a lookin&rsquo; out for the foe. These wimmen
+hadn&rsquo;t no ribbons on, no, fur from it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then there wuz General Schuyler a fellin&rsquo; trees to obstruct the march
+of the British army. And Miss Schuyler a settin&rsquo; fire to a field of wheat
+rather than have it help the enemy of her country. Brave old 4 mother, worthy
+pardner of a grand man, she wuz a takin&rsquo; her life in her hand and a
+destroyin&rsquo; her own property for the sake of the cause she loved. A emblem
+of the way men and women sot fire to their own hopes, their own happiness, and
+burnt &rsquo;em up on the altar of the land we love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there wuz some British wimmen a follerin&rsquo; their husbands through the
+perils of danger and death, likely old 4 mothers they wuz, and thought jest as
+much of their pardners as I do of my Josiah. I could see that plain. And could
+see it a shinin&rsquo; still plainer in another one of the pictures&mdash;Lady
+Aukland a goin&rsquo; over the Hudson in a little canoe with the waves a
+dashin&rsquo; up high round her, to get to the sick bed of her companion. The
+white flag of truce wuz a wavin&rsquo; over her head and in her heart wuz a
+shinin&rsquo; the clear white light of a woman&rsquo;s deathless devotion. Oh!
+there wuz likely wimmen amongst the British, I haint a doubt of it, and men
+too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then we clim a long flight of stairs and we see some more pictures, all
+round that room. Alto relieved agin, or he must have been relieved, and
+happified to see &rsquo;em, they wuz so impressive. I myself had from 25 to 30
+emotions a minute while I stood a lookin&rsquo; at em&mdash;big lofty emotions
+too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There waz Jennie McCrea a bein&rsquo; dragged offen her horse, and killed by
+savages. A dreadful sight&mdash;a woman settin&rsquo; out light-hearted toward
+happiness and goin&rsquo; to meet a fearful doom. Dreadful sight that has come
+down through the centuries, and happens over and over agin amongst female
+wimmen. But here it wuz fearful impressive for the savages that destroyed her
+wuz in livin&rsquo; form, they haint always materialized.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, it wuz a awful seen. And jest beyond it, wuz Burgoyne a scoldin&rsquo; the
+savages for the cruelty of the deed. Curius, haint it? How the acts and deeds
+of a man that he sets to goin&rsquo;, when they have come to full fruition
+skare him most to death, horrify him by the sight. I&rsquo;ll bet Burgoyne felt
+bad enough, a lookin&rsquo; on her dead body, if it wuz his doin&rsquo;s in the
+first place, in lettin&rsquo; loose such ignerance and savagery onto a
+strugglin&rsquo; people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, Mr. Burgoyne felt bad and ashamed, I haint a doubt of it. His poet soul
+could suffer as well as enjoy&mdash;and then I didn&rsquo;t feel like
+sayin&rsquo; too much aginst Mr. Burgoyne, havin&rsquo; meditated so lately in
+the treachery of Arnold, one of our own men doin&rsquo; a act that ort to keep
+us sort a humble-minded to this day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then there wuz the killin&rsquo; and buryin&rsquo; of Frazier both
+impressive. He wuz a gallant officer and a brave man. And then there wuz
+General Schuyler (a good creeter) a turnin&rsquo; over his command to Gates.
+And I methought to myself as I looked on it, that human nater wuz jest about
+the same then; it capered jest about as it duz now in public affairs and
+offices. Then there wuz the surrender of Burgoyne to Gates. A sight impressive
+enough to furnish one with stiddy emotions for weeks and weeks. A
+thinkin&rsquo; of all he surrendered to him that day, and all that wuz took.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The monument is dretful high. Up, up, up, it soars as if it wuz bound to reach
+up into the very heavens, and carry up there these idees of ourn about Free
+Rights, and National Liberty. It don&rsquo;t go clear up, though. I wish it
+did. If it had, I should have gone up the high ladder clear to the top. But I
+desisted from the enterprise for 2 reasons, one wuz, that it didn&rsquo;t go,
+as I say, clear up, and the other wuz that the stairs wuzn&rsquo;t finished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah proposed that he should go up as he clim up our well, with one foot on
+each side on&rsquo;t. He said he wuz tempted to, for he wanted dretfully to
+look out of them windows on the top. And he said it would probable be expected
+of him. And I told him that I guessed that the monument wouldn&rsquo;t feel
+hurt if he didn&rsquo;t go up; I guessed it would stand it. I discouraged the
+enterprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And anon we went down out of the monument, and crossed over to the
+good-lookin&rsquo; house where the man lives who takes care of the monument,
+and shows off its good traits, a kind of a guardian to it. And we got a
+first-rate dinner there, though such is not their practice. And then he took us
+in a likely buggy with 2 seats, and a horse to draw it, and we sot out to see
+what the march of 100 years has left us of the doin&rsquo;s of them days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Time has trampled out a good many of &rsquo;em, but we found some. We found the
+old Schuyler mansion, a settin&rsquo; back amongst the trees, with the old
+knocker on it, that had been pulled by so many a old 4 father, carryin&rsquo;
+tidin&rsquo;s of disappointment, and hope, and triumph, and encouragement, and
+everything. We went over the threshold wore down by the steps that had fell
+there for a hundred years, some light, some heavy steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went into the clean, good-lookin&rsquo; old kitchen, with the platters, and
+shinin&rsquo; dressers and trays; the old-fashioned settee, half-table and
+half-seat. And we see the cup General Washington drinked tea out of, good old
+creeter. I hope the water biled and it wuz good tea, and most probable it wuz.
+And we see lots of arms that had been carried in the war, and cannon balls, and
+shells, and tommy-hawks, and hatchets, and arrows, and etc., etc. And down in
+one room all full of other curiosities and relicts, wuz the skull of a <i>traitor</i>.
+I should judge from the looks on&rsquo;t that besides bein&rsquo; mean, he wuz
+a hombly man. Somebody said folks had made efforts to steal it. But Josiah
+whispered to me, that there wuzn&rsquo;t no danger from him, for he would
+rather be shet right up in the Tombs than to own it, in any way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I felt some like him. Some of his teeth had been stole, so they said. Good
+land! what did they want with his teeth! But it wuz a dretful interestin&rsquo;
+spot. And I thought as I went through the big square, roomy rooms that I
+wouldn&rsquo;t swap this good old house for dozens of Queen Anns, or any other
+of the fashionable, furbelowed houses of to-day. The orniments of this house
+wuz more on the inside, and I couldn&rsquo;t help thinkin&rsquo; that this
+house, compared with the modern ornimental cottages, wuz a good deal like one
+of our good old-fashioned foremothers in her plain gown, compared with some of
+the grandma&rsquo;s of to-day, all paint, and furbelows, and false hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old 4 mothers orniments wuz on the inside, and the others wuz more up on
+the roof, scalloped off and gingerbreaded, and criss-crossed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old house wuz full of rooms fixed off beautiful. It wuz quite a treat to
+walk throngh&rsquo;em. But the old fireplaces, and mantle tray shelves spoke to
+our hearts of the generations that had poked them fires, and leaned up against
+them mantle trays. They went ahead on us through the old rooms; I
+couldn&rsquo;t see &rsquo;em, but I felt their presence, as I follered
+&rsquo;em over the old thresholts their feet had worn down a hundred years ago.
+Their feet didn&rsquo;t make no sound, their petticoats and short gowns
+didn&rsquo;t rustle against the old door ways and stair cases.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dear old grandpas in their embroidered coats, didn&rsquo;t cast no shadow
+as they crossed the sunshine that came in through the old-fashioned window
+panes. No, but with my mind&rsquo;s eye (the best eye I have got, and one that
+don&rsquo;t wear specks) I see &rsquo;em, and I follerd &rsquo;em down the
+narrow, steep stair case, and out into the broad light of 4 P. M., 1886.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image51.gif" height="280" width="499" alt="Ghosts of the Past" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Anon, or shortly after, we drove up on a corner of the street jest above where
+the Fish creek empties into the Hudson, and there, right on a tall high brick
+block, wuz a tablet, showin&rsquo; that a tree once stood jest there, under
+which Burgoyne surrendered. And agin, when I thought of all that he surrendered
+that day, and all that America and the world gained, my emotions riz up so
+powerful, that they wuzn&rsquo;t quelled down a mite, by seein&rsquo; right on
+the other side of the house wrote down these words, &ldquo;Drugs, Oils,
+etc.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, oil couldn&rsquo;t smooth &rsquo;em down, nor drugs drug &rsquo;em; they
+wuz too powerful. And they lasted jest as soarin&rsquo; and eloquent as ever
+till we turned down a cross street, and arrove at the place, jest the identical
+spot where the British stacked their arms (and stacked all their pride, and
+their ambitious hopes with &rsquo;em). It made a high pile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, from there we went up to a house on a hill, where poor Baroness Riedesel
+hid with her three little children, amongst the wounded and dyin&rsquo;
+officers of the British army, and stayed there three days and three nights,
+while shots and shells wuz a bombardin&rsquo; the little house&mdash;and not
+knowin&rsquo; but some of the shots had gone through her lover husband&rsquo;s
+heart, before they struck the low ruff over her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What do you s&rsquo;pose she wuz a thinkin&rsquo; on as she lay hid in that
+suller all them three days and three nights with her little girls&rsquo; heads
+in her lap? Jest the same thoughts that a mother thinks to-day, as she cowers
+down with the children she loves, to hide from danger; jest the same thoughts
+that a wife thinks today when her heart is out a facing danger and death, with
+the man she loves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She faced danger, and died a hundred deaths in the thought of the danger to
+them she loved. I see the very splinters that the cruel shells and cannon balls
+split and tore right over her head. Good honorable splinters and not skairful
+to look at today, but hard, and piercin&rsquo;, and harrowin&rsquo; through
+them days and nights.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Time has trampled over that calash she rode round so much in (I wish I could a
+seen it); but Time has ground it down into dust. Time&rsquo;s hand, quiet but
+heavy, rested down on the shinin&rsquo; heads of the three little girls, and
+their Pa and Ma, and pushed &rsquo;em gently but firmly down out of sight; and
+all of them savages who used to follow that calash as it rolled onwards, and
+all their canoes, and war hoops, and snowshoes, etc., etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, that calash of Miss Riedesel has rolled away, rolled away years ago,
+carryin&rsquo; the three little girls, their Pa and Ma and all the fears, and
+hopes, and dreads, and joys, and heartaches of that time it has rolled on with
+&rsquo;em all; on, on, down the dusty road of Oblivion,&mdash;it has
+disappeared there round the turn of road, and a cloud of dust comes up into our
+faces, as we try to follow it. And the Injuns that used to howl round it, have
+all follered on the trail of that calash, and gone on, on, out of sight. Their
+canoes have drifted away down the blue Hudson, away off into the mist and the
+shadows. Curius, haint it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there the same hills and valleys lay, calm and placid, there is the same
+blue sparklin&rsquo; Hudson. Dretful curius, and sort a heart breakin&rsquo; to
+think on&rsquo;t&mdash;haint it? Only jest a few more years and we, too, shall
+go round the turn of the road, out of sight, out of sight, and a cloud of dust
+will come up and hide us from the faces of them that love us, and them, too,
+from the eyes of a newer people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All our hopes, all our ambitious, all our loves, our joys, our
+sorrows,&mdash;all, all will be rolled away or floated away down the river, and
+the ripples will ripple on jest as happy; the Sunshine will kiss the hills jest
+as warmly, and lovin&rsquo;ly; but other eyes will look on &rsquo;em, other
+hearts will throb and burn within &rsquo;em at the sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kinder sad to think on, haint it?
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image52.gif" height="180" width="239" alt="The Butgoynes" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>Chapter XVIII.<br/>
+THE SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETING.</h2>
+
+<p>
+One day Josiah and me went into a meetin&rsquo; where they wuz kinder
+fixin&rsquo; over the world, sort a repairin&rsquo; of it, as you may say. Some
+of the deepest, smartest speeches I ever hearn in my life, I hearn there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You know it is a middlin&rsquo; deep subject. But they rose to it. They rose
+nobly to it. Some wuz for repairin&rsquo; it one way, and some
+another&mdash;some wanted to kinder tinker it up, and make it over like. Some
+wanted to tear it to pieces, and build it over new. But they all meant well by
+the world, and nobody could help respectin&rsquo; &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I enjoyed them hours there with &rsquo;em, jest about as well as it is in my
+power to enjoy anything. They wuz all on &rsquo;em civilized Christian folks
+and philanthropists of different shades and degrees, all but one. There wuz one
+heathen there. A Hindoo right from Hindoostan, and I felt kinder sorry for him.
+A heathen sot right in the midst of them folks of refinement, and culture, who
+had spent their hull lives a tryin&rsquo; to fix over the world, and make it
+good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This poor little heathen, with a white piller case, or sunthin&rsquo; wound
+round his head (I s&rsquo;pose he hadn&rsquo;t money to buy a hat), and his
+small black eyes lookin&rsquo; out kinder side ways from his dark hombly little
+face, rousted up my pity, and my sympathy. There had been quite a firm speech
+made against allowin&rsquo; foreigners on our shores. And this little heathen,
+in his broken speech, said, It all seemed so funny to him, when everybody wuz
+foreigners in this country, to think that them that got here first should say
+they owned it, and send everybody else back. And he said, It seemed funny to
+him, that the missionarys we sent over to his land to teach them the truth,
+told them all about this land of Liberty, where everybody wuz free, and
+everybody could earn a home for themselves, and urged &rsquo;em all to come
+over here, and then when they broke away from all that held &rsquo;em in their
+own land, and came thousands and thousands of milds, to get to this land of
+freedom and religion,then they wuz sent back agin, and wuzn&rsquo;t allowed to
+land. It seemed so funny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so it did to me. And I said to myself, I wonder if they don&rsquo;t lose
+all faith in the missionarys, and what they tell them. I wonder if they
+don&rsquo;t have doubts about the other free country they tell &rsquo;em about.
+The other home they have urged &rsquo;em to prepare for, and go to. I wonder if
+they haint afraid, that when they have left their own country and sailed away
+for that home of Everlastin&rsquo; freedom, they will be sent back agin, and
+not allowed to land.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it comferted me quite a good deal to meditate on&rsquo;t, that that land
+didn&rsquo;t have no laws aginst foreign emigration. That its ruler wuz one who
+held the rights of the lowest, and poorest, and most ignerent of His children,
+of jest as much account as he did the rights of a king. Thinkses I that poor
+little head with the piller case on it will be jest as much looked up to, as if
+it wuz white and had a crown on it. And I felt real glad to think it wuz so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I went to every meetin&rsquo; of &rsquo;em, and enjoyed every one of
+&rsquo;em with a deep enjoyment. And I said then, and I say now, for folks that
+had took such a hefty job as they had, they done well, nobody could do better,
+and if the world wuzn&rsquo;t improved by their talk it wuz the fault of the
+world, and not their&rsquo;n.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And we went to meetin&rsquo; on Sunday mornin&rsquo; and night, and hearn good
+sermons. There&rsquo;s several high big churches at Saratoga, of every
+denomination, and likely folks belong to the hull on &rsquo;em: There is no
+danger of folks losin&rsquo; their way to Heaven unless they want to, and they
+can go on their own favorite paths too, be they blue Presbyterian paths, or
+Methodist pasters, or by the Baptist boat, or the Episcopalian high way, or the
+Catholic covered way, or the Unitarian Broadway, or the Shadow road of
+Spiritualism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No danger of their losin&rsquo; their way unless they want to. And I thought to
+myself as I looked pensively at the different steeples, &ldquo;What though
+there might be a good deal of&rsquo;wranglin&rsquo;, and screechin&rsquo;, and
+puffin&rsquo; off steam, at the different stations, as there must always be
+where so many different routes are a layin&rsquo; side by side, each with its
+own different runners, and conductors, and porters, and managers, and blowers,
+still it must be, that the separate high ways would all end at last in a
+serener road, where the true wayfarers and the earnest pilgrims would all walk
+side by side, and forget the very name of the station they sot out from.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sez as much to my companion, as we wended our way home from one of the
+meetin&rsquo;s, and he sez, &ldquo;There haint but one right way, and it is a
+pity folks can&rsquo;t see it.&rdquo; Sez he a sithin&rsquo; deep, &ldquo;Why
+can&rsquo;t everybody be Methodists?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We wuz a goin&rsquo; by the &rsquo;Piscopal church then, and he sez a
+lookin&rsquo; at it, as if he wuz sorry for it, &ldquo;What a pity that such
+likely folks as they be, should believe in such eronious doctrines. Why,&rdquo;
+sez he, &ldquo;I have hearn that they believe that the bread at communion is
+changed into sunthin&rsquo; else. What a pity that they should believe anything
+so strange as that is, when there is a good, plain, practical, Christian belief
+that they might believe in, when they might be Methodists. And the Baptists
+now,&rdquo; sez he, a glancin&rsquo; back at their steeple, &ldquo;why
+can&rsquo;t they believe that a drop is as good as a fountain? Why do they want
+to believe in so <i>much</i> water? There haint no need on&rsquo;t. They might be
+Methodists jest as well as not, and be somebody.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he walked along pensively and in deep thought, and I a feelin&rsquo;
+somewhat tuckered didn&rsquo;t argue with him, and silence rained about us till
+we got in front of the hall where the Spiritualists hold their meetin&rsquo;s,
+and we met a few a comin&rsquo; out on it and then he broke out and acted mad,
+awful mad and skernful, and sez he angrily, &ldquo;Them dumb fools believe in
+supernatural things. They don&rsquo;t have a shadow of reason or common sense
+to stand on. A man is a fool to gin the least attention to them, or their
+doin&rsquo;s. Why can&rsquo;t they believe sunthin&rsquo; sensible? Why
+can&rsquo;t they jine a church that don&rsquo;t have anything curius in it?
+Nothin&rsquo; but plain, common sense facts in it: Why can&rsquo;t they be
+Methodists?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The idee!&rdquo; sez he, a breakin&rsquo; out fresh. &ldquo;The idee of
+believin&rsquo; that folks that have gone to the other world can come back agin
+and appear. Shaw!&rdquo; sez he, dretful loud and bold. I don&rsquo;t believe I
+ever heard a louder shaw in my life than that wuz, or more kinder haughty and
+highheaded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then I spoke up, and sez, &ldquo;Josiah, it is always well, to shaw in the
+right place, and I am afraid you haint studied on it as much as you ort. I am
+afraid you haint a shawin&rsquo; where you ort to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where should I shaw?&rdquo; sez he, kinder snappish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;when you condemn other folkses beliefs, you
+ort to be careful that you haint a condemin&rsquo; your own belief at the same
+time. Now my belief is grounded in the Methodist meetin&rsquo; house like a
+rock; my faith has cast its ancher there inside of her beliefs and can&rsquo;t
+be washed round by any waves of opposin&rsquo; doctrines. But I am one who
+can&rsquo;t now, nor never could, abide bigotry and intolerance either in a
+Pope, or a Josiah Allen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And when you condemn a belief simply on the ground of its bein&rsquo;
+miraculous and beyond your comprehension, Josiah Allen, you had better pause
+and consider on what the Methodist faith is founded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All our orthodox meetin&rsquo; houses, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist,
+Episcopalian, every one on &rsquo;em, Josiah Allen, are sot down on a belief, a
+deathless faith in a miraculous birth, a life of supernatural events, the
+resurrection of the dead, His appearance after death, a belief in the graves
+openin&rsquo; and the dead comin&rsquo; forth, a belief in three persons
+inhabitin&rsquo; one soul, the constant presence and control of spiritual
+influences, the Holy Ghost, and the spirits of just men. And while you are a
+leanin&rsquo; up against that belief, Josiah Allen, and a leanin&rsquo; heavy,
+don&rsquo;t shaw at any other belief for the qualities you hold sacred in your
+own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He quailed a very little, and I went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you want to shaw at it, shaw for sunthin&rsquo; else in it, or else
+let it entirely alone. If you think it lacks active Christian force, if you
+think it is not aggressive in its assaults at Sin, if you think it lacks faith
+in the Divine Head of the church, say so, do; but for mercy&rsquo;s sake <i>try</i> to
+shaw in the right place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;they are a low set that follers it up
+mostly, and you know it.&rdquo; And his head was right up in the air, and he
+looked <i>very</i> skernful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I sez, &ldquo;Josiah Allen, you are a shawin&rsquo; agin in the wrong
+place,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;If what you say is true, remember that 1800 years
+ago, the same cry wuz riz up by Pharisees, &lsquo;He eats with Publicans and
+sinners.&rsquo; They would not have a king who came in the guise of the poor,
+they scerned a spiritual truth that did not sparkle with worldly lustre.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it shone on; it lights the souls of humanity to-day. Let us not be
+afraid, Josiah Allen. Truth is a jewel that <i>cannot</i> be harmed by deepest
+investigation, by roughest handlin&rsquo;. It can&rsquo;t be buried, it will
+shine out of the deepest darkness. What is false will be washed away, what is
+true will remain. For all this frettin&rsquo;, and chafing, all this turbelence
+of conflectin&rsquo; beliefs, opposin&rsquo; wills, will only polish this
+jewel. Truth, calm and serene, will endure, will shine, will light up the
+world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He begun to look considerable softer in mean, and I continued on: &ldquo;Josiah
+Allen, you and I know what we believe the beautiful religion (Methodist
+Episcopal) that we both love, makes a light in our two souls. But don&rsquo;t
+let us stand in that light and yell out, that everybody else&rsquo;s light is
+darkness; that our light is the only one. No, the heavens are over all the
+earth; the twelve gates of heaven are open and a shinin&rsquo; down on all
+sides of us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jonesville meetin&rsquo; house (Methodist Episcopal) haint the only
+medium through which the light streams. It is dear to us, Josiah Allen, but let
+us not think that we must coller everybody and drag &rsquo;em into it. And let
+us not cry out too much at other folkses superstitions, when the rock of our
+own faith, that comforts us in joy and sorrow, is sot in a sea of
+supernaturalism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know how that faith comforts our two souls, how it is to us, like
+the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, but they say, their belief is the
+same to them, let us not judge them too hardly. No, the twelve gates of heaven
+are open, Josiah Allen, and a shinin&rsquo; down onto the earth. We know the
+light that has streamed into our own souls, but we do not know exactly what
+rays of radience may have been reflected down into some other lives through
+some one of those many gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The plate below has to be prepared, before it can ketch the picture and
+hold it. The light does not strike back the same reflection from every earthly
+thing. The serene lake mirrors back the light, in a calm flood of glory, the
+flashin&rsquo; waterfall breaks it into a thousand dazzlin&rsquo; sparkles. The
+dewy petal of the yellow field lily, reflects its own ray of golden light back,
+so does the dark cone of the pine tree, and the diamond, the opal, the ruby,
+each tinges the light with its own coloring, but the light is all from above.
+And they all reflect the light, in their own way for which the Divine skill has
+prepared them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us not try to compel the deep blue Ocean waves and the shinin&rsquo;
+waterfall, and the lily blow, to reflect back the light, in the same identical
+manner. No, let the light stream down into high places, and low ones, let the
+truth shine into dark hearts, and into pure souls. God is light. God is Love.
+It is His light that shines down out of the twelve gates, and though the ruby,
+or the amethyst, may color it by their own medium, the light that is reflected,
+back is the light of Heaven. And Josiah Allen,&rdquo; sez I in a deeper,
+earnester tone, &ldquo;let us who know so little ourselves, be patient with
+other ignerent ones. Let us not be too intolerent, for no intolerence, Josiah
+Allen is so cruel as that of ignerence, an&rsquo; stupidity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez Josiah, &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t believe in anything I can&rsquo;t <i>see</i>,
+Samantha Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I jest looked round at him witheringly, and sez I, &ldquo;What <i>have</i> you ever
+seen, Josiah Allen, I mean that is worth sein&rsquo;? Haint everything that is
+worth havin&rsquo; in life, amongst the unseen? The deathless loves, the
+aspirations, the deep hopes, and faiths, that live in us and through us, and
+animate us and keep us alive,&mdash;Whose spectacles has ever seen &rsquo;em?
+What are we, all of us human creeters, any way, but little atoms dropped here,
+Heaven knows why, or how, into the midst of a perfect sea of mystery, and
+unseen influences. What hand shoved us forwards out of the shadows, and what
+hand will reach out to us from the shadows and draw us back agin? Have you seen
+it Josiah Allen? You have felt this great onseen force a movin&rsquo; you
+along, but you haint sot your eyes on it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is there above us, below us, about us, but a waste of mystery, a
+power of onseen influences?.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t believe anything you can&rsquo;t see:&mdash;Did you ever
+see old Gravity, Josiah Allen, or get acquainted with him? Yet his hands hold
+the worlds together. Who ever see the mysterious sunthin&rsquo; in the North
+that draws the ship&rsquo;s compass round? Who ever see that great mysterious
+hand that is dropped down in the water, sweepin&rsquo; it back and forth,
+makin&rsquo; the tides come in, and the tides go out? Who ever has ketched a
+glimpse of them majestic fingers, Josiah Allen? Or the lips touched with
+lightnin&rsquo;, whose whispers reach round the world, and through the Ocean?
+You haint see &rsquo;em, nor I haint, No, Josiah Allen, we don&rsquo;t know
+much of anything, and we don&rsquo;t know that for certain. We are all on us
+only poor pupils down in the Earth&rsquo;s school-room, learnin&rsquo; with
+difficulty and heart ache the lessons God sets for us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tough old Experience gives us many a hard floggin&rsquo;, before we learn the
+day&rsquo;s lessons. And we find the benches hard, long before sundown. And it
+makes our hearts ache to see the mates we love droop their too tired heads in
+sleep, all round us before school is out. But we grind on at our lessons, as
+best we may. Learnin&rsquo; a little maybe. Havin&rsquo; to onlearn a sight, as
+the pinters move on towards four. Clasping hands with fellow toilers and (hard
+task) onclaspin&rsquo; &rsquo;em, as they go up above us, or down nearer the
+foot. Havin&rsquo; little &lsquo;intermissions&rsquo; of enjoyment, soon over.
+But we plod on, on, and bimeby&mdash;and sometimes we think we do not care how
+soon&mdash;the teacher will say to us, that we can be &lsquo;dismissed.&rsquo;
+And then we shall drop out of the rank of learners, and the school will go
+without us, jest as busily, jest as cheerfully, jest as laboriously, jest as
+sadly. Poor learners at the hard lessons of life. Learnin&rsquo; out of a book
+that is held out to us from the shadows by an onseen, inexorable hand.
+Settin&rsquo; on hard benches that may fall out from under us at any time. Poor
+ignerent creeters that we are, would it not be a too arrant folly for us to
+judge each other hardly, we, all on us, so deplorably ignerent, so weakly
+helpless?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez Josiah, in earnest axcents, &ldquo;Le&rsquo;s walk a little faster.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, in lookin&rsquo; up, I see that he wuz readin&rsquo; a advertisement. I
+ketched sight of a picture ornamentin&rsquo; of it. It wuz Lydia Pinkham. And
+as I see that benine face, I found and recovered myself. Truly, I had been a
+soarin&rsquo; up, up, fur above Saratoga, Patent Medicines, Josiah Allen, etc.,
+etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when I found myself by the side of Josiah Allen once more, I moved onwards
+in silence, and soon we found ourselves right by the haven where I desired to
+be,&mdash;our own tried and true boardin&rsquo; house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Truly eloquence is tuckerin&rsquo;, very, especially when you are a
+soarin&rsquo; and a walkin&rsquo; at the same time.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image53.gif" height="181" width="154" alt="Josiah" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>Chapter XIX.<br/>
+ST. CHRISTINA&rsquo;S HOME.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Wall, it wuz that very afternoon, almost immegetly after dinner, that Josiah
+Allen invited me warmly to go with him to the Roller Coaster. And I compromised
+the matter by his goin&rsquo; with us first to St. Christina&rsquo;s Home, and
+then, I told him, I would proceed with him to the place where he would be. They
+wuz both on one road, nigh to each other, and he consented after some words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt dretfully interested in this Home, for it is a place where poor little
+sick children are took to, out of their miserable, stiflin&rsquo;, dirty
+garrets, and cellars, and kep&rsquo; and made well and happy in their pleasant,
+home-like surroundin&rsquo;s. And I thought to myself, as I looked ont on the
+big grounds surroundin&rsquo; it, and walked through the clean wide rooms, that
+the change to these children, brought out of their narrow dark homes of want
+and woe, into this great sunshiny Home with its clean fresh rooms, its good
+food, its cheery Christian atmosphere, its broad sunshiny playgrounds, must
+seem like enterin&rsquo; Paradise to &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I thought to myself how thankful I wuz that this pleasant House Beautiful,
+wuz prepared for the rest and refreshment of the poor little pilgrims, worn out
+so early in the march of life. And I further thinkses I, &ldquo;Heaven bless
+the kind heart that first thought on&rsquo;t, and carried out the heavenly
+idee.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The children&rsquo;s faces all looked, so happy, and bright, it wuz a treat to
+see &rsquo;em. And the face of the sister who showed us round the rooms looked
+as calm, and peaceful, and happy, as if her face wuz the sun from which their
+little lights wuz reflected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up amongst the rooms overhead, every one on &rsquo;em clean as a pin and sweet
+and orderly, wuz one room that specially attracted my attention. It wuz a small
+chapel where the little ones wuz took to learn their prayers and say &rsquo;em.
+It wuzn&rsquo;t a big, barren barn of a room, such as I have often seen in
+similar places, and which I have always thought must impress the children with
+a awful sense of the immensity and lonesomeness of space, and the
+intangebility, and distance of the Great Spirit who inhabiteth Eternity. No, it
+wuz small, and cozy, and cheerful, like a home. And the stained glass window
+held a beautiful picture of love and charity, which might well touch the
+children&rsquo;s hearts, sweetly and unconsciously, with the divine worth of
+love, and beauty, and goodness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I could fancy the dear, little ones kneelin&rsquo; here, and prayin&rsquo;
+&ldquo;Our Father, who art in Heaven,&rdquo; and feelin&rsquo; that He wuz
+indeed their Father, and not a stranger, and that Heaven wuz not fur off from
+&rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I thought to myself &ldquo;Never! never! through all their life will they
+get entirely away from the pure, sweet lessons they learn here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I enjoyed the hour I spent here with a deep, heart enjoyment, and so did
+Josiah. Or, that is, I guess he did, though he whispered to me from time to
+time, or even oftener, as we went through the buildin&rsquo;, that we wuz a
+devourin&rsquo; time that we might be spendin&rsquo; at the Roller Coaster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, at last, greatly to my pardner&rsquo;s satisfaction, we sot out for the
+place where he fain would be. On our way there we roamed through another Indian
+Encampment, a smaller one than that where we had the fearful incident of the
+Mermaid and Sarah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, it wuzn&rsquo;t so big, but it had many innocent diversions and a
+photograph gallery, and other things for its comfert. And a standin&rsquo; up a
+leanin&rsquo; aginst a tree, by one of the little houses stood a Injun. He wuz
+one of the last left of his tribe. He seemed to be a lookin&rsquo; pensively
+on&mdash;and seein&rsquo; how the land that had belonged to &rsquo;em, the
+happy huntin&rsquo;-grounds, the springs they believed the Great Spirit had gin
+to &rsquo;em, had all passed away into the bands of another race.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wuz sorry for that Injun, real sorry. And thinkses I to myself, we feel
+considerable pert now, and lively, but who knows in another three or four
+hundred years, but what one of the last of our race, may be a leanin&rsquo; up
+aginst some new tree, right in the same spot, a watchin&rsquo; the old places
+passed away into other hands, mebby black hands, or some other colored ones;
+mebby yellow ones, who knows? I don&rsquo;t, nor Josiah don&rsquo;t. But my
+pardner wuz a hurryin&rsquo; me on, so I dropped my revery and my umberell in
+my haste to foller on after his footsteps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah picked up my umberell, but he couldn&rsquo;t pick up my soarin&rsquo;
+emotions for me. No, he haint never been able, to get holt of &rsquo;em. But
+suffice it to say, that soon, preceded by my companion, I found myself a
+mountin&rsquo; the nearly precipitus stairs, that led to the Roller Coaster.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image54.gif" height="300" width="465" alt="The Rollercoaster" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And havin&rsquo; reached the spot, who should we find there but Ardelia Tutt
+and Bial Flamburg. They had been on the Roller Coaster seven times in
+succession, and the car. And they wuz now a sittin&rsquo; down to recooperate
+their energies, and collect their scattered wits together. The Roller Coaster
+is <i>very</i> scatterin&rsquo; to wits that are not collected firm and sound, and
+cemented by strong common sense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reason why the Roller Coaster don&rsquo;t scatter such folkses wits is
+supposed to be because, they don&rsquo;t go on to it. Ardelia looked as if her
+idees wuz scattered to the four pints of the compass. As for Bial, it seemed to
+me, as if he never had none to scatter. But he spoke out to once, and said, he
+didn&rsquo;t care to ride on &rsquo;em. (Bial Flamburg&rsquo;s strong pint, is
+his truthfulness, I can&rsquo;t deny that.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ardelia wouldn&rsquo;t own up but what she enjoyed it dretfully. You know folks
+are most always so. If they partake of a pleasure and recreation that is
+doubtful in its effects, they will always say, what a high extreme of enjoyment
+they enjoyed a partakin&rsquo; of it. Curius, haint it? Wall, Josiah had been
+anticipatin&rsquo; so much enjoyment from the exercise, that I didn&rsquo;t
+make no move to prevent him from embarkin&rsquo; on it&mdash;though it looked
+hazardous and dangerous in the extreme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked down on the long valleys, and precipitous heights of the assents and
+desents, in which my pardner wuz so soon to be assentin&rsquo; and
+desentin&rsquo; and I trembled, and wuz jest about to urge him to forego his
+diversion, for the sake of his pardner&rsquo;s happiness, but as I turned to
+expostulate with him, I see the beautiful, joyous, hopeful look on his
+liniment, and the words fell almost dead on my tongue. I felt that I had ruther
+suffer in silence than to say one word to mar that bliss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such is the love of pardners, and such is some of the agonies they suffer
+silently to save from woundin&rsquo; the more opposite one. No, I said not a
+word; but silently sat, and see him makin&rsquo; his preparations to embark. He
+see the expression onto my face, and he too wuz touched by it. He never said
+one word to me about embarkin&rsquo; too, which I laid to two reasons. One wuz
+my immovable determination not to embark on the voyage, which I had confided to
+him before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the other wuz, the added expenses of the journey if he took his companion
+with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, I felt that he thought it wuz better we should part temporarily than that
+the expenditure should be doubled. But as the time drew near for him to leave
+me, I see by his meen that he felt bad about leavin&rsquo; me. He realized what
+a companion I had been to him. He realized the safety and repose he had always
+found at my side and the unknown dangers he wuz a rushin&rsquo; into.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he got up and silently shook hands with me. He would have kissed me, I make
+no doubt, if folks hadn&rsquo;t been a standin&rsquo; by. He then embarked, and
+with lightnin&rsquo; speed wuz bore away from me, as he dissapeared down the
+desent, his few gray hairs waved back, and as he went over the last precipitus
+hill, I heard him cry out in agonizin&rsquo; axents, &ldquo;Samantha!
+Samantha!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I rushed forwards to his rescue but so lightnin&rsquo; quick wuz their
+movements that I met my companion a comin&rsquo; back, and I sez, the first
+thing, &ldquo;I heard your cry, Josiah! I rushed to save you, my dear
+pardner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;I spoke out to you, to call your attention to
+the landscape, over the woods there!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked at him in a curious, still sort of a way, and didn&rsquo;t say
+nothin&rsquo; only just that look. Why, that man looked all trembly and broke
+up, but he kep&rsquo; on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, it wuz beautiful and inspirin&rsquo;, and I knew you wuz such a
+case for landscapes, I thought I would call your attention to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, coldly, &ldquo;You wuz skairt, Josiah Allen, and you know it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Skairt! the idee of me bein&rsquo; skairt. I wuz callin&rsquo; your
+attention to the beauty of the view, over in the woods.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What wuz it?&rdquo; sez I, still more coldly; for I can&rsquo;t bear
+deceit, and coverin&rsquo; up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, it wuz a house, and a tree, and a barn, and things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A great seen to scream about,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;It would probable
+have stood there till you got back, but you couldn&rsquo;t seem to wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I have noticed that you always wanted to see things to once. I have
+noticed it in you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could most probable have waited till you got back, to see a house and
+a tree.&rdquo; And in still more&mdash;frigid axents, I added, &ldquo;Or a
+barn.&rdquo; And I sez, kinder sarkastikly, &ldquo;You enjoyed your ride, I
+s&rsquo;pose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Immensely, it wuz perfectly beautiful! So sort a free and soarin&rsquo;
+like. It is jest what suits a man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;d better go right over it agin,&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez the man who runs the cars. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better go
+agin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; sez Josiah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; sez the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Josiah Allen looked all around the room, and down on the grass, as if trying to
+find a good reasonable excuse a layin&rsquo; round loose somewhere, so&rsquo;s
+he could get holt of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;d better go,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I love to see you happy,
+Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, you&rsquo;d better go,&rdquo; sez the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo; sez Josiah, still a lookin&rsquo; round for a excuse, up into
+the heavens and onto the horizon. And at last his face kinder brightenin&rsquo;
+up, as if he had found one: &ldquo;No, it looks so kinder cloudy, I guess I
+won&rsquo;t go. I think we shall have rain between now and night.&rdquo; And so
+we said no more on the subject and sot out homewards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ardelia wrote a poem on the occasion, wrote it right there, with rapidity and a
+lead pencil, and handed it to me, before I left the room. I put it into my
+pocket and didn&rsquo;t think on it, for some days afterwards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night after we got home from the Roller Coaster, I felt dretful sort a
+down hearted about Abram Gee, I see in that little incident of the day, that
+Bial, although I couldn&rsquo;t like him, yet I see he had his good qualities,
+I see how truthful he wuz. And although I love truth&mdash;I fairly worship
+it&mdash;yet I felt that if things wuz as he said they wuz, he would
+more&rsquo;n probable get Ardelia Tutt, for I know the power of Ambition in
+her, and I felt that she would risk the chances of happiness, for the name of
+bein&rsquo; a Banker&rsquo;s Bride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I sat there in deep gloom, and a chocolate colored wrapper, till as late as
+half past nine o&rsquo;clock P. M. And I felt that the course of Abram&rsquo;s
+love wuz not runnin&rsquo; smooth. No, I felt that it wuz runnin&rsquo; in a
+dwindlin&rsquo; torrent over a rocky bed, and a precipitus one. And I felt that
+if he wuz with me then and there, if we didn&rsquo;t mingle our tears together
+we could our sithes, for I sithed, powerful and frequent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor short-sighted creeter that I wuz, a settin&rsquo; in the shadow, when the
+sun wuz jest a gettin&rsquo; ready to shine out onto Abram and reflect off onto
+my envious heart. Even at that very time the hand of righteous Retribution had
+slipped its sure noose over Bial Flamburg&rsquo;s neck, and wuz a walkin&rsquo;
+him away from Ardelia, away from happiness (oritory).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that very hour, half past nine P. M., Ardelia Tutt and Abram Gee had met
+agin, and rosy love and happiness wuz even then a stringin&rsquo; roses on the
+chain that wuz to bind &rsquo;em together forever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The way on&rsquo;t wuz: It bein&rsquo; early when Ardelia got here, Bial
+proposed to take her out for a drive and she consented. He got a livery horse,
+and buggy, and they say that the livery man knew jest what sort of a creeter
+the horse wuz, and knew it wuz liable to break the buggy all to pieces and them
+to, and he let &rsquo;em have it for goin.&rsquo; But howsumever, whether that
+is so or not, when they got about five or six milds from Saratoga the horse
+skeert out of the road, and throwed &rsquo;em both out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wuz a bank of sand that skeert it, a high bank that wuz piled up by a little
+hovel that stood by the side of the road. The ground all round the hut wuz too
+poor to raise anything else but sand, and had raised sights of that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A man and woman, dretful shabby lookin&rsquo;, wuz a standin&rsquo; by the door
+of the hut, and the man had a shovel in his hand, and had been a loadin&rsquo;
+sand into a awful big wheelbarrow that wuz a standin&rsquo;
+by&mdash;seemin&rsquo;ly ready to carry it acrost the fields, to where some man
+wuz a mixin&rsquo; some motar, to lay the foundations of a barn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, the old man stood a pantin&rsquo; by the side of the wheelbarrow, as if
+he had indeed got on too heavy a load. It wuz piled up high. The horse shied,
+and Ardelia wuz throwed right out onto the bank of sand, Bial by the side of
+her. And the old man and woman came a runnin&rsquo; up, and callin&rsquo; out,
+&ldquo;Bial, my son, my son, are you wounded?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image55.gif" height="285" width="434" alt="The Accident" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And there it all wuz. Ardelia see the hull on it. The Banker wuz before her,
+and she wuz a layin&rsquo; on the bank. And the banker wuz a doin&rsquo; a
+heavy business, if anybody doubted it, let &rsquo;em take holt and cart a load
+on it acrost the fields.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, Ardelia wuz jarred fearful, in her heart, her ambition, her pride, and
+her bones. And as the horse wuz a fleein&rsquo; far away, and no other
+conveyance could be found to transport her to the next house (Ardelia
+wouldn&rsquo;t go into his&rsquo;n), and night wuz approachin&rsquo; with rapid
+strides, the old Banker jest unloaded the load of sand (good old creeter, he
+would have to load it all over agin), and took Ardelia into the wheelbarrow,
+and wheeled her over to the next house and unloaded her.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image56.gif" height="277" width="467" alt="Ardelia in the
+wheelbarrow" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The old Banker told Ardelia that when his neighbor got home he would take her
+back to Saratoga, which he did. He had been to the village for necessaries, but
+he turned right round and carried her back to Mr. Pixleyses. And I s&rsquo;pose
+Ardelia paid him, mebby as high as 75 cents. As for Bial, he tramped off into
+the house, and she didn&rsquo;t see him agin, nor didn&rsquo;t want to. Wall, I
+s&rsquo;pose it wuz durin&rsquo; that ride on the wheelbarrow, that
+Ardelia&rsquo;s ambition quelled to softer emotions. I s&rsquo;pose so. She
+never owned it right up to me, but I s&rsquo;pose so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bial Flamburg hadn&rsquo;t lied a word to her. In all her agony she realized
+that. But she had built a high towerin&rsquo; structure of ambition on what he
+said, and it had tottered. And as is natural in times of danger, the heart
+turns instinctively to its true love, she thought of Abram Gee, she wanted him.
+And as if in answer to her deep and lovin&rsquo; thought, who should come out
+to the buggy to help her out at Mr. Pixleyses gate, but Abram Gee? He had come
+unexpected, and on the eight o&rsquo;clock train, and wuz there waitin&rsquo;
+for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Bial Flamburg had been with her, he wouldn&rsquo;t have gone a nigh the
+buggy, but he see it was a old man, and he rushed out. Ardelia couldn&rsquo;t
+walk a step on her feet (owin&rsquo; to bein shaken up, in bones and
+feelin&rsquo;s), and Abram jest took her in his strong lovin&rsquo; arms and
+carried her into the house, and she sort a clung round his neck, and seemed
+tickled enough to see him,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she wuz dretful shook up and agitated, and it wuzn&rsquo;t till way along
+in the night some time, that she wuz able to write a poem called, &ldquo;a lay
+on a wheelbarrow; or, the fallen one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which I thought when I read it, wuz a good name for it, for truly she had fell,
+and truly she had lay on it. Howsumever, Ardelia wrote that jest because it wuz
+second nater to write poetry on every identical thing she ever see or did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wuz glad enough to get rid of Bial Flamburg, and glad enough to go back to
+her old love. Abram wuz too manly and tender to say a word to Ardelia that
+night on the subject nearest to his heart. No, he see she needed rest. But the
+next day, when they wuz alone together, I s&rsquo;pose he put the case all
+before her. All his warm burnin&rsquo; love for her, all his jealousy, and his
+wretchedness while she wuz a waverin&rsquo; between Banks and Bread, how his
+heart had been checked by the thought that Bial would vault over him, and in
+the end hold him at a discount.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why, I s&rsquo;pose he talked powerful and melted Ardelia&rsquo;s soft little
+heart till it wuz like the softest kind of dough in his hands. And then he went
+on tenderly to say, how he needed her, and how she could mould him to her will.
+I s&rsquo;pose he talked well, and eloquent, I s&rsquo;pose so. Anyhow she
+accepted him right there in full faith and a pink and white cambric dress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And they came over and told me about it in the afternoon P. M. And I felt well
+and happy in my mind, and wished &rsquo;em joy with a full heart and a
+willin&rsquo; mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They are both good creeters. And she bein&rsquo; so soft, and he so kinder
+hardy and stout-hearted, I believe they will get along firstrate. And when she
+once let her mind and heart free to think on him, she worships him so openly
+and unreservedly (though soft), that I don&rsquo;t, believe there is a happier
+man in the hull country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I lay out to give&rsquo;em a handsome present when they be married, which
+will be in the fall. Mother Gee (who has got as well as can be expected) is
+goin&rsquo; to live with Susan. And I&rsquo;m glad on&rsquo;t. Mother Gee is a
+good old female no doubt, but it is resky work to take a new husband to live
+with, and when you take a mother-in-law too it adds to the resk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she is goin&rsquo; to live with Susan; it is her prefference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Abram has done so well, that he has bought another five acres onto his
+place, and is a goin&rsquo; to fix his house all over splendid before the
+weddin&rsquo; day. And Ardelia is to go right from the altar to her
+home&mdash;it is her own wishes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knows enough in her way, Ardelia duz. And she has a wisdom of the heart
+which sometimes I think, goes fur ahead of the wisdom of the head. And then
+agin, I think they go well together, wisdom of the head and the heart too. (The
+times I think this is after readin&rsquo; her poetry.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But any way she will make Abram a good soft little wife, lovin&rsquo; and
+affectionate always. And good land! he loves her to that extent that it
+wouldn&rsquo;t make no difference to him if she didn&rsquo;t know enough to
+come in when it rained. He would fetch her in, drippin&rsquo; and worship her,
+damp or dry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Them verses of Ardelia&rsquo;s, that she handed me, by the Roller Coaster wuz
+as follows&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;A LAY ON A ROLLER COASTER<br/>
+&ldquo;BY ARDELIA TUTT.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Oh was thy track all straight, and smooth like glass<br/>
+Thou couldest not mount the hills, and lo, the dells,<br/>
+The hills and dells oh! Roller Coaster pass<br/>
+In peace, believing all things well.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;The hills of life go down, and mount elate<br/>
+We mount or sink on them, as case may be<br/>
+All seated on the wagon seat of life&mdash;<br/>
+A holdin&rsquo; on in peace, or screamin&rsquo; fearfulee.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Hold then thy breath, and go, e&rsquo;en up or down,<br/>
+Hold to the seat, and hold to royal hope,<br/>
+Hope for the best, so shalt thou wear a crown,<br/>
+A clinging hope to hold, is better than a rope.<br/>
+<br/>
+&ldquo;Mount then the Mounts, Oh Roller Coaster mount,<br/>
+And sink then in the dells with brow serene;<br/>
+&rsquo;Tis no disgrace to sink a spell, we count<br/>
+Him coward, knave, who floats and calls it mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ardelia always will stand up for Josiah Allen, and I am glad on&rsquo;t. I
+should jest as soon be jealous of one of Josiah&rsquo;s gingham neckties, one
+of the thinnest and stringiest ones, as to be jealous of her. She means well,
+Ardelia duz.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>Chapter XX.<br/>
+AN ACCIDENT WITH RESULTS.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Wall, it wuz on the very day before we laid out to leave for home. I wuz a
+settin&rsquo; in my room a mendin&rsquo; up a rip in my pardner&rsquo;s best
+coat, previous to packin&rsquo; in his trunk, when all of a sudden Miss
+Flamm&rsquo;s hired girl came in a cryin&rsquo;, and sez I, &ldquo;What is the
+matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And sez she, &ldquo;Ah! Miss Flamm has sent for you and Mr. Allen to come over
+there right away. There has been a axident.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A axident!&rdquo; sez I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez she. &ldquo;The little girl has got hurt, and they
+don&rsquo;t think she will live. Poor little pretty thing,&rdquo; sez the hired
+girl, and busted out a cryin&rsquo; agin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did she get hurt?&rdquo; sez I, as I laid down the coat, and went to
+tyin&rsquo; on my bunnet mekanically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall, the nurse had her out with the baby and the little boys. And we
+s&rsquo;pose she had been drinkin&rsquo; too much. We all knew she drinked, and
+she wuzn&rsquo;t in a condition to go out with the children this mornin&rsquo;,
+and Miss Flamm would have noticed it and kep&rsquo; &rsquo;em in, but the dog
+wuz sick all night, and Miss Flamm wuz up with it most all night, and she felt
+wore out this mornin&rsquo; with her anxtety for the dog, and her want of
+sleep, and so they went out, and it wuzn&rsquo; more&rsquo;n half an hour
+before it took place. She left the baby carriage and the little boys and girl
+in a careless place, not knowin&rsquo; what she wuz about, and they got run
+over. The baby and the little boys wuzn&rsquo;t hurt much, but they think the
+little girl will die. Miss Flamm went right into a caniption fit,&rdquo; sez
+she, &ldquo;when she wuz brung in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a pity she hadn&rsquo;t went into one before,&rdquo; sez I very
+dryly, dry as a chip almost. My axents wuz fairly dusty they wuz so dry. But my
+feelin&rsquo;s for Miss Flamm moistened up and melted down when I see her, when
+we went into the room. It didn&rsquo;t take us long for they are still to the
+tarven, and we met Josiah Allen at the door, so he went with us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, Miss Flamm felt bad enough, bad enough. She has got a mother&rsquo;s heart
+after all, down under all the strings and girtins, and laces, and dogs, etc.,
+etc., that have hid it, and surrounded it. Her face wuz jest as white and
+deathly as the little girl&rsquo;s, and that wuz jest the picture of stillness
+and death. And I remembered then that I had heard that the little girl wuz her
+favorite amongst her children, whenever she had any time to notice &rsquo;em.
+She wuz a only daughter and a beauty, besides bein&rsquo; smart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor had been there and done what he could, and go gone away. He said
+there wuz nothin&rsquo; more to do till she came out of that stuper, if she
+ever did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it looked like death, and there Miss Flamm sot alone with her child, and
+her conscience. She wuzn&rsquo;t a cryin&rsquo; but there wuz a look in her
+eyes, in her set white face that went beyond tears, fur beyond &rsquo;em. She
+gripped holt of my hand with her icy cold ones, and sez she, &ldquo;Pray for
+me!&rdquo; She wuz brung up a Methodist, and knew we wuz the same. My
+feelin&rsquo;s overcame me as I looked in her face and the child&rsquo;s, both
+lookin&rsquo; like dyin&rsquo; faces, and I sez with the tears a jest
+runnin&rsquo; down my cleeks and a layin&rsquo; my hand tender on her shoulder,
+&ldquo;Is there anything I can do for you, you poor little creeter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray for me,&rdquo; sez she agin, with her white lips not movin&rsquo;
+in a smile, nor a groan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now my companion, Josiah Allen, is a class-leader, and though I say it that
+mebby shouldn&rsquo;t&mdash;That man is able in prayer. He prays as if he meant
+what he said. He don&rsquo;t try to show off in oritory as so many do, or give
+the Lord information. He never sez, &ldquo;Oh Lord, thou knowest by the
+mornin&rsquo; papers, so and so.&rdquo; No, he prays in simple words for what
+he wants. And he always seems to feel that somebody is nigh to him, a
+hearin&rsquo; him, and if it is best and right, his requests will be granted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I motioned for that man to kneel down by the bed and pray, which he did. He
+wuz to the fore side of the bed, and Miss Flamm and I on the other side. Wall,
+Josiah commenced his prayer, in a low earnest askin&rsquo; voice, then all of a
+sudden he begun to hesitate, waver, and act dretful agitated. And his actions
+and agitations seemed to last for some time. I thought it wuz his
+feelin&rsquo;s overcomin&rsquo; of him, and of course, my hand bein&rsquo; over
+my eyes in a respectful, decent way, I didin&rsquo;t see nothin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at last, after what wuz seemingly a great effort, he began to go on as
+usual agin. About that time I heard sunthin&rsquo; hit the wall hard on the
+other side of the room, and I heard a yelp. But then everything wuz still and
+Josiah Allen made a good prayer. And before it wuz through Miss Flamm laid her
+head down onto my shoulder, and busted into tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And what wuz rooted up and washed away by them tears I don&rsquo;t know, and I
+don&rsquo;t s&rsquo;pose anybody duz. Whether vanity, and a mistaken ambition,
+and the poor empty successes of a fashionable life wuz uprooted and floated
+away on the awakened, sweepin&rsquo; tide of a mother&rsquo;s love and remorse;
+whether the dog floated down that stream, and low necked dresses, and high
+hazardus slippers, and strings for waists and corsets, and fashion, and folly,
+and rivalry, and waltzin&rsquo;, and glitter, and buttons, and show; whether
+they all went down that stream, swept along like bubbles on a heavin&rsquo;
+tumultuous tide, I don&rsquo;t know, nor I don&rsquo;t s&rsquo;pose anybody
+duz.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But any way, from that day on Miss Flamm has been a different woman. I stayed
+with her all that night and the next day, she a not leavin&rsquo; the
+child&rsquo;s bed for a minute, and we a not gettin&rsquo; of her to, much as
+we tried to; eatin&rsquo; whatever we could make her eat right there by the
+bedside. And on the 2d day the doctor see a change in the child and she began
+to roust a little out of that stuper, and in a week&rsquo;s time, she wuz a
+beginnin&rsquo; to get well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We stayed on till she wuz out of danger and then we went home. But I see that
+she wuz to be trusted with her children after that. She dismissed that nurse,
+got a good motherly one, who she said would help her take care of the children
+for the future; only <i>help</i> her, for she should have the oversight of &rsquo;em
+herself, always.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hired girl told me (Miss Flamm never mentioned it to me), and she wuz glad
+enough of it, that the dog wuz dead. It died the day the little girl wuz hurt.
+The hired girl said the doctor had told Miss Flamm, that it couldn&rsquo;t live
+long. But it wuzn&rsquo;t till we wuz on our way home that I found out one of
+the last eppisodes in that dog&rsquo;s life. You see, sick as that dog wuz, it
+wuz bound to bark at my pardner as long as it had a breath left in its body.
+And Josiah told me in confidence (and it must be kep&rsquo;, it is right that
+it should be); he said jest after he had knelt down and began to pray he felt
+that dog climb up onto his heels, and pull at his coat tails, and growl a low
+mad growl, and naw at &rsquo;em.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image57.gif" height="289" width="413" alt="Josiah prays" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+He tried to nestle round and get it off quietly but no, there it stood right
+onto Josiah Allen&rsquo;s heels, and hung on, and tugged at them coat-tails,
+and growled at &rsquo;em that low deep growl, and shook &rsquo;em, as if
+determined to worry &rsquo;em off. And there my companion wuz. He
+couldn&rsquo;t show his feelin&rsquo;s in his face; he had got to keep his face
+all right towards Miss Flamm. And his feelin&rsquo;s was rousted up about her,
+and he wuz a wantin&rsquo;, and knew he wuz expected, to have his words and
+manner soothin&rsquo; and comfortin&rsquo;, and that dog a standin&rsquo; on
+his heels and tearin&rsquo; off his coat-tails.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What to do he didn&rsquo;t know. He couldn&rsquo;t stop his prayer on such a
+time as this and kill a dog, though he owned up to me that he felt like it, and
+he couldn&rsquo;t keep still and feel his coat-tails tore off of him, and be
+growled at, and shook, and pawed at all day. So he said after the dog had gin a
+most powerful tug, almost a partin&rsquo; the skirts asunder from his coat, he
+drew up one foot carefully (still a keepin&rsquo; his face straight and the
+prayer agoin&rsquo;) and brung it back sudden and voyalent, and he heard the
+dog strike aginst the opposite side of the room with one short, sharp yelp, and
+then silence rained down and he finished the prayer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he said, and owned it up to me, that it didn&rsquo;t seem to him so much
+like a religious exercise, as he could wish. It didn&rsquo;t seem to help his
+spiritual growth much, if any.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;I should think as much,&rdquo; and I sez, &ldquo;You wuz in a
+hard place, Josiah Allen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he sez, &ldquo;It wuz the dumbest hard place any one wuz ever in on
+earth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I sez, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know but it wuz.&rdquo; That man wuz to be
+pitied, and I told him so, and he acted real cheerful and contented at
+hearin&rsquo; my mind. He owned up that he had dreaded tellin&rsquo; me about
+it, for fear I would upbraid him. But, good land! I would have been a hard
+hearted creeter if I could upbraid a man for goin&rsquo; through such a time as
+that. He said he thought mebby I would think it wuz irreverent or
+sunthin&rsquo;, the dog&rsquo;s actions, at such a time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wall,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;you didn&rsquo;t choose the actions, did you?
+It wuzn&rsquo;t nothin&rsquo; you wanted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez he feelin&rsquo;ly. &ldquo;Heaven knows I didn&rsquo;t.
+And I done the best I could,&rdquo; sez he sort a pitiful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sez I, &ldquo;I believe you, Josiah Allen,&rdquo; and sez I warmly, &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t believe that Alexander, or Cezar, or Grover Cleveland, could have
+done any better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He brightened all up at this, he felt dretful well to think I felt with him,
+and my feelin&rsquo;s wuz all rousted up to think of the sufferin&rsquo;s he
+had went through, so we felt real well towards each other. Such is some of the
+comforts and consolations of pardners. Howsumever, the dog died, and I wuz
+kinder sorry for the dog. I think enough of dogs (as dogs) and always did.
+Always use &rsquo;em dretful well, only it mads me to have &rsquo;em put ahead
+of children, and sot up in front of &rsquo;em. I always did and always shall
+like a dog as a <i>dog</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, they say that when that dog died, Miss Flamm hardly inquired about it,
+she wuz so took up in gettin&rsquo; acquainted with her own children. And I
+s&rsquo;pose they improved on acquaintance, for they say she is jest devoted to
+&rsquo;em. And she got acquainted with G. Washington too, so they say. He wuz a
+stiddy, quiet man, and she had got to lookin&rsquo; on him as her banker and
+business man. But they say she liked him real well, come to get acquainted with
+him. He always jest worshipped her, so they are real happy. There wuz always
+sunthin&rsquo; kinder good about Miss Flamm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thos. J. is a carryin&rsquo; on another lawsuit for her (more money that
+descended onto her from her father, or that ort to descend). And he is
+carryin&rsquo; it stiddy and safe. It will bring Thomas Jefferson over 900
+dollars in money besides fame, a hull lot of fame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we sot sail for home in good spirits, and the noon train. And we reached
+Jonesville with no particular eppisodin&rsquo; till we got to the Jonesville
+Depot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I rather think Ardelia Tutt wrote a poem on the cars goin&rsquo; home, though I
+can&rsquo;t say for certain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She and Abram sot a few seats in front of us, and I thought I see a certain
+look to the backside of her head that meant poetry. It wuz a kind of a sot
+look, and riz up like. But I can&rsquo;t say for certain for she didn&rsquo;t
+have no chance to tell me about it. Abram looked down at her all the time as if
+he jest worshipped her. And she is a good little creeter, and will make him a
+happy wife; I don&rsquo;t make no doubt. As I said, the old lady is goin&rsquo;
+to live with Susan. They went right on in the train, for Ardelia&rsquo;s home
+lays beyond Jonesville, and Abram wuz goin&rsquo; home with her by Deacon
+Tutt&rsquo;s request. They are willin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, we disembarked from the cars, and we found the old mair and the <i>Democrat</i>
+a waitin&rsquo; for us. Thomas J. wuz a comin&rsquo; for us, but had spraint
+his wrist and couldn&rsquo;t drive. Wall, Josia lifted our saddul bags in, and
+my umbrell, and the band box. But when he went to lift my trunk he faltered. It
+<i>wuz</i> heavy. I had got relicts from Mount McGregor, from the Battlefield, from
+the various springs, minerals, stuns, and things, and Josiah couldn&rsquo;t
+lift it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What added to the hardness of the job, the handles had broken offen it, and he
+had to grip hold on it, by the might of his finger nails. It wuz a hard job,
+and Josiah&rsquo;s face got red and I felt, as well as see, that his temper wuz
+a risin&rsquo;. And I sez, instinctively, &ldquo;Josiah, be calm!&rdquo; For I
+knew not what unguarded word he might drop as he vainly tried to grip hold
+on&rsquo;t, and it eluded his efferts and came down on the ground every time, a
+carryin&rsquo; with it, I s&rsquo;pose, portions of his fingernails, broke off
+in the fray.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, he wuz a strugglin&rsquo; with it and with his feelin&rsquo;s, for I
+kep&rsquo; on a sayin&rsquo;, &ldquo;Josiah, do be calm! Do be careful about
+usin&rsquo; a profane word so nigh home and at this time of day, and you jest
+home from a tower.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image58.gif" height="290" width="422" alt="trying to lift trunk" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And he kep&rsquo; his feelin&rsquo;s nobly under control, and never said a
+word, only to wonder &ldquo;what under the High Heavens a woman wanted to lug
+round a ton of stuns in her trunk for.&rdquo; And anon sayin&rsquo; that he
+would be dumbed if he didn&rsquo;t leave it right there on the platform.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image59.gif" height="283" width="415" alt="Too heavy!" />
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Savin&rsquo; these few slight remarks that man nobly restrained himself, and
+lugged and lifted till the blood almost gushed through his bald head. And right
+in the midst of the fray, a porter came up and went to liftin&rsquo; the trunk
+in the usual highheaded, haughty way Railroad officials have. But anon a change
+came over his linement. And as it fell back from his fingers to the platform
+for the 3d time, he broke out in a torrent of swearin&rsquo; words dretful to
+hear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt as if I should sink through the <i>Democrat</i>. But Josiah listened to the
+awful words with a warm glow of pleasure and satisfaction a beamin&rsquo; from
+his face. I never saw him look more complacent. And as the man moistened his
+hands and with another frightful burst of profanity histed it into the end of
+the buggy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wall, I gin the man a few warnin&rsquo; words aginst profanity, and Josiah gin
+him a quarter for liftin&rsquo; in the trunk, he said, and we drove off in the
+meller glow of the summer sunset.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it wuz duskish before we got to the turn of the road, and considerable dark
+before we got to the Corners. But we went on tbgough the shadows, a
+feelin&rsquo; we could bear &rsquo;em, for we wuz together, and we wuz a
+goin&rsquo; home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And pretty soon we got there! The door wuz open, the warm light wuz a
+streamin&rsquo; out from doors and windows, and there stood the children!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There they all wuz, all we loved best, a waitin&rsquo; to welcome us. Love,
+which is the light of Heaven, wuz a shinin&rsquo; on their faces, and we had
+got home.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/image60.gif" height="400" width="364" alt="The End" />
+</div>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA ***</div>
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Samantha at Saratoga, by Marietta Holley
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+Title: Samantha at Saratoga
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+Author: Marietta Holley
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+Official Release Date: September 2002  [Etext #3425]
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+
+SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA  BY JOSIAH ALLEN'S WIFE
+                          (Marietta Holly)
+
+
+
+Dedication:
+
+                       TO THE GREAT ARMY OF
+                          SUMMER TRAMPS
+                      THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
+               BY THEIR COMRADE AND FELLOW WANDERER
+                            THE AUTHOR
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER I. SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA
+
+CHAPTER II. ARDELIA TUTT AND HER MOTHER
+
+CHAPTER III. THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS
+
+CHAPTER IV. ARDELIA AND ABRAM GEE
+
+CHAPTER V. WE ARRIVE AT SARATOGA
+
+CHAPTER VI. SARATOGA BY DAYLIGHT
+
+CHAPTER VII. SEEING THE DIFFERENT SPRINGS
+
+CHAPTER VIII. JOSIAH AND SAMANTHA TAKE A LONG WALK
+
+CHAPTER IX. JOSIAH'S FLIRTATIONS
+
+CHAPTER X. MISS G. WASHINGTON FLAMM
+
+CHAPTER XI. VISIT TO THE INDIAN ENCAMPMENT
+
+CHAPTER XII. A DRIVE TO SARATOGA LAKE
+
+CHAPTER XIII. VISITS TO NOTABLE PLACES
+
+CHAPTER XIV. LAKE GEORGE AND MOUNT McGREGOR
+
+CHAPTER XV. ADVENTURES AT VARIOUS SPRINGS
+
+CHAPTER XVI. AT A LAWN PARTY
+
+CHAPTER XVII. A TRIP TO SCHUYLERVILLE
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. THE SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETING
+
+CHAPTER XIX. ST. CHRISTINA'S HOME
+
+CHAPTER XX. AN ACCIDENT WITH RESULTS
+
+
+
+
+ A SORT OF PREFACE.
+
+WHICH IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO READ.
+
+When Josiah read my dedication he said "it wuz a shame to dedicate
+a book that it had took most a hull bottle of ink to write, to a
+lot of creeters that he wouldn't have in the back door yard."
+
+But I explained it to him, that I didn't mean tramps with broken
+hats, variegated pantaloons, ventilated shirt-sleeves, and
+barefooted.  But I meant tramps with diamond ear-rings, and
+cuff-buttons, and Saratoga trunks, and big accounts at their
+bankers.
+
+And he said, "Oh, shaw!"
+
+But I went on nobly, onmindful of that shaw, as female pardners
+have to be, if they accomplish all the talkin' they want to.
+
+And sez I, "It duz seem sort o' pitiful, don't it, to think how
+sort o' homeless the Americans are a gettin'?  How the posys that
+blow under the winders of Home are left to waste their sweet
+breaths amongst the weeds, while them that used to love 'em are a
+climbin' mountain tops after strange nosegays."
+
+The smoke that curled up from the chimbleys, a wreathin' its way
+up to the heavens -- all dead and gone.  The bright light that
+shone out of the winder through the dark a tellin' everybody that
+there wuz a Home, and some one a waitin' for somebody -- all dark
+and lonesome.
+
+Yes, the waiter and the waited for are all a rushin' round
+somewhere, on the cars, mebby, or a yot, a chasin' Pleasure, that
+like as not settled right down on the eves of the old house they
+left, and stayed there.
+
+I wonder if they will find her there when they go back again.
+Mebby they will, and then agin, mebby they won't.  For Happiness
+haint one to set round and lame herself a waitin' for folks to
+make up their minds.
+
+Sometimes she looks folks full in the face, sort o' solemn like
+and heart-searchin', and gives 'em a fair chance what they will
+chuse.  And then if they chuse wrong, shee'll turn her back to
+'em, for always.  I've hearn of jest such cases.
+
+But it duz seem sort o' solemn to think -- how the sweet restful
+felin's that clings like ivy round the old familier door steps --
+where old 4 fathers feet stopped, and stayed there, and baby feet
+touched and then went away -- I declare for't, it almost brings
+tears, to think how that sweet clingin' vine of affection, and
+domestic repose, and content -- how soon that vine gets tore up
+nowadays.
+
+It is a sort of a runnin' vine anyway, and folks use it as sech,
+they run with it.  Jest as it puts its tendrils out to cling round
+some fence post, or lilock bush, they pull it up, and start off
+with it.  And then its roots get dry, and it is some time before
+it will begin to put out little shoots and clingin' leaves agin
+round some petickular mountain top, or bureau or human bein'.  And
+then it is yanked up agin, poor little runnin' vine, and run with
+-- and so on -- and so on -- and so on.
+
+Why sometimes it makes me fairly heart-sick to think on't.  And I
+fairly envy our old 4 fathers, who used to set down for several
+hundred years in one spot.  They used to get real rested, it must
+be they did.
+
+Jacob now, settin' right by that well of his'n for pretty nigh two
+hundred years.  How much store he must have set by it during the
+last hundred years of 'em!  How attached he must have been to it!
+
+Good land!  Where is there a well that one of our rich old
+American patriarks will set down by for two years, leavin' off the
+orts.  There haint none, there haint no such a well.  Our
+patriarks haint fond of well water, anyway.
+
+And old Miss Abraham now, and Miss Isaac -- what stay to home
+wimmen they wuz, and equinomical!
+
+What a good contented creeter Sarah Abraham wuz.  How settled
+down, and stiddy, stayin' right to home for hundreds of years.
+Not gettin' rampent for a wider spear, not a coaxin' old Mr.
+Abraham nights to take her to summer resorts, and winter hants of
+fashion.
+
+No, old Mr. Abraham went to bed, and went to sleep for all of her.
+
+And when they did once in a hundred years, or so, make up their
+minds to move on a mile or so, how easy they traveled.  Mr.
+Abraham didn't have to lug off ten or twelve wagon loads of
+furniture to the Safe Deposit Company, and spend weeks and weeks a
+settlin' his bisness, in Western lands, and Northern mines,
+Southern railroads, and Eastern wildcat stocks, to get ready to
+go.  And Miss Abraham didn't have to have a dozen dress-makers in
+the house for a month or two, and messenger boys, and dry goods
+clerks, and have to stand and be fitted for basks and polenays,
+and back drapery, and front drapery, and tea gowns, and dinner
+gowns, and drivin' gowns, and mornin' gowns, and evenin' gowns,
+and etectery, etcetery, etcetery.
+
+No, all the preperations she had to make wuz to wrop her mantilly
+a little closter round her, and all Mr. Abraham had to do wuz to
+gird up his lions.  That is what it sez.  And I don't believe it
+would take much time to gird up a few lions, it don't seem to me
+as if it would.
+
+And when these few simple preperations had been made, they jest
+histed up their tent and laid it acrost a camel, and moved on a
+mild or two, walkin' afoot.
+
+Why jest imagine if Miss Abraham had to travel with eight or ten
+big Saratoga trunks, how could they have been got up onto that
+camel?  It couldn't lave been done.  The camel would have died,
+and old Mr. Abraham would also have expired a tryin' to lift 'em
+up.  No, it was all for the best.
+
+And jest think on't, for all of these simple, stay to home ways,
+they called themselves Pilgrims and Sojourners.  Good land!  What
+would they have thought nowadays to see folks make nothin' of
+settin' off for China, or Japan or Jerusalem before breakfast.
+
+And what did they know of the hardships of civilization?  Now to
+sposen the case, sposen Miss Abraham had to live in New York
+winters, and go to two or three big receptions every day, and to
+dinner parties, and theatre parties, and operas and such like,
+evenin's, and receive and return about three thousand calls, and
+be on more 'n a dozen charitable boards (hard boards they be too,
+some on 'em) and lots of other projects and enterprizes -- be on
+the go the hull winter, with a dress so tight she couldn't breathe
+instead of her good loose robes, and instead of her good
+comfortable sandals have her feet upon high-heeled shoes pinchin'
+her corns almost unto distraction.  And then to Washington to go
+all through it agin, and more too, and Florida, and Cuba; and then
+to the sea-shore and have it all over agin with sea bathin' added.
+
+And then to the mountains, and all over agin with climbin' round
+added.  Then to Europe, with seas sickness, picture galleries,
+etc., added.  And so on home agin in the fall to begin it all over
+agin.
+
+Why Miss Abraham would be so tuckered out before she went half
+through with one season, that she would be a dead 4 mother.
+
+And Mr. Abraham -- why one half hour down at the stock exchange
+would have been too much for that good old creeter.  The yells and
+cries, and distracted movements of the crowd of Luker Gatherers
+there, would have skairt him to death.  He never would have lived
+to follow Miss Abraham round from pillow to post through summer
+and winter seasons -- he wouldn't have lived to waltz, or
+toboggen, or suffer other civilized agonies.  No, he would have
+been a dead patriark.  And better off so, I almost think.
+
+Not but what I realize that civilization has its advantages.  Not
+but what I know that if Mr. Abraham wanted Miss Abraham to part
+his hair straight, or clean off his phylackrity when she happened
+to be out a pickin' up manny, he couldn't stand on one side of his
+tent and telephone to bring her back, but had to yell at her.
+
+And I realize fully that if one of his herd got strayed off into
+another county, they hadn't no telegraf to head it off, but the
+old man had to poke off through rain or sun, and hunt it up
+himself.  And he couldn't set down cross-legged in front of his
+tent in the mornin', and read what happened on the other side of
+the world, the evenin' before.
+
+And I know that if he wanted to set down some news, they had to
+kill a sheep, and spend several years a dressin' off the hide into
+parchment -- and kill a goose, or chase it up till they wuz beat
+out, for a goose-quill.
+
+And then after about 20 years or so, they could put it down that
+Miss Isaac had got a boy -- the boy, probably bein' a married man
+himself and a father when the news of his birth wuz set down.
+
+I realize this, and also the great fundimental fact that underlies
+all philosophies, that you can't set down and stand up at the same
+time -- and that no man, however pure and lofty his motives may
+be, can't lean up against a barn door, and walk off simultanious.
+And if he don't walk off, then the great question comes in, How
+will he get there?  And he feels lots of times that he must stand
+up so's to bring his head up above the mullien and burdock stalks,
+amongst which he is a settin', and get a wider view-a broader
+horizeon.  And he feels lots of time, that he must get there.
+
+This is a sort of a curius world, and it makes me feel curius a
+good deal of the time as we go through it.  But we have to make
+allowances for it, for the old world is on a tramp, too.  It can't
+seem to stop a minute to oil up its old axeltrys -- it moves on,
+and takes us with it.  It seems to be in a hurry.
+
+Everything seems to be in a hurry here below.  And some say Heaven
+is a place of continual sailin' round and goin' up and up all the
+time.  But while risin' up and soarin' is a sweet thought to me,
+still sometimes I love to think that Heaven is a place where I can
+set down, and set for some time.
+
+I told Josiah so (waked him up, for he wuz asleep), and he said he
+sot more store on the golden streets, and the wavin' palms, and
+the procession of angels.  (And then he went to sleep agin.)
+
+But I don't feel so.  I'd love, as I say, to jest set down for
+quite a spell, and set there, to be kinder settled down and to
+home with them whose presence makes a home anywhere.  I wouldn't
+give a cent to sail round unless I wuz made to know it wuz my duty
+to sail.  Josiah wants to.
+
+But, as I say, everybody is in a hurry.  Husbands can't hardly
+find time to keep up a acquaintance with their wives.  Fathers
+don't have no time to get up a intimate acquaintance with their
+children.  Mothers are in such a hurry -- babys are in such a
+hurry -- that they can't scarcely find time to be born.  And I
+declare for't, it seems sometimes as if folks don't want to take
+time to die.
+
+The old folks at home wait with faithful, tired old eyes for the
+letter that don't come, for the busy son or daughter hasn't time
+to write it -- no, they are too busy a tearin' up the running vine
+of affection and home love, and a runnin' with it.
+
+Yes, the hull nation is in a hurry to get somewhere else, to go
+on, it can't wait.  It is a trampin' on over the Western slopes, a
+trampin' over red men, and black men, and some white men a
+hurryin' on to the West -- hurryin' on to the sea.  And what then?
+
+Is there a tide of restfulness a layin' before it?  Some cool
+waters of repose where it will bathe its tired forward, and its
+stun-bruised feet, and set there for some time?
+
+I don't s'pose so.  I don't s'pose it is in its nater to.  I
+s'pose it will look off longingly onto the far off somewhere that
+lays over the waters -- beyend the sunset.
+
+
+                                           JOSIAH ALLEN'S WIFE.
+NEW YORK, June, 1887.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA.
+
+
+The idee on't come to me one day about sundown, or a little before
+sundown.  I wuz a settin' in calm peace, and a big rockin' chair
+covered with a handsome copperplate, a readin' what the Sammist
+sez about "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity."  The words struck deep,
+and as I said, it was jest that very minute that the idee struck
+me about goin' to Saratoga.  Why I should have had the idee at
+jest that minute, I can't tell, nor Josiah can't.  We have talked
+about it sense.
+
+But good land! such creeters as thoughts be never wuz, nor never
+will be.  They will creep in, and round, and over anything, and
+get inside of your mind (entirely unbeknown to you) at any time.
+Curious, haint it? -- How you may try to hedge 'em out, and shet
+the doors and everything.  But they will creep up into your mind,
+climb up and draw up their ladders, and there they will be, and
+stalk round independent as if they owned your hull head; curious!
+
+Well, there the idee wuz -- I never knew nothin' about it, nor how
+it got there.  But there it wuz, lookin' me right in the face of
+my soul, kinder pert and saucy, sayin', "You'd better go to
+Saratoga next summer; you and Josiah."
+
+But I argued with it.  Sez I, "What should we go to Saratoga for?
+None of the relations live there on my side, or on hison; why
+should we go?"
+
+But still that idee kep' a hantin me; "You'd better go to Saratoga
+next summer, you and Josiah."  And it whispered, "Mebby it will
+help Josiah's corns."  (He is dretful troubled with corns.)  And
+so the idee kep' a naggin' me, it nagged me for three days and
+three nights before I mentioned it to my Josiah.  And when I did,
+he scorfed at the idee.  He said, "The idee of water curing them
+dumb corns -- "
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, stranger things have been done;" sez I,
+"that water is very strong.  It does wonders."
+
+And he scorfed agin and sez, "Don't you believe faith could cure
+em?"
+
+Sez I, "If it wuz strong enough it could."
+
+But the thought kep a naggin' me stiddy, and then -- here is the
+curious part of it -- the thought nagged me, and I nagged Josiah,
+or not exactly nagged; not a clear nag; I despise them, and always
+did.  But I kinder kep' it before his mind from day to day, and
+from hour to hour.  And the idee would keep a tellin' me things
+and I would keep a tellin' 'em to my companion.  The idee would
+keep a sayin' to me, "It is one of the most beautiful places in
+our native land.  The waters will help you, the inspirin' music,
+and elegance and gay enjoyment you will find there, will sort a
+uplift you.  You had better go there on a tower;" and agin it sez,
+"Mebby it will help Josiah's corns."
+
+And old Dr. Gale a happenin' in at about that time, I asked him
+about it (he doctored me when I wuz a baby, and I have helped 'em
+for years.  Good old creetur, he don't get along as well as he ort
+to.  Loontown is a healthy place.)  I told him about my strong
+desire to go to Saratoga, and I asked him plain if he thought the
+water would help my pardner's corns.  And he looked dreadful wise
+and he riz up and walked across the floor 2 and fro several times,
+probably 3 times to, and the same number of times fro, with his
+arms crossed back under the skirt of his coat and his eyebrows
+knit in deep thought, before he answered me.  Finely he said, that
+modern science had not fully demonstrated yet the direct bearing
+of water on corn.  In some cases it might and probably did
+stimulate 'em to greater luxuriance, and then again a great flow
+of water might retard their growth.
+
+Sez I, anxiously, "Then you'd advise me to go there with him?"
+
+"Yes," sez he, "on the hull, I advise you to go."
+
+Them words I reported to Josiah, and sez I in anxious axents, "Dr.
+Gale advises us to go."
+
+And Josiah sez, "I guess I shan't mind what that old fool sez."
+
+Them wuz my pardner's words, much as I hate to tell on 'em.  But
+from day to day I kep' it stiddy before him, how dang'r'us it wuz
+to go ag'inst a doctor's advice.  And from day to day he would
+scorf at the plan.  And I, ev'ry now and then, and mebby oftener,
+would get him a extra good meal, and attack him on the subject
+immegatly afterwards.  But all in vain.  And I see that when he
+had that immovible sotness onto him, one extra meal wouldn't
+soften or molify him.  No, I see plain I must make a more voyalent
+effort.  And I made it.  For three stiddy days I put before that
+man the best vittles that these hands could make, or this brain
+could plan.
+
+And at the end of the 3d day I gently tackled him agin on the
+subject, and his state wuz such, bland, serene, happified, that he
+consented without a parlay.  And so it wuz settled that the next
+summer we wuz to go to Saratoga.  And he began to count on it and
+make preparation in a way that I hated to see.
+
+Yes, from the very minute that our two minds wuz made up to go to
+Saratoga Josiah Allen wuz set on havin' sunthin new and uneek in
+the way of dress and whiskers.  I looked coldly on the idee of
+puttin' a gay stripe down the legs of the new pantaloons I made
+for him, and broke it up, also a figured vest.  I went through
+them two crisises and came out triumphent.
+
+Then he went and bought a new bright pink necktie with broad long
+ends which he intended to have float out, down the front of his
+vest.  And I immegatly took it for the light-colored blocks in my
+silk log-cabin bedquilt.  Yes, I settled the matter of that pink
+neck-gear with a high hand and a pair of shears.  And Josiah sez
+now that he bought it for that purpose, for the bedquilt, because
+he loves to see a dressy quilt, -- sez he always enjoys seein' a
+cabin look sort o' gay.  But good land! he didn't.  He intended
+and calculated to wear that neck-tie into Saratoga, -- a sight for
+men and angels, if I hadn't broke it up.
+
+But in the matter of whiskers, there I was powerless.  He trimmed
+'em (unbeknow to me) all off the side of his face, them good
+honerable side whiskers of hisen, that had stood by him for years
+in solemnity and decency, and begun to cultivate a little patch on
+the end of his chin.  I argued with him, and talked well on the
+subject, eloquent, but it wuz of no use, I might as well have
+argued with the wind in March.
+
+He said, he wuz bound on goin' into Saratoga with a fashionable
+whisker, come what would.
+
+And then I sithed, and he sez, -- " You have broke up my pantaloons,
+my vest, and my neck-tie, you have ground me down onto plain
+broadcloth, but in the matter of whiskers I am firm! Yes!" sez he
+"on these whiskers I take my stand!"
+
+And agin I sithed heavy, and I sez in a dretful impressive way, as
+I looked on 'em, "Josiah Allen, remember you are a father and a
+grandfather!"
+
+And he sez firmly, "If I wuz a great-grandfather I would trim my
+whiskers in jest this way, that is if I wuz a goin' to set up to
+be fashionable and a goin' to Saratoga for my health."
+
+And I groaned kinder low to myself, and kep' hopin' that mebby
+they wouldn't grow very fast, or that some axident would happen to
+'em, that they would get afire or sunthin'.  But they didn't.  And
+they grew from day to day luxurient in length, but thin.  And his
+watchful care kep' 'em from axident, and I wuz too high princepled
+to set fire to 'em when he wuz asleep, though sometimes, on a
+moonlight night, I was tempted to, sorely tempted.
+
+But I didn't, and they grew from day to day, till they wuz the
+curiusest lookin' patch o' whiskers that I ever see.  And when we
+sot out for Saratoga, they wuz jest about as long as a shavin'
+brush, and looked some like one.  There wuz no look of a
+class-leader, and a perfesser about 'em, and I told him so.  But
+he worshiped 'em, and gloried in the idee of goin' afar to show
+'em off.
+
+But the neighbors received the news that we wuz goin' to a
+waterin' place coldly, or with ill-concealed envy.
+
+Uncle Jonas Bently told us he shouldn't think we would want to go
+round to waterin' troughs at our age.
+
+And I told him it wuzn't a waterin' trough, and if it wuz, I
+thought our age wuz jest as good a one as any, to go to it.
+
+He had the impression that Saratoga wuz a immense waterin' trough
+where the country all drove themselves summers to be watered.  He
+is deef as a Hemlock post, and I yelled up at him jest as loud as
+I dast for fear of breakin' open my own chest, that the water got
+into us, instid of our gettin' into the water, but I didn't make
+him understand, for I hearn afterwards of his sayin' that, as nigh
+as he could make out we all got into the waterin' trough and wuz
+watered.
+
+The school teacher, a young man, with long, small lims, and some
+pimpley on the face, but well meanin', he sez to me: "Saratoga is
+a beautiful spah."
+
+And I sez warmly, "It aint no such thing, it is a village, for I
+have seen a peddler who went right through it, and watered his
+horses there, and he sez it is a waterin' place, and a village."
+
+"Yes," sez he, "it is a beautiful village, a modest retiren city,
+and at the same time it is the most noted spah on this continent."
+
+I wouldn't contend with him for it wuz on the stoop of the meetin'
+house, and I believe in bein' reverent.  But I knew it wuzn't no
+"spah," -- that had a dreadful flat sound to me.  And any way I
+knew I should face its realities soon and know all about it.  Lots
+of wimen said that for anybody who lived right on the side of a
+canal, and had two good, cisterns on the place, and a well, they
+didn't see why I should feel in a sufferin' condition for any more
+water; and if I did, why didn't I ketch rain water?
+
+Such wuz some of the deep arguments they brung up aginst my
+embarkin' on this enterprise, they talked about it sights and
+sights; -- why, it lasted the neighbors for a stiddy conversation,
+till along about the middle of the winter.  Then the Minister's
+wife bought a new alpacky dress -- unbeknown to the church till it
+wuz made up -- and that kind o' drawed their minds off o' me for a
+spell.
+
+Aunt Polly Pixley wuz the only one who received the intelligence
+gladly.  And she thought she would go too.  She had been kinder
+run down and most bed rid for years.  And she had a idee the water
+might help her.  And I encouraged Aunt Polly in the idee, for she
+wuz well off.  Yes, Mr. and Miss Pixley wuz very well off though
+they lived in a little mite of a dark, low, lonesome house, with
+some tall Pollard willows in front of the door in a row, and jest
+acrost the road from a grave-yard.
+
+Her husband had been close and wuzn't willin' to have any other
+luxury or means of recreation in the house only a bass viol, that
+had been his father's -- he used to play on that for hours and
+hours.  I thought that wuz one reason why Polly wuz so nervous.  I
+said to Josiah that it would have killed me outright to have that
+low grumblin' a goin' on from day to day, and to look at them tall
+lonesome willows and grave stuns.
+
+But, howsumever, Polly's husband had died durin' the summer, and
+Polly parted with the bass viol the day after the funeral.  She
+got out some now, and wuz quite wrought up with the idee of goin'
+to Saratoga.
+
+But Sister Minkley; sister in the church and sister-in-law by
+reason of Wbitefield, sez to me, that she should think I would
+think twice before I danced and waltzed round waltzes.
+
+And I sez, "I haint thought of doin' it, I haint thought of
+dancin' round or square or any other shape."
+
+Sez she, "You have got to, if you go to Saratoga."
+
+Sez I, "Not while life remains in this frame."
+
+And old Miss Bobbet came up that minute -- it wuz in the store
+that we were a talkin' -- and sez she, "It seems to me, Josiah
+Allen's wife, that you are too old to wear low-necked dresses and
+short sleeves."
+
+"And I should think you'd take cold a goin' bareheaded," sez Miss
+Luman Spink who wuz with her.
+
+Sez I, lookin' at 'em coldly, "Are you lunys or has softness begun
+on your brains?"
+
+"Why," sez they, "you are talking about goin' to Saratoga, hain't
+you?"
+
+"Yes," sez I.
+
+"Well then you have got to wear 'em," says Miss Bobbet.  "They
+don't let anybody inside of the incorporation without they have
+got on a low-necked dress and short sleeves."
+
+"And bare-headed," sez Miss Spink; "if they have' got a thing on
+their heads they won't let 'em in."
+
+Sez I, "I don't believe it"
+
+Sez Miss Bobbet, "It is so, for I hearn it, and hearn it straight.
+James Robbets's wife's sister had a second cousin who lived
+neighbor to a woman whose niece had been there, been right there
+on the spot.  And Celestine Bobbet, Uncle Ephraim's Celestine,
+hearn it from James'es wife when she wuz up there last spring, it
+come straight.  They all have to go in low necks."
+
+"And not a mite of anything on their heads," says Miss Spink.
+
+Sez I in sarcastical axents, "Do men have to go in low necks too?"
+
+"No," says Miss Bobbet.  "But they have to have the tails of their
+coats kinder pinted.  Why," sez she, "I hearn of a man that had
+got clear to the incorporation and they wouldn't let him in
+because his coat kinder rounded off round the bottom, so he went
+out by the side of the road and pinned up his coat tails, into a
+sort of a pinted shape, and good land the incorporation let him
+right in, and never said a word."
+
+I contended that these things wuzn't so, but I found it wuz the
+prevailin' opinion.  For when I went to see the dressmaker about
+makin' me a dress for the occasion, I see she felt just like the
+rest about it.  My dress wuz a good black alpacky.  I thought I
+would have it begun along in the edge of the winter, when she
+didn't have so much to do, and also to have it done on time.  We
+laid out to start on the follerin' July, and I felt that I wanted
+everything ready.
+
+I bought the dress the 7th day of November early in the forenoon,
+the next day after my pardner consented to go, and give 65 cents a
+yard for it, double wedth.  I thought I could get it done on time,
+dressmakers are drove a good deal.  But I felt that a dressmaker
+could commence a dress in November and get it done the follerin'
+July, without no great strain bein' put onto her; and I am fur
+from bein' the one to put strains onto wimmen, and hurry 'em
+beyend their strength.  But I felt Almily had time to make it on
+honor and with good buttonholes.
+
+"Well," she sez, the first thing after she had unrolled the
+alpacky, and held it up to the light to see if it was firm -- sez
+she:
+
+"I s'pose you are goin' to have it made with a long train, and low
+neck and short sleeves, and the waist all girted down to a taper?"
+
+I wuz agast at the idee, and to think Alminy should broach it to
+me, and I give her a piece of my mind that must have lasted her
+for days and days.  It wuz a long piece, and firm as iron.  But
+she is a woman who likes to have the last word and carry out her
+own idees, and she insisted that nobody was allowed in Saratoga --
+that they wuz outlawed, and laughed at if they didn't have trains
+and low necks, and little mites of waists no bigger than
+pipe-stems.
+
+Sez I, "Alminy Hagidone, do you s'pose that I, a woman of my age,
+and a member of the meetin' house, am a goin' to wear a low-necked
+dress?"
+
+"Why not?," sez she, "it is all the fashion and wimmen as old agin
+as you be wear 'em."
+
+Well, sez I, "It is a shame and a disgrace if they do, to say
+nothin' of the wickedness of it.  Who do you s'pose wants to see
+their old skin and bones?  It haint nothin' pretty anyway.  And as
+fer the waists bein' all girted up and drawed in, that is nothin'
+but crushed bones and flesh and vitals, that is just crowdin' down
+your insides into a state o' disease and deformity, torturin' your
+heart down so's the blood can't circulate, and your lungs so's you
+can't breathe, it is nothin' but slow murder anyway, and if I ever
+take it into my head to kill myself, Alminy Hagidone, I haint a
+goin' to do it in a way of perfect torture and torment to me, I'd
+ruther be drownded."
+
+She quailed, and I sez, "I am one that is goin' to take good long
+breaths to the very last."  She see I wuz like iron aginst the
+idee of bein' drawed in, and tapered, and she desisted.  I s'pose
+I did look skairful.  But she seemed still to cling to the idee of
+low necks and trains, and she sez sort a rebukingly:
+
+"You ortn't to go to Saratoga if you haint willin' to do as the
+rest do.  I spose," sez she dreamily, "the streets are full of
+wimmen a walkin' up and down with long trains a hangin' down and
+sweepin' the streets, and ev'ry one on 'em with low necks and
+short sleeves, and all on 'em a flirting with some man"
+
+"Truly," sez I, "if that is so, that is why the idee come to me.
+I am needed there.  I have a high mission to perform about.  But I
+don't believe it is so."
+
+"Then you won't have it made with a long train?" sez she, a holdin'
+up a breadth of the alpacky in front of me, to measure the skirt.
+
+"No mom!" sez I, and there wuz both dignity and deep resolve in
+that "mom."  It wuz as firm and stern principled a "mom" as I ever
+see, though I say it that shouldn't.  And I see it skairt her.
+She measured off the breadths kinder trembly, and seemed so
+anxious to pacify me that she got it a leetle shorter in the back
+than it wuz in the front.  And (for the same reason) it fairly
+clicked me in the neck it wuz so high, and the sleeves wuz that
+long that I told Josiah Allen (in confidence) I was tempted to
+knit some loops across the bottom of 'em and wear 'em for mits.
+
+But I didn't, and I didn't change the dress neither.  Thinkses I,
+mebby it will have a good moral effect on them other old wimmen
+there.  Thinkses I, when they see another woman melted and
+shortened and choked fur principle's sake, mebby they will pause
+in their wild careers.
+
+Wall, this wuz in November, and I wuz to have the dress, if it wuz
+a possible thing, by the middle of April, so's to get it home in
+time to sew some lace in the neck.  And so havin' everything
+settled about goin' I wuz calm in my frame most all the time, and
+so wuz my pardner.
+
+And right here, let me insert this one word of wisdom for the
+special comfort of my sect and yet it is one that may well be laid
+to heart by the more opposite one.  If your pardner gets restless
+and oneasy and middlin' cross, as pardners will be anon, or even
+oftener -- start them off on a tower.  A tower will in 9 cases out
+of 10 lift 'em out of their oneasiness, their restlessness and
+their crossness.
+
+Why this is so I cannot tell, no more than I can explain other
+mysteries of creation, but I know it is so.  I know they will come
+home more placider, more serener, and more settled-downer.  Why I
+have known a short tower to Slab City or Loontown act like a charm
+on my pardner, when crossness wuz in his mean and snappishness wuz
+present with him.  I have known him to set off with the mean of a
+lion and come back with the liniment of a lamb.  Curious, haint
+it?
+
+And jest the prospect of a tower ahead is a great help to a woman
+in rulin' and keepin' a pardner straight and right in his
+liniments and his acts.  Somehow jest the thought of a tower sort
+a lifts him up in mind, and happifys him, and makes him easier to
+quell, and pardners must be quelled at times, else there would be
+no livin' with 'em.  This is known to all wimmen companions and
+and men too.  Great great is the mystery of pardners.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+ARDELLA TUTT AND HER MOTHER.
+
+
+But to resoom and continue on.  I was a settin' one day, after it
+wuz all decided, and plans laid on; I wuz a settin' by the fire a
+mendin' one of Josiah's socks.  I wuz a settin' there, as soft and
+pliable in my temper as the woosted I wuz a darnin' 'em with, my
+Josiah at the same time a peacefelly sawin' wood in the
+wood-house, when I heard a rap at the door and I riz up and opened
+it, and there stood two perfect strangers, females.  I, with a
+perfect dignity and grace (and with the sock still in my left
+hand) asked 'em to set down, and consequently they sot.  Then
+ensued a slight pause durin' which my two gray eyes roamed over
+the females before me.
+
+The oldest one wuz very sharp in her face and had a pair of small
+round eyes that seemed when they were sot onto you to sort a bore
+into you like two gimlets.  Her nose was very sharp and defient,
+as if it wuz constantly sayin' to itself, "I am a nose to be
+looked up to, I am a nose to be respected, and feared if
+necessary."  Her chin said the same thing, and her lips which wuz
+very thin, and her elbow, which wuz very sharp.
+
+Her dress was a stiff sort of a shinin' poplin, made tight acrost
+the chest and elboes.  And her hat had some stiff feathers in it
+that stood up straight and sort a sharp lookin'.  She had a long
+sharp breast-pin sort a stabbed in through the front of her stiff
+standin' collar, and her knuckles sot out through her firm lisle
+thread gloves, her umberell wuz long and wound up hard, to that
+extent I have never seen before nor sense.  She wuz, take it all
+in all, a hard sight, and skairful.
+
+The other one wuzn't no more like her in looks than a soft fat
+young cabbage head is like the sharp bean pole that it grows up by
+the side on, in the same garden.  She wuz soft in her complexion,
+her lips, her cheeks, her hands, and as I mistrusted at that first
+minute, and found out afterwards, soft in her head too.  Her dress
+wuz a loose-wove parmetty, full in the waist and sort a drabbly
+round the bottom.  Her hat wuz drab-colored felt with some loose
+ribbon bows a hangin' down on it, and some soft ostridge tips.
+She had silk mits on and her hands wuz fat and kinder
+moist-lookin'.  Her eyes wuz very large and round, and blue, and
+looked sort o' dreamy and wanderin' and there wuz a kind of a
+wrapped smile on her face all the time.  She had a roll of paper
+in her hand and I didn't dislike her looks a mite.
+
+Finally the oldest female opened her lips, some as a steel trap
+would open sudden and kinder sharp, and sez she: "I am Miss Deacon
+Tutt, of Tuttville, and this is my second daughter Ardelia.
+Cordelia is my oldest, and I have 4 younger than Ardelia."
+
+I bowed real polite and said, "I wuz glad to make the acquaintance
+of the hull 7 on 'em."  I can be very genteel when I set out,
+almost stylish.
+
+"I s'pose," says she, "I am talkin' to Josiah Allen's wife?"
+
+I gin her to understand that that wuz my name and my station, and
+she went on, and sez she: "I have hearn on you through my
+husband's 2d cousin, Cephas Tutt."
+
+"Cephas," sez she, "bein' wrote to by me on the subject of
+Ardelia, the same letter containin' seven poems of hern, and on
+bein' asked to point out the quickest way to make her name and
+fame known to the world at large, wrote back that he havin' always
+dealt in butter and lard, wuzn't up to the market price in poetry,
+and that you would be a good one to go to for advice.  And so,"
+sez she a pointin' to a bag she carried on her arm (a hard lookin'
+bag made of crash with little bullets and knobs of embroidery on
+it), "and so we took this bag full of Ardelia's poetry and come on
+the mornin' train, Cephas'es letter havin' reached us at nine
+o'clock last night.  I am a woman of business."
+
+The bag would hold about 4 quarts and it wuz full.  I looked at it
+and sithed.
+
+"I see," sez she, "that you are sorry that we didn't bring more
+poetry with us.  But we thought that this little batch would give
+you a idee of what a mind she has, what a glorious, soarin' genus
+wuz in front of you, and we could bring more the next time we
+come."
+
+I sithed agin, three times, but Miss Tutt didn't notice 'em a mite
+no more'n they'd been giggles or titters.  She wouldn't have took
+no notice of them.  She wuz firm and decided doin' her own errent,
+and not payin' no attention to anything, nor anybody else.
+
+"Ardelia, read the poem you have got under your arm to Miss Allen!
+The bag wuz full of her longer ones," sez she, "but I felt that I
+must let you hear her poem on spring.  It is a gem.  I felt it
+would be wrongin' you, not to give you that treat.  Read it
+Ardelia."
+
+I see Ardelia wuz used to obeyin' her ma.  She opened the sheet to
+once, and begun.
+
+Jest the minute Ardelia stopped readin' Miss Tatt says proudly:
+"There! haint that a remarkable poem,?"
+
+Sez I, calmly, "Yes it is a remarkable one."
+
+"Did you ever hear anything like it?" says she, triumphly.
+
+"No," sez I honestly, "I never did."
+
+"Ardelia, read the poem on Little Ardelia Cordelia; give Miss
+Allen the treat of hearin' that beautiful thing."
+
+I sort a sithed low to myself; it wuz more of a groan than a
+common sithe, but Miss Tutt didn't heed it, she kep' right on --
+
+"I have always brought up my children to make other folks happy,
+all they can, and in rehearsin' this lovely and remarkable poem,
+Ardelia will be not only makin' you perfectly happy, givin' you a
+rich intellectual feast, that you can't often have, way out here
+in the country, fur from Tuttville; but she will also be attendin'
+to the business that brought us here.  I have always fetched my
+children up to combine joy and business; weld 'em together like
+brass and steel.  Ardelia, begin!"
+
+So Ardelia commenced agin'.  It wuz wrote on a big sheet of paper
+and a runnin' vine wuz a runnin' all 'round the edge of the paper,
+made with a pen.
+
+Jest as soon as Ardelia stopped rehearsin' the verses, Miss Tutt
+sez agin to me:
+
+"Haint that a most remarkable poem?"
+
+And agin I sez calmly, and trutbfully, "Yes, it is a very
+remarkable one!"
+
+"And now," sez Miss Tutt, plungin' her hand in the bag, and
+drawin' out a sheet of paper, "to convince you that Ardelia has
+always had this divine gift of poesy -- that it is not, all the
+effect of culture and high education -- let me read to you a poem
+she wrote when she wuz only a mere child," and Miss Tutt read:
+
+                         "LINES ON A CAT
+
+                       "WRITTEN BY ARDELIA TUTT,
+    "At the age of fourteen years, two months and eight days.
+
+                "Oh Cat! Sweet Tabby cat of mine;
+              6 months of age has passed o'er thee,
+                  And I would not resign, resign
+                 The pleasure that I find in you.
+                          Dear old cat!"
+
+"Don't you think," sez Miss Tutt, "that this poem shows a fund of
+passion, a reserve power of passion and constancy, remarkable in
+one so young?"
+
+"Yes," sez I reasonably, "no doubt she liked the cat.  And," sez
+I, wantin' to say somethin' pleasant and agreeable to her, "no
+doubt it was a likely cat."
+
+"Oh the cat itself is of miner importance," sez Miss Tutt.  "We
+will fling the cat to the winds.  It's of my daughter I would
+speak.  I simply handled the cat to show the rare precocious
+intellect.  Oh! how it gushed out in the last line in the
+unconquerable burst of repressed passion -- `Dear old cat!'
+Shakespeare might have wrote that line, do you not think so?"
+
+"No doubt he might," sez I, calmly, "but he didn't."
+
+I see she looked mad and I hastened to say: "He wuzn't aquainted
+with the cat."
+
+She looked kinder mollyfied and continued:
+
+"Ardelia dashes off things with a speed that would astonish a mere
+common writer.  Why she dashed off thirty-nine verses once while
+she wuz waitin' for the dish water to bile, and sent 'em right off
+to the printer, without glancin' at 'em agin.'
+
+"I dare say so," sez I, "I should judge so by the sound on 'em."
+
+"Out of envy and jealousy, the rankest envy, and the shearest
+jealousy, them verses wuz sent back with the infamous request that
+she should use 'em for curl papers.  But she sot right down and
+wrote forty-eight verses on a `Cruel Request,' wrote 'em inside of
+eighteen minutes.  She throws off things, Ardelia does, in half an
+hour, that it would take other poets, weeks and weeks to write."
+
+"I persume so," sez I, "I dare persume to say, they never could
+write 'em."
+
+"And now," sez Miss Tutt, "the question is, will you put Ardelia
+on the back of that horse that poets ride to glory on?  Will you
+lift her onto the back of that horse, and do it at once?  I
+require nothin' hard of you," sez she, a borin' me through and
+through with her eyes.  "It must be a joy to you, Josiah Allen's
+wife, a rare joy, to be the means of bringin' this rare genius
+before the public.  I ask nothin' hard of you, I only ask that you
+demand, demand is the right word, not ask; that would be grovelin'
+trucklin' folly, but demand that the public that has long ignored
+my daugther Ardelia's claim to a seat amongst the immortal poets,
+demand them, compel them to pause, to listen, and then seat her
+there, up, up on the highest, most perpendiciler pinnacle of
+fame's pillow.  Will you do this?"
+
+I sat in deep dejection and my rockin' chair, and knew not what to
+say -- and Miss Tutt went on:
+
+"We demand more than fame, deathless, immortal fame for 'em.  We
+want money, wealth for 'em, and want it at once!  We want it for
+extra household expenses, luxuries, clothing, jewelry, charity,
+etc.  If we enrich the world with this rare genius, the world must
+enrich us with its richest emmolients.  Will you see that we have
+it!  Will you at once do as I asked you to?  Will you seat her
+immegately where I want her sot?
+
+Sez I, considerin', "I can't get her up there alone, I haint
+strong enough."  Sez I, sort a mekanikly, "I have got the
+rheumatez."
+
+"So you scoff me do you?  I came to you to get bread, am I to get
+worse than a stun -- a scoff?"
+
+"I haint gin you no scoff," sez I, a spunkin' up a little, "I
+haint thought on it.  I like Ardelia and wish her well, but I
+can't do merikles, I can't compel the public to like things if
+they don't."
+
+Sez Miss Tutt, "You are jealous of her, you hate her."
+
+"No, I don't," sez I, "I haint jealous of her, and I like her
+looks first-rate.  I love a pretty young girl," sez I candidly,
+"jest as I love a fresh posy with the dew still on it, a dainty
+rose-bud with the sweet fragrance layin' on its half-folded heart.
+I love 'em," sez I, a beginnin' to eppisode a little unbeknown to
+me, "I love 'em jest as I love the soft unbroken silence of the
+early spring mornin', the sun all palely tinted with rose and
+blue, and the earth alayin' calm and unwoke-up, fresh and fair.  I
+love such a mornin' and such a life, for itself and for the
+unwritten prophecis in it.  And when I see genius in such a sweet,
+young life, why it makes me feel as it duz to see through all the
+tender prophetic beauty of the mornin' skies, a big white dove a
+soarin' up through the blue heavens."
+
+Sez Miss Tutt, "You see that in Ardelia, but you wont own it, you
+know you do."
+
+"No!" sez I, "I would love to tell you that I see it in Ardelia; I
+would honest, but I can't look into them mornin' skies and say I
+see a white dove there, when I don't see nothin' more than a plump
+pullet, a jumpin' down from the fence or a pickin' round calmly in
+the back door-yard.  Jest as likely the hen is, as the white dove,
+jest as honerable, but you mustn't confound the two together."
+
+"A hen," sez Miss Tutt bitterly.  "To confound my Ardelia with a
+hen!  And I don't think there wuz ever a more ironieler `hen' than
+that wuz, or a scornfuller one."
+
+"Why," sez I reasonably.  "Hens are necessary and useful in any
+position, both walkin' and settin', and layin'.  You can't get'em
+in any position hardly, but what they are useful and respectable,
+only jest flyin'.  Hens can't fly.  Their wings haint shaped for
+it.  They look some like a dove's wings on the outside, the same
+feathers, the same way of stretchin' 'em out.  But there is
+sunthin lackin' in 'em, some heaven-given capacity for soarin' an
+for flight that the hens don't have.  And it makes trouble, sights
+and sights of trouble when hens try to fly, try to, and can't!
+
+"At the same time it is hard for a dove to settle down in a back
+yard and stay there, hard and tegus.  She can and duz sometimes,
+but never till after her wings have been clipped in some way.
+Poor little dove!  I am always sorry for 'em to see 'em a walkin'
+round there, a wantin' to fly -- a not forgettin' how it seemed to
+have their wings soarin' up through the clear sky, and the rush of
+the pure liquid windwaves a sweepin' aginst 'em, as they riz up,
+up, in freedom, and happiness, and glory.  Poor little creeters.
+
+"Yes, but doves can, if you clip their wings, settle down and
+walk, but hens CAN'T fly, not for any length of time they can't.
+No amount of stimulatin' poultices applied to the ends of their
+tail feathers and wings can ever make 'em fly.  They can't; it
+haint their nater.  They can make nests, and fill them with pretty
+downy chicks, they can be happy and beautiful in life and mean;
+they can spend their lives in jest as honerable and worthy a way
+as if they wuz a flyin' round, and make a good honerable
+appearance from day to day, till they begin to flop their wings,
+and fly -- then their mean is not beautiful and inspirin'; no, it
+is fur from it.  It is tuff to see 'em, tuff to see the floppin',
+tuff to see their vain efforts to soar through the air, tuff to
+see 'em fall percepitously down onto the ground agin.  For they
+must come there in the end; they are morally certain to.
+
+"Now Ardelia is a sweet pretty lookin' girl, she can set down in a
+cushioned arm-chair by a happy fireside, with pretty baby faces a
+clusterin' around her and some man's face like the sun a
+reflectin' back the light of her happy heart.  But she can't sit
+up on the pinnacle of fame's pillow.  I don't believe she can ever
+get up there, I don't.  Honestly speakin', I don't."
+
+"Envy!" sez Miss Tutt, "glarin', shameless envy!  You don't want
+Ardelia to rise!  You don't want her to mount that horse I spoke
+of; you don't want to own that you see genius in her.  But you do,
+Josiah Allen's wife, you know you do -- "
+
+"No," sez I, "I don't see it.  I see the sweetness of pretty
+girlhood, the beauty and charm of openin' life, but I don't see
+nothin' else, I don't, honest.  I don't believe she has got
+genius," sez I, "seein' you put the question straight to me and
+depend a answer; seein' her future career depends on her choice
+now, I must tell you that I believe she would succeed better in
+the millionary trade or the mantilly maker's than she will in
+tryin' to mount the horse you speak on.
+
+"Why," sez I, candidly, "some folks can't get up on that horse,
+their legs haint strong enough.  And if they do manage to get on,
+it throws 'em, and they lay under the heels for life.  I don't
+want to see Ardelia there, I don't want to see her maimed and
+lamed and stunted so early in the mornin' of life, by a kick from
+that animal, for she can't ride it," sez I, "honestly she can't.
+
+"There is nothin' so useless in life, and so sort a wearin' as to
+be a lookin' for sunthin' that haint there.  And when you pretend
+it is there when it haint, you are addin' iniquity to uselessness;
+so if you'll take my advice, the advice of a wellwisher, you will
+stop lookin', for I tell you plain that it haint there."
+
+Sez Miss Tutt, "Josiah Allen's wife, you have for reasens best
+known to your conscience baulked my hopes of a speedy immortality.
+You have willfully tried to break down my hopes of an immense,
+immediate income to flow out of them poems for luxuries, jewelry,
+charity, etc.  But I can at least claim this at your hands, I
+demand honesty.  Tell me honestly what you yourself think of them
+poems."
+
+Sez I (gettin' up sort a quick and goin' into the buttery, and
+bringin' out a little basket), "Here are some beautiful sweet
+apples, won't you have one?"
+
+"Apples, at such a time as this;" sez Miss Tutt
+
+"When the slumberin' world trembles before the advancin' tread of
+a new poet -- When the heavens are listenin' intently to ketch the
+whispers of an Ardelia's fate -- Sweet apples! in such a time as
+this!" sez she.  But she took two.
+
+"I demand the truth," sez she.  "And you are a base, trucklin'
+coward, if you give it not."
+
+Sez I, tryin' to carry off the subject and the apples into the
+buttery; "Poetry ort to have pains took with it."
+
+"Jealousy!" sez Miss Tutt.  "Jealousy might well whisper this.
+Envy, rank envy might breathe the suspicion that Ardelia haint
+been took pains with.  But I can see through it," sez she.  "I can
+see through it."
+
+"Well," sez I, wore out, "if they belonged to me, and if she wuz
+my girl, I would throw the verses into the fire, and set her to a
+trade."
+
+She stood for a minute and bored me through and through with them
+eyes.  Why it seemed as if there wuz two holes clear through my
+very spirit, and sole; she partly lifted that fearful lookin'
+umberell as if to pierce me through and through; it wuz a fearful
+seen.
+
+At last she turned, and flung the apple she wuz a holdin' onto the
+floor at my feet -- and sez she, "I scorn 'em, and you too."  And
+she kinder stomped her feet and sez, "I fling off the dust I have
+gethered here, at your feet."
+
+Now my floor wuz clean and looked like yeller glass, almost, it
+wuz so shinin' and spotless, and I resented the idee of her sayin'
+that she collected dust off from it.  But I didn't say nothin'
+back.  She had the bag of poetry on her arm, and I didn't feel
+like addin' any more to her troubles.
+
+But Ardelia, after her mother had swept out ahead, turned round
+and held out her hand, and smiled a sweet but ruther of a
+despondent and sorrowful smile, and I kissed her warmly.  I like
+Ardelia.  And what I said, I said for her good, and she knew it.
+I like Ardelia.
+
+Well, Miss Tutt and Ardelia went from our house to Eben Pixley's.
+They are distant relatives of hern, and live about 3 quarters of a
+mile from us.  The Pixleys think everything of Ardelia but they
+can't bear her mother.  There has been difficulties in the family.
+
+But Ardelia stayed there mor'n two weeks right along.  She haint
+very happy to home I believe.  And before she went back home it
+wuz arranged that she should teach the winter's school and board
+to Miss Pixley's.  But Miss Pixley wuz took sick with the tyfus
+before she had been there two weeks -- and, for all the world, if
+the deestrict didn't want us to board her.  Josiah hadn't much to
+do, so he could carry her back and forth in stormy weather, and it
+wuz her wish to come.  And it wuz Josiah's wish too, for the pay
+wuz good, and the work light -- for him.  And so I consented after
+a parlay.
+
+But I didn't regret it.  She is a good little creeter and no more
+like her mother than a feather bed is like a darnin' needle.  I
+like Ardelia: so does Josiah.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS.
+
+
+We have been havin' a pound party here in Jonesville.  There wuz a
+lot of children left without any father or mother, nobody only an
+old grandma to take care of 'em, and she wuz half bent with the
+rheumatiz, and had a swelled neck, and lumbago and fits.
+
+They lived in an old tumble-down house jest outside of Jonesville.
+The father wuz, I couldn't deny, a shiftless sort of a chap,
+good-natured, always ready to obleege a neighbor, but he hadn'nt
+no faculty.  And I don't know, come to think of it, as anybody is
+any more to blame if they are born without a faculty, than if they
+are born with only one eye.  Faculty is one of the things that you
+can't buy.
+
+He loved to hunt.  That is, he loved to hunt some kinds of things.
+He never loved to hunt stiddy, hard work, and foller on the trail
+of it till he evertook success and captured it.  No, he druther
+hunt after catamounts and painters, in woods where catamounts
+haint mounted, and painters haint painted sence he wuz born.
+
+He generally killed nothin' bigger than red squirrels and chipmunks.
+The biggest game he ever brought down wuz himself.  He shot himself
+one cold day in the fall of the year.  He wuz gettin' over a brush
+fence, they s'posed the gun hit against somethin' and went off, for
+they found him a layin' dead at the bottom of the fence.
+
+I always s'posed that the shock of his death comin' so awful
+sudden unto her, killed his wife.  She had been sick for a long
+spell, she had consumption and dropsy, and so forth, and so forth,
+for a long time, and after he wuz brought in dead, she didn't live
+a week.  She thought her eyes of him, for no earthly reason as I
+could ever see.  How strange, how strange a dispensation of
+Providence it duz seem, that some women love some men, and vicy
+versey and the same.
+
+But she did jest about worship him, and she died whisperin' his
+name, and reachin' out her hands as if she see him jest ahead of
+her.  And I told Josiah I didn't know but she did.  I shouldn't
+wonder a mite if she did see him, for there is only the veil of
+mystery between us and the other world at any time, and she had
+got so nigh to it, that I s'pose it got so thin that she could
+see through it.
+
+Just as you can see through the blue haze that lays before our
+forest in Injun summer.  Come nigh up to it and you can see the
+silvery trunks of the maples and the red sumac leaves, and the
+bright evergreens, and the forms of the happy hunters a passin'
+along under the glint of the sunbeams and the soft shadows.
+
+They died in Injun summer.  I made a wreath myself of the
+bright-colored leaves to lay on their coffins.  Dead leaves, dead
+to all use and purpose here, and yet with the bright mysterious
+glow upon them that put me in mind of some immortal destiny and
+blossoming beyond our poor dim vision.  Jane Smedley wuz a good
+woman, and so wuz Jim, good but shiftless.
+
+But I made the same wreath for her and Jim, and the strange mellow
+light lay on both of 'em, makin' me think in spite of myself of
+some happy sunrisin' that haply may dawn on some future huntin'
+ground, where poor Jim Smedley even, may strike the trail of
+success and happiness, hid now from the sight of Samantha, hid
+from Josiah.
+
+Wall, they died within a week's time of each other, and left nine
+children, the oldest one of 'em not quite fifteen.  She, the
+oldest one, wuz a good girl, only she had the rickets so that when
+she walked, she seemed to walk off all over the house backwards,
+and sideways, and every way, but when she sot down, she wuz a good
+stiddy girl, and faithful; she took after her mother, and her
+mother took after her grandmother, so there wuz three takin' after
+each other, one right after the other.
+
+Jane wuz a good, faithful, hard-workin' creeter when she wuz well,
+brought up her children good as she could, learnt 'em the
+catechism, and took in all kinds of work to earn a little
+somethin' towards gettin' a home for 'em; she and her mother both
+did, her mother lived with 'em, and wuz a smart old woman, too,
+for one that wuz pretty nigh ninety.  And she wuzn't worrysome
+much, only about one thing  --  she wanted a home, wanted a home
+dretfully.  Some wimmen are so; she had moved round so much, from
+one poor old place to another, that she sort o' hankered after
+bein' settled down into a stiddy home.
+
+Wall, there wuz eight children younger than Marvilla, that wuz the
+oldest young girl's name.  Eight of 'em, countin' each pair of
+twins as two, as I s'pose they ort.  The Town buried the father
+and mother, which wuz likely and clever in it, but after that it
+wouldn't give only jest so much a week, which wuz very little,
+because it said, Town did, that they could go to the poor-house,
+they could be supported easier there.
+
+I don't know as the Town could really be blamed for sayin' it, and
+yet it seemed kinder mean in it, the Town wuz so big, and the
+children, most of 'em, wuz so little.
+
+But any way, it wuz jest sot on it, and there wuz the end of it,
+for you might jest as well dispute the wind as to dispute the Town
+when it gets sot.
+
+Wall, the old grandma said she would die in the streets before she
+would go to the poor-house.  She had come from a good family in
+the first place,
+
+They say she run away and left a good home and got married, and
+did dretful poor in the married state.  He waz shiftless and didn't
+have nothin' and didn't lay up any.  And she didn't keep any of
+her old possessions only jest her pride.  She kept that, or enough
+of it to say that she would die on the road before she would go to
+the poor-house.  And once I see her cry she wanted a home so bad.
+
+And lots of folks blamed her for it, blamed the old woman awfully.
+They said pride wuz so wicked.  Wimmen who would run like deers if
+company came when they wuzn't dressed up slick, they would say the
+minute they got back into the room, all out of breath with hurryin'
+into their best clothes, they'd say a pantin' "That old woman ought
+to be made to go to the poorhouse, to take the pride out of her,
+pride wuz so awfully, dretfully wicked, and it wuz a shame that she
+wuz so ongrateful as to want a home of her own."  And then they
+would set down and rest.
+
+Wall, the family wuz in a sufferin' state.  The Town allowed 'em
+one dollar a week.  But how wuz ten human beings to live on a
+dollar a week.  The children worked every chance they got, but
+they couldn't earn enough to keep 'em in shoes, let alone other
+clothin' and vittles.  And the old house wuz too cold for 'em to
+stay in durin' the cold weather, it wuz for Grandma Smedley,
+anyway, if the children could stand it she couldn't.  And what wuz
+to be done.  A cold winter wuz a cumin' on, and it wouldn't delay
+a minute because Jim Smedley had got shot, and his wife had
+follered him, into, let us hope, a happier huntin' ground than he
+had ever found in earthly forests.
+
+Wall, I proposed to have a pound party for 'em.  I said they might
+have it to our house if they wanted it, but if they thought they
+wanted it in a more central place (our house wuz quite a little to
+one side), why we could have it to the schoolhouse.
+
+I proposed to Josiah the first one.  He wuz a settin' by the fire
+relapsed into silence.  It wuz a cold night outside, but the red
+curtains wuz down at our sitting-room winders, shettin' out the
+cold drizzlin' storm of hail and snow that wuz a deseendin' onto
+the earth.  The fire burned up warm and bright, and we sot there
+in our comfortable home, with the teakettle singin' on the stove,
+and the tea-table set out cosy and cheerful, for Josiah had been
+away and I had waited supper for him.
+
+As I sot there waitin' for the tea-kettle to bile (and when I say
+bile, I mean bile, I don't, mean simmer) the thought of the
+Smedleys would come in.  The warm red curtains would keep the
+storm out, but they couldn't keep the thought of the children, and
+the feeble old grandmother out of the room.  They come right in,
+through the curtains, and the firelight, and everything, and sot
+right down by me and hanted me.
+
+And what curious creeters thoughts be, haint they? and oncertain,
+too.  You may make all your plans to get away from 'em.  You may
+shet up your doors and winders, and set with a veil on and an
+umbrell up - but good land! how easy they jest ontackle the doors
+and windows, with no sounds of ontacklin' and come right in by
+you.
+
+First you know there they be right by the side of you, under your
+umbrell, under your veil, under your spectacles, a lookin' right
+down into your soul, and a hantin' you.
+
+And then agin, when you expect to be hanted by 'em, lay out to,
+why, they'll jest stand off somewhere else, and don't come nigh
+you.  Don't want to.  Oncertain creeters, thoughts be, and
+curious, curious where they come from, and how.
+
+Why, I got to thinkin' about it the other day, and I got lost,
+some like children settin' on a log over a creek a ridin'; there
+they be, and there the log is, but they don't seem to be there,
+they seem to be a floatin' down the water.
+
+And there I wuz, a settin' in my rockin' chair, and I seemed to be
+a floatin' down deep water, very deep.  A thinkin' and a wonderin'.
+A thinkin' how all through the ages what secrets God had told to
+man when the time had come, and the reverent soul below was ready
+to hear the low words whispered to his soul, and a wonderin' what
+strange revelation God held now, ready to reveal when the soul
+below had fitted itself to hear, and comprehend it.
+
+Ah! such mysteries as He will reveal to us if we will listen.  If
+we wait for God's voice.  If we did not heed so much the confusing
+clamor of the world's voices about us.  Emulation, envy, anger,
+strife, jealousy; if we turned our heads away from these discords,
+and in the silence which is God's temple, listened, listened, --
+who knows the secrets He would make known to us?
+
+Secrets of the day, secrets of the night, the sunshine, the
+lightning, the storm.  The white glow of that wonderful light that
+is not like the glow of the sun or of the moon, but yet lighteth
+the world.  That strange light that has a soul - that reads our
+thoughts, translates our wishes, overleaps distance, carrying our
+whispered words after holding our thoughts for ages, and then
+unfoldin' 'em at will.  What other wondrous mysteries lie
+concealed, wrapped around by that soft pure flame, mysteries that
+shall lie hidden until some inspired eye shall be waiting, looking
+upward at the moment when God's hand shall draw back the shining
+veil for an instant, and let him read the glowing secret.
+
+Secrets of language! shall some simple power, some symbol be
+revealed, and the nations speak together?
+
+Secrets of song! shall some serene, harmonious soul catch the note
+to celestial melodies?
+
+Secrets of sight! shall the eyes too dim now, see the faces of the
+silent throngs that surround them, "the great cloud of witnesses"?
+
+Secrets of the green pathways that lead up through the blue silent
+fields of space - shall we float from star to star?
+
+Secrets of holiness! shall earthly faces wear the pure light of
+the immortals?
+
+But oh! who shall be the happy soul that shall be listening when
+the time has fully come and He shall reveal His great secret?  The
+happy soul listening so intently that it shall catch the low,
+clear whisper.
+
+Listening, maybe, through the sweet twilight shadows for the
+wonderful secret, while the silver shallop of the moon is becalmed
+over the high northern mountains, as if a fleet of heavenly guests
+had floated down through the clear ocean waves of the sky to
+listen too - to hear the wonderful heavenly secret revealed to man
+- and a clear star looks out over the glowing rose of the western
+heavens, looking down like God's eye, searching his soul,
+searching if it be worthy of the great trust.
+
+Maybe it will be in the fresh dawning of the day, that the great
+secret will grow bright and clear and luminous, as the dawning of
+the light.
+
+Maybe it will be in the midst of the storm - a mighty voice borne
+along by the breath of the wind and the thunder, clamoring and
+demanding the hearer to listen.
+
+Oh! if we were only good enough, only pure enough, what might not
+our rapt vision discern?
+
+But we know not where or when the time shall be fully come, but
+who, who, shall be the happy soul that shall, at the time, be
+listening?
+
+Oh! how deep, how strange the waters wuz, and how I floated away
+on 'em, and how I didn't.  For there I wuz a settin in my own
+rockin' chair and there opposite me sot my own Josiah a whittlin',
+for the "World" hadn't come, and he wuz restless and ill at ease,
+and time hung heavy on his hands.
+
+There I sot the same Samantha - and the thought of the Smedleys,
+the same old Smedleys, was a hantin' of me, the same old hant, and
+I says to my Josiah, says I: "Josiah, I can't help thinkin' about
+the Smedleys," says I.  "What do you think about havin' a pound
+party for 'em, and will you take holt, and do your part?"
+
+"Good land, Samantha!  Are you crazy?  Crazy as a loon?  What
+under the sun do you want to pound the Smedleys for?  I should
+think they had trouble enough without poundin' 'em.  Why," says
+he, "the old woman couldn't stand any poundin' at all, without
+killin' her right out and out, and the childern haint over tough
+any of 'em.  Why, what has got into you?  I never knew you to
+propose anything of that wicked kind before.  I sha'n't have
+anything to do with it.  If you want 'em pounded you must get
+your own club and do your own poundin'."
+
+Says I, "I don't mean poundin' 'em with a club, but let folks buy
+a pound of different things to eat and drink and carry it to 'em,
+and we can try and raise a little money to get a warmer horse for
+'em to stay in the coldest of the weather."
+
+"Oh!" says he, with a relieved look.  "That's a different thing.
+I am willin' to do that.  I don't know about givin' 'em any money
+towards gettin' 'em a home, but I'll carry 'em a pound of crackers
+or a pound of flour, and help it along all I can."
+
+Josiah is a clever creeter (though close), and he never made no
+more objections towards havin' it.
+
+Wall, the next day I put on my shawl and hood (a new brown hood
+knit out of zephyr worsted, very nice, a present from our daughter
+Maggie, our son Thomas Jefferson's wife), and sallied out to see
+what the neighbor's thought about it.
+
+The first woman I called on wuz Miss Beazley, a new neighbor who
+had just moved into the neighborhood.  They are rich as they can
+be, and I expected at least to get a pound of tea out of her.
+
+She said it wuz a worthy object, and she would love to help it
+along, but they had so many expenses of their own to grapple with,
+that she didn't see her way clear to promise to do anything.  She
+said the girls had got to have some new velvet suits, and some
+sealskin sacques this winter, and they had got to new furnish the
+parlors, and send their oldest boy to college, and the girls
+wanted to have some diamond lockets, and ought to have 'em but she
+didn't know whether they could manage to get them or not, if they
+did, they had got to scrimp along every way they could.  And then
+they wuz goin' to have company from a distance, and had got to get
+another girl to wait on 'em.  And though she wished the poor well,
+she felt that she could not  dare to promise a cent to 'em.  She
+wished the Smedley family well -- dretful well -- and hoped I
+would get lots of things for 'em.  But she didn't really feel as
+if it would be safe for her to promise'em a pound of anything,
+though mebby she might, by a great effort, raise a pound of flour
+for 'em, or meal.
+
+Says I dryly (dry as meal ever wuz in its dryest times), "I
+wouldn't give too much.  Though," says I, "A pound of flour would
+go a good ways if it is used right."  And I thought to myself that
+she had better keep it to make a paste to smooth over things.
+
+Wall, I went from that to Miss Jacob Hess'es, and Miss Jacob Hess
+wouldn't give anything because the old lady wuz disagreeable, old
+Grandma Smedley, and I said to Miss Jacob Hess that if the Lord
+didn't send His rain and dew onto anybody only the perfectly
+agreeable, I guessed there would be pretty dry times.  It wuz my
+opinion there would be considerable of a drouth.
+
+There wuz a woman there a visitin' Miss Hess -- she wuz a stranger
+to me and I didn't ask her for anything, but she spoke up of her
+own accord and said she would give, and give liberal, only she wuz
+hampered.  She didn't say why, or who, or when, but she only sez
+this that "she wuz hampered," and I don't know to this day what
+her hamper wuz, or who hampered her.
+
+And then I went to Ebin Garven'ses, and Miss Ebin Garven wouldn't
+help any because she said "Joe Smedley had been right down lazy,
+and she couldn't call him anything else."
+
+"But," says I, "Joe is dead, and why should his children starve
+because their pa wasn't over and above smart when he wuz alive?"
+But she wouldn't give.
+
+Wall, Miss Whymper said she didn't approve of the manner of
+giving.  Her face wuz all drawed down into a curious sort of a
+long expression that she called religus and I called somethin'
+that begins with "h-y-p-o" -- and I don't mean hypoey, either.
+
+No, she couldn't give, she said, because she always made a
+practise of not lettin' her right hand know what her left hand
+give.
+
+And I said, for I wuz kinder took aback, and didn't think, I said
+to her, a glancin' at her hands which wuz crossed in front of her,
+that I didn't see how she managed it, unless she give when her
+right hand was asleep.
+
+And she said she always gave secret.
+
+And I said, "So I have always s'posed -- very secret."
+
+I s'pose my tone was some sarcastic, for she says, "Don't the
+Scripter command us to do so?"
+
+Says I firmly, "I don't believe the Scripter means to have us
+stand round talkin' Bible, and let the Smedleys starve," says I.
+"I s'pose it means not to boast of our good deeds."
+
+Says she, "I believe in takin' the Scripter literal, and if I
+can't git my stuff there entirely unbeknown to my right hand I
+sha'n't give."
+
+"Wall," says I, gettin' up and movin' towards the door, "you must
+do as you're a mind to with fear and tremblin'."
+
+I said it pretty impressive, for I thought I would let her see I
+could quote Scripter as well as she could, if I sot out.
+
+But good land! I knew it wuz a excuse.  I knew she wouldn't give
+nothin' not if her right hand had the num palsy, and you could
+stick a pin into it -- no, she wouldn't give, not if her right
+hand was cut off and throwed away.
+
+Wall, Miss Bombus, old Dr. Bombus'es widow, wouldn't give -- and
+for all the world -- I went right there from Miss Whymper'ses.
+Miss Bombus wouldn't give because I didn't put the names in the
+Jonesville Augur or Gimlet, for she said, "Let your good deeds so
+shine."
+
+"Why," says I, "Miss Whymper wouldn't give because she wanted to
+give secreter, and you won't give because you want to give
+publicker, and you both quote Scripter, but it don't seem to help
+the Smedleys much."
+
+She said that probably Miss Whymper was wrestin' the Scripter to
+her own destruction."
+
+"Wall," says I, "while you and Miss Whymper are a wrestin' the
+Scripter, what will become of the Smedleys?  It don't seem right
+to let them 'freeze to death, and starve to death, while we are a
+debatin' on the ways of Providence."
+
+But she didn't tell, and she wouldn't give.
+
+A woman wuz there a visitin', Miss Bombus'es aunt, I think, and
+she spoke up and said that she fully approved of her niece
+Bombus'es decision.  And she said, "As for herself, she never
+give to any subject that she hadn't thoroughly canvassed."
+
+Says I, "There they all are in that little hut, you can canvass
+them at any time.  Though," says I, thoughtfully, "Marvilla might
+give you some trouble."  And she asked why.
+
+And I told her she had the rickets so she couldn't stand still to
+be canvassed, but she could probably follow her up and canvass
+her, if she tried hard enough.  And says I, "There is old Grandma
+Smedley, over eighty, and five children under eight, you can
+canvass them easy."
+
+Says she, "The Bible says, `Search the Sperits.'"
+
+And I was so wore out a seein' how place after place, for three
+times a runnin the Bible was lifted up and held as a shield before
+stingy creeters, to ward off the criticism of the world and their
+own souls, that I says to myself -- loud enough so they could hear
+me, mebbe, "Why is it that when anybody wants to do a mean,
+ungenerous act, they will try to quote a verse of Scripter to
+uphold 'em, jest as a wolf will pull a lock of pure white wool
+over his wolfish foretop, and try to look innocent and sheepish."
+
+I don't care if they did hear me, I wuz on the step mostly when I
+thought it, pretty loud.
+
+Wall, from Miss Bombus'es I went to Miss Petingill's.
+
+Miss Petingill is a awful high-headed creeter.  She come to the
+door herself and she said, I must excuse her for answerin' the
+door herself.  (I never heard the door say anything and don't
+believe she did, it was jest one of her ways.)  But she said I
+must excuse her as her girl wuz busy at the time.
+
+She never mistrusted that I knew her hired girl had left, and she
+wuz doin' her work herself.  She had ketched off her apron I knew,
+as she come through the hall, for I see it a layin' behind the
+door, all covered with flour.  And after she had took me into the
+parlor, and we had set down, she discovered some spots of flour on
+her dress, and she said she "had been pastin' some flowers into a
+scrap book to pass away the time."  But I knew she had been bakin'
+for she looked tired, tired to death almost, and it wuz her bakin'
+day.  But she would sooner have had her head took right off than
+to own up that she had been doin' housework -- why, they say that
+once when she wuz doin' her work herself, and was ketched lookin'
+awful, by a strange minister, that she passed herself off' for a
+hired girl and said, "Miss Petingill wasn't to home, and when
+pressed hard she said she hadn't "the least idee where Miss
+Petingill wuz."
+
+Jest think on 't once -- and there she wuz herself.  The idee!
+
+Wall, the minute I sot down before I begun my business or
+anything, Miss Petingill took me to do about puttin' in Miss
+Bibbins President of our Missionary Society for the Relief of
+Indignent Heathens.
+
+The Bibbins'es are good, very good, but poor.
+
+Says Miss Petingill: "It seems to me as if there might be some
+other woman put in, that would have had more influence on the
+Church."
+
+Says I, "Haint Miss Bibbins a good Christian sister, and a great
+worker?"
+
+"Why yes, she wuz good, good in her place.  But," she said, "the
+Petingills hadn't never associated with the Bibbins'es."
+
+And I asked her if she s'posed that would make any difference with
+the heathen;  if the heathen would be apt to think less of Miss
+Bibbins because she hadn't associated with the Petingills?
+
+And she said, she didn't s'pose "the heathens would ever know it;
+it might make some difference to 'em if they did," she thought,
+"for it couldn't be denied," she said, "that Miss Bibbins did not
+move in the first circles of Jonesville."
+
+It had been my doin's a puttin' Miss Bibbins in and I took it
+right to home, she meant to have me, and I asked her if she
+thought the Lord would condemn Miss Bibbins on the last day,
+because she hadn't moved in the first circles of Jonesville?
+
+And Miss Petingill tosted her head a little, but had to own up,
+that she thought "He wouldn't."
+
+"Wall, then," sez I, "do you s'pose the Lord has any objections
+to her working for Him now?"
+
+"Why no, I don't know as the Lord would object."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "we call this work the Lord's work, and if He is
+satisfied with Miss Bibbins, we ort to be."
+
+But she kinder nestled round, and I see she wuzn't satisfied, but
+I couldn't stop to argue, and I tackled her then and there about
+the Smedleys.  I asked her to give a pound, or pounds, as she felt
+disposed.
+
+But she answered me firmly that she could't give one cent to the
+Smedleys, she wuz principled against it.
+
+And I asked her, "Why?"
+
+And she said, because the old lady wuz proud and wanted a home,
+and she thought that pride wuz so wicked, that it ort to be put
+down.
+
+Wall, Miss Huff, Miss Cephas Huff, wouldn't give anything because
+one of the little Smedleys had lied to her.  She wouldn't
+encourage lyin'.
+
+And I told her I didn't believe she would be half so apt to reform
+him on an empty stomach, as after he wuz fed up.  But she wouldn't
+yield.
+
+Wall, Miss Daggett said she would give, and give abundant, only
+she didn't consider it a worthy object.
+
+But it wuzn't nothin' only a excuse, for the object has never been
+found yet that she thought wuz a worthy one.  Why, she wouldn't
+give a cent towards painting the Methodist steeple, and if that
+haint a high and worthy object, I don't know what is.  Why, our
+steeple is over seventy feet from the ground.  But she wouldn't
+help us a mite -- not a single cent.
+
+Take such folks as them and the object never suits 'em.  They
+won't come right out and tell the truth that they are too stingy
+and mean to give away a cent, but they will always put the excuse
+onto the object -- the object don't suit 'em.
+
+Why, I do believe it is the livin' truth that if the angel Gabriel
+wuz the object, if he wuz in need and we wuz gittin' up a pound
+party for him -- she would find fault with Gabriel, and wouldn't
+give him a ounce of provisions.
+
+Yes, I believe it -- I believe they would tost their heads and
+say, they always had had their thoughts about anybody that tooted
+so loud -- it might be all right but it didn't look well, and
+would be apt to make talk.  Or they would say that he wuz
+shiftless and extravagant a loafin' round in the clouds, when he
+might go to work -- or that he might raise the money himself by
+selling the feathers offen his wings for down pillers -- or some
+of the rest of the Gabriel family might help him -- or something,
+or other -- anyway they would propose some way of gittin' out of
+givin' a cent to Gabriel.  I believe it as much as I believe I
+live and breathe; and so does Josiah.
+
+Wall, Miss Mooney wouldn't give anything because she thought Jane
+Smedley wuzn't so sick as she thought she wuz; she said "she was
+spleeny."
+
+And I told Miss Mooney that when a woman was sick enough to die, I
+thought she ort to be called sick.
+
+But Miss Mooney wouldn't give up, and insisted to the very last
+that Miss Smedley wuz hypoey and spleeny -- and thought she wuz
+sicker than she really wuz.  And she held her head and her nose up
+in a very disagreeable and haughty way, and said as I left, that
+she never could bear to help spleeny people.
+
+Wall, all that forenoon did I traipse through the street and not
+one cent did I get for the Smedleys, only Miss Gowdey said she
+would bring a cabbage and Miss Deacon Peedick and Miss Ingledue
+partly promised a squash apiece.  And I mistrusted that they give
+'em more to please me than anything else.
+
+Wall, I wuz clean discouraged and beat out, and so I told Josiah.
+But he encouraged me some by sayin':
+
+"Wall, I could have told you jest how it would be," and, "You
+would have done better, Samantha, to have been to home a cookin'
+for your own famishin' family."  And several more jest such
+inspirin' remarks as men will give to the females of their
+families when they are engaged in charitable enterprises.
+
+But I got a good, a very good dinner, and it made me feel some
+better, and then I haint one to give up to discouragements,
+anyway.
+
+So I put on a little better dress for after noon, and my best
+bonnet and shawl, and set sail again after dinner.
+
+And if I ever had a lesson in not givin' up to discouragements in
+the first place I had it then.  For whether it wuz on account of
+the more dressy look of my bonnet and shawl -- or whether it wuz
+that folks felt cleverer in the afternoon -- or whether it wuz
+that I had gone to the more discouragin' places in the forenoon,
+and the better ones in the afternoon -- or whether it wuz that I
+tackled on the subject in a better way than I had tackled 'em --
+whether it wuz for any of these reasons, or all of 'em or somethin'
+ -- anyway my luck turned at noon, 12 M., and all that afternoon
+I had one triumph after another -- place after place did I collect
+pound or pounds as the case may be (or collected the promises of
+'em, I mean).  I did splendid, and wuz prospered perfectly amazing
+ -- and I went home feelin' as happy and proud as a king or a zar.
+
+And the next Tuesday evenin' we had the pound party.  They
+concluded to have it to our house.  And Thomas Jefferson and
+Maggie, and Tirzah Ann and Whitefield came home early in the
+afternoon to help trim the parlor and setin' room with evergreens
+and everlastin' posies, and fern leaves.
+
+They made the room look perfectly beautiful.  And they each of
+'em, the two childern and their companions, brought home a motto
+framed in nice plush and gilt frames, which they put up on each
+side of the settin' room, and left them there as a present to
+their pa and me.  They think a sight of us, the childern do --
+and visey versey, and the same.
+
+One of 'em wuz worked in gold letters on a red back-ground "Bear
+Ye One Another's Burdens."  And the other wuz "Feed my Lambs."
+
+They think a sight on us, the childern do -- they knew them
+mottoes would highly tickle their pa and me.  And they did seem to
+kinder invigorate up all the folks that come to the party.
+
+And they wuz seemingly legions.  Why, they come, and they kept a
+comin'.  And it did seem as if every one of 'em had tried to see
+who could bring the most.  Why, they brought enough to keep the
+Smedleys comfortable all winter long.  It wuz a sight to see 'em.
+
+It wuz a curious sight, too, to set and watch what some of the
+folks said and done as they brought their pounds in.
+
+I had to be to the table all the time a'most, for I wuz appointed
+a committee, or a board -- I s'pose it would be more proper to
+call myself a board, more business like.  Wall, I wuz the board
+appointed to lay the things on -- to see that they wuz all took
+care of, and put where they couldn't get eat up, or any other
+casuality happen to 'em.
+
+And I declare if some of the queerest lookin' creeters didn't come
+up to the table and talk to me.  There wuz lots of 'em there that
+I didn't know, folks that come from Zoar, Jim Smedley's old
+neighborhood.
+
+There wuz a long table stretched acrost one end of the settin'
+room, and I stood behind it some as if I wuz a dry goods merchant
+or grocery, and some like a preacher.
+
+And the women would come up to me and talk.  There wuz one woman
+who got real talkative to me before the evenin' wuz out.  She said
+her home wuz over two miles beyond Zoar.
+
+She had a young babe with her, a dark complexioned babe, with a
+little round black head, that looked some like a cannon ball.  She
+said she had shingled the child that day about eight o'clock in
+the forenoon; she talked real confidential to me.
+
+She said the babe had sights of hair, and she told her husband
+that day that if he would shingle the babe she would come to the
+party and if he wouldn't shingle it she wouldn't come.  It seemed
+they had had a altercation on the subject; she wanted it shingled
+and he didn't.  But it seemed that ruther than stay away from the
+party -- he consented, and shingled it.  So they come.
+
+They brought a eight pound loaf of maple sugar and two dozen eggs.
+They did well.  Then there wuz another woman who would walk her
+little girl into the bedroom every few minutes, and wet her hair,
+and comb it over, and curl it on her fingers.  The child had a
+little blue flannel dress on, with a long plain waist, and a long
+skirt gethered on full all round.  Her hair lay jest as smooth and
+slick as glass all the time, but five times did she walk her off,
+and go through with that performance.  She brought ten yards of
+factory cloth, and a good woollen petticoat for the old grandma.
+She did first-rate.
+
+And then there wuz another woman who stayed by the table most all
+the evenin'.  She would gently but firmly ask everybody who
+brought anything, what the price of the article wuz -- and then
+she would tackle the different women who come up to the table for
+patterns.  I do believe she got the pattern of every bask waist
+there wuz there, and every mantilly.
+
+And Abram Gee brought twenty-five loaves of bread -- of different
+sizes, but all on 'em good.  And he looked at Ardelia Tutt every
+minute of the time.  And Ardelia brought a lot of verses, --
+"Stanzas on a Grandmother."  I didn't think they would do Grandma
+Smedley much good, and then on the other hand I didn't s'pose they
+would hurt her any.
+
+But we had a splendid good time after the things wuz all brought
+in -- of course, bein' a board the fore part of the evenin' I
+naturally had a harder time than I did the latter part, after I
+had got over it.
+
+The children, Thomas J., and Tirzah Ann, and Ardelia Tutt, and
+Abram Gee, and some of the rest of the young folks sung and played
+some beautiful pieces, and they had four tablows, which wuz
+perfectly beautiful.
+
+And then we passed good nice light biscuit and butter, and hot
+coffee, and pop corn and apples.  And it did seem, and all the
+neighbors said so, that it wuz the very best party they had ever
+attended to.
+
+And before they went away they made a motion some of the
+responsable men did -- some made the motions and some seconded 'em
+-- that they would adjourn till jest one year from that night,
+when if the Smedleys was still alive and in need -- we would have
+jest such a party ag'in.
+
+And at the last on't Elder Minkley made a prayer -- a very
+thankful and good prayer, but short.  And then they went home.
+
+Wall, the next mornin' we started to carry the things to the
+Smedleys.  It wuz very early, for Josiah had got to go clear to
+Loontown on business, and I wuz goin' to stay with the childern
+till he got back.
+
+It wuz a very cold mornin'.  We hadn't heard from the Smedleys for
+two or three days, because we wanted to surprise 'em, so we didn't
+want to give 'em a hint beforehand of what we wuz a doin'.  So, as
+I say, it wuz a number of days sense we had heard from 'em, and
+the weather wuz cold.
+
+When we got to the door it seemed to be dretful still there
+inside.  And there wuz some white frost on the latch jest as if a
+icy, white hand had onlatched the door, and had laid on it last.
+
+We rapped, but nobody answered.  And then we opened the door and
+went in, and there they all lay asleep.  The children waked up.
+But old Grandma didn't.
+
+There wuzn't any fire in the room, and you could see by the
+freezing coldness of the air that there hadn't been any for a day
+or two.
+
+Grandma Smedley had took the poor old coverin's all off from
+herself, and put 'em round the youngest baby, little Jim.  And he
+lay there all huddled up tight to his Grandma, with his red cheek
+close to her white one, for he loved her.
+
+Josiah cried and wept, and wept and cried onto his bandana -- but
+I didn't.
+
+The tears run down my face some, to see the childern feel so bad
+when Grandma couldn't speak to 'em.
+
+But I knew that the childern would be took care of now, I knew the
+Jonesvillians would be all rousted up and sorry enough for 'em,
+and would be willin' to do anything now, when it wuz some too
+late.
+
+And I felt that I couldn't cry nor weep (and told Josiah so), the
+tears jest dripped down my face in a stream, but I wouldn't weep
+-- for as I said to myself:
+
+While the Jonesvillians had been a disputin' back and forth, and
+wrestin' Scripter, and the meanin' of Providence in regard to
+helpin' Grandma Smedley and gittin' her a comfortable place to
+stay in, and somethin' to eat, the Lord himself had took the case
+in hand and had gin her a home and the bread that satisfies."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+ARDELIA AND ABRAM GEE.
+
+
+Wall, I don't s'pose there had been a teacher in our deestrict
+for years and years that gin' better satisfaction than Ardelia
+Tutt.  Good soft little creeter, the scholars any one of 'em felt
+above hurtin' on her or plagin' her any way.  She sort a made 'em
+feel they had to take care on her, she wuz so sort a helpless
+actin', and good natured, and yet her learnin' wuz good,
+fust-rate.
+
+Yes, Ardelia was thought a sight on in Jonesville by scholars and
+parents and some that wuzn't parents.  One young chap in
+perticiler, Abram Gee by name, who had just started a baker's
+shop in Jonesville, he fell so deep in love with her from the
+very start that I pitied him from about the bottom of my heart.
+It wuz at our house that he fell.
+
+The young folks of our meetin'-house had a sort of a evenin'
+meetin' there to see about raisin' some money for the help of the
+steeple -- repairin' of it.  Abram is a member, and so is
+Ardelia, and I see the hull thing.  I see him totter and I see
+him fall.  And prostrate he wuz, from that first night.  Never
+was there a feller that fell in love deeper, or lay more
+helpless.  And Ardelia liked him, that wuz plain to see; at fust
+as I watched and see him totter, I thought she wuz a sort o'
+wobblin' too, and when he fell deep, deep in love, I looked to
+see her a follerin' on.  But Ardelia, as soft as she wuz, had an
+element of strength.  She wuz ambitious.  She liked Abram, but
+she had read novels a good deal, and she had for years been
+lookin' for a prince to come a ridin' up to their dooryard in
+disguise with a crown on under his hat, and woo her to be his
+bride.
+
+And so she braced herself against the sweet influence of love and
+it wuz tuff -- I could see for myself that it wuz, when she had
+laid out to set on a throne by the side of a prince, he a holdin'
+his father's scepter in his hand -- to descend from that elevation
+and wed a husband who wuz a moulder of bread, with a rollin' pin
+in his hand.  It wuz tuff for Ardelia; I could see right through
+her mind (it wuzn't a great distance to see), and I could see jest
+how a conflict wuz a goin' on between love and ambition.
+
+But Abram had my best wishes, for he wuz a boy I had always
+liked.  The Gees had lived neighbor to us for years.  He wuz a
+good creeter and his bread wuz delicious (milk emptin's).  He wuz
+a sort of a hard, sound lookin' chap, and she, bein' so oncommon
+soft, the contrast kinder sot each other off and made 'em look
+well together.
+
+He had a house and lot all paid for, with no incumbrances only a
+mortgage of 150 dollars and a lame mother.  But he laid out to
+clear off the mortgage this year, and I wuz told that mother Gee
+wuz a goin' to live with her daughter Susan, who had jest come
+into a big property -- as much as 700 dollars worth of land,
+besides cows, 2 heads of cow, and one head of a calf.
+
+I knew Mother Gee and she wuz goin' to stay with Abram till he
+got married and then she wuz goin' to live with Susan.  And I
+s'pose it is so.  She is a likely old woman with a milk leg.
+
+Wall, Abram paid Ardelia lots of attention, sech as walkin' home
+with her from protracted meetin's nights, and lookin' at her
+durin' the meetin's more protracted than the meetin's wuz fur.
+And 3 times he sent her a plate of riz biscuit sweetened,
+sweetened too sweet almost, he went too fur in this and I see it.
+
+Yes, he done his part as well as his condition would let him,
+paralyzed by his feelin's -- but she acted kinder offish, and I
+see that sonthin' wuz in the way.  I mistrusted at first, it
+might be Abram's incumbrance, but durin' a conversation I had
+with her, I see I wuz in the wrong on't.  And I could see plain,
+though some couldn't, that she liked Abram as she did her eyes.
+Somebody run him down a little one day before me and she sprouted
+right up and took his part voyalent.  I could see her feelin's
+towards him though she wouldn't own up to 'em.  But one day she
+came out plain to me and lamented his condition in life.
+Somebody had attact her that day before me about marryin' of him
+-- and she owned up to me, that she had laid out to marry
+somebody to elevate her.  Some one with a grand pure mission in
+life.
+
+And I spoke right up and sez, "Why bread is jest as pure and
+innocent as anything can be, you won't find anything wicked about
+good yeast bread, nor," sez I, cordially, "in milk risin', if it
+is made proper."
+
+But she said she preferred a occupation that wuz risin', and
+noble, and that made a man necessary and helpful to the masses.
+
+And I sez agin -- "Good land! the masses have got to eat.  And I
+guess you starve the masses a spell and they'll think that good
+bread is as necessary and helpful to 'em as anything can be.  And
+as fer its bein' a risin' occupation, why," sez I, "it is stiddy
+risen' -- risin' in the mornin,' and risin' at night, and all
+night, both hop and milk emptin's.  Why," sez I, "I never see a
+occupation so risin' as his'n is, both milk and hop."  But she
+wouldn't seem to give in and encourage him much only by spells.
+
+And then Abram didn't take the right way with her.  I see he wuz
+a goin' just the wrong way to win a woman's love.  For his love,
+his great honest love for her made him abject, he groveled at her
+feet, loved to grovel.
+
+I told him, for he confided in me from the first on't and
+bewailed her coldness to me, I told him to sprout up and act as
+if he had some will of his own and some independent life of his
+own.  Sez I, "Any woman that sees a man a layin' around under her
+feet will be tempted to step on him," sez I.  "I don't see how
+she can help it, if she calcerlates to get round any, and walk."
+Sez I, "Sprout up and be somebody.  She is a good little creeter,
+but no better than you are, Abram; be a man."
+
+And he would try to be.  I could see him try.  But one of her
+soft little glances, specially if it wuz kind and tender to him,
+es it wuz a good deal of the time, why it would just overthrow
+him ag'in.  He would collapse and become nothin' ag'in, before
+her.  Why I have hearn him sing that old him, a lookin' right at
+Ardelia stiddy:
+
+"Oh to be nothin', nothin'!"
+
+And thinks I to myself, "if this keeps on, you are in a fairway
+to git your wish."
+
+He wuz a good singer, a beartone, and she a secent.  They loved
+to sing together.  They needed some air, but then they got along
+without it; and it sounded quite well, though rather low and
+deep.
+
+Wall, it run along for weeks and weeks, he with his hopes a
+risin' up sometimes like his yeast and then bein' pounded down
+ag'in like his bread, under the hard knuckles of a woman's
+capricious cruelty.  For I must say that she did, for sech a soft
+littte creeter, have cold and cruel ways to Abram.  (But I s'pose
+it wuz when she got to thinkin' about the Prince, or some other
+genteel lover.)
+
+But her real feelin's would break out once in a while, and lift
+him up to the 3d heaven of happiness and then he'd have to totter
+and fall down ag'in.  Abram Gee had a hard time on't.  I pitied
+him from nearly the bottom of my heart.  But I still kep' a
+thinkin' it would turn out well in the end.  For it wuz jest
+about this time that I happened to find this poetry in a book
+where she had, I s'posed, left it.  And I read 'em, almost
+entirely unbeknown to myself.
+
+It wuz wrote in a dreatful blind way but I recognized it at once.
+I looked right through it, and see what she wuz a writin' about
+though many wouldn't, it wuz wrote in sech a deep style.
+
+                       "STANZAS ON BREAD;
+
+                              "or
+
+                   "A LAY OF A BROKEN HEART.
+
+       "Oh Bread, dear Bread, that seemest to us so cold,
+        Oft'times concealed thee within, may be a sting!
+        Sweet buried hopes may in thy crust be rolled;
+         A sad, burnt crust of deepest suffering.
+
+        "There are some griefs the female soul don't tell,
+          And she may weep, and she may wretched be;
+         Though she may like the name of Abram well
+          And she may not like dislike the name of G ,
+
+        "Oh Fel Ambition, how thou lurest us on,
+          How by thy high, bold torch we're stridin' led:
+         Thou lurest us up, cold mountain top upon,
+          And seated by us there, thou scoffest at bread.
+
+        "Thou lookest down, Ambition, on the ovens brim;
+          Thou brookest not a word of him save with contumalee:
+         And yet, wert thou afar, how sweet to set by him
+          And cut low slices of sweet joy with G ,
+
+        "Oh! Fel Ambition, wert but thou away,
+          Could we thy hauntin' form no more, nor see;
+         How sweet 'twould be to linger on with A-,
+          How sweet 'twould be to dwell for aye with G-."
+
+Wall, as I say, she gin good satisfaction in the deestrict and I
+declare for it, I got to likin' her dretful well before the
+winter wuz over.  Softer she wuz, and had to be, than any fuz
+that was ever on any cotton flannel fur or near.  And more verses
+she wrote than wuz good for her, or for anybody else, -   Why she
+would write "Lines on the Tongs," or "Stanzas on the Salt
+Suller," if she couldn't do any better; it beats all!  And then
+she would read 'em to me to get my idees on 'em.  Why I had to
+call on every martyr in the hull string of martyrs sometimes to
+keep myself from tellin' her my full mind about 'em unbeknown to
+me.  For, if I had, it would have skairt the soft little creeter
+out of what little wit she had.
+
+So I kep' middlin' still, and see it go on.  For she wuz a good
+little soul, affectionate and kinder helpful.  A good creeter now
+to find your speks.  Why she found 'em for me times out of
+number, and I got real attached to her and visey versey.  And
+when she came a visitin' me in the spring (at my request), and I
+happened to mention that Josiah and me laid out to go to Saratoga
+for the summer, what did the soft little creeter want to do but
+to go too.  Her father was well off and wuz able to send her, and
+she had relatives there on her own side, some of the Pixleys, so
+her board wouldn't cost nothin'.  So it didn't look nothin'
+unreasonable, though whether I could get her there and back
+without her mashin' all down on my hands, like a over ripe peach,
+she wuz that soft, wuz a question that hanted me, and so I told
+Josiah.
+
+But Josiah kinder likes young girls (nothin' light; a calm
+meetin'-house affection), it is kinder nater that he should, and
+he sez: "Better let her go, she won't make much trouble."
+
+"No," sez I, "not to you, but if you had to set for hours and
+hours and hear her verses read to you on every subject -- on
+heaven, and earth, and the seas, and see her a measurin' of it
+with a stick to get the lines the right length; if you had to go
+through all this, mebby you would meditate on the subject before
+you took it for a summer's job."
+
+" Wall," sez he, "mebby she won't write so much when she gets
+started; she will be kinder jogged round and stirred up in body
+and mebby her feelins' will kinder rest.  I shouldn't wonder a
+mite if they did," sez he.  "And then she can take a good many
+steps for you, and I love to see you favored," sez he.
+
+He wanted her to go, I see that, and I see that it wuz natur that
+he should, and so I consented in my mind -- after a parlay.
+
+She found his specks a sight and his hat.  Nothin' seemed to
+please her better than to be gropin' round after things to please
+somebody; her disposition wuz such.  So it wuz settled that she
+should accompany and go with us.  And the mornin' we started she
+met us at the Jonesville Depot in good sperits and a barege
+delaine dress, cream color, and a hat of the same.
+
+I hadn't seen her for some weeks, and she seemed softly tickled
+to see Josiah and me, and asked a good many questions about
+Jonesville, kinder turnin' the conversation gradually round onto
+bread, as I could see.  So I branched right out, knowin' what she
+wanted of me, and told her plain, that "Abram Gee wuz a lookin'
+kinder mauger.  But doin' his duty stiddy," sez I, lookin' keenly
+at her, "a doin' his duty by everybody, and beloved by everybody,
+him and his bread too."
+
+She turned her head away and kinder sithed, and I guess it wuz as
+much as a quarter of a hour after that, that I see her take out a
+pencil and a piece of paper out of her portmonny, and a little
+stick, and she went to makin' some verses, a measurin' 'em
+careful as she wrote 'em, and when she handed 'em to me they wuz
+named
+
+
+
+                        "A LAY ON A CAR;
+
+                              "or
+
+                 "THE LESSON OF A LOCOMOTIVE."
+
+After I had read it and handed it back to her, she sez, "Don't
+you think I improve on the melody and rhythm of my poetry?  I
+take this little stick with me now wherever I go, and measure my
+lines by it.  They are jest of a length, I am very particular;
+you know you advised me to be."
+
+"Yes," sez I mechaniklly, "but I didn't mean jest that."  Sez I,
+"the poetry I wuz a thinkin' on, is measured by the soul, the
+enraptured throb of heart and brain; it don't need takin' a stick
+to it.  Howsumever," sez I, for I see she looked sort a
+disapinted, "howsumever, if you have measured 'em, they are
+probable about the same length:  it is a good sound stick, I
+haint no doubt;" and I kinder sithed.
+
+And she sez, "What do you think of the first verse?  Haint that
+verse as true as fate, or sadness, or anything else you know of?"
+
+"Oh yes," sez I candidly, "yes; if the cars run backwards we
+shouldn't go on; that is true as anything can be.  But if I wuz
+in your place, Ardelia," sez I, "I wouldn't write any more
+to-day.  It is a kind of muggy damp day.  It is a awfully bad day
+for poetry to-day.  And," sez I, to get her mind offen it, "Have
+you seen anything of my companion's specks?"
+
+And that took her mind offen poetry and she went a huntin' for
+'em, on the seat and under the seat.  She hunted truly high and
+low and at last she found 'em on my pardner's foretop, the last
+place any of us thought of lookin'.  And she never said another
+word about poetry, or any other trouble, nor I nuther.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+WE ARRIVE AT SARATOGA.
+
+
+We arrived at Saratoga jest as sunset with a middlin' gorgeous
+dress on wuz a walkin' down the west and a biddin' us and the
+earth good-bye.  There wuz every color you could think on almost,
+in her gown and some stars a shinin' through the floatin' drapery
+and a half moon restin' up on her cloudy foretop like a beautiful
+orniment.
+
+(I s'pose mebby it is proper to describe sunset in this way on
+goin' to such a dressy place, though it haint my style to do so, I
+don't love to describe sunset as a female and don't, much of the
+time, but I love to see things correspond.)
+
+Wall, we descended from the cars and went to the boardin' place
+provided for us beforehand by the look out of friends.  It wuz a
+good place, there haint no doubt of that, good folks; good fare
+and clean.
+
+Ardelia parted away from us at the depo.  She wuz a goin' to board
+to a smaller boardin' house kep' by a second cousin of her
+father's brother's wife's aunt.  It wuz her father's request that
+she should get her board there on account of its bein' in the
+family.  He loved "to see relations hang together;" so he said,
+and "get their boards of each other."  But I thought then, and I
+think now, that it wuz because they asked less for the board.
+Deacon Tutt is close.  But howsumever Ardelia went there, and my
+companion and me arrove at the abode where we wuz to abide, with
+no eppisode only the triflin' one of the driver bein' dretful
+mistook as to the price he asked to take us there.
+
+I thought, and Josiah thought, that 50 cents wuz the outlay of
+expendatur he required to carry us where we would be; it wuz but a
+short distance.  But no!  He said that 5 dollars wuz what he said,
+that is, if we heard anything about a 5.  But he thought we wuz
+deef, and dident hear him.  He thought he spoke plain, and said 4
+dollars for the trip.
+
+And on that price he sot down immovible.  They arged, and Josiah
+Allen even went so far as to use language that grated on my nerve,
+it wuz so voyalent and vergin' on the profane.  But there the man
+sot, right onto that price, and he had to me the appeerance of one
+who wuz goin' to sot there on it all night.  And so rather than to
+spend the night out doors, in conversation with him, he a settin'
+on that price, and Josiah a shakin' his fist at it, and a jawin'
+at it, I told Josiah that he had better pay it.  And finally he
+did, with groanin's that could hardly be uttered.
+
+Wall, after supper (a good supper and enough on't), Josiah proposed
+that we should take a short walk, we two alone, for Ardelia wuz
+afar from us, most to the other end of the village, either asleep
+or a writin' poetry, I didn't know which, but I knew it wuz one or
+the other of 'em.  And I wuz tired enough myself to lay my head
+down and repose in the arms of sleep, and told my companion so,
+but he said:
+
+"Oh shaw!  Let old Morpheus wait for us till we get back, there'll
+be time enough to rest then."
+
+Josiah felt so neat, that he wuz fairly beginnin' to talk high
+learnt, and classical.  But I didn't say nothin' to break it up,
+and tied on my bonnet with calmness (and a double bow knot) and we
+sallied out.
+
+Soon, or mebby a little after, for we didn't walk fast on account
+of my deep tucker, we stood in front of what seemed to be one hull
+side of a long street, all full of orniments and open work, and
+pillows, and flowers, and carvin's, and scallops, and down between
+every scollop hung a big basket full of posys, of every beautiful
+color under the heavens.  And over all, and way back as fur as we
+could see, wuz innumerable lights of every color, gorgeousness a
+shinin' down on gorgeousness, glory above, a shinin' down on glory
+below.  And sweet strains of music wuz a floatin, out from
+somewhere, a shinin' somewhere, renderin' the seen fur more
+beautiful to all 4 of our wraptured ears.
+
+And Josiah sez, as we stood there nearly rooted to the place by
+our motions, and a picket fence, sez he dreamily,
+
+"I almost feel as if we had made a mistake, and that this is the
+land of Beuler."  And he murmured to himself some words of the old
+him:
+
+"Oh Beuler land! Sweet Beuler land!"
+
+And I whispered back to him and sez - "Hush they don't have brass
+bands in Beulah land."
+
+And he sez, "How do you know what they have in Beuler?"
+
+"Wall," sez I, "'taint likely they do."
+
+But I don't know as I felt like blamin' him, for it did seem to me
+to be the most beautiful place that I ever sot my eyes on.  And it
+did seem fairly as if them long glitterin' chains and links of
+colored lights, a stretchin' fur back into the distance sort a
+begoned for us to enter into a land of perfect beauty and Pure
+Delight.
+
+And then them glitterin' chains of light would jine onto other
+golden, and crimson, and orange, and pink, and blue, and amber
+links of glory and hang there all drippin' with radiance, and way
+back as fur as we could see.  And away down under the shinin'
+lanes the white statues stood, beautiful snow-white females, a
+lookin' as if they enjoyed it all.  And the lake mirrowed back all
+of the beauty.
+
+Right out onto the lake stood a fairy-like structure all glowin'
+with big drops of light and every glitterin' drop reflected down
+in the water and the fountain a sprayin' up on each side.  Why it
+sprayed up floods of diamonds, and rubys, and sapphires, and
+topazzes, and turkeys, and pearls, and opals, and sparklin' 'em
+right back into the water agin.
+
+And right while we stood there, neerly rooted to the spot and
+gazin' through extacy and 2 pickets, the band gin a loud burst of
+melody and then stopped, and after a minute of silence, we hearn a
+voice angel-sweet a risin' up, up, like a lark, a tender-hearted,
+golden-throated lark.
+
+High, high above all the throngs of human folks who wuz cheerin'
+her down below - up above the sea of glitterin' light - up above
+the bendin' trees that clasped their hands together in silent
+applaudin' above her, up, up, into the clear heavens, rose that
+glorious voice a singin' some song about love, love that wuz
+deathless, eternal.
+
+Why it seemed as if the very clouds wuz full of shadowy faces a
+bendin' down to hear it, and the new moon, shaped just like a
+boat, had glided down, down the sky to listen.
+
+If the man of the moon was there he wuz a layin' in the bottom of
+the boat, he wuzn't in sight.  But if he heard that music I'll bet
+he would say he wuzn't in the practice of hearin' any better.  And
+Josiah stood stun still till she had got done, and then he sort a
+sithed out:
+
+"Oh, it seems as if it must be Beuler land!  Do you s'pose,
+Samantha, Beuler land is any more beautiful?"
+
+And I sez, "I haint a thinkin' about Beulah."  I sez it pretty
+middlin' tart, partly to hide my own feelin's, which wuz perfectly
+rousted up, and partly from principle, and sez I, "Don't for
+mercy's sake call it Beuler."
+
+Josiah always will call it so.  I've got a 4th cousin, Beulah Smith
+(my own age and unmarried up to date), and he always did and would
+call her Beuler.  Truly in some things a pardner's influence and
+encouragement fails to accomplish the ends aimed at.
+
+Wall, it wuz after some words that I drew Josiah away from that
+seen of enchantment - or he me, I don't exactly know which way it
+wuz - and we wended onwards in our walk.
+
+The hull broad streets wuz full of folks, full as they could be,
+all on 'em perfect strangers to us and who knew what motives or
+weapons they wuz a carryin' with 'em; but we knew we wuz safe,
+Josiah and me did, for way up over all our heads, stood a big
+straight soldier, a volunteer volunteerin, to see to the hull crew
+on 'em below, a seein' that they behaved themselves.  His age wuz
+seventy-seven as near as I could make out but he didn't look
+more'n half that.  He had kep' his age remarkable.
+
+Wall, it wuz, if I remember right, jest about now that we see a
+glitterin' high up over our heads some writen in flame.  I never
+see such brilliant writin, before nor don't know as I ever shall
+ag'in.
+
+And Josiah stopped stun still, and stood a lookin' perfectly
+dumfoundered at it.  And finally he sez, "I'd give a dollar bill
+if I could write like that."
+
+I see he wuz deeply rousted up for 2 cents is as high as he
+usually goes in betted.  I see he felt deep and I didn't blame
+him.  Why," sez he, "jest imagine, Samantha, a hull letter wrote
+like that! how I'd love to send one back to Uncle Nate Gowdey.
+
+"How Uncle Nate's eyes would open, and he wouldn't want no
+spectacles nor nothin' to read it with, would he?  I wonder if I
+could do it," sez he, a beginnin' to be all rousted up.
+
+But I sez, "Be calm," for so deep is my mind that I grasped the
+difficuties of the undertaken' at once.  "How could yon send it,
+Josiah Allen?  Where would you get a envelop?  How could you get
+it into the mail bag?"  Sez I, "When anybody would send a letter
+wrote like that, they would want to write it on sheets of
+lightnin', and fold it up in the envelopin' clouds of the skies,
+and it should be received by a kneelin' and reverent soul.  Who is
+Uncle Nate that he should get it?  He has not a reverent Soul and
+he has also rheumatiz in his legs."
+
+And then I thought, so quick and active is my mind when it gets to
+startin' off on a tower, I thought of what I had hearn a few days
+before, of how the secret had been learnt by somebody who lived
+right there in the village, of floatin' letters up at sea from one
+ship to another, sigualin' out in letters of flame -
+
+"Help!  I'm a sinkin'!" or "Danger ahead!  Look out!"
+
+And I thought what it must be to stand on a dusky night on a lone
+deck and see up on the broad, dark; lonesome sky above, a sudden
+message, a flash of vivid lightnin', takin' to itself the form of
+language.  And I wondered to myself if in the future we should use
+the great pages of the night-sky to write messages from one city
+to another, or from sea to land, of danger and warnin'; and then I
+thought to myself, if souls clog-bound to earth are able to
+accomplish so much, who knows but the freed soul goin' outward and
+onward from height to height of wisdom may yet be able to signal
+down from the Safe Land messages of help and warnin' to the souls
+it loved below.
+
+The souls a sailin' and a driftin' through the dark night of
+despair - a dashin' along through fog and mist and darkness aginst
+rocks.  What it would be to one kneelin' in the lonesome night
+watches by a grave, if the dark sky could grow luminous and he
+could read, - "Do not despair!  I am alive!  I love you!"
+
+Or, in the hour of the blackest temptation and dread, when the
+earth is hollow and the sky a black vault, and the only way of
+happiness on God's earth seems down the dangerous, beautiful way,
+God-forbidden, what would it be to have the empty vault lit up
+with "Danger ahead!  We will help you! be patient a little
+longer!"
+
+Oh how fur my thoughts wuz a travellin', and at what a good jog,
+but not one trace did my companion see on my forward of these
+thoughts that wuz a passin' through my foretop: and at that very
+minute, we came up nigh enough to see that right back of the
+glitterin' language overhead, went a long line of big, glowin'
+stars of glory way up over our heads, and leadin' down a gentle
+declivity and Josiah sez, "Let's foller on, and see what it will
+lead us to, Samantha."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "light is pretty generally, safe to foller, Josiah
+Allen."  And so we meandered along, keepin' our 2 heads as nigh as
+we could under that long glitterin' chain of golden drops that wuz
+high overhead.  And on, and on, we follered it dilligently; till
+for the land's sake! if it didn't lead us to another one of them
+openwork buildin's, fixed off beautiful, and we could see inside 2
+big wells like, with acres of floor seemin'ly on each side of 'em,
+and crowds of folks a walkin' about and settin' at little tables
+and most all of 'em a drinkin'.
+
+The water they drinked we could see wuz a bubblin' up and a
+runnin' over all the time, in big round crystal globes.  And up,
+up on a slender pole way up over one of the wells hung another one
+of them crystal bowls, a bubblin' over with the water and
+sparklin'.
+
+And ag'in Josiah asked me if I thought Beuler land could compare
+with it?
+
+And I told him ag'in kinder sharp, That I wuzn't a thinkin' about
+Beuler, I didn't know any sech a place or name.  I wish he would
+call things right.
+
+Wall, he wuz so dead tired by this time, that we sot sail homewards;
+that is, my feet wuz tired, and my bones, but my mind seemed more
+rousted up than common.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+SARATOGA BY DAYLIGHT.
+
+
+Wall, the next mornin' Josiah and me sallied out middlin' early to
+explore still further the beauties and grandness of Saratoga.  I
+had on a black straw bonnet, a green vail, and a umbrell.  I also
+have my black alpacky, that good moral dress.
+
+My dress bein' such a high mission one choked me.  It wuz so high
+in the neck it held my chin up in a most uncomfortable position,
+but sort a grand and lofty lookin'.  My sleeves wuz so long that
+more'n half the time my hand wuz covered up by 'em and I wuz too
+honerable to wear 'em for mits; no, in the name of principle I
+wore 'em for sleeves, good long sleeves, a pattern to other
+grandmas that I might meet.
+
+I felt that when they see me and see what I wuz a doin' and
+endurin' fur the cause of female dressin' they would pause in
+their wild career, and cover up their necks and pull their sleeves
+down.
+
+Wall, it haint to be expected that I could walk along carryin'
+such hefty emotions as I wuz a carryin', and havin' my neck held
+high and stiddy both by principle and alpacky, and see to every
+step I wuz a takin'.  And, first I knew, right while I was
+enjoyin' the loftiest of these emotions, I ketched my foot in
+sunthin', and most fell down.  Instinctively (such is the power of
+love) I put out my hand and clutched at the arm of my pardner.
+But he too wuz nearly fallin' at the same time.  It wuz a narrow
+chance that we wuz a runnin' from having our prostrate forms a
+layin' there outstretched on the highway.
+
+Instinctively I sez, "Good land!" and Josiah sez -- wall, it is
+fur from me to tell what he said, but it ended up with these
+words, "Dumb them dumb sidewalks anyway;" and sez he, "I should
+think it would pay to have a little less gilt paint and spangles
+and orniments overhead and a few more solid bricks unless they
+want more funerals here, dumb 'em!"
+
+Sez I,"Be calm! who be you a talkin' about? who do you want to
+bring down your fearful curses on, Josiah Allen?"
+
+"Why, onto the dumb bricks," sez he.
+
+He wuz agitated and I said no more.  But four times in that first
+walk, did I descend almost precipitously into declivities amongst
+the bricks, risin' simultaneously on similar elevations.
+
+It wuz a fearful ordeel and I felt it so, but upheld by principle
+and Josiah, I moved onwards, through what seemed to be 5 great
+throngs and masses of people, 3 on the ground and 2 hinted up
+above us on tall pillows.
+
+Them immense places overhead long as the streets, wuz kinder
+scalloped out and trimmed off handsum with railin's, etc.  And on
+it -- oh! what a vast congregation of heads of all sorts and sizes
+and colors.  And oh! what a immense display of parasols; why no
+parasol store in the land could begin with what I see there.
+
+I can truly say that I thought I knew somethin' about parasols;,
+havin' owned 3 different ones in the course of my life, and havin'
+one covered over.  I thought I knew somethin' of their nater and
+habits, which is a good deal, so I had always s'posed, like a
+umbrell's.  But good land!  I gin up that I knew them not, nor
+never had.
+
+Why anybody could learn more on 'em through one jerney down that
+street, than from a hull lifetime in Jonesville.  Truly travel is
+very upliftin' and openin' and spreadin' out to the mind, both in
+parasols and human nater.
+
+Wall, them 2 masses over our heads wuz 2, then the one in which we
+wuz a strugglin' and the one opposite to it made 4.  For anybody
+with any pretence to learnin' knows that twice 2 is 4.  And then
+in the middle of the broad street was a bigger mass of chariots
+and horsemen, and carts and carriages, and great buggies and
+little ones, and big loads of barrels, and big loads of ladies,
+and then a load of wood, and then a load of hay, and then a pair
+of young folks pretty as a picture.  And then came some high big
+coaches as big as our spare bedroom, and as high as the roof on
+our horse barn, with six horses hitched to e'm, all runnin' over
+on top with men; and wimmen, and children, and parasols, and
+giggles, and ha ha's.  And a man wuz up behind a soundin' out on a
+trumpet, a dretful sort of a high, sweet note, not dwindlin' down
+to the end as some music duz, but kinder crinklin' round and
+endin' up in the air every time.
+
+Josiah wuz dretful took with it and he told me in confidence that
+he laid out when he got home to buy a trumpet and blow out jest
+them strains every time he went into Jonesville or out of it.  He
+said it would sound so sort a warlike and impressive.
+
+I expostulated aginst the idee.  But sez he, "You'll enjoy it when
+you get used to it."
+
+"Never!" sez I.
+
+"Yes you will," sez he, "and while I live I lay out that you shall
+have advantages, and shall enjoy things new and uneek."
+
+"Yes," sez I feelin'ly, "I expect to, Josiah Allen, as long as I
+live with you."  And I sithed.  But I had little time to enjoy
+even sithin', for oh! the crowd that wuz a pressin' onto us and
+surroundin' us on every side, some on 'em curius and strange
+lookin', some on 'em beautiful and grand.  Pretty young girls
+lookin' sweet enough to kiss, and right behind 'em a Chinese man
+with a long dress, and wooden shoes, and his hair in a long braid
+behind, and his eyes sot in sideways.  And then would come on a
+hull lot of wimmen in dresses ev'ry color of the rainbow, and some
+men.  Then a few childern, lookin' sweet as roses, with their
+mothers a pushin' the little carts ahead on 'em.  And if you'll
+believe it, I don't s'pose you will, but it is true, that lots of
+black ma's had childern jest as white as snow, and pretty as
+rosebuds, took after their fathers I s'pose.  But I don't believe
+in a mixin' of the races.  And when I see 'em a kissin' the pretty
+babys, I begun to muse a very little on the feelin's of the
+indignent South, at havin' a colered girl set in the same car with
+'em, or on a bench in the same school room.
+
+I mewsed on how they held the white forms clost to their black
+breasts at birth, and in the hour of death -- the black lips
+pressed to the white cheeks and lips, in both cases.  And all the
+way between life and death they mingle clost as they can, some in
+some cases like the hill of knowledge.  Then the contact is too
+clost, when they sot out to climb up by 'em.  Truly there are deep
+conundrums and strange ones, all along through life; though the
+white man may be, and is, cleer up out of his way, on the sunshiny
+brow of the hill, and the black man at the foot, way down amongst
+the shadows and darkness of the low grounds.  They don't come very
+nigh each other.  But the arms that have felt the clasp and the
+lips that have felt the kisses of that very same black climber all
+through life, moves 'em and shouts 'em to "go down," to "go back,"
+
+"The contact is getting too clost, danger is ahead."  Curious,
+haint it?  Jest as if any danger is so dangerous as ignorance and
+brutality.  Curious, haint it?  But I am a eppisodin', and to
+resoom.
+
+Wall, right after the babies we'd meet a Catholic priest with a
+calm and fur away look on his face, a lookin' at the crowd as if
+he wuz in it, but not of it.  And then a burgler, mebby, anyway a
+mean lookin' creeter, ragged and humble.  And then 2 or 3 men
+foreign lookin', jabberin' in a tongue I know nothin' of, nor
+Josiah either.  And then some more childern, and wimmen, and dogs,
+and parasols, and men, and babies, and Injuns, and Frenchmen, and
+old young wimmen, and young old ones, and handsome ones, and
+hombly ones, and parasols, and some sweet young girls ag'in, and
+some black men, and some white men, and some more wimmen, and
+parasols, and silk, and velvet, and lace, and puckers, and
+raffles, and gethers, and gores, and flowers, and feathers, and
+fringes, and frizzles, and then some men, some Southerners from
+the South, some Westerners from the West, some Easterners from the
+East, and some Cubebs from Cuba, and some Chinamen from China.
+
+Oh! what a seen!  What a seen! back and forth, passin' and
+repassin', to and fro, parasols, and dogs, and wimmen, and men,
+and babies, and parasols, to and fro, to and fro.  Why, if I stood
+there long so crazed would I have become at the seen, that I
+should have felt that Josiah wuz a To and I wuz a Fro, or I wuz a
+parasol and he wuz a dog.
+
+And to prevent that fearful catastrophe, I sez, "If we ever get
+beyond this side of the village that seems all run together, if we
+ever do get beyond it, which seems doubtful, le's go and sit down,
+in some quiet spot, and try to collect our scattered minds."  Sez
+I, "I feel curius, Josiah Allen!" and sez I, "How do you feel?"
+
+His answer I will not translate; it was neither Biblical nor even
+moral.  And I sez agin, "Hain't it strange that they have the
+village all run together with no streets turnin' off of it."  Sez
+I, "It makes me feel queer, Josiah Allen, and I am a goin' to
+enquire into it."  So we wended our way some further on amongst
+the dense crowd I have spoken of, only more crowded and more
+denser, and anon, if not oftener, Josiah's head would be scooped
+in by passin' parasols, and then in low, deep tones, Josiah would
+use words that I wouldn't repeat for a dollar bill, till at last I
+asked a by bystander a standin' by, and sez I, "Is this village
+all built together -- don't you have no streets a turnin' off of
+it?"
+
+"Yes," sez he, "you'll find a street jest as soon as you get by
+this hotel."
+
+I stopped right in my tracts; I wuz dumbfoundered.  Sez I, "Do you
+mean to say that this hull side of the street that we have been a
+traversin' anon, or long before anon, -- do you say that this is
+all one buildin'?"
+
+"Yes mom," sez he.
+
+Sez I, in faint axents, "When shall we get to the end on it?"
+
+Sez he, "You have come jest about half way."
+
+Josiah gin a deep groan and turned him round in his tracts and
+sez, "Le's go back this minute."
+
+I too thought of the quiet haven from whence we had set out, with
+a deep longin', but sech is the force and strength of my mind that
+I grasped holt of the situation and held it there tight.  If we
+wuz half way across it wouldn't be no further to go on than it
+would to go back.  Such wuz my intellect that I see it to once,
+but Josiah's mind couldn't grasp it, and with words murmured in my
+ears which I will never repeat to a livin' soul he wended on by my
+side through the same old crowd -- parasols, and wimmen, and dogs,
+and babies, and men, and parasols, and Injuns, and Spanards, and
+Creoles, and pretty girls, and old wimmen, and puckers, and
+gethers, and bracelets, and diamonds, and lace, and parasols.
+Several times, if not more, wuz Josiah Allen scooped in by a
+parasol held by a female, and I felt he wuz liable to be torn from
+me.  His weight is but small.  3 times his hat fell off in the
+operation and wuz reskued with difficulty, and he spoke words I
+blush to recall as havin' passed my pardner's lips.
+
+Wall, in the fullness of time, or a little after, for truly I wuz
+not in a condition to sense things much, we arrove at a street and
+we gladly turned our 2 frames into it, and wended our way on it,
+goin' at a pretty good jog.  The crowd a growin' less and less and
+we kep a goin', and kep a goin', till Josiah sez in weary axents:
+
+"Where be you a goin', Samantha?  Haint you never goin' to stop?
+I am fairly tuckered out."
+
+And I sez in faint axents, "I would fain reach a land where
+parasols and puckers are not and dogs and diamonds are no more."
+
+I wuz middlin' incoherent from my agitation.  But I meant well.  I
+wuz truly in hopes I would reach some quiet place where Josiah and
+me could set down alone.  Where I could look in quiet and repose
+upon that dear bald head, and recooperate my strength.
+
+We went by beautiful places, grand houses of different colors but
+every one on 'em good lookin' ones, a settin' back amongst their
+green trees, with shady grass-covered yards, and fountains and
+flower beds in front of 'em, and more grand handsome houses, and
+more big beautiful yards, green velvet grass and beautiful flowers
+and fountains, and birds and beauty on every side on us.
+
+And though I felt and knew that in them big carriages that was a
+passin' 2 and fro all the time, though I felt that parasols, and
+puckers, and laces, and dogs, and diamonds, wuz a bein' borne past
+me all the time, yet sech is the force of my mind that I could
+withdraw my specks from 'em, and look at the beautiful works of
+nater (assisted by man) that wuz about me on every hand.
+
+Finally my long search wuz rewarded, we came to a big open gateway
+that seemed to lead into a large, quiet delightful forest.  And in
+that lovely, lonesome place, Josiah and me sot down to recooperate
+our 2 energies.
+
+Josiah looked good to me.  Men are nice creeters, but you don't
+want to see too meny of 'em to once, likeways with wimmen.  Josiah
+looked to me at that moment some like a calico dress that you have
+picked out of a dense quantity of patterns of calico at a store,
+it looks better to you when you get it away from the rest.  Josiah
+Allen looked good to me.
+
+But anon, after I had bathed my distracted eyes (as you may say)
+in the liniment of my pardner, I began to take in the rare beauty
+of the seen laid out before me and we arose and wended our way
+onwards peaceful and serene, as 2 childern led on by their mother.
+
+Dear Mother Nature! how dost thou rest and soothe thy distracted
+childern when too hardly used by the grindin', oppressive hands of
+fashion,and the weerisome elements of a too civilized life.  Maybe
+thou art a heathen mother, oneducated and ignorant in all but the
+wisdom of love, but thy bosom is soft and restful, and thy arms
+lovin' and tender.  And, heathen if thou art, we love thee first
+and at last.  We are glad to slip out of all the vain and gilded
+supports that have held us weerily up, and lay down our tired
+heads on thy kindly and unquestionin' bosom and rest.
+
+As we rose from the soft turf, on which we had been a restin', and
+meandered on through that beautiful park, (so tenderly had nature
+used him,) not one trace of the wild commotion that had almost
+rent Josiah Allen's breast, could be seen save one expirin'
+threeoh of agony.  As we started out ag'in, he looked down onto my
+faithful umberell, that had stiddied me on so many towers of
+principle, and sez he, in low concentrated axents of skern and
+bitterness, "If that wuz a dumb parasol, Samantha, I would crush
+it to the earth and grind it to atoms."
+
+Truly he could not forget how his bald head had been gethered in
+like a ripe sheaf, by 7 females, during that very walk, hombly
+ones too, so it had happened.  But I sez nothin' in reply to this
+expirin' note of the crysis he had passed through, knowin' this
+was not the time for silver speech but for golden silence, and so
+we meandered onwards.
+
+And it wuz anon that we see in the distance a fair white female a
+standin' kinder still in the edge of the woods, and Josiah spoke
+in a seemin'ly careless way, and sez he, "She don't seem to have
+many clothes on, Samantha."
+
+Sez I, "Hush, Josiah! she has probably overslept herself, and come
+out in a hurry, mebby to look for some herbs or sunthin'.  I
+persoom one of her childern are sick, and she sprung right up out
+of bed, and come out to get some weather-wort, or catnip, or
+sunthin'."
+
+And as I spoke I drawed Josiah down a side path away from her.
+But he stopped stun still and sez he, "Mebby I ought to go and
+help her Samantha."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, sense I lived with you, I don't think I have
+been shamder of you;" sez I, "it would mortify her to death if she
+should mistrust you had seen her in that condition."
+
+"Wall," sez he, still a hangin' back, "if the child is very sick,
+and I can be any help to her, it is my duty to go."
+
+His eye had been on her nearly every moment of the time, in spite
+of my almost voyalent protests, and sez he, kinder excited like,
+"She is standin' stun still, as if she is skarit; mebby there is a
+snake in front of her or sunthin', or mebby she is took paralysed,
+I'd better go and see."
+
+Sez I, in low, deep axents, "You stay where you be, Josiah Allen,
+and I will go forward, bein' 2 females together, it is what it is
+right to do and if we need your help I will holler."
+
+And finally he consented after a parlay.
+
+Wall, as I got up to her I see she wuzn't a live, meat woman, but
+a statute and so I hastened back to my Josiah and told him there
+wuzn't no need of his help and he wuz in the right on't -- she wuz
+stun still."
+
+He said he guessed we'd better go that way.  And I sez, "No,
+Josiah, I want to go round by the other road."
+
+Wall, we got back to our abode perfectly tuckered out, but
+perfectly happy.  And we concluded that after dinner we would set
+out and see the different springs and partake of 'em.  Had it not
+been for our almost frenzied haste to get away from parasols and
+dogs and destraction into a place of rest we should have beheld
+them sooner.  And our afternoon's adventures I will relate in
+another epistol.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+SEEING THE DIFFERENT SPRINGS.
+
+
+Immegeatly after dinner (a good one) Josiah Allen, Ardelia Tutt
+and me sot out to view and look at the different springs and to
+partake of the same.  We hadn't drinked a drop of it as yet.
+Ardelia had come over to go with us.  She had on a kind of a
+yellowish drab dress and a hat made of the same, with some drab
+and blue bows of ribbon and some pink holly-hawks in it, and she
+had some mits on (her hands prespired dretfully, and she sweat
+easy).  As I have said, she is a good lookin' girl but soft.  And
+most any dress she puts on kinder falls into the same looks.  It
+may be quite a hard lookin' dress before she puts it on, but
+before she has wore it half a hour it will kinder crease down into
+the softest lookin, thing you ever see.  And so with her bonnets,
+and mantillys, and everything.
+
+The down onto a goslin's breast never looked softer than every rag
+she had on this very afternoon, and no tender goslin' itself wuz
+ever softer than she wuz on the inside on't.  But that didn't
+hinder my likin' her.
+
+Wall, anon, or a little before, we came to that long, long
+buildin', beautiful and dretful ornimental, but I could see plain
+by daylight what I had mistrusted before, that it wuzn't built for
+warmth.  It must be dretful cold in the winter, and I don't see
+how the wimmen folks of the home could stand it, unless they hang
+up bed quilts and blankets round the side, and then, I should
+think they would freeze.  They couldn't keep their house plants
+over winter any way - and I see they had sights of 'em - unless
+they kep' 'em down suller.
+
+But howsumever, that is none of my lookout.  If they want to be so
+fashionable, as to try to live out doors and in the house too,
+that is none of my business.  And of course it looked dretful
+ornimental and pretty.  But I will say this, it haint bein' mejum.
+I should rather live either out doors, or in the house, one of the
+2.  But I am a eppisodin'.  And to resoom.
+
+Josiah Allen paid the money demanded of him and we went in and
+advanced onwards to where a boy wuz a pullin' up the water and
+handin' of it round.
+
+It looked dretful bubblin' and sparklin'.  Why sunthin' seemed to
+be a sparklin' up all the time in the water and I thought to
+myself mebby it wuz water thoughts, mebby it wanted to tell
+sunthin', mebby it has all through these years been a tryin' to
+bubble up and sparkle out in wisdom but haint found any one yet
+who could understand its liquid language.  Who knows now?
+
+I took my glass and looked close - sparkle, sparkle, up came the
+tiny thought sparks!  But I wuzn't wise enough to read the
+glitterin' language.  No I wuzn't deep enough.  It would take a
+deep mind, mebby thousands of feet deep, to understand the great
+glowin' secret that it has been a tryin' to reveal and couldn't.
+Mebby it has been a tryin' to tell of big diamond mines that it
+has passed through - great cliffs and crags of gold sot deep with
+the crystalized dew of diamonds.
+
+But no, I didn't believe that wuz it.  That wouldn't help the
+world, only to make it happier, and these seemed to me to be
+dretful inspirin', upliftin' thoughts.  No, mebby it is a tryin'
+to tell a cold world about a way to heat it.  Mebby it has been a
+runnin' over and is sparklin' with bright thoughts about how deep
+underneath the earth lay a big fireplace, that all the cold
+beggars of mortality could set round and warm their frozen fingers
+by, - a tryin' to tell how the heat of that fire that escapes now
+up the chimbleys of volcanoes, and sometimes in sudden drafts
+blows out sideways into earthquakes, etc., could be utilized by
+conveyin' it up on top of the ground, and have it carried into the
+houses like Croton water.  Who knows now?  Mebby that is it!
+
+Oh!  I felt that it would be a happy hour for Samantha when she
+could bile her potatoes by the heat of that large noble fire-place.
+And more than that, far more wuz the thought that heat might become,
+in the future, as cheap as cold.  That the little cold hands that
+freeze every winter in the big cities, could be stretched out before
+the big generous warmth of that noble fire-place.  And who built
+that fire in the first place?  Who laid the first sticks on the
+handirons, and put the match to it?  Who wuz it that did it, and
+how did he look, and when wuz he born, and why, and where?
+
+These, and many other thoughts of similar size and shape, filled
+my brane almost full enough to lift up the bunnet, that reposed
+gracefully on my foretop, as I stood and held the sparklin' glass
+in my hands.
+
+Sparkle! sparkle! sparkle! what wuz it, it wuz a tryin' to say to
+me and couldn't?  Good land!  I couldn't tell, and Josiah
+couldn't, I knew instinctively he couldn't, though I didn't ask
+him.
+
+No, I turned and looked at that beloved man, for truly I had for
+the time bein' been by the side of myself, and I see that he wuz
+a drinkin' lavishly of the noble water.  I see that he wuz a
+drinkin' more than wuz for his good, his linement showed it, and
+sez I, for he wuz a liftin' another tumbler full onto his lips,
+sez I, "Pause, Josiah Allen, and don't imbibe too much."
+
+"Why," he whispered, "you can drink all you are a mind to for 5
+cents.  I am bound for once, Samantha Allen, to get the worth of
+my money."
+
+And he drinked the tumbler full down at one swoller almost, and
+turned to the weary boy for another.  He looked bad, and eager,
+and sez I, "How many have you drinked?"
+
+Sez he, in a eager, animated whisper, "9."  And he whispered in
+the same axents, "5 times 9 is 45 ; if it had been to a fair, or
+Fourth of July, or anything, it would have cost me 45 cents, and
+if it had been to a church social - lemme see - 9 times 10 is 90.
+It would have cost me a dollar bill!  And here I am a havin' it
+all for 5 cents.  Why," sez he, "I never see the beat on't in my
+life."
+
+And ag'in he drinked a tumbler full down, and motioned to the
+frightened boy for another.
+
+But I took him by the vest and whispered to him, sez I, "Josiah
+Allen, do you want to die, because you can die cheap?  Why," sez
+I, "it will kill you to drink so much."
+
+"But think of the cheapness on't Samantha!  The chance I have of
+getting the worth of my money."
+
+But I whispered back to him in anxus axents and told him, that I
+guessed if funeral expenses wuz added to that 5 cents it wouldn't
+come so cheap, and sez I, "you wont live through many more glasses,
+and you'll see you wont.  Why," sez I, "you are a drowndin' out
+your insides."
+
+He wuz fairly a gettin' white round the mouth, and I finally got
+him to withdraw, though he looked back longingly at the tumblers
+and murmured even after I had got him to the door, that it wuz a
+dumb pity when anybody got a chance to get the worth of their
+money, which wuzn't often, to think they couldn't take advantage
+on it.
+
+And I sez back to him in low deep axents, "There is such a thing
+as bein' too graspin', Josiah Allen."  Sez I, "The children of
+Israel used to want to lay up more manny than they wanted or
+needed, and it spilte on their hands."  And sez I, "you see if it
+haint jest so with you; you have been in too great haste to enrich
+yourself, and you'll be sorry for it, you see if you haint."
+
+And he was.  Though he uttered language I wouldn't wish to repeat,
+about the children of Israel and about me for bringin' of 'em up.
+But the man wuz dethly sick.  Why he had drinked 11 tumblers full,
+and I trembled to think what would have follered on, and ensued,
+if I hadn't interfered.  As it wuz, he wuz confined to our abode
+for the rest of the day.
+
+But I wouldn't have Josiah Allen blamed more than is due for this
+little incedent, for it only illustrates a pervailin' trait in
+men's nater, and sometimes wimmen's - a too great desire to amass
+sudden riches, and when opportunity offers, burden themselves with
+useless and wearysome and oft-times painful gear.
+
+They don't need it but seeing they have a chance to get it cheap,
+"dog cheap " as the poet observes, why they weight themselves down
+with it, and then groan under the burden of unnecessary and wearin'
+wealth.  This is a deep subject, deep as the well from which my
+companion drinked, and nearly drinked himself into a untimely grave.
+
+Men heap up more riches than they can enjoy and then groan and
+rithe under the taxes, the charity given, the envy, the noteriety,
+the glare, and the glitter, the crowd of fortune-hunters and
+greedy hangers-on, and the care and anxiety.  They orniment the
+high front of their houses with the paint, the gildin', the
+fashion, and the show of enormous wealth, and while the crowd of
+fashion-seekers and fortune-hunters pour in and out of the lofty
+doorway they set out on the back stoop a groanin' and a sithin' at
+the cares and sleepless anxietes of their big wealth, and then
+they git up and go down street and try their best to heap up more
+treasure to groan over.
+
+And wimmen now, when wuz there ever a woman who could resist a
+good bargain?  Her upper beauro draws may be a runnin' over with
+laces and ribbons, but let her see a great bargain sold for
+nothin' almost, and where is the female woman that can resist
+addin' to that already too filled up beauro draw.
+
+A baby, be he a male, or be he a female child, when he has got a
+appel in both hands, will try to lay holt of another, if you hold
+it out to him.  It is human nater.  Josiah must not be considered
+as one alone in layin' up more riches than he needed.  He suffered,
+and I also, for sech is the divine law of love, that if one member
+of the family suffers, the other members suffer also, specially
+when the sufferin' member is impatient and voyalent is his distress,
+and talks loud and angry at them who truly are not to blame.
+
+Now I didn't make the springs nor I wuzn't to blame for their
+bein' discovered in the first place.  But Josiah laid it to me.
+And though I tried to make him know that it wuz a Injun that
+discovered 'em first, he wouldn't gin in and seemed to think they
+wouldn't have been there if it hadn't been for me.
+
+I hated to hear him go on so.  And in the cause of Duty, I brung
+up Sir William Johnson and others.  But he lay there on the lounge,
+and kep' his face turned resolute towards the wall, in a dretful
+oncomfertable position (sech wuz his temper of mind), and said,
+he never had heard of them, nor the springs nuther, and shouldn't
+if it hadn't been for me.
+
+Why, sez I, "A Injun brought Sir William Johnson here on his
+back."
+
+"Wall," sez he, cross as a bear, "that is the way you'll have to
+take me back, if you go on in this way much longer."
+
+"In what way, Josiah?" sez I.
+
+"Why a findin' springs and draggin' a man off to 'em, and makin'
+him drink."
+
+"Why, Josiah Allen," sez I, "I told you not to drink - don't you
+remember?"
+
+"No!  I don't remember nuthin', nor don't want to.  I want to go
+to sleep!" sez he, snappish as anything, so I went out and let him
+think if he wanted to, that I made the Springs, and the Minerals,
+and the Gysers, and the Spoutin' Rock, and everything.  Good land!
+I knew I didn't; but I had to rest under the unkind insinnuation.
+Such is some of the trials of pardners.
+
+But Josiah waked up real clever.  And I brung him up some delicate
+warm toast and some fragrant tea, and his smile on me wuz dretful
+good-natured, almost warm.  And I forgot all his former petulence
+and basked in the rays of love and happiness that beamed on me out
+of the blue sky of my companion's eyes.  The clear blue sky that
+held two stars, to which my heart turned.
+
+Such is some of the joys of pardners with which the world don't
+meddle with, nor can't destroy.
+
+But to resoom.  Ardelia sot down awhile in our room before she
+went back to her boardin' house.  I see she wuz a writin' for she
+had a long lead pencil in her right hand and occasionally she
+would lean her forrerd down upon it, in deep thought, and before
+she went, she slipped the verses into my hand.
+
+Sez I, a lookin' over my specks at Ardelia after I had finished
+readin' the verses: "What does 'ron' mean?  I never heerd of that
+word before, nor knew there wuz sech a one."
+
+Sez she, "I meant ran, but I s'pose it is a poetical license to
+say 'ron,' don't you think so?"
+
+"Oh, yes," sez I, "I s'pose so, I don't know much about licenses,
+nor don't want to, they are suthin' I never believed in.  But,"
+sez I, for I see she looked red and overcasted by my remarks, "I
+don't s'pose it will make any difference in a 100 years whether
+you say ran or ron."
+
+But sez I, "Ardelia, it is a hot day, and I wouldn't write any
+more if I wuz in your place.  If you should heat your bra-, the
+upper part of your head, you might not get over it for some time."
+
+"But," sez she, "you have told me sometimes to stop on account of
+cold weather."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "most any kind of weather is hard on some kinds of
+poetry."  Sez I, "Poetry is sunthin' that takes particular kinds
+of folks and weather to be successful."  Sez I, "It is sunthin'
+that can't be tampered with with impunity by Christians or world's
+people.  It is a kind of a resky thing to do, and I wouldn't write
+any more to-day, Ardelia."
+
+And she heard to me and after a settin' a while with us, she went
+back to Mr. Pixley's.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+JOSIAH AND SAMANTHA TAKE A LONG WALK.
+
+
+Wall, we hadn't been to Saratoga long before Aunt Polly Pixley
+came over to see us, for Aunt Polly had been as good as her word
+and had come to Saratoga, to her 2d cousins, the Mr. Pixley'ses,
+where Ardelia wuz a stopping.  Ardelia herself is a distant
+relation to Aunt Polly, quite distant, about 40 or 50 miles
+distant when they are both to home.
+
+Wall, the change in Aunt Polly is wonderful, perfectly wonderful.
+She don't look like the same woman.
+
+She took her knittin' work and come in the forenoon, for a all
+day's visit, jest as she wuz used to in the country, good old soul
+- and I took her right to my room and done well by her, and we
+talked considerable about other wimmen, not runnin' talk, but good
+plain talk.
+
+She thinks a sight of the Saratoga water, and well she may, if
+that is what has brung her up, for she wuz always sick in
+Jonesville, kinder bedrid.  And when she sot out for Saratoga she
+had to have a piller to put on the seat behind her to sort a prop
+her up (hen's feather).
+
+And now, she told me she got up early every mornin' and walked
+down to the spring for a drink of the water - walked afoot.  And
+she sez, "It is astonishin' how much good that water is a doin'
+me; for," sez she, "when I am to home I don't stir out of the
+house from one day's end to the other; and here," sez she, "I set
+out doors all day a'most, a listenin' to the music in the park
+mornin' and evenin' I hear every strain on't."
+
+Aunt Polly is the greatest one for music I ever see, or hearn on.
+And I sez to her, "Don't you believe that one great thing that is
+helpin' you, is bein' where you are kep' gay and cheerful, - by
+music and good company; and bein' out so much in the sunshine and
+pure air."  (Better air than Saratoga has got never wuz made; that
+is my opinion and Josiah's too.)  And sez I, "I lay a good deal to
+that air."
+
+"No," she said, "it wuz the water."
+
+Sez I, "The water is good, I don't make no doubts on't."  But I
+continued calmly - for though I never dispute, I do most always
+maintain my opinion - and I sez again calmly, "There has been a
+great change in you for the better, sense you come here, Miss
+Pixley.  But some on't I lay to your bein' where things are so
+much more cheerful and happyfyin'.  You say you haint heerd a
+strain of music except a base viol for over 14 years before you
+come here.  And though base viols if played right may be
+melodious, yet Sam Pixley's base viol wuz a old one, and sort a
+cracked and grumbly in tone, and he wuzn't much of a player
+anyway, and to me, base viols always sounded kinder base anyway."
+
+And sez I, "Don't you believe a gettin' out of your little low
+dark rooms, shaded by Pollard willers and grave stuns, and gettin'
+out onto a place where you can heer sweet music from mornin' till
+night, a liftin' you up and makin' you happier - don't you believe
+that has sunthin' to do with your feelin' so much better - that
+and the pure sweet air of the mountains comin' down and bein'
+softened and enriched by the breath of the valley, and the minerals,
+makin' a balmy atmosphere most full of balm - I lay a good deal to
+that."
+
+"Oh no," sez she, "it is the water."
+
+"Yes," sez I, in a very polite way, - I will be polite, "the water
+is good, first rate."
+
+But at that very minute, word come to her that she had company,
+and she sot sail homewards immegetly, and to once.
+
+And now I don't care anything for the last word, some wimmen do,
+but I don't.  But I sez to her, as I watched her a goin' down the
+stairway, steppin' out like a girl almost, sez I, "How well you do
+seem, Aunt Polly; and I lay a good deal on't to that air."
+
+Now who would have thought she would speak out from the bottom of
+the stairway and say, "No, it is the water?"
+
+Wall, the water is good, there haint no doubt, and anyway, through
+the water and the air, and bein' took out of her home cares, and
+old surroundin's onto a brght happy place, the change in Polly
+Pixley is sunthin' to be wondered at.
+
+Yes, the water is good.  And it is dretful smart, knowin' water
+too.  Why, wouldn't anybody think that when it all comes from the
+same place, or pretty nigh the same place anyway, that they would
+get kinder flustrated and mixed up once in a while?
+
+But they don't.  These hundreds and thousands of years, and I
+don't know how much longer, they have kep' themselves separate
+from each other, livin' nigh neighbors there down under the
+ground, but never neighborin' with each other, or intermarryin' in
+each other's families.  No, they have kep' themselves apart,
+livin' exclosive down below and bubblin' up exclosive.
+
+They know how to make each other keep their proper distance, and I
+s'pose through all the centuries to come they will bubble up,
+right side by side, entirely different from each other.
+
+Curius, hain't it?  Dretful smart, knowin' waters they be, fairly
+sparklin' and flashin' with light and brightness, and intelligence.
+They are for the healin' and refreshin' of ,the nations, and the
+nations are all here this summer, a bein' healed by 'em.  But still
+I lay a good deal to that air.
+
+Amongst the things that Aunt Polly told me about wimmen that day,
+wuz this, that Ardelia Tutt had got a new Bo, Bial Flamburg, by
+name.
+
+She said Mr. Flamburg had asked Ardelia's 3d cousin to introduce
+him to her, and from that time his attentions to her had been
+unremittent, voyalent, and close.  She said that to all human
+appearance he wuz in love with her from his hat band down to his
+boots and she didn't know what the result would be, though she
+felt that the situation wuz dangerus, and more'n probable Abram
+Gee had more trouble ahead on him.  (Aunt Polly jest worships
+Abram Gee, jest as everybody duz that gets to know him well.)
+And I too, felt that the situation wuz dubersome.  For Ardelia I
+knew wuz one of the soft little wimmen that has got to have men
+a trailin' round after 'em; and her bein' so uncommon tender
+hearted, and Mr. Flamburg so deep in love, I feared the result.
+
+Wall, I wuz jest a thinkin' of this that day after dinner when
+Josiah proposed a walk, so we sot out.  He proposed we should walk
+through the park, so we did.  The air wuz heavenly sweet and that
+park is one of the most restful and beautiful places this side of
+Heaven, or so it seemed to us that pleasant afternoon.  The music
+was very soft and sweet that day, sweet with a undertone of
+sadness, some like a great sorrowful soul in a beautiful body.
+
+The balmy south wind whispered through the branches of the bendin'
+trees on the hill where we sot.  The light was a shinin' and a
+siftin' down through the green leaves, in a soft golden haze, and
+the music seemed to go right up into them shadowy, shinin' pathways
+of golden misty light, a climbin' up on them shadowy steps of mist
+and gold, and amber, up, up into the soft depths of the blue
+overhead - up to the abode of melody and love.
+
+Down the hill in the beautiful little valley, all amongst the
+fountains and windin' walks and white statutes, and green, green,
+grass, little children wuz a playin'.  Sweet little toddlers, jest
+able to walk about, and bolder spirits, though small, a trudgin'
+about with little canes, and jumpin' round, and havin' a good
+time.
+
+Little boys and little girls (beautiful creeters, the hull on
+'em), for if their faces, every one on 'em, wuzn't jest perfect!
+They all had the beauty of childhood and happiness.  And crowds of
+older folks wuz there.  And some happy young couples, youths and
+maidens, wuz a settin' round, and a wanderin' off by themselves,
+and amongst them we see the form of Ardelia, and a young man by
+her side.
+
+She wuz a leanin' on the stun railin' that fences in the trout
+pond.  She wuz evidently a lookin' down pensively at the shinin'
+dartin' figures of the trout, a movin' round down in the cool
+waters.
+
+I wuzn't nigh enough to 'em to see really how her companion
+looked, but even at that distance I recognized a certain air and
+atmosphere a surroundin' Ardelia that I knew meant poetry.
+
+And Josiah recognized it too, and he sez to me, "We may as well go
+round the hill and out to the road that way," sez he, (a pointin'
+to the way furthest from Ardelia) "and we may as well be a goin'."
+
+That man abhors poetry.
+
+Wall, we wandered down into the high way and havin' most the hull
+afternoon before us, we kinder sauntered round amongst the stores
+that wuz pretty nigh to where we wuz.  There is some likely good
+lookin' stores kep' by the natives, as they call the stiddy
+dwellers in Saratoga.  Good lookin' respectable stores full of
+comfort and consolation, for the outer or inner man or woman.  (I
+speak it in a mortal sense).
+
+But with the hundred thousand summer dwellers, who flock here with
+the summer birds, and go out before the swallers go south, there
+comes lots of summer stores, and summer shops, and picture
+studios, etc., etc.  Like big summer bird's-nests, all full and a
+runnin' over with summer wealth, to be blowed down by the autumn
+winds.  These shops are full of everything elegant and beautiful
+and useful.  The most gorgeous vases and plaks and chiner ware of
+every description and color, and books, and jewelry, and rugs, and
+fans, and parasols, and embroideries, and laces, and etc., etc.,
+etc.
+
+And one shop seemed to be jest full of drops of light, light and
+sunshine, crystalized in golden, clear, tinted amber.  There wuz a
+young female statute a standin' up in the winder of that store
+with her hands outstretched and jest a drippin' with the great
+glowin' amber drops.  Some wuz a hangin' over her wings for she
+was a young flyin' female.  And I thought to myself it must be she
+would fly better with all that golden light a drippin' about her.
+
+Josiah liked her looks first rate.  And he liked the looks of some
+of the pictures extremely.  There wuz lots of places all full of
+pictures.  A big collection of water colors, though as Josiah said
+and well said, How they could get so many colors out of water wuz
+a mystery to him.
+
+But my choice out of all the pictures I see, wuz a little one
+called "The Sands of Dee."  It wuz "Mary a callin' the cattle
+home."  The cruel treacherus water wuz a risin' about her round
+bare ankles as she stood there amongst the rushes with her little
+milk-bucket on her arm.
+
+Her pretty innocent face wuz a lookin' off into the shadows, and
+the last ray of sunset was a fallin' on her.  Maybe it wuz the
+pity on't that struck so hard as I looked at it, to know that the
+"cruel, crawli'n foam" wuz so soon to creep over the sweet young
+face and round limbs.  And there seemed to be a shadow of the
+comin' fate, a sweepin' in on the gray mist behind her.
+
+I stood for some time, and I don't know but longer, a lookin' at
+it, my Josiah a standin' placidly behind me, a lookin' over my
+shoulder and enjoyin' of it too, till the price wuz mentioned.
+But at that fearful moment, my pardner seized me by the arm, and
+walked me so voyalently out of that store and down the walk that I
+did not find and recover myself till we stood at the entrance to
+Philey street.
+
+And I wuz so out of breath, by his powerful speed, that she didn't
+look nateral to me, I hardly recognized Philey.  But Josiah
+hurried me down Philey and wanted to get my mind offen Mary Dee I
+knew, for he says as we come under a sign hangin' down over the
+road, "Horse Exchange," sez he, "What do you say, Samantha, do you
+spose I could change off the old mair, for a camel or sunthin'?
+How would you like a camel to ride?"
+
+I looked at him in speechless witherin' silence, and he went on
+hurridly, "It would make a great show in Jonesville, wouldn't it,
+to see us comin' to meetin' on a camel, or to see us ridin' in a
+cutter drawed by one.  I guess I'll see about it, some other
+time."
+
+And he went on hurridly, and almost incoherently as we see another
+sign, over the road - oh! how vollubly he did talk - "Quick,
+Livery."
+
+"I hate to see folks so dumb conceeted!  Now I don't spose that
+man has got any hosses much faster than the old mair."
+
+"'Wing's!'  Shaw!  I don't believe no such thing - a livery on
+wings.  I don't believe a word on't.  And you wouldn't ketch me on
+one on 'em, if they had!"
+
+"'Yet Sing!"' sez he, a lookin' accost the street into a laundry
+house.  "What do I care if you do sing?  'Taint of much account if
+you do any way.  I sing sometimes, I yet sing," says he.
+
+"Sing," sez I in neerly witherin' tone.  "I'd love to hear you
+sing, I haint yet and I've lived with you agoin' on 30 years."
+
+"Wall, if you haint heerd me, it is because you are deef," sez he.
+
+But that is jest the way he kep' on, a hurryin' me along, and a
+talkin' fast to try to get the price of that picture out of my
+head.  Anon, and sometimes oftener, we would come to the word in
+big letters on signs, or on the fence, or the sides of barns,
+"Pray."  And sometimes it would read, "Pray for my wife!"  And
+Josiah every time he came to the words would stop and reflect on
+'em.
+
+"`Pray!'  What business is it of yourn, whether I pray or not?
+`Pray for my wife!'  That haint none of your business."
+
+Sez he, a shakin' his fist at the fence, "'Taint likely I should
+have a wife without prayin' for her.  She needs it bad enough,"
+sez he once, as he stood lookin' at it.
+
+I gin him a strange look, and he sez, "You wouldn't like it, would
+you, if I didn't pray for you?"
+
+"No," sez I, "and truly as you say, the woman who is your wife
+needs prayer, she needs help, morn half the time she duz."
+
+He looked kinder dissatisfied at the way I turned it, but he sez,
+"'Plumbin' done here!'"
+
+"I'd love to know where they are goin' to plum.  I don't see no
+sign of plum trees, nor no stick to knock 'em off with."  And agin
+he sez, "You would make a great 'fuss, Samantha, if I should say
+what is painted up right there on that cross piece.  You would say
+I wuz a swearin'."
+
+Sez I coldly, (or as cold as I could with my blood heated by the
+voyalence and rapidity of the walk he had been a leadin' me,)
+"There is a Van in front of it.  Van Dam haint swearin'."
+
+"You would say it wuz if I used it," sez he reproachfully.  "If I
+should fall down on the ice, or stub my toe, and trip up on the
+meetin' house steps, and I should happen to mention the name of
+that street about the same time, you would say I wuz a swearin'."
+
+I did not reply to him; I wouldn't.  And ag'in he hurried me on'ards
+by some good lookin' bildin's, and trees, and tavrens, and cottages,
+and etc., etc., and we come to Caroline street, and Jane, and
+Matilda, and lots of wimmen's names.
+
+And Josiah sez, "I'll bet the man that named them streets wuz love
+sick!"
+
+But he wuzn't no such thing.  It was a father that owned the land,
+and laid out the streets, and named 'em for his daughters.  Good
+old creeter!  I wuzn't goin' to have him run at this late day, and
+run down his own streets too.
+
+But ag'in Josiah hurried me on'ards.  And bimeby we found
+ourselves a standin' in front of a kind of a lonesome lookin'
+house, big and square, with tall pillows in front.  It wuz a
+standin' back as if it wuz a kinder a drawin' back from company,
+in a square yard all dark and shady with tall trees.  And it all
+looked kinder dusky, and solemn like.  And a bystander a standin'
+by told us that it wuz "ha'nted."
+
+Josiah pawed at it, and shawed at the idee of a gost.
+
+But I sez, "There! that is the only thing Saratoga lacked to make
+her perfectly interestin', and that is a gost!"
+
+But agin Josiah pawed at the idee, and sez, "There never wuz such
+a thing as a gost! and never will be."  And sez he, "what an
+extraordenary idiot anybody must be to believe in any sech thing."
+And ag'in he looked very skernful and high-headed, and once ag'in
+he shawed.
+
+And I kep' pretty middlin' calm and serene and asked the
+bystander, when the gost ha'nted, and where?
+
+And he said, it opened doors and blowed out lights mostly, and
+trampled up stairs.
+
+"Openin', and blowin', and tramplin'," sez I dreamily.
+
+"Yes," sez the man, "that's what it duz."
+
+And agin Josiah shawed loud.  And agin I kep' calm, and sez I,
+"I'd give a cent to see it."  And sez I, "Do you suppose it would
+blow out and trample if we should go in?"
+
+But Josiah grasped holt of my arm and sez, "'Taint safe! my dear
+Samantha! don't le's go near the house."
+
+"Why? " sez I coldly, "you say there haint no sech thing as a
+gost, what are you afraid on?"
+
+His teeth wuz fairly chatterin'.  "Oh! there might be spiders
+there, or mice, it haint best to go."
+
+I turned silently round and started on, for my companion's looks
+was pitiful in the extreme.  But I merely observed this, as we
+wended onwards, "I have always noticed this, Josiah Allen, that
+them that shaw the most at sech things, are the ones whose teeth
+chatter when they come a nigh 'em, showin' plain that the shawers
+are really the ones that believe in 'em."
+
+"My teeth chattered," sez he, "because my gooms ache."
+
+"Well," sez I, "the leest said the soonest mended."  And we went
+on fast ag'in by big houses and little, and boardin' houses, and
+boardin' houses, and boardin' houses, and tavrens, and tavrens,
+and he kept me a walkin' till my feet wuz most blistered.
+
+I see what his aim wuz; I had recognized it all the hull time.
+
+But as we went up the stairway into our room, perfectly tuckered
+out, both on us, I sez to him, in weary axents, "That picture wuz
+cheap enough, for the money, wuzn't it?"
+
+He groaned aloud.  And sech is my love for that man, that the
+minute I heard that groan I immegetly added, "Though I hadn't no
+idee of buyin' it, Josiah."
+
+Immegetly he smiled warmly, and wuz very affectionate in his
+demeener to me for as much as two hours and a half.  Sech is the
+might of human love.
+
+His hurryin' me over them swelterin' and blisterin' streets, and
+showin' me all the beauty and glory of the world, and his
+conversation had no effect, skercely on my mind.  But what them
+hours of frenzied effert could not accomplish, that one still,
+small groan did.  I love that man.  I almost worship him, and he
+me, vise versey, and the same.
+
+We found that Ardelia Tutt had been to see us in our absence.  She
+had been into our room I see, for she had dropped one of her mits
+there.  And the chambermaid said she had been in and waited for us
+quite a spell - the young man a waitin' below on the piazza, so I
+s'posed.
+
+I expect Ardelia wanted to show him off to us and I myself wuz
+quite anxus to see him, feelin' worried and oncomfertable about
+Abram Gee and wantin' to see if this young chap wuz anywhere nigh
+as good as Abram.
+
+Well about a hour after we came back, Josiah missed his glasses he
+reads with.  And we looked all over the house for 'em, and under
+the bed, and on the ceilin', and through our trunks and bandboxes,
+and all our pockets, and in the Bible, and Josiah's boots, and
+everywhere.  And finely, after givin' 'em up as lost, the idee
+come to us that they might possibly have ketched on the fringe of
+Ardelia's shawl, and so rode home with her on it.
+
+So we sent one of the office-boys home with her mit and asked her
+if she had seen Josiah's glasses.  And word come back by the boy
+that she hadn't seen 'em, and she sent word to me to look on my
+pardner's head for 'em, and sure enough there we found 'em, right
+on his foretop, to both of our surprises.
+
+She sent also by the boy a poem she had wrote that afternoon, and
+sent word how sorry she wuz I wuzn't to home to see Mr. Flamburg.
+But I see him only a day or two after that, and I didn't like his
+looks a mite.
+
+But he said, and stuck to it, that his father owned a large bank,
+that he wuz a banker, and a doin' a heavy business.
+
+Wall, that raised him dretfully in Ardelia's eyes; she owned up to
+me that it did.  She owned to me that she lead always thought she
+would love to be a Banker's Bride.  She thought it sounded rich.
+She said, "banker sounded so different from baker."
+
+I sez to her coolly, that "it wuz only a difference of one letter,
+and I never wuz much of a one to put the letter N above any of the
+others, or to be haughty on havin' it added to, or diminished from
+my name."
+
+But she kep' on a goin' with him.  She told me it wuz real
+romanticle the way he got aquanted with her.  He see her onbeknown
+to her one day, when she wuz a writin' a poem on one of the
+benches in the park.
+
+"A Poem on a Bench!"
+
+She wuz a settin' on the bench, and a writin' about it, she was a
+writin' on the bench in two different ways.  Curius, haint it?
+
+But to resoom.  He immegetly fell in love with her.  And he got a
+feller who wuz a boardin' to his boardin' place to interduce him
+to Ardelia's relative, Mr. Pixley, and Mr. Pixley interduced him
+to Ardelia.  He told Ardelia's relatives the same story -  That
+his father wuz a banker, that he owned a bank and wuz doin' a
+heavy business.
+
+Wall, I watched that young chap, and watched him close, and I see
+there wuz one thing about him that could be depended on, he wuz
+truthful.
+
+He seemed almost morbid on the subject, and would dispute himself
+half a hour, to get a thing or a story he wuz tellin' jest exactly
+right.  But he drinked; that I know for I know the symptoms.
+Coffee can't blind the eyes of her that waz once Smith, nor
+peppermint cast a mist before 'em.  My nose could have took its
+oath, if noses wuz ever put onto a bar of Justice - my nose would
+have gin its firm testimony that Bial Flamburg drinked.
+
+And there wuz that sort of a air about him, that I can't describe
+exactly - a sort of a half offish, half familier and wholly
+disagreeable mean, that can be onderstood but not described.  No,
+you can't picture that liniment, but you can be affected by it.
+Wall, Bial had it.
+
+And I kep' on a not likin' him, and kep' stiddy onwards a likin'
+Abram Gee.  I couldn't help it, nor did'nt want to.  And I looked
+out constant to ketch him in some big story that would break him
+right down in Ardelia's eyes, for I knew if she had been brought
+up on any one commandment more'n another, it wuz the one ag'inst
+lyin'.  She hated lyin'.
+
+She had been brought up on the hull of the commandments but on
+that one in particeler; she wuz brung up sharp but good.  But not
+one lie could I ketch him in.  And he stuck to it, that his father
+wuz a banker and doin' a heavy business.
+
+Wall, it kep' on, she a goin' with him through ambition, for I see
+plain, by signs I knoo, that she didn't love him half as well as
+she did Abram.  And I felt bad, dretful bad, to set still and see
+Ambition ondoin' of her.  For oft and oft she would speak to me of
+Bial's father's bank and the heft of the business he wuz a doin'.
+
+And I finally got so worked up in my mind that I gin a sly hint to
+Abram Gee, that if he ever wanted to get Ardelia Tutt, he had
+better make a summer trip to Saratoga.  I never told Ardelia what
+I had done, but trusted to a overrulin' destiny, that seems to
+enrap babys, and lunatiks, and soft little wimmen, when their
+heads get kinder turned by a man, and to Abram's honest face when
+she should compare it with Bial Flamburg's, and to Abram's pure,
+sweet breath with that mixture of stale cigars, tobacco, beer, and
+peppermint.
+
+But Abram wrote back to me that his mother wuz a lyin' at the
+p'int of death with a fever - that his sister Susan wuz sick a bed
+with the same fever and couldn't come a nigh her and he couldn't
+leave what might be his mother's death-bed.  And he sez, if
+Ardelia had forgot him in so short a time, mebby it wuz the best
+thing he could do, to try and forget her.  Anyway, he wouldn't
+leave his dying mother for anything or anybody.
+
+That wuz Abram Gee all over, a doin' his duty every time by bread
+and humanity.  But he added a postscript and it wuz wrote in a
+agitated hand - that jest as soon as his mother got so he could
+leave her, he should come to Saratoga.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+JOSIAH 'S FLIRTATIONS.
+
+
+They say there is a sight of flirtin' done at Saratoga.  I didn't
+hear so much about it as Josiah did, naturally there are things
+that are talked of more amongst men than women.  Night after night
+he would come home and tell me how fashionable it wuz, and pretty
+soon I could see that he kinder wanted to follow the fashion.
+
+I told him from the first on't that he'd better let it entirely
+alone.  Says I, "Josiah Allen, you wouldn't never carry it through
+successful if you should undertake it -- and then think of the
+wickedness on't."
+
+But he seemed sot.  He said "it wuz more fashionable amongst
+married men and wimmen, than the more single ones," he said "it
+wuz dretful fashionable amongst pardners."`
+
+"Wall," says I, "I shall have, nothin' to do with it, and I advise
+you, if you know when you are well off, to let it entirely alone."
+
+"Of course," says he, fiercely, "You needn't have nothin' to do
+with it.  It is nothin' you would want to foller up.  And I would
+ruther see you sunk into the ground, or be sunk myself, than to
+see you goin' into it.  Why," says he, savagely, "I would tear a
+man lim from lim, if I see him a tryin' to flirt with you."
+(Josiah Allen worships me.)  "But," says he, more placider like,
+"men have to do things sometimes, that they know is too hard for
+their pardners to do -- men sometimes feel called upon to do
+things that their pardners don't care about -- that they haint
+strong enough to tackle.  Wimmen are fragile creeters anyway."
+
+"Oh, the fallacy of them arguments -- and the weakness of 'em.
+
+But I didn't say nothin' only to reiterate my utterance, that "if
+he went into it, he would have to foller it up alone, that he
+musn't expect any help from me."
+
+"Oh no!" says he.  "Oh! certainly not."
+
+His tone wuz very genteel, but there seemed to be sumthin' strange
+in it.  And I looked at him pityin'ly over my specks.  The hull
+idea on it wuz extremely distasteful to me, this talk about
+flirtin', and etc., at our ages, and with our stations in the
+Jonesville meetin' house, and with our grandchildren.
+
+But I see from day to day that he wuz a hankerin' after it, and I
+almost made up my mind that I should have to let him make a trial,
+knowin' that experience wuz the best teacher, and knowin' that his
+morals wuz sound, and he wuz devoted to me, and only went into the
+enterprize because he thought it wuz fashionable.
+
+There wuz a young English girl a boardin' to the same place we
+did.  She dressed some like a young man, carried a cane, etc.  But
+she wuz one of the upper 10, and wuz as pretty as a picture, and I
+see Josiah had kinder sot his eyes on her as bein' a good one to
+try his experiment with.  He thought she wuz beautiful.  But good
+land!  I didn't care.  I liked her myself.  But I could see, though
+he couldn't see it, that she wuz one of the girls who would flirt
+with the town pump, or the meetin' house steeple, if she couldn't
+get nobody else to flirt with.  She wuz born so, but I suppose
+ontirely unbeknown to her when she wuz born.
+
+Wall, Josiah Allen would set and look at her by the hour --
+dretful admirin'.  But good land!  I didn't care.  I loved to look
+at her myself.  And then too I had this feelin' that his morals
+wuz sound.  But after awhile, I could see, and couldn't help
+seein', that he wuz a tryin' in his feeble way to flirt with her.
+And I told him kindly, but firmly, "that it wuz somethin' that I
+hated to see a goin' on."
+
+But he says, "Well, dumb it all, Samantha, if anybody goes to a
+fashionable place, they ort to try to be fashionable.  'Taint
+nothin' I want to do, and you ort to know it."
+
+And I says in pityin' axents but firm, "If you don't want to,
+Josiah, I wouldn't, fashion or no fashion."
+
+But I see I couldn't convince him, and there happened to be a
+skercity of men jest then -- and he kep' it up, and it kep' me on
+the key veav, as Maggie says, when she is on the tenter hooks of
+suspense.
+
+I felt bad to see it go on, not that I wuz jealous, no, my foretop
+lay smooth from day to day, not a jealous hair in it, not one --
+but I felt sorry for my companion.  I see that while the endurin'
+of it wuz hard and tejus for him (for truly he was not a addep at
+the business; it come tuff, feerful tuff on him), the endin' wuz
+sure to be harder.  And I tried to convince him, from a sense of
+duty, that she wuz makin' fun of him -- he had told me lots of the
+pretty things she had said to him -- and out of principle I told
+him that she didn't mean one word of 'em.  But I couldn't convince
+him, and as is the way of pardners, after I had sot the reasen and
+the sense before him, and he wouldn't hear to me, why then I had
+to set down and bear it.  Such is some of the trials of pardners?
+
+Wall, it kep' agoin' on, and a goin' on, and I kep' a hatin' to
+see it, for if anybody has got to flirt, which I am far from
+approvin' of, but if I have got to see it a goin' on, I would fain
+see it well done, and Josiah's efforts to flirt wuz like an effort
+of our old mair to play a tune on the melodian, no grace in it, no
+system, nor comfort to him, nor me.
+
+I s'pose the girl got some fun out of it; I hope she did, for if
+she didn't it wuz a wearisome job all round.
+
+Wall, a week or so rolled on, and it wuz still in progress.  And
+one day an old friend of ours, Miss Ezra Balch, from the east part
+of Jonesville, come to see me.  She come to Saratoga for the
+rheumatiz, and wuz gettin' well fast, and Ezra was gettin' entirely
+cured of biles, for which he had come, carbunkles.
+
+Wall, she invited Josiah and me to take a ride with 'em, and we
+both accepted of it, and at the appointed time I wuz ready to the
+minute, down on the piazza, with my brown cotton gloves on, and my
+mantilly hung gracefully over my arm.  But at the last minute,
+Josiah Allen said "he couldn't go."
+
+I says "Why can't you go?"
+
+"Oh," he says, kinder drawin' up his collar, and smoothin' down
+his vest, "Oh, I have got another engagement."
+
+He looked real high-headed, and I says to him:
+
+"Josiah Allen didn't you promise Druzilla Balch that you would go
+with her and Ezra to-day?"
+
+"Wall yes," says he, "but I can't."
+
+"Why not?" says I.
+
+"Wall, Samantha, though they are well meanin', good people, they
+haint what you may call fashionable, they haint the upper 10."
+
+Says I, "Josiah Allen you have fell over 15 cents in my estimation,
+sense we have begun talkin', you won't go with 'em because they
+haint fashionable.  They are good, honest Christian Methodists,
+and have stood by you and me many a time, in times of trouble,
+and now," says I, "you turn against 'em because they haint
+fashionable."  Says I, "Josiah Allen where do you think you'll
+go to?"
+
+"Oh, probable down through Congress Park, and we may walk up as
+fur as the Indian Encampment.  I feel kinder mauger to-day, and my
+corns ache feerful."  (His boots wuz that small that they wuz
+sights to behold, sights!)  "We probably shan't walk fur," says
+he.
+
+I see how 'twuze in a minute.  That English girl had asked him to
+walk with her, and my pardner had broken a solemn engagement with
+Ezra and Druzilla Balch to go a walkin' with her.  I see how
+'twuz, but I sot in silence and one of the big rockin' chairs, and
+didn't say nothin'.
+
+Finally he says, with a sort of a anxious look onto his foreward:
+
+"You don't feel bad, do you Samantha?  You haint jealous, are
+you?"
+
+"Jealous!" says I, a lookin' him calmly over from head to feet --
+it wuz a witherin' look, and yet pitiful, that took in the hull
+body and soul, and weighed 'em in the balances of common sense,
+and pity, and justice.  It wuz a look that seemed to envelop him
+all to one time, and took him all in, his bald head, his vest, and
+his boots, and his mind (what he had), and his efforts to be
+fashionable, and his trials and tribulations at it, and -- and
+everything.  I give him that one long look, and then I says:
+
+"Jealous?  No, I haint jealous."
+
+Then silence rained again about us, and Josiah spoke out (his
+conscience was a troublin' him), and he says:
+
+"You know in fashionable life, Samantha, you have to do things
+which seem unkind, and Ezra, though a good, worthy man, can't
+understand these things as I do."
+
+Says I: "Josiah Allen, you'll see the day that you'll be sorry for
+your treatment of Druzilla Balch, and Ezra."
+
+"Oh wall," says he, pullin' up his collar, "I'm bound to be
+fashionable.  While I can go with the upper 10, it is my duty and
+my privilege to go with 'em, and not mingle in the lower classes
+like the Balches."
+
+Says I firmly, "You look out, or some of them 10 will be the death
+of you, and you may see the day that you will be glad to leave
+'em, the hull 10 of em, and go back to Druzilla and Ezra Balch."
+
+But what more words might have passed between us, wuz cut short by
+the arrival of Ezra and Druzilla in a good big carriage, with Miss
+Balch on the back seat, and Ezra acrost from her, and a man up in
+front a drivin'.  It wuz a good lookin' sight, and I hastened down
+the steps, Josiah disappearin' inside jest as quick as he ketched
+sight of their heads.
+
+They asked me anxiously "where Josiah wuz and why he didn't come?"
+And I told 'em, "that Josiah had told me that mornin' that he felt
+manger, and he had some corns that wuz a achin'."
+
+So much wuz truth, and I told it, and then moved off the subject,
+and they seein' my looks, didn't pursue it any further.  They
+proposed to go back to their boardin' place, and take in Deacon
+Balch, Ezra's brother from Chicago, who wuz stayin' there a few
+days to recooperate his energies, and get help for tizick.  So
+they did.  He wuz a widowed man.  Yes, he was the widower of
+Cornelia Balch who I used to know well, a good lookin' and a good
+actin' man.  And he seemed to like my appeerance pretty well,
+though I am fur from bein' the one that ort to say it.
+
+And as we rolled on over the broad beautiful road towards Saratoga
+Lake, I begun to feel better in my mind.
+
+The Deacon wuz edifyin' in conversation, and he thought, and said,
+"that my mind was the heftiest one that he had ever met, and he
+had met hundreds and hundreds of 'em."  He meant it, you could see
+that, he meant every word he said.  And it wuz kind of comfortin'
+to hear the Deacon say so, for I respected the Deacon, and I knew
+he meant just what he said.
+
+He said, and believed, though it haint so, but the Deacon believed
+it, "that I looked younger than I did the day I wuz married."
+
+I told him "I didn't feel so young."
+
+"Wall," he said, "then my looks deceived me, for I looked as
+young, if not younger."
+
+Deacon Balch is a good, kind, Christian man.
+
+His conversation was very edifyin', and he looked kinder good, and
+warm-hearted at me out of his eyes, which wuz blue, some the color
+of my Josiah's.  But alas!  I felt that though some comforted and
+edified by his talk, still, my heart was not there, not there in
+that double buggy with 2 seats, but wuz afur off with my pardner.
+I felt that Josiah Allen wuz a carryin' my heart with him wherever
+he wuz a goin'.  Curious, haint it?  Now you may set and smile,
+and talk, and seem to be enjoyin' yourself first-rate, with
+agreeable personages all around you, and you do enjoy yourself
+with that part of your nater.  But with it all, down deep under
+the laughs, and the bright words, the comfort you get out of the
+answerin' laughs, the gay talk, under it all is the steady
+consciousness that the real self is fur away, the heart, the soul
+is fur away, held by some creeter whether he be high, or whether
+he be low, it don't matter -- there your heart is, a goin' towards
+happiness, or a travellin' towards pain as the case may be --
+curious, haint it?
+
+Wall, Ezra and Druzilla wanted to go to the Sulphur Springs way
+beyend Saratoga Lake, and as the Deacon wuz agreeable, and I also,
+we sot out for it, though, as we all said, it wuz goin' to be a
+pretty long and tegus journey for a hot day.  But we went along
+the broad, beautiful highway, by the high, handsome gates of the
+Racing Park, down, down, by handsome houses and shady woods, and
+fields of bright-colored wild flowers on each side of the road,
+down to the beautiful lake, acrost it over the long bridge, and
+then into the long, cool shadows of the bendin' trees that bend
+over the road on each side, while through the green boughs, jest
+at our side we could ketch a sight of the blue, peaceful waters, a
+lyin' calm and beautiful jest by the side of us -- on, on, through
+the long, sheltered pathway, out into the sunshine for a spell,
+with peaceful fields a layin' about us, and peaceful cattle a
+wanderin' over 'em, and then into the shade agin, till at last we
+see a beautiful mountin', with its head held kinder high, crowned
+with ferns and hemlocks, and its feet washed by the cool water of
+the beautiful lake.
+
+The shadows of this mountin', tree crowned, lay on the smooth,
+placid wave, and a white sail boat wuz a comin' round the side
+on't, and floatin' over the green, crystal branches, and golden
+shadows.  It wuz a fair seen, seen for a moment, and then away we
+went into the green shadows of the woods again, round a corner,
+and here we wuz, at the Sulphur Springs.
+
+It wuz a quiet peaceful spot.  The house looked pleasant, and so
+did the Landlord, and Landlady, and we dismounted and walked
+through a long clean hall, and went out onto a back piazza and sot
+down.  And I thought as I sot there, that I would be glad enough
+to set there, for some time.  Everything looked so quiet and
+serene.  The paths leadin' up the hills in different directions,
+out into the green woods, looked quiet; the pretty, grassy
+backyard leadin' down to the water side looked green and
+peaceable, and around all, and beyond all, wuz the glory of the
+waters.  They lay stretched out beautiful and in heavenly calm,
+and the sun, which wuz low in the West, made a gold path acrost
+'em, where it seemed as if one could walk over only a little ways,
+into Perfect Repose.  The Lake somehow looked like a glowin'
+pavement, it didn't look like water, but it seemed like broad
+fields of azure and palest lavender, and pinky grey, and pearly
+white, and every soft and delicate color that water could be
+crystalized into.  And over all lay the glowin', tender sunset
+skies -- it wuz a fair seen.  And even as I looked on in a almost
+rapped way, the sun come out from behind a soft cloud, and lay on
+the water like a pillow of fire jest as I dream that pillow did,
+that went ahead of my old 4 fathers.
+
+The rest on 'em seemed to be more intent on the lemonade with 2
+straws in 'em.  I didn't make no fuss.  They are nice, clean
+folks, I make no doubt.  I wouldn't make no fuss and tell on the
+hired man -- women of the house have enough to worry 'em anyway.
+But he had dropped some straws into our tumblers, every one on
+'em, I dare presume to say they had been a fillin' straw ticks.  I
+jest took mine out in a quiet way, and throwed 'em to one side.
+The rest on 'em, I see, and it wuz real good in 'em, drinked
+through 'em, as we used to at school.  It wuz real good in
+Druzilla, and Ezra, and also in the Deacon.  It kinder ondeared
+the hull on 'em to me.  I hope this won't be told of, it orto be
+kep -- for he wuz a goodnatured lookin' hired man, black, but not
+to blame for that -- and good land! what is a straw? -- anyway
+they wuz clean.
+
+There wuz some tents sot up there in the back yard, lookin' some
+as I s'pose our old 4 fathers tents did, in the pleasant summer
+times of old.  And I asked a bystander a standin' by, whose tents
+they wuz, and he said they wuz Free Thinkers havin' a convention.
+
+And I says, "How free?"
+
+And he said "they wuz great cases to doubt everything, they
+doubted whether they wuz or not, and if they wuz or when, and if
+so, why?"
+
+And he says, "won't you stay to-night over and attend the meetin'?"
+
+And I says, "What are they goin' to teach tonight?"
+
+And he says, "The Whyness of the What"
+
+I says, "I guess that is too deep a subject for me to tackle," and
+says I, "Don't they believe anything easier than that?"
+
+And he says, "They don't believe anything.  That is their belief
+-- to believe nothin'."
+
+"Nothin'!" says I.
+
+"Yes," says he, "Nothin'."  And, says he, "to-morrer they are
+goin' to prove beyond any question, that there haint any God, nor
+anything, and never wuz anything."
+
+"Be they?" sez I.
+
+"Yes," says he, "and won't you come and be convinced?"
+
+I looked off onto the peaceful waters, onto the hills that lay as
+the mountains did about Jerusalem, onto the pillow of fire that
+seemed to hold in it the flames of that light that had lighted the
+old world onto the mornin' of the new day, -- and one star had
+come out, and stood tremblin' over the brow of the mountain and I
+thought of that star that had riz so long time ago, and had guided
+the three wise men, guided 'em jest alike from their three
+different homes, entirely unbeknown to each other, guidin' 'em to
+the cradle where lay the infant Redeemer of the world, so long
+foretold by bard and prophet.  I looked out onto the heavenly
+glory of the day, and then inside into my heart, that held a faith
+jest as bright and undyin' as the light of that star -- and I
+says, "No, I guess I won't go and be convinced."
+
+Wall, we riz up to go most immediately afterwerds, and the Deacon
+(he is very smart) observed:
+
+"How highly tickled and even highlarious the man seemed in talkin'
+about there not bein' any future."  And he says, "It wuz a good
+deal like a man laughin' and clappin' his hands to see his house
+burn down"
+
+And I sez, "it wuz far wurse, for his home wouldn't stand more'n a
+100 years or so, and this home he wuz a tryin' to destroy, wuz one
+that would last through eternity."  "But," says I, "it hain't
+built by hands, and I guess their hands hain't strong enough to
+tear it down, nor high enough to set fire to it."
+
+And the Deacon says, "Jest so, Miss Allen, you spoke truthfully,
+and eloquent."  (The Deacon is very smart.)
+
+When we got into the buggy to start, the Deacon says, "I would
+like to resoom the conversation with you, Josiah Allen's wife, a
+goin' back."
+
+And Druzilla spoke right out and says, "I will set on the front
+seat by Ezra."  I says, "Oh no, Druzilla, I can hear the Deacon
+from where I sot before."
+
+But the Deacon says, Talkin' loud towards night always offected
+his voice onpleasantly, mebby Druzilla and he had better change
+seats.
+
+Again I demurred.  And then Druzilla said she must set by Ezra,
+she wanted to tell him sumthin' in confidence.
+
+And so it wuz arraigned, for I felt that I wuz not the one to
+come between pardners, no indeed.  The road laid peacefuller and
+beautifuller than ever, or so it seemed under the sunset glory
+that sort o' hung round it.  Jest about half way through the woods
+we met the English girl, a stridin' along alone, each step more'n
+3 feet long, or so it seemed to me.  There wuz a look of health,
+and happy determination on her forwerd as she strided rapidly by.
+
+I would have fain questioned her concernin' my pardner, as she
+strode by, but before I could call out, or begon to her she wuz
+far in the rearwerd, and goin' in a full pressure and in a knot of
+several miles an hour.
+
+Wall, from that minute I felt strange and curious.  And though
+Druzilla and Ezra was agreeable and the Deacon edifyin', I didn't
+seem to feel edified, and the most warm-hearted looks didn't seem
+to warm my heart none, it wuz oppressed with gloomy forebodings
+of, Where wuz my pardner?  They had laid out to set out together.
+Had they sot?  This question was a goverin' me, and the follerin'
+one: If they had sot out together, where wuz my pardner, Josiah
+Allen, now?  As I thought these feerful thoughts, instinctively I
+turned around to see if I could see a trace of his companion in
+the distance.  Yes, I could ketch a faint glimpse of her as she
+wuz mountin' a diclivity, and stood for an instant in sight, but
+long before even, she disopeered agin, for her gait wuz
+tremendous, and at a rate of a good many knots she wuz a goin',
+that I knew.  And the fearful thought would rise, Josiah Allen
+could not go more than half a knot, if he could that.  He wuz a
+slow predestinatur any way, and then his corns was feerful, and
+never could be told -- and his boots had in 'em the elements of
+feerful sufferin'.  It wuz all he could do when he had 'em on to
+hobble down to the spring, and post-office.  Where? where wuz he?
+And she a goin' at the rate of so many knots.
+
+Oh! the agony of them several minutes, while these thoughts wuz
+rampagin through my destracted brain.
+
+Oh! if pardners only knew the agony they bring onto their devoted
+companions, by their onguarded and thoughtless acts, and
+attentions to other females, gin without proper reseerch and
+precautions, it would draw their liniments down into expressions
+of shame and remorse.  Josiah wouldn't have gone with her if he
+had known the number of knots she wuz a goin', no, not one step --
+then why couldn't he have found out the number of them knots --
+why couldn't he?  Why can't pardners look ahead and see to where
+their gay attentions, their flirtations that they call mild and
+innercent, will lead 'em to?  Why can't they realize that it haint
+only themselves they are injurin', but them that are bound to 'em
+by the most sacred ties that folks can be twisted up in?  Why
+can't they realize that a end must come to it, and it may be a
+fearful and a shameful one, and if it is a happiness that stops,
+it will leave in the heart when happiness gets out, a emptiness, a
+holler place, where like as not onhappiness will get in, and mebby
+stay there for some time, gaulin' and heart-breakin' to the
+opposite pardner to see it go on?
+
+If it is indifference, or fashion, or anything of that sort, why
+it don't pay none of the time, it don't seem to me it duz, and the
+end will be emptier and hollerer then the beginnin'.
+
+In the case of my pardner it wuz fashion, nothing but the
+butterfly of fashion he wuz after, to act in a high-toned,
+fashionable manner, like other fashionable men.  And jest see the
+end on't why he had brought sufferin' of the deepest dye onto his
+companion, and what, what hed he brought onto himself -- onto his
+feet?
+
+Oh! the agony of them several moments while them thoughts was a
+rackin' at me.  The moments swelled out into a half hour, it must
+have been a long half hour, before I see far ahead, for the eyes
+of love is keen - a form a settin' on the grass by the wayside,
+that I recognized as the form of my pardner.  As we drew nearer we
+all recognized the figure -- but Josiah Allen didn't seem to
+notice us.  His boots was off, and his stockin's, and even in that
+first look I could see the agony that was a rendin' them toes
+almost to burstin'.  Oh, how sorry I felt for them toes!  He was a
+restin' in a most dejected and melancholy manner on his hand, as
+if it wuz more than sufferin' that ailed him -- he looked a
+sufferer from remorse, and regret, and also had the air of one
+whom mortification has stricken.
+
+He never seemed to sense a thing that wuz passin' by him, till the
+driver pulled up his horses clost by him, and then he looked up
+and see us.  And far be it from me to describe the way he looked
+in his lowly place on the grass.  There wuz a good stun by him on
+which he might have sot, but no, he seemed to feel too mean to get
+up onto that stun; grass, lowly, unassumin' grass, wuz what seemed
+to suit him best, and on it he sot with one of his feet stretched
+out in front of him.
+
+Oh! the pitifulness of that look he gin us, oh! the meakinness of
+it.  And even, when his eye fell on the Deacon a settin' by my
+side, oh! the wild gleam of hatred, and sullen anger that glowed
+within his orb, and revenge!  He looked at the Deacon, and then at
+his boots, and I see the wild thought wuz a enterin' his sole, to
+throw that boot at him.  But I says out of that buggy the very
+first thing the words I have so oft spoke to him in hours of
+danger:
+
+"Joisiah, be calm!"
+
+His eye fell onto the peaceful grass agin, and he says: "Who
+hain't a bein' calm?  I should say I wuz calm enough, if that is
+what you want."
+
+But, oh, the sullenness of that love.
+
+Says Ezra, good man -- he see right through it all in a minute,
+and so did Druzilla and the Deacon -- says Ezra, "Get up on the
+seat with the driver, Josiah Allen, and drive back with us."
+
+"No," says Josiah, "I have no occasion, I am a settin' here,"
+(looking round in perfect agony) "I am a settin' here to admire
+the scenery."
+
+Then I leaned over the side of the buggy, and says I, "Josiah
+Allen, do you get in and ride, it will kill you to walk back; put
+on your boots if you can, and ride, seein' Ezra is so perlite as
+to ask you."
+
+"Yes, I see he is very perlite, I see you have set amongst very
+perlite folks, Samantha," says he, a glarin' at Deacon Balch as if
+he would rend him from lim to lim, "But as I said, I have no
+occasion to ride, I took off my boots and stockin's merely --
+merely to pass away time.  You know at fashionable resorts," says
+he, "it is sometimes hard for men to pass away time."
+
+Says I in low, deep accents, "Do put on your stockin's, and your
+boots, if you can get 'em on, which I doubt, but put your
+stockin's on this minute, and get in, and ride."
+
+"Yes," says Ezra, "hurry up and get in, Josiah Allen, it must be
+dretful oncomfortabe a settin' down there in the grass."
+
+"Oh, no!" says Josiah, and he kinder whistled a few bars of no
+tune that wuz ever heard on, or ever will be heard on agin, so
+wild and meloncholy it wuz -- "I sot down here kind o' careless.
+I thought seein' I hadn't much on hand to do at this time o' year,
+I thought I would like to look at my feet -- we hain't got a very
+big lookin' glass in our room."
+
+Oh, how incoherent and over-crazed he was a becomin'!  Who ever
+heard of seein' anybody's feet in a lookin' glass -- of dependin'
+on a lookin' glass for a sight on 'em?  Oh, how I pitied that man!
+and I bent down and says to him in soothin' axents: "Josiah Allen,
+to please your pardner you put on your stockin's and get into this
+buggy.  Take your boots in your hand, Josiah, I know you can't get
+'em on, you have walked too far for them corns.  Corns that are
+trampled on, Josiah Allen, rise up and rends you, or me, or
+anybody else who owns 'em or tramples on 'em.  It hain't your
+fault, nobody blames you.  Now get right in."
+
+"Yes, do," says the Deacon.
+
+Oh! the look that Josiah Allen gin him.  I see the voyolence of
+that look, that rested first on the Deacon, and then on that,
+boot.
+
+And agin I says, "Josiah Allen."  And agin the thought of his own
+feerful acts, and my warnin's came over him, and again
+mortification seemed to envelop him like a mantilly, the tabs
+goin' down and coverin' his lims -- and agin he didn't throw that
+boot.  Agin Deacon Balch escaped oninjured, saved by my voice, and
+Josiah's inward conscience, inside of him.
+
+Wall, suffice it to say, that after a long parley, Josiah Allen
+wuz a settin' on the high seat with the driver, a holdin' his
+boots in his hand, for truly no power on earth could have placed
+them boots on Josiah Allen's feet in the condition they then wuz.
+
+And so he rode on howewards, occasionally a lookin' down on the
+Deacon with looks that I hope the recordin' angel didn't
+photograph, so dire, and so revengeful, and jealous, and -- and
+everything, they wuz.  And ever, after ketchin' the look in my
+eye, the look in his'n would change to a heart-rendin' one of
+remorse, and sorrow, and shame for what he had done.  And the
+Deacon, wantin' to be dretful perlite to him, would ask him
+questions, and I could see the side of Josiah's face, all glarin'
+like a hyena at the sound of his voice, and then he would turn
+round and ossume a perlite genteel look as he answered him, and
+then he glare at me in a mad way every time I spoke to the Deacon,
+and then his mad look would change, even to one of shame and
+meakinness.  And he in his stockin' feet, and a pertendin' that he
+didn't put his boots on, because it wuzn't wuth while to put 'em
+on agin so near bed-time.  And he that sot out that afternoon a
+feelin' so haughty, and lookin' down on Ezra and Druzilla, and
+bein' brung back by 'em, in that condition -- and bein' goured all
+the time by thoughts of the ignominious way his flirtin' had
+ended, by her droppin' him by the side of the road, like a weed
+she had trampled on too hardly.  And a bein' gourded deeper than
+all the rest of his agonies, by a senseless jealousy of Deacon
+Balch -- and a thinkin' for the first time in his life, what it
+would be, if her affections, that had been like a divine beacon to
+him all his life, if that flame should ever go out, or ever
+flicker in its earthly socket -- oh, those thoughts that he had
+seemed to consider in his own mad race for fashion -- oh, how that
+sass that had seemed sweet to him as a gander, oh how bitter and
+poisonous it wuz to partake of as a goose.
+
+Oh! the agony of that ride.  We went middlin' slow back -- and
+before we got to Saratoga the English girl went past us, she had
+been to the Sulphur Springs and back agin.  She didn't pay no
+attention to us, for she wuz alayin' on a plan in her own mind,
+for a moonlight pedestrian excursion on foot, that evenin', out to
+the old battle ground of Saratoga.
+
+Josiah never looked to the right hand or the left, as she passed
+him, at many, many a knot an hour.  And I felt that my pardner's
+sufferin from that cause was over, and mine too, but oh! by what
+agony wuz it gained.  For 3 days and 3 nights he never stood on
+any of his feet for a consecutive minute and a half, and I bathed
+him with anarky, and bathed his very soul with many a sweet moral
+lesson at the same time.  And when at last Josiah Allen emerged
+from that chamber, he wuz a changed man in his demeanor and
+liniment, such is the power of love and womanly devotion.
+
+He never looked at a woman durin' our hull stay at Saratoga, save
+with the eye of a philosopher and a Methodist.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+MISS G. WASHINGTON FLAMM.
+
+Miss G. Washington Flamm is a very fashionable woman.  Thomas
+Jefferson carried her through a law-suit, and carried her stiddy
+and safe.  (She wuz in the right on't, there haint no doubt of
+that.)
+
+She had come to Jonesville for the summer to board, her husband
+bein' to home at the time in New York village, down on Wall
+street.  He had to stay there, so she said.  I don't know why,
+but s'pose sunthin' wuz the matter with the wall; anyway he
+couldn't leave it.  And she went round to different places a good
+deal for her health.  There didn't seem to be much health round
+where her husband wuz, so she had to go away after it, go a
+huntin' for it, way over to Europe and back ag'in; and away off
+to California, and Colorado, and Long Branch, and Newport, and
+Saratoga, and into the Country.  It made it real bad for Miss
+Flamm.
+
+Now I always found it healthier where Josiah wuz than in any
+other place.  Difference in folks I s'pose.  But they say there
+is sights and sights of husbands and wives jest like Miss Flamm.
+Can't find a mite of health anywhere near where their families
+is, and have to poke off alone after it.  It makes it real bad
+for 'em.
+
+But anyway she came to Jonesville for her health.  And she hearn
+of Thomas Jefferson and employed him.  It wuz money that fell
+onto her from her father, or that should have fell, that she wuz
+a tryin' to git it to fall.  And he won the case.  It fell.  She
+wuz rich as a Jew before she got this money, but she acted as
+tickled over it as if she wuzn't worth a cent.  (Human nater.)
+She paid Thomas J. well and she and Maggie and he got to be quite
+good friends.
+
+She is a well-meanin', fat little creeter, what there is of her.
+I have seen folks smaller than she is, and then ag'in we seen
+them that wuzn't so small.  She is middlin' good lookin', not old
+by any means, but there is a deep wrinkle plowed right into her
+forward, and down each side of her mouth.  They are plowed deep.
+And I have always wondered to myself who held the plow.
+
+It wuz'nt age, for she haint old enough.  Wuz it Worry?  That
+will do as good a day's work a plowin' as any creeter I ever see,
+and work as stiddy after it gits to doin' day's works in a
+female's face.
+
+Waz it Dissatisfaction and Disappointment?  They, too, will plow
+deep furrows and a sight of 'em.  I don't know what it wuz.
+Mebby it wuz her waist and sleeves.  Her sleeves wuz so tight
+that they kep' her hands lookin' a kinder bloated and swelled all
+the time, and must have been dretful painful.  And her waist --
+it wuz drawed in so at the bottom, that to tell the livin' truth
+it wuzn't much bigger'n a pipe's tail.  It beat all to see the
+size immegatly above and below, why it looked perfectly
+meraculous.  She couldn't get her hands up to her head to save
+her life; if she felt her head a tottlin' off her shoulders she
+couldn't have lifted her hands to have stiddied it, and, of
+course, she couldn't get a long breath, or short ones with any
+comfort.
+
+Mebby that worried her, and then ag'in, mebby it wuz dogs.  I
+know it would wear me out to take such stiddy care on one, day
+and night.  I never seemed to feel no drawin's to take care of
+animals, wash 'em, and bathe 'em, and exercise 'em, etc., etc.,
+never havin' been in the menagery line and Josiah always keepin'
+a boy to take care of the animals when he wuzn't well.  Mebby it
+wuz dogs.  Anyway she took splendid care of hern, jest wore
+herself out a doin' for it stiddy day and night and bein'
+trampled on, and barked at almost all the time she wuz a bringin'
+on it up.
+
+Yes, she took perfectly wonderful care on't, for a woman in her
+health.  She never had been able to take any care of her
+children, bein' VERY delicate.  Never had been well enough to
+have any of 'em in the room with her nights, or in the day time
+either.  They tired her so, and she wuz one of the wimmen who
+felt it wuz her DUTY to preserve her health for her family's
+sake.  Though WHEN they wuz a goin' to get the benefit of her
+health I don't know.
+
+But howsumever she never could take a mite of care of her
+children, they wuz brought up on wet nurses, and bottles, etc.,
+etc., and wuz rather weakly, some on 'em.  The nurses, wet and
+dry ones both, used to gin 'em things to make 'em sleep, and
+kinder yank 'em round and scare 'em nights to keep 'em in the
+bed, and neglect 'em a good deal, and keep 'em out in the brilin'
+sun when they wanted to see their bows; and for the same reeson
+keepin' em out in their little thin dresses in the cold, and
+pinch their little arms black and blue if they went to tell any
+of their tricks.  And they learnt the older ones to be deceitful
+and sly and cowerdly.  Learnt 'em to use jest the same slang
+phrases and low language that they did; tell the same lies, and
+so they wuz a spilin' 'em in every way; spilin' their brains with
+narcotics, their bodies by neglect and bad usage, and their minds
+and morals by evil examples.
+
+You see some nurses are dretful good.  But Miss Flamm's health
+bein' so poor and her mind bein' so took up with fashion, dogs,
+etc., that she couldn't take the trouble to find out about their
+characters and they wuz dretful poor unbeknown to her.  She had
+dretful bad luck with 'em, and the last one drinked, so I have
+been told.
+
+Yes, it made it dretful bad for Miss Flamm that her health was so
+poor, and her fashionable engagements so many and arduous that
+she didn't have the time to take a little care of her children
+and the dog too.  For you could see plain, by the care that she
+took of that dog, what a splendid hand she would be with the
+children, if she only had the time and health.
+
+Why, I don't believe there wuz another dog in America, either the
+upper or lower continent, that had more lovin', anxus,
+intelligent, devoted attention than that dog had, day and night,
+from Miss Flamm.  She took 2 dog papers, so they say, to get the
+latest information on the subject; she compared notes with other
+dog wimmen, I don't say it in a runnin' way at all.  I mean
+wimmen who have gin their hull minds to dog, havin', some on 'em,
+renounced husbands, and mothers, and children for dog sake.
+
+You know there are sich wimmen, and Miss Flamm read up and
+studied with constant and absorbed attention all the latest
+things on dog.  Their habits, their diet, their baths, their
+robes, their ribbons, and bells, and collars, their barks --
+nothin' escaped her; she put the best things she learned into
+practice, and studied out new ones for herself.  She said she had
+reduced the subject to a science, and she boasted proudly that
+her dog, the last one she had, went ahead of any dog in the
+country.  And I don't know but it did.  I knew it had a good
+healthy bark.  A loud strong bark that must have made it bad for
+her in the night.  It always slept with her, for she didn't dast
+to trust it out of her sight nights.  It had had some spells in
+the night, kinder chills, or spuzzums like, and she didn't dast
+to be away from it for a minute.
+
+She wouldn't let the wet nurse tech it, for her youngest child,
+little G. Washington Flamm, Jr., wuzn't very healthy, and Miss
+Flamm thought that mebby the dog might ketch his weakness if the
+nurse handled it right after she had been nursin' the baby.  And
+then she objected to the nurse, so I hearn, on account of her
+bein' wet.  She wanted to keep the dog dry.  I hearn this; I
+don't know as it wuz so.  But I hearn these things long enough
+before I ever see her.  And when I did see her I see that they
+didn't tell me no lies about her devotion to the dog, for she
+jest worshiped it, that was plain to be seen.
+
+Wall, she has got a splendid place at Saratoga; a cottage she
+calls it.  I, myself, should call it a house, for it is big as
+our house and Deacon Peddick'ses and Mr. Bobbett'ses all put
+together, and I don't know but bigger.
+
+Wall, she invited Josiah and me to drive with her, and so her dog
+and she stopped for us.  (I put the dog first, for truly she
+seemed to put him forward on every occasion in front of herself,
+and so did her high-toned relatives, who wuz with her.)
+
+Or I s'pose they wuz her relatives for they sot up straight, and
+wuz dretful dressed up, and acted awful big-feelin' and never
+took no notice of Josiah and me, no more than if we hadn't been
+there.  But good land!  I didn't care for that.  What if they
+didn't pay any attention to us?  But Josiah, on account of his
+tryin' to be so fashionable, felt it deeply, and he sez to me
+while Miss Flamm wuz a bendin' down over the dog, a talkin' to
+him, for truly it wuz tired completely out a barkin' at Josiah,
+it had barked at him every single minute sense we had started,
+and she wuz a talkin' earnest to it a tryin' to soothe it, and
+Josiah whispered to me, "I'll tell you, Samantha, why them
+fellers feel above me; it is because I haint dressed up in sech a
+dressy fashion.  Let me once have on a suit like their'n, white
+legs and yellow trimmin's, and big shinin' buttons sot on in
+rows, and white gloves, and rosettes in my hat -- why I could
+appear in jest as good company as they go in."
+
+Sez I, "You are too old to be dressed up so gay, Josiah Allen.
+There is a time for all things.  Gay buttons and rosettes look
+well with brown hair and sound teeth, but they ort to gently pass
+away when they do.  Don't talk any more about it, Josiah, for I
+tell you plain, you are too old to dress like them, they are
+young men."
+
+"Wall," he whispered, in deep resolve, "I will have a white
+rosette in my hat, Samantha.  I will go so far, old or not old.
+What a sensation it will create in the Jonesville meetin'-house
+to see me come a walkin' proudly in, with a white rosette in my
+hat."
+
+"You are goin' to walk into meetin' with your hat on, are you?"
+sez I coldly.
+
+"Oh, ketch a feller up.  You know what I mean.  And don't you
+think I'll make a show?  Won't it create a sensation in
+Jonesville?"
+
+Sez I: "Most probable it would.  But you haint a goin' to wear no
+bows on your hat at your age, not if I can break it up," sez I.
+
+He looked almost black at me, and sez he, "Don't go too fur,
+Samantha!  I'll own you've been a good wife and mother and all
+that, but there is a line that you must stop at.  You mustn't go
+too fur.  There is some things in which a man must be footloose,
+and that is in the matter of dress.  I shall have a white rosette
+on my hat, and some big white buttons up and down the back of my
+overcoat!  That is my aim, Samantha, and I shall reach it if I
+walk through goar."
+
+He uttered them fearful words in a loud fierce whisper which made
+the dog bark at him for more'n ten minutes stiddy, at the top of
+its voice, and in quick short yelps.
+
+If it had been her young child that wuz yellin' at a visitor in
+that way and ketchin' holt of him, and tearin' at his clothes,
+the child would have been consigned to banishment out of the
+room, and mebby punishment.  But it wuzn't her babe and so it
+remained, and it dug its feet down into the satin and laces and
+beads of Miss Flamm's dress, and barked to that extent that we
+couldn't hear ourselves think.
+
+And she called it "sweet little angel," and told it it might
+"bark its little cunnin' bark."  The idee of a angel barkin';
+jest think on't.  And we endured it as best we could with shakin'
+nerves and achin' earpans.
+
+It wuz a curius time.  The dog harrowin' our nerve, and snappin'
+at Josiah anon, if not oftener, and ketchin' holt of him
+anywhere, and she a callin' it a angel; and Josiah a lookin' so
+voyalent at it, that it seemed almost as if that glance could
+stun it.
+
+It wuz a curius seen.  But truly worse wuz to come, for Miss
+Flamm in an interval of silence, sez, "We will go first to the
+Gizer Spring, and then, afterwards, to the Moon."
+
+Or, that is what I understand her to say.  And though I kep'
+still, I wuz determined to keep my eyes out, and if I see her
+goin' into anything dangerus, I wuz goin' to reject her overtures
+to take us.  But thinkses I to myself, "We always said I believed
+we should travel to the stars some time, but I little thought it
+would be to-day, or that I should go in a buggy."
+
+Josiah shared my feelin's I could see, for he whispered to me,
+"Don't le's go, Samantha, it must be dangerus!"
+
+But I whispered back, "Le's wait, Josiah, and see.  We won't do
+nothin' percipitate, but," sez I, "this is a chance that we most
+probable never will have ag'in.  Don't le's be hasty."  We talked
+these things in secret, while Miss Flamm wuz a bendin' over, and
+conversin' with the dog.  For Josiah would ruther have died than
+not be s'pozed to be "Oh Fay," as Maggie would say, in everything
+fashionable.  And it has always been my way to wait and see, and
+count 10, or even 20, before speakin'.
+
+And then Miss Flamin sez sunthin' about what beautiful fried
+potatoes you could get there in the moon, and you could always
+get them, any time you wanted 'em.
+
+And the very next time she went to kissin' the dog so voyalently
+as not to notice us, my Josiah whispered to me and sez, "Did you
+have any idee that wuz what the old man wuz a doin'?  I knew he
+wuz always a settin' up there in the moon, but it never passed my
+mind that he wuz a fryin' potatoes."
+
+But I sez, "Keep still, Josiah.  It is a deep subject, a great
+undertakin', and it requires caution and deliberation."
+
+But he sez,"I haint a goin', Samantha!  Nor I haint a goin' to
+let you go.  It is dangerus."
+
+But I kinder nudged him, for she had the dog down on her lap, and
+was ready to resoom conversation.  And about that time we got to
+the entrance of the spring, and one of her relatives got down and
+opened the carriage door.
+
+I wondered ag'in that she didn't introduce us.  But I didn't care
+if she didn't.  I felt that I wuz jest as good as they wuz, if
+they wuz so haughty.  But Josiah wantin' to make himself
+agreeable to 'em (he hankers after gettin' into high society), he
+took off his hat and bowed low to 'em, before he got out, and sez
+he, "I am proud to know you, sir," and tried to shake hands with
+him.  But the man rejected his overtoors and looked perfectly
+wooden, and oninterested.  A big-feelin', high-headed creeter.
+Josiah Allen is as good as he is any day.  And I whispered to him
+and sez, "Don't demean yourself by tryin' to force your company
+onto them any more."
+
+"Wall," he whispered back, "I do love to move in high circles."
+
+Sez I, "Then I shouldn't think you would be so afraid of the
+undertakin' ahead on us.  If neighborin' with the old man in the
+moon, and eatin' supper with him, haint movin' in high circles,
+then I don't know what is."
+
+"But I don't want to go into anything dangerus," sez he.
+
+But jest then Miss Flamm.spoke to me, and I moved forward by her
+side and into a middlin' big room, and in the middle wuz a great
+sort of a well like, with the water a bubblin' up into a clear
+crystal globe, and a sprayin' up out of it, in a slender misty
+sparklin' spray.  It wuz a pretty sight.  And we drinked a glass
+full of it a piece, and then we wandered out of the back
+door-way, and went down into the pretty; old-fashioned garden
+back of the house.
+
+Josiah and me and Miss Flamm went.  The dog and the two relatives
+didn't seem to want to go.  The relatives sot up there straight
+as two sticks, one of 'em holdin' the dog, and they didn't even
+look round at us.
+
+"Felt too big to go with us," sez Josiah, bitterly, as we went
+down the steps.  "They won't associate with me."
+
+"Wall, I wouldn't care if I wuz in your place, Josiah Allen," sez
+I, "you are jest as good as they be, and I know it."
+
+"You couldn't make 'em think so, dumb 'em," sez he.
+
+I liked the looks of it down there.  It seems sometimes as if
+Happiness gets kinder homesick, in the big dusty fashionable
+places, and so goes back to the wild, green wood, and kinder
+wanders off, and loafs round, amongst the pine trees, and cool
+sparklin' brooks and wild flowers and long shinin' grasses and
+slate stuns, and etc., etc.
+
+I don't believe she likes it half so well up in the big hotel
+gardens or Courtin' yards, as she does down there.  You see it
+seems as if Happiness would have to be more dressed up, up there,
+and girted down, and stiff actin', and on her good behavior, and
+afraid of actin' or lookin' onfashionable.  But down here by the
+side of the quiet little brook, amongst the cool, green grasses,
+fur away from diamonds, and satins, and big words, and dogs, and
+parasols, and so many, many that are a chasin' of her and a
+follerin' of her up, it seemed more as if she loved to get away
+from it all, and get where she could take her crown off, lay down
+her septer, onhook her corset, and put on a long loose gown, and
+lounge round and enjoy herself (metafor).
+
+We had a happy time there.  We went over the little rustick
+bridges which would have been spilte in my eyes if they had been
+rounded off on the edges, or a mite of paint on 'em.  Truly, I
+felt that I had seen enough of paint and gildin' to last me
+through a long life, and it did seem such a treat to me to see a
+board ag'in, jest a plain rough bass-wood board, and some stuns a
+lyin' in the road, and some deep tall grass that you had to sort
+a wade through.
+
+Miss Flamm seemed to enjoy it some down there, though she spoke
+of the dog, which she had left up with her relatives.
+
+"3 big-feelin' ones together," I whispered to Josiah.
+
+And he sez, "Yes, that dog is a big-feelin' little cuss-tomer.
+And if I wuz a chipmunk he couldn't bark at me no more than he
+duz."
+
+And I looked severe at Josiah and sez I, "If you don't jine your
+syllables closer together you will see trouble, Josiah Allen.
+You'll find yourself swearin' before you know it."
+
+"Oh shaw, sez he, "customer haint a swearin' word; ministers use
+it.  I've hearn 'em many a time."
+
+"Yes," sez I, "but they don't draw it out as you did, Josiah
+Allen."
+
+"Oh! wall!  Folks can't always speak up pert and quick when they
+are off on pleasure exertions and have been barked at as long as
+I have been.  But now I've got a minutes chance," sez he, "let me
+tell you ag'in, don't you make no arraingments to go to the Moon.
+It is dangerus, and I won't go myself, nor let you go."
+
+"Let," sez I to myself.  "That is rather of a gaulin' word to me.
+Won't let me go."  But then I thought ag'in, and thought how love
+and tenderness wuz a dictatin' the term, and I thought to myself,
+it has a good sound to me, I like the word.  I love to hear him
+say he won't let me go.
+
+And truly to me it looked hazerdus.  But Miss Flamm seemed ready
+to go on, and onwillin'ly I followed on after her footsteps.  But
+I looked 'round, and said "Good-bye" in my heart, to the fine
+trees, and cleer, brown waters of the brook, the grass, and the
+wild flowers, and the sweet peace that wuz over all.
+
+"Good-bye," sez I.  "If I don't see you ag'in, you'll find some
+other lover that will appreciate you, though I am fur away."
+
+They didn't answer me back, none on 'em, but I felt that they
+understood me.  The pines whispered sunthin' to each other, and
+the brook put its moist lips up to the pebbly shore and whispered
+sunthin' to the grasses that bent down to hear it.  I don't know
+exactly what it wuz, but it wuz sunthin' friendly I know, for I
+felt it speak right through the soft, summer sunshine into my
+heart.  They couldn't exactly tell what they felt towards me, and
+I couldn't exactly tell what I felt towards them, yet we
+understood each other; curi'us, haint it?
+
+Wall, we got into the carriage ag'in, one of her relatives
+gettin' down to open the door.  They knew what good manners is;
+I'll say that for 'em.  And Miss Flamm took her dog into her arms
+seemin'ly glad to get holt of him ag'in, and kissed it several
+times with a deep love and devotedness.  She takes good care of
+that dog.  And what makes it harder for her to handle him is, her
+dress is so tight, and her sleeves.  I s'pose that is why she
+can't breathe any better, and what makes her face and hands red,
+and kinder swelled up.  She can't get her hands to her head to
+save her, and if a assassin should strike her, she couldn't raise
+her arm to ward off the blow if he killed her.  I s'pose it
+worrys her.
+
+And she has to put her bunnet on jest as quick as she gets her
+petticoats on, for she can't lift he arms to save her life after
+she gets her corsets on.  She owned up to me once that it made
+her feel queer to be a walkin' 'round her room with not much on
+only her bunnet all trimmed off with high feathers and artificial
+flowers.
+
+But she said she wuz willing to do anythin' necessary, and she
+felt that she must have her waist taper, no matter what stood in
+the way on't.  She loves the looks of a waist that tapers.  That
+wuz all the fault she found with the Goddus of Liberty
+enlightenin' the world in New York Harber.  We got to talkin'
+about it and she said, "If that Goddus only had corsets on, and
+sleeves that wuz skin tight, and her overskirt looped back over a
+bustle, it would be perfect!"
+
+But I told her I liked her looks as well ag'in as she wuz.  "Why,"
+sez I, "How could she lift her torch above her head?  And how could
+she ever enlighten the world, if she wuz so held down by her corsets
+and sleeves that she couldn't wave her torch?"
+
+She see in a minute that it couldn't be done.  She owned up that
+she couldn't enlighten the world in that condition, but as fur as
+looks went, it would be perfectly beautiful.
+
+But I don't think so at all.  But, as I say, Miss Flamm has a
+real hard time on't, all bard down as she is, and takin' all the
+care of that dog, day and night.  She is jest devoted to it.
+
+Why jest before we started a little lame girl with a shabby
+dress, but a face angel sweet, came to the side of the carriage
+to sell some water lilies.  Her face looked patient, and wistful,
+and she jest held out her flowers silently, and stood with her
+bare feet on the wet ground and her pretty eyes lookin' pitifully
+into our'n.  She wanted to sell 'em awfully, I could see.  And I
+should have bought the hull of 'em immegitly, my feelin's was
+sech, but onfortionably I had left my port-money in my other
+pocket, and Josiah said he had left his (mebby he had).  But Miss
+Flamm would have bought 'em in a minute, I knew, the child's face
+looked so mournful and appealin'; she would have bought 'em, but
+she wuz so engrossed by the dog; she wuz a holdin' him up in
+front of her a admirin' and carressin' of him, so's she never
+ketched sight of the lame child.
+
+No body, not the best natured creeter in the world, can see
+through a dog when it is held clost up to the eye, closer than
+anything else.
+
+Wall, we drove down to what they called Vichy Spring and there on
+a pretty pond clost to the springhouse, we see a boat with a
+bycycle on it, and a boy a ridin' it.  The boat wuz rigged out to
+look like a swan with its wings a comin' up each side of the boy.
+And down on the water, a sailin' along closely and silently wuz
+another swan, a shadow swan, a follerin' it right along.  It wuz
+a fair seen.
+
+And Josiah sez to me, "He should ride that boat before he left
+Saratoga; he said that wuz a undertakin' that a man might be
+proud to accomplish."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, don't you do anything of the kind."
+
+"I MUST, Samantha," sez he.  And then he got all animated about
+fixin' up a boat like it at home.  Sez he, "Don't you think it
+would be splendid to have one on the canal jest beyond the
+orchard?"  And sez he, "Mebby, bein' on a farm, it would be more
+appropriate to have a big goose sculptured out on it; don't you
+think so?"
+
+Sez I, "Yes, it would be fur more appropriate, and a goose a
+ridin' on it.  But," sez I, "you will never go into that
+undertakin' with my consent, Josiah Allen."
+
+"Why," sez he, "it would be a beautiful recreation; so uneek."
+
+But at that minute Miss Flamm gin the order to turn round and
+start for the Moon, or that is how I understood her, and I
+whispered to Josiah and sez, "She means to go in the buggy, for
+the land's sake!"
+
+And Josiah sez, "Wall, I haint a goin' and you haint.  I won't
+let you go into anythin' so dangerus.  She will probably drive
+into a baloon before long, and go up in that way, but jest before
+she drives in, you and I will get out, Samantha, if we have to
+walk back."
+
+"I never heard of anybody goin' up in a baloon with two horses
+and a buggy," sez I.
+
+"Wall, new things are a happenin' all the time, Samantha.  And I
+heard a feller a talkin' about it yesterday.  You know they are a
+havin' the big political convention here, and he said, (he wuz a
+real cute chap too,) he said, 'if the wind wasted in that
+convention could be utilized by pipes goin' up out of the ruff of
+that buildin' where it is held,' he said, 'it would take a man up
+to the moon.'  I heerd him say it.  And now, who knows but they
+have got it all fixed.  There wuz dretful windy speeches there
+this mornin'.  I hearn 'em, and I'll bet that is her idee, of
+bein' the first one to try it; she is so fashionable.  But I
+haint a goin' up in no sech a way."
+
+"No," sez I.  "Nor I nuther.  It would be fur from my wishes to
+be carried up to the skies on the wind of a political convention.
+"Though," sez I reasonably, "I haint a doubt that there wuz
+sights, and sights of it used there."
+
+But jest at this minute Miss Flamm got through talkin' with her
+relatives about the road, and settled down to caressin' the dog
+ag'in, and Josiah hadn't time to remark any further, only to say,
+"Watch me, Samantha, and when I say jump, jump."
+
+And then we sot still but watchful.  And Miss Flamm kissed the
+dog several times and pressed him to her heart that throbbed full
+of such a boundless love for him.  And he lifted his head and
+snapped at a fly, and barked at my companion with a renewed energy,
+and showed his intellect and delightful qualities in sech remarkable
+ways, that filled Miss Flamm's soul deep with a proud joy in him.
+And then he went to sleep a layin, down in her lap, a mashin' down
+the delicate lace and embroidery and beads.  He had been a eating
+the beads, I see him gnaw off more than two dozen of 'em, and I
+called her attention to it, but she said, "The dear little darlin'
+had to have some such recreation."  And she let him go on with it,
+a mowin' 'em down, as long as he seemed to have a appetite for 'em.
+And ag'in she called him "angel."  The idee of a angel a gnawin'
+off beads and a yelpin'!
+
+And I asked her, and I couldn't help it.  How her baby wuz that
+afternoon, and if she ever took it out to drive?
+
+And she said she didn't really know how it wuz this afternoon; it
+wuzn't very well in the mornin'.  The nurse had it out somewhere,
+she didn't really know just where.  And she said, no, she didn't
+take it out with her at all -- fur she didn't feel equal to the
+care of it, in this hot weather.
+
+Miss Flamm haint very well I could see that.  The care of that
+dog is jest a killin' her, a carryin' it round with her all the
+time daytimes, and a bein' up with it so much nights.  She said
+it had a dretful chill the night before, and she had to get up to
+warm blankets to put round it; "its nerves wuz so weak," she
+said, "and it wuz so sensative that she could not trust it to a
+nurse."  She has a hard time of it; there haint a doubt of it.
+
+Wall, it wuz anon, or jest about anon, that Miss Flamm turned to
+me and sez, "Moon's is one of the pleasantest places on the lake.
+I want you to see it; folks drive out there a sight from
+Saratoga."
+
+And then I looked at Josiah, and Josiah looked at me, and peace
+and happiness settled down ag'in onto our hearts.
+
+Wall, we got there considerably before anon and we found that
+Moon's insted of bein' up in another planet wuz a big, long sort
+a low buildin' settled right down onto this old earth, with a
+immense piazza stretchin' along the side on't.
+
+And Miss Flamm and Josiah and me disembarked from the carriage
+right onto the end of it.  But the dog and her relatives stayed
+back in the buggy and Josiah spoke bitterly to me ag'in but low,
+"They think it would hurt 'em to associate with me a little, dumb
+'m; but I am jest as good as they be any day of the week, if I
+haint dressed up so fancy."
+
+"That's so," sez I, whisperin' back to him, "and don't let it
+worry you a mite.  Don't try to act like Haman," sez I.  "You are
+havin' lots of the good things of this world, and are goin' to
+have some fried potatoes.  Don't let them two Mordecais at the
+gate, poison all your happiness, or you may get come up with jest
+as Haman wuz."
+
+"I'd love to hang'em," sez he, "as high as Haman's gallows would
+let 'em hang."
+
+"Why," sez I, "they haint injured you in any way.  They seem to
+eat like perfect gentlemen.  A little too exclusive and
+aristocratic, mebby, but they haint done nothin' to you."
+
+"No," sez he, "that is the stick on it, here we be, three men
+with a lot of wimmen.  And they can't associate with me as man
+with man, but set off by themselves too dumb proud to say a word
+to me, that is the dumb of it."
+
+But at this very minute, before I could rebuke him for his
+feerful profanity, Miss Flamm motioned to us to come and take a
+seat round a little table, and consequently we sot.
+
+It was a long broad piazza with sights and sights of folks on
+it a settin' round little tables like our'n, and all a lookin'
+happy, and a laughin', and a talkin' and a drinkin' different
+drinks, sech as lemonade, etc., and eatin' fried potatoes and
+sech.
+
+And out in the road by which we had come, wuz sights and sights
+of vehicles and conveyances of all kinds from big Tally Ho
+coaches with four horses on 'em, down to a little two wheeled
+buggy.  The road wuz full on'em.
+
+In front of us, down at the bottom of a steep though beautiful
+hill, lay stretched out the clear blue waters of the lake.
+Smooth and tranquil it looked in the light of that pleasant
+afternoon, and fur off, over the shinin' waves, lay the island.
+And white-sailed boats wuz a sailin' slowly by, and the shadow of
+their white sails lay down in the water a floatin' on by the side
+of the boats, lookin' some like the wings of that white dove that
+used to watch over Lake Saratoga.
+
+And as I looked down on the peaceful seen, the feelin's I had
+down in the wild wood, back of the Gizer Spring come back to me.
+The waves rolled in softly from fur off, fur off, bringin' a
+greetin' to me unbeknown to anybody, unbeknown to me.  It come
+into my heart unbidden, unsought, from afur, afur.
+
+Where did it come from that news of lands more beautiful than
+any that lay round Mr. Moons'es, beautiful as it wuz.
+
+Echoes of music sweeter fur than wuz a soundin' from the band
+down by the shore, music heard by some finer sense than heard
+that, heavenly sweet, heavenly sad, throbbin' through the
+remoteness of that country, through the nearness of it, and
+fillin' my eyes with tears.  Not sad tears, not happy ones, but
+tears that come only to them that shet their eyes and behold the
+country, and love it.  The waves softly lappin' the shore brought
+a message to me; my soul hearn it.  Who sent it?  And where, and
+when, and why?
+
+Not a trace of these emotions could be read on my countenance as
+I sot there calmly a eatin' fried potatoes.  And they did go
+beyond anything I ever see in the line of potatoes, and I thought
+I could fry potatoes with any one: Yes, such wuz my feelin's when
+I sot out for Mr. Moons'es.  But I went back a thinkin' that
+potatoes had never been fried by me, sech is the power of a grand
+achievment over a inferior one, and so easy is the sails taken
+down out of the swellin' barge of egotism.
+
+No, them potatoes you could carry in your pocket for weeks right
+by the side of the finest lace, and the lace would be improved by
+the purity of 'em.  Fried potatoes in that condition, you could
+eat 'em with the lightest silk gloves one and the tips of the
+fingers would be improved by 'em; fried potatoes, jest think
+on't!
+
+Wall, we had some lemonade too, and if you'll believe it, -- I
+don't s'pose you will but it is the truth, -- there wuz straws in
+them glasses too.  But you may as well believe it for I tell the
+truth at all times, and if I wuz a goin' to lie, I wouldn't lie
+about lemons.  And then I've always noticed it, that if things
+git to happenin' to you, lots of things jest like it will happen.
+That made twice in one week or so, that I had found straws in my
+tumbler.  But then I have had company three days a runnin', rainy
+days too sometimes.  It haint nothin' to wonder at too much.  Any
+way it is the truth.
+
+Wall, we drinked our lemonade, I a quietly takin' out the straws
+and droppin' 'em on the floor at my side in a quiet ladylike
+manner, and Josiah, a bein' wunk at by me, doin' the same thing.
+
+And anon, our carriage drove up to the end of the piazza agin and
+we sot sail homewards.  And the dog barked at Josiah almost every
+step of the way back, and when we got to our boardin' place, Miss
+Flamm shook hands with us both, and her relatives never took a
+mite of notice of us, further than to jump down and open the
+carriage door for us as we got out.  (They are genteel in their
+manners, and Josiah had to admit that they wuz, much as his
+feelin's wuz hurt by their haughtiness towards him.)
+
+And then the dog, and Miss Flamm and Miss Flamm's relatives drove
+off.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+VISIT TO THE INDIAN ENCAMPMENT.
+
+It wuz a fair sunshiny mornin' (and it duz seem to me that the
+fairness of a Saratoga mornin' seems fairer, and the sunshine
+more sunshiny than it duz anywhere else), that Josiah and Ardelia
+and me sot sail for the Indian Encampment, which wuz encamped on
+a little rise of ground to the eastward of where we wuz.
+
+Ardelia wuz to come to our boardin' place at halfpast 9 A. M.,
+forenoon, and we wuz to set out together from there.  And
+punctual to the very half minute I wuz down on the piazza, with
+my mantilly hung over my arm and my umberel in my left hand.
+Josiah Allen was on the right side on me.  And as Ardelia hadn't
+come yet we sot down in a middlin' quiet part of the piazza, and
+waited for her.  And as we sot there, I sez to Josiah, as I
+looked out on the fair pleasant mornin' and the fair pleasant
+faces environin' of us round, sez I, "Saratoga is a
+good-natured place, haint it, Josiah?"
+
+And he said (I mistrust his corns ached worse than common, or
+sunthin'), he said, he didn't see as it wuz any better-natured
+than Jonesville or Loontown.
+
+And I sez, "Yes it is, Josiah Allen."  Sez I, folks are happier
+here and more generous, the rich ones seem inclined to help them
+that need help to a little comfort and happiness.  Jest as I have
+always said, Josiah Allen.  When folks are happy, they are more
+inclined to do good."
+
+"Oh shaw!" sez Josiah.  "That never made no difference with me."
+
+"What didn't?" sez I.
+
+"I'm always good," sez he, and he snapped out the words real
+snappish, and loud.
+
+And I sez mildly, "Wall, you needn't bring the ruff down to prove
+your goodness."
+
+And he went on: "I don't see as they are so pesky good here; I
+haint seen nothin' of it."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "when I look over Yaddo, and Hilton Park, it makes
+me reconciled, Josiah, to have men get rich; it makes me willin',
+Josiah."
+
+And he sez (cross), He guessed men would get rich whether I wuz
+willin' or not; he guessed they wouldn't ask me.
+
+"Wall, you needn't snap my head off, Josiah Allen," sez I,
+"because I love to see folks use their wealth to make pleasant
+places for poor folks to wander round in, and forget their own
+narrow rocky roads for a spell.  It is a noble thing to do,
+Josiah Allen; they might have built high walls round 'em if they
+had been a mind to, and locked the gates and shet out all the
+poor and tired-out ones, But they didn't, and I am highly tickled
+at the thought on't, Josiah Allen."
+
+"Wall, I don't shet up our sugar lot, do I? and I have never
+heerd you say one word a praisin' me up for that."
+
+"That is far different, Josiah Allen," sez I, "there is nothin'
+there that can git hurt, only stumps.  And you have never laid
+out a cent of money on it.  And they have spent thousands and
+thousands of dollars; and the poorest little child in Saratoga,
+if it has beauty-lovin' eyes, can go in and enjoy these places
+jest as much as the owners can.  And it is a sweet thought to me,
+Josiah Allen."
+
+"Oh wall," sez he, "you have probable said enough about it."
+
+Now I never care for the last word, some wimmen do, but I never
+do.  But still I wuzn't goih' to be shet right eff from talkin'
+about these places, and I intimated as much to him, and he said,
+"Dumb it all!  I could talk about 'em all day, if I wanted to,
+and about Demorist's Woods too."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "that is another place, Josiah Allen, that is a
+likely well-meanin' spot.  Middlin' curius to look at," sez I,
+reesonably.  "It makes one's head feel sort a strange to see them
+criss-cross, curius poles, and floors up in trees, and ladders,
+and teterin' boards, and springs, etc., etc., etc.  But it is a
+well-meanin' spot, Josiah Allen.  And it highly tickled me to
+think that the little fresh air children wuz brung up there by
+the owner of the woods and the poor little creeters, out of their
+dingy dirty homes, and filthy air, wandered round for one happy
+day in the green woods, in the fresh air and sunshine.  That wuz
+a likely thing to do, Josiah Allen, and it raises a man more in
+my estimation when he's doin' sech things as that, than to set up
+in a political high chair, and have a lot of dirty hands clapped,
+and beery breaths a cheerin' him on up the political arena."
+
+"Oh wall," sez Josiah, "the doin's in them woods is enough to
+make anybody a dumb lunatick.  The crazyest lookin' lot of stuff
+I ever set eyes on."
+
+"Wall, anyway," sez I, "it is a good crazy, if it is, and a
+well-meanin' one."
+
+"Oh, how cross Josiah Allen did look as he heered me say these
+words.  That man can't bear to hear me say one word a praisin' up
+another man, and it grows on him.
+
+But good land!  I am a goin' to speak out my mind as long as my
+breath is spared.  And I said quite a number of words more about
+the deep enjoyment it gin' me to see these broad, pleasure
+grounds free for all, rich and poor, bond and free, hombly and
+handsome, etc., etc.
+
+And I spoke about the charitable houses, St. Christiana's home,
+and the Home for Old Female Wimmen, and mentioned the fact in
+warm tones of how a good, noble-hearted woman had started that
+charity in the first on't.
+
+And Josiah, while I wuz talkin' about these wimmen, became meak
+as a lamb.  They seemed to quiet him.  He looked real mollyfied
+by the time Ardelia got there, which wuz anon.  And then we sot
+sail for the Encampment.
+
+The Encampment is encamped on one end of a big, square,
+wild-lookin' lot right back of one of the biggest tarvens in
+Saratoga.  It is jest as wild lookin' and appeerin' a field as
+there is in the outskirts of Loontown or Jonesville.  Why Uncle
+Grant Hozzleton's stunny pasture don't look no more sort a broke
+up and rural than that duz.  I wondered some why they had it
+there, and then I thought mebby they kep' it to remember Nater
+by, old Nater herself, that runs a pretty small chance to be
+thought on in sech a place as this.
+
+You know there is so much orniment and gildin' and art in the
+landscape and folks, that mebby they might forget the great
+mother of us all, that is, right in the thickest of the crowd
+they might, but they have only to take these few steps and they
+will see Ma Nater with her every-day dress on, not fixed up a
+mite.  And I s'pose she looks good to 'em.
+
+I myself think that Mother Nater might smooth herself out a
+little there with no hurt to herself or her children.  I don't
+believe in Mas goin' round with their dresses onhooked, and
+slip-shod, and their hair all stragglin' out of their combs.  (I
+say this in metafor.  I don't spose Ma Nater ever wore a back
+comb or had hooks and eyes on her gown; I say it for oritory, and
+would wish to be took in a oritorius way.
+
+And I don't say right out, that the reeson I have named is the
+one why they keep that place a lookin' so like furey, I said,
+MEBBY.  But I will say this, that it is a wild-lookin' spot, and
+hombly.
+
+Wall, on the upper end on't, standin' up on the top of a sort of
+a hill, the Indian Encampment is encamped.  There is a hull row
+of little stores, and there is swings, and public diversions of
+different kinds, krokay grounds, etc., etc., etc.
+
+Wall, Ardelia stopped at one of these stores kep' by a Injun, not
+a West, but a East one, and began to price some wooden bracelets,
+and try 'em on, and Josiah and me wandered on.
+
+And anon, we came to a tent with some good verses of Scripter on
+it;  good solid Bible it wuz;  and so I see it wuz a good creeter
+in there anyway.  And I asked a bystander a standin' by, Who wuz
+in there, and Why, and When?
+
+And he said it wuz a fortune-teller who would look in the pamm of
+my hand, and tell me all my fortune that wuz a passin' by.  And I
+said I guessed I would go in, for I would love to know how the
+children wuz that mornin' and whether the baby had got over her
+cold.  I hadn't heerd from 'em in over two days.
+
+Josiah kinder hung 'round outside though he wuz willin' to have
+me go in.  He jest worships the children and the baby.  And he
+sees the texts from Job on it, with his own eyes.
+
+So I bid him a affectionate farewell, and we see the woman a
+lookin' out of the tent and witnessin' on't.  But I didn't care.
+If a pair of companions and a pair of grandparents can't act
+affectionate, who can?  And the world and the Social Science
+meetin' might try in vain to bring up any reeson why they
+shouldn't.
+
+So I went in, with my mind all took up with the grandchildern.
+But the first words she sez to me wuz, as she looked close at the
+pamm of my hand, "Keep up good spirits, Mom; you will get him in
+spite of all opposition."
+
+"Get who?" sez I, "And what?"
+
+"A man you want to marry.  A small baldheaded man, a amiable-lookin',
+slender man.  His heart is sot on you.  And all the efferts of the
+light-complected woman in the blue hat will be in vain to break it
+up.  Keep up good courage, you will marry him in spite of all," sez
+she, porin' over my pamm and studyin' it as if it wuz a jography.
+
+"For the land's sake!" sez I, bein' fairly stunted with the idees
+she promulgated.
+
+"Yes, you will marry him, and be happy.  But you have had a
+sickness in the past and your line of happiness has been broken
+once or twice."
+
+Sez I, "I should think as much; let a woman live with a man, the
+best man in the world for 20 years, and if her line of happiness
+haint broke more than once or twice, why it speaks well for the
+line, that is all.  It is a good, strong line."
+
+"Then you have been married?" says she.
+
+"Yes, Mom," sez I.
+
+"Oh, I see, down in the corner of your hand is a coffin, you are
+a widow, you have seen trouble.  But you will be happy.  The
+mild, bald gentleman will make you happy.  He will lead you to
+the altar in spite of the light-complected woman with the blue
+bat on."
+
+Ardelia Tutt had on a blue hat, the idee!  But I let her go on.
+Thinkses I, "I have paid my money and now it stands me in hand to
+get the worth on't."  So she comferted me up with the hope of
+gettin' my Josiah for quite a spell.
+
+Gettin' my pardner!  Gettin' the father of my childern, and the
+grandparent of my grandchildren!  Jest think on't, will you?
+
+But then she branched off and told me things that wuz truly
+wonderful.  Where and how she got 'em wuz and is a mistery to me.
+True things, and strange.
+
+Why it seemed same as if them tall pines, that wuz a whisperin'
+together over the Encampment wuz a peerin' over into my past, and
+a whisperin' it down to her.  Or, in some way or other, the truth
+wuz a bein' filtered down to her comprehension through some
+avenue beyond our sense or sight.
+
+It is a curious thing, so I think, and so Josiah thinks.  We
+talked it over after I came out, and we wuz a wanderin' on about
+the Encampment.  I told him some of the wonderful things she had
+told me and he didn't believe it.  "For," sez he, "I'll be hanged
+if I can understand and I won't believe anything that I can't
+understand!"
+
+And I pointed with the top of my umberel at a weed growin' by the
+side of the road, and sez I, "When you tell me jest how that weed
+draws out of the back ground jest the ingredients she needs to
+make her blue foretop, and her green gown, then I'll tell you all
+about this secret that Nater holds back from us a spell, but will
+reveel to us when the time comes."
+
+"Oh shave!" sez Josiah, "I guess I know all about a jimson weed.
+Why they groin; that is all there is about them.  They grow, dumb
+'em.  I guess if you'd broke your back as many times as I have a
+pullin' 'em up, yon would know all about' em.  Dumb their dumb
+picters," sez he, a scowlin' at 'em.
+
+It wuz the same kind of weed that growed in our onion beds.  I
+recognized it.  Them and white daisies, our garden wuz overrun by
+'em both.
+
+But I sez, "Can you tell how the little seed of this weed goes
+down into the earth and selects jest what she wants out of the
+great storehouse below?  She never comes out in a pink head-dress
+or a yellow gown.  No, she always selects what will make the blue.
+It shows that it has life, intelligence, or else it couldn't think,
+way down under the ground, and grope in the dark, but always
+gropin' jest right, always a thinkin' the right thing, never, never
+in the hundreds and thousands of years makin' a mistake.  Why, you
+couldn't do it, Josiah Allen, nor I couldn't.
+
+"And we set and see these silent mysteries a goin' on right at
+our door-step day by day, and year by year, and think nothin' of
+it, because it is so common.  But if anything else, some new law,
+some new wonder we don't understand comes in our way, we are
+ready to reject it and say it is a lie.  But you know, Josiah
+Allen," sez I, jest ready to go on eloquent -
+
+But I wuz interrupted jest here by my companion hollerin' up in a
+loud voice to a boy, "Here! you stop that, you young scamp!  Don't
+you let me see you a doin' that agin!"
+
+Sez I, "What is it, Josiah Allen?"
+
+"Why look at them young imps, a throwin' sticks at that feeble
+old woman, over there."
+
+I looked, and my own heart wuz rousted up with indignation.  I
+stood where I couldn't see her face, but I see she wuz old,
+feeble, and bent, a withered poor old creeter, and they had
+marked up over her, her name, Aunt Sally.
+
+I too wuz burnin' indignant to see a lot of young creeters a
+throwin' sticks at her, and I cried out loud, "Do you let Sarah
+be."
+
+They turned round and laughed in our faces, and I went on: "I'd
+be ashamed of myself if I wuz in your places to be a throwin'
+sticks at that feeble old woman.  Why don't you spend your
+strengths a tryin' to do sunthin' for her?  Git her a home, and
+sunthin' to eat, and a better dress.  Before I'd do what you are
+a doin' now, I'd growvel in the dust.  Why, if you wuz my boys
+I'd give you as good a spankin' as you ever had."
+
+But they jest laughed at us, the impudent Greeters.  And one of
+the boys at that minute took up a stick and threw it, and hit
+Sarah right on her poor old head.
+
+Sez Josiah, "Don't you hit Sarah agin."
+
+Sez the boys, "We will," and two of 'em hit her at one time.  And
+one of 'em knocked the pipe right out of her mouth.  She wuz a
+smokin', poor old creeter.  I s'pose that wuz all the comfort she
+took.  But did them little imps care?  They knocked her as if
+they hated the sight of her.  And my Josiah (I wuz proud of that
+man) jest advanced onto 'em, and took 'em one in each hand, and
+gin 'em sech a shakin', that I most expected to see their bones
+drop out, and sez he between each shake, "Will you let Sarah
+alone now?"
+
+I wuz proud of my Josiah, but fearful of the effect of so much
+voyalence onto his constitution, and also onto the boys' frames.
+And I advanced onto the seen of carnage and besought him to be
+calm.  Sez he, "I won't be calm!" sez he, "I haint the man,
+Samantha, to stand by and see one of your sect throwed at, as I
+have seen Sarah throwed at, without avengin' of it."
+
+And agin he shook them boys with a vehemence.  The pennies and
+marbles in their pockets rattled and their bones seemed ready to
+part asunder.  I wuz proud of that noble man, my pardner.  But
+still I knew that if their bones was shattered my pardner would
+be avenged upon by incensed parents.  And I sez, "I'd let 'em go
+now, Josiah.  I don't believe they'll ever harm Sarah agin."  Sez
+I, "Boys, you won't, will you ever strike a poor feeble old woman
+agin?."  Sez I, "promise me, boys, not to hurt Sarah."
+
+I don't know what the effect of my words would have been, but a
+man came up just then and explained to me, that Aunt Sally wuz a
+image that they throwed at for one cent apiece to see if they
+could break her pipe.
+
+I see how it wuz, and cooled right down, and so did Josiah.  And
+he gin the boys five cents apiece, and quiet rained down on the
+Encampment.
+
+But I sez to the man, "I don't like the idee of havin' my sect
+throwed at from day to day, and week to week."  Sez I, "Why didn't
+you have a man fixed up to throw at, why didn't you have a Uncle
+Sam?"  Sez I, "I don't over and above like it; it seems to be a
+sort of a slight onto my sect."
+
+Sez the man winkin' kind a sly at Josiah, "It won't do to make
+fun of men, men have the power in their hands and would resent it
+mebby.  Uncle Sam can't be used jest like Aunt Sally."
+
+Sez I, "That haint the right spirit.  There haint nothin' over
+and above noble in that, and manly."
+
+I wuz kinder rousted up about it, and so wuz Josiah.  And that is
+I s'pose the reasun of his bein' so voyalent, at the next place
+of recreation we halted at Josiah see the picture of the mermaid;
+that beautiful female, a, settin' on the rock and combin' her
+long golden hair.  And he proposed that we should go in and see
+it.
+
+Sez I, "It costs ten cents apiece, Josiah Allen.  Think of the
+cost before it is too late."  Sez I, "Your expenditure of money
+today has been unusial."  Sez I, "The sum of ten cents has jest
+been raised by you for noble principles, and I honer you for it.
+But still the money has gone."  Sez I, "Do you feel able to incur
+the entire expense?"
+
+Sez he, "All my life, Samantha, I have jest hankered after seein'
+a mermaid.  Them beautiful creeters, a settin' and combin' their
+long golden tresses.  I feel that I must see it.  I fairly long
+to see one of them beautiful, lovely bein's before I die."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "if you feel like that, Josiah Allen, it is not
+fur from me to balk you in your search for beauty.  I too admire
+loveliness, Josiah Allen, and seek after it."  And sez I, "I will
+faithfully follow at your side, and together we will bask in the
+rays of beauty, together will we be lifted up and inspired by the
+immortal spirit of loveliness."
+
+So payin' our 30 cents we advanced up the steps, I expectin' soon
+to be made happy, and Josiah held up by the expectation of soon
+havin' his eyes blest by that vision of enchantin' beauty, he had
+so long dremp of.
+
+He advanced onto the pen first and before I even glanced down
+into the deep where as I s'posed she set on a rock a combin' out
+her long golden hair, a singin' her lurin' and enchanted song, to
+distant mariners she had known, and to the one who wuz a showin'
+of her off, before I had time to even glance at her, the maid, I
+was dumbfounded and stood aghast, at the mighty change that came
+over my pardner's linement.
+
+He towered up in grandeur and in wrath before me.  He seemed
+almost like a offended male fowl when ravenin' hawks are angerin'
+of it beyond its strength to endure.  I don't like that metafor;
+I don't love to compare my pardner to any fowl, wild or tame; but
+my frenzied haste to describe the fearful seen must be my excuse,
+and also my agitation in recallin' of it.
+
+He towered up, he fluttered so to speak majestically, and he says
+in loud wild axents that must have struck terror to the soul of
+that mariner, "Where is the hair-comb?"
+
+And then he shook his fist in the face of that mariner, and cries
+out once agin, "Where is them long golden tresses?  Bring 'em on
+this instant!  Fetch on that hair-comb, in a minute's time, or
+I'll prosecute you, and sue you, and take the law to you - !"
+
+The mariner quailed before him and sez I, "My dear pardner, be
+calm!  Be calm!"
+
+"I won't be calm!"
+
+Sez I mildly, but firmly, "You must, Josiah Allen; you must! or
+you will break open your own chest.  You must be calm."
+
+"And I tell you I won't be calm.  And I tell you," says he, a
+turnin' to that destracted mariner agin "I tell you to bring on
+that comb and that long hair, this instant.  Do you s'pose I'm
+goin' to pay out my money to see that rack-a-bone that I wouldn't
+have a layin' out in my barn-yard for fear of scerin' the dumb
+scere-crows out in the lot.  Do you s'pose I'm goin' to pay out
+my money for seein' that dried-up mummy of the hombliest thing
+ever made on earth, the dumbdest, hombliest; with 2 or 3 horse
+hairs pasted onto its yellow old shell!  Do you spose I'm goin'
+to be cheated by seein' that, into thinkin' it is a beautiful
+creeter a playin' and combin' her hair?  Bring on that beautiful
+creeter a combin' out her long, golden hair this instant, and
+bring out the comb and I'll give you five minutes to do it in."
+
+He wuz hoorse with emotion, and he wuz pale round his lips as
+anything and leis eyes under his forward looked glassy.  I wuz
+fearful of the result.
+
+Thinkses I, I will look and see what has wrecked my pardner's
+happiness and almost reasen.  I looked in and I see plain that
+his agitation was nothin' to be wondered at.  It did truly seem
+to be the hombliest, frightfulest lookin' little thing that wuz
+ever made by a benignant Providence or a taxy-dermis.  I couldn't
+tell which made it.  I see it all, but I see also, so firm, sot
+is my reasun onto its high throne on my heart, I see that to
+preserve my pardner's sanity, I must control my reasun at the
+sight that had tottered my pardner's.
+
+I turned to him, and tried to calm the seethin' waters, but he
+loudly called for the comb, and for the tresses, and the lookin'
+glass.  And, askin' in a wild' sarcastic way where the song wuz
+that she sung to mariners?  And hollerin' for him to bring on
+that rock at that minute, and them mariners, and ordered him to
+set her to singin'.
+
+The idee! of that little skeletin with her skinny lips drawed
+back from her shinin' fish teeth, a singin'.  The idee on't!
+
+But truly, he wuz destracted and knew not what he did.  The
+mariner in charge looked destracted.  And the bystanders a
+standin' by wuz amazed, and horrowfied by the spectacle of his
+actin' and behavin'.  And I knew not how I should termonate the
+seen, and withdraw him away from where he wuz.
+
+But in my destraction and agony of sole, I bethought me of one
+meens of quietin' him and as it were terrifyin' him into silence
+and be the meens of gettin' on him to leave the seen.  I begoned
+to Ardelia to come forward and I sez in a whisper to her, "Take
+out your pencil and a piece of paper and stand up in front of him
+and go to writin' some of your poetry,"
+
+And then I sez agin in tender agents, "Be calm, Josiah."
+
+"And I tell you that I won't be calm!  And I tell you," a shakin'
+his fist at that pale mariner, "I tell you to bring out -- "
+
+At that very minute he turned his eyes onto Ardelia, who stood
+with a kind of a fur-away look in her eyes in front of him with
+the paper in her hand, and sez he to me, "What is she doin'?"
+
+"She is composin' some poetry onto you, Josiah Allen," sez I, in
+tremblin' axents; for I felt that if that skeme failed, I wuz
+undone, for I knew I had no ingredients there to get him a extra
+good meal.  No, I felt that my tried and true weepon wuz fur
+away, and this wuz my last hope.
+
+But as I thought these thoughts with almost a heatlightnin'
+rapidety, I see a change in his liniment.  It did not look so
+thick and dark; it began to look more natural and clear.
+
+And sez he in the same old way I have heerd him say it so many
+times, "Dumb it all!  What duz she want to write poetry on me
+for?  It is time to go home."  And so sayin', he almost tore us
+from the seen.
+
+I gin Ardelia that night 2 yards of lute-string ribbon, a light
+pink, and didn't begrech it.  But I have never dast, not in his
+most placid and serene moments - I have never dast, to say the
+word "Mermaid' to him.
+
+Truly there is something that the boldest female pardner dassent
+do.  Mermaids is one of the things I don' dast to bring up.  No!
+no, fur be it from me to say "Mermaid" to Josiah Allen.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+A DRIVE TO SARATOGA LAKE.
+
+
+Josiah and me took a short drive this afternoon, he hirin' a
+buggy for the occasion.  He called it "goin' in his own conveniance,"
+and I didn't say nothin' aginst his callin' it so.  I didn't break
+it up for this reasun, thinkses I it is a conveniance for us to
+ride in it, for us 2 tried and true souls to get off for a minute
+by ourselves.
+
+Wall, Josiah wuz dretful good behaved this afternoon.  He helped
+me in a good deal politer than usual and tucked the bright
+lap-robe almost tenderly round my form.
+
+Men do have sech spells.  They are dretful good actin' at times.
+Why they act better and more subdueder and mellerer at sometimes
+than at others, is a deep subject which we mortals cannot as yet
+fully understand.  Also visey versey, their cross, up headeder
+times, over bearin' and actin'.  It is a deep subject and one
+freighted with a great deal of freight.
+
+But Josiah's goodness on this afternoon almost reached the
+Scripteral and he sez, when we first sot out, and I see that the
+horse's head wuz turned towards the Lake.  Sez he, "I guess we'll
+go to the Lake, but where do you want to go, Samantha?  I will go
+anywhere you want to go."
+
+And he still drove almost recklessly on lakewards.  And sez he,
+"We had better go straight on, but say the word, and you can go
+jest where you want to."  And he urged the horse on to still
+greater speed.  And he sez agin, "Do you want to go any
+particular place, Samantha?"
+
+"Yes," sez I, "I had jest as leves go there as not."
+
+"Wall, I knew there would be where you would want to go."  And he
+drove on at a good jog.  But no better jog than we had been a
+goin' on.
+
+Wall the weather wuz delightful.  It wuz soft and balmy.  And my
+feelin's towered my pardner (owin' to his linement) wuz soft and
+balmy as the air.  And so we moved onwards, past the home of one
+who wuz true to his country, when all round him wuz false, who
+governed his state wisely and well, held the lines firm, when she
+wuz balky, and would have been glad to take the lines in her
+teeth and run away onto ruin; past the big grand house of him who
+carried a piece of our American justice way off into Egypt and
+carried it firm and square too right there in the dark.  I s'pose
+it is dark.  I have always hearn about its bein' as dark as
+Egypt.  Wall, anyway he is a good lookin' man.  They both on 'em
+are and Josiah admitted it - after some words.
+
+Wall anon, or perhaps a little after, we came to where we could
+see the face of Beautiful Saratoga Lake, layin' a smilin' up into
+the skies.  A little white cloud wuz a restin' up on the top of
+the tree-covered mountain that riz up on one side of the lake,
+and I felt that it might be the shadow form of the sacred dove
+Saderrosseros a broodin' down over the waters she loved.
+
+That she loved still, though another race wuz a bathin' their
+weary forwards in the tide.  And I wondered as I looked down on
+it, whether the great heart of the water wuz constant; if it ever
+heaved up into deep sithes a thinkin' of the one who had passed
+away, of them who once rested lightly on her bosem, bathed their
+dark forwards and read the meanin' of the heavens, in the moon
+and stars reflected there.
+
+I don't know as she remembered 'em, and Josiah don't.  But I know
+as we stood there, a lookin' down on her, the lake seemed to give
+a sort of a sithe and a shiver kind a run over her, not a cold
+shiver exactly, but a sort of a shinin', glorified shiver.  I see
+it a comin' from way out on the lake and it swept and sort a
+shivered on clean to the shore and melted away there at our feet.
+Mebby it wuz a sort o' sithe, and mebby agin it wuzn't.
+
+I guess it felt that it wuz all right, that a fairer race had
+brought fairer customs and habits of thoughts, and the change wuz
+not a bad one.  I guess she looked forward to the time when a
+still grander race should look down into her shinin' face, a race
+of free men, and free wimmen; sons and daughters of God, who
+should hold their birthright so grandly and nobly that they will
+look back upon the people of to-day, as we look back upon the
+dark sons and daughters of the forest, in pity and dolor.
+
+I guess she thought it wuz all right.  Any way she acted as if
+she did.  She looked real sort o' serene and calm as we left her,
+and sort o' prophetic too, and glowin'.
+
+Wall, we went by a long first rate lookin' sort of a tarven, I
+guess.  It wuz a kind of a dark red color, and dretfully flowered
+off in wood - red wood.  And there we see standin' near the
+house, a great big round sort of a buildin', and my Josiah sez,
+
+"There! that is a buildin' I like the looks on. That is a barn I
+like; built perfectly round.  That is sunthin' uneek.  I'll have
+a barn like that if I live.  I fairly love that barn."  And he
+stopped the horse stun still to look at it.
+
+And I sez in sort o' cool tones, not entirely cold, but coolish:
+"What under the sun do you want with a round barn?  And you don't
+need another one."
+
+"Wall, I don't exactly need it, Samantha, but it would be a
+comfert to me to own one.  I should dearly love a round barn."
+
+And he went on pensively, - "I wonder how much it would cost.  I
+wouldn't have it quite so big as this is.  I'd have it for a
+horse barn, Samantha.  It would look so fashionable, and genteel.
+Think what it would be, Samantha, to keep our old mair in a round
+barn, why the mair would renew her age."
+
+"She wouldn't pay no attention to it," sez I.  "She knows too
+much."  And I added in cooler, more dignifieder tones, but dretful
+meanin' ones, "The old mair, Josiah Allen, don't run after every
+new fancy she hears on.  She don't try to be fashionable, and she
+haint high-headed, except," sez I, reasenably, "when you check her
+up too much."
+
+"Wall," sez he, "I am bound to make some enquiries.  Hello!" says
+he to a bystander a comin' by.  "Have you any idee what such a
+barn as that would cost?  A little smaller one, I don't need so
+big a one.  How many feet of lumber do you s'pose it would take
+for it?  I ask you," sez he, "as between man and man."
+
+I nudged him there, for as I have said, I didn't believe then,
+and I don't believe now, that he or any other man ever knew or
+mistrusted what they meant by that term "as between man and man."
+I think it sounds kind o' flat, and I always oppose Josiah's
+usin' it; he loves it.
+
+Wall, the man broke out a' laughin' and sez he, "That haint a
+barn, that is a tree."
+
+"A tree!" sez I, a sort o' cranin' my neck forward in deep amaze.
+And what exclamation Josiah Allen made, I will not be coaxed into
+revealin'; no, it is better not.
+
+But suffice it to say that after a long explanation my companion
+at last gin in that the man wuz a tellin' the truth, and it wuz
+the lower part of a tree-trunk, that growed once near the Yo Semity
+valley of California.  Good land! good land!
+
+Josiah drove on quick after the man explained it, he felt
+meachin', but I didn't notice his linement so much, I wuz so deep
+in thought, and a wonderin' about it; a wonderin' how the old
+tree felt with her feet a restin' here on strange soil - her
+withered, dry old feet a standin' here, as if jest ready to walk
+away restless like and feverish, a wantin' to get back by the
+rushin' river that used to bathe them feet in the spring overflow
+of the pure cold mountain water.  It seemed to me she felt she
+was a alien, as if she missed her strong sturdy grand old body,
+her lofty head that used to peer up over the mountains, and as if
+some day she wuz a goin' to set off a walkin' back, a tryin' to
+find 'em.
+
+I thought of how it had towered up, how the sun had kissed its
+branches, how the birds had sung and built their nests against
+her green heart, hovered in her great, outstretched arms.  The
+birds of a century, the birds of a thousand years.  How the
+storms had beat upon her; the first autumn rains of a thousand
+years, the first snow-flakes that had wavered down in a slantin'
+line and touched the tips of her outstretched fingers, and then
+had drifted about her till her heart wuz almost frozen and she
+would clap her cold hands together to warm 'em, and wail out a
+dretful moanin' sound of desolation, and pain.
+
+But the first warm rain drops of Spring would come, the sunshine
+warmed her, she swung out her grand arms in triumph agin, and
+joined the majestic psalm of victory and rejoicing with all her
+grand sisterhood of psalmists.  The stars looked down on her, the
+sun lit her lofty forward, the suns and stars of a thousand
+years.  Strange animals, that mebby we don't know anything about
+now, roamed about her feet, birds of a different plumage and song
+sung to her (mebby).
+
+Strange faces of men and women looked up to her.  What faces had
+looked up to her in sorrow and in joy?  I'd gin a good deal to
+know.  I'd have loved to see them strange faces touched with
+strange pains and hopes.  Tribulations and joys of a thousand
+years ago.  What sort of tribulations wuz they, and what sort of
+joys?  Sunthin' human, sunthin' that we hold in common, no doubt.
+The same pain that pained Eve as she walked down out of Eden, the
+same joy that Adam enjoyed while they and the garden wuz
+prosperus, wuz in their faces most probable whether their
+forwards wuz pinted or broad, their faces black, copper colored
+or white.
+
+And the changes, the changes of a thousand years, all these the
+old tree had seen, and I respected her dry dusty old feet and wuz
+sorry for 'em.  And I reveryed on the subject more'n half the way
+home, and couldn't help it.  Anyway my revery lasted till jest
+before we got to the big gate of the Race Course.
+
+And right there, right in front of them big ornamental doors, we
+see Miss G. Washington Flamm, with about a thousand other carriages
+and wagons and Tally ho's and etcetry, and etcetry.  Josiah thinks
+there wuz a million teams, but I don't.  I am mejum; there wuzn't
+probable over a thousand right there in the road.
+
+Miss Flamm recognized us and asked us if we didn't want to go in.
+Wall, Josiah wuz agreeable to the idee and said so.  And then she
+said sunthin' to the man that tended to the gate, probably
+sunthin' in our praise, and handed him sunthin', it might have
+been a ten cent piece, for all I know.
+
+But anyway he wuz dretful polite to us, and let us through.  And
+my land! if it wuzn't a sight to behold!  Of all the big roomy
+places I ever see all filled with vehicles of all shapes and
+sizes and folks on foot and big high platforms, all filled with
+men and wimmen and children!  And Josiah sez to me, "I thought
+the hull dumb world wuz there outside in the road, and here there
+is ten times as many in here."
+
+And I sez, "Yes, Josiah, be careful and not lose me, for I feel
+like a needle in a hay mow."
+
+He looked down on me and sort a smiled.  I s'pose it wuz because
+I compared myself to a needle, and he sez, "A cambric needle, or
+a darnin' needle?"
+
+And I sez, "I wouldn't laugh in such a time as this, Josiah Allen."
+Sez I, "Do jest look over there on the race course."
+
+And it wuz a thrillin' seen.  It wuz a place big enough for all
+the horses of our land to run 'round in and from Phario's horses
+down to them of the present time.  And beautiful broad smooth
+roads cut in the green velvet of the grass, and horses goin'
+'round jest like lightnin', with little light buggys hitched to
+'em, some like the quiver on sheet lightnin' (only different
+shape) and men a drivin' 'em.
+
+And then there wuz a broad beautiful race course with little
+clusters of trees and bushes, every little while right in the
+road, and if you'll believe it, I don't s'pose you will, but it
+is the livin' truth, when them horses, goin' jest like a flash of
+light, with little boys all dressed in gay colors a ridin' 'em --
+when them horses came to them trees instid of goin' 'round 'em,
+or pushin' in between 'em, or goin' back agin, they jumped right
+over 'em.  I don't spose this will be believed by lots of folks
+in Jonesville and Loontown, but it is the truth, for I see it
+with both my eyes.  Josiah riz right up in the buggy and cheered
+jest as the rest of 'em did, entirely unbeknown to himself, so he
+said, to see it a goin' on.
+
+Why he got nearly rampant with excitement.  And so did I, though
+I wouldn't want it known by Tirzah Ann's husband's folks and
+others in Jonesville.  They call it "steeple chasin'" so if they
+should hear on't, it wouldn't sound so very wicked any way.  I
+should probable tell 'em if they said too much, "That it wuz a
+pity if folks couldn't get interested in a steeple and chase it
+up."  But between you and me I didn't see no sign of a steeple,
+nor meetin' house nor nuthin'.  I s'pose they gin it that name to
+make it seem more righter to perfessors.  I know it wuz a great
+comfort to me.  (But I don't think they chased a steeple, and
+Josiah don't, for we think we should have seen it if they had.)
+
+Wall, as I say, we wuz both dretfully interested, excited, and
+wrought up, I s'pose I ort to say, when a chap accosted me and
+says to me sunthin' about buyin' a pool.  And I shook my head and
+sez, "No, I don't want to buy no pool."
+
+But he kep' on a talkin' and a urgin', and sez, "Won't you buy a
+French pool, mom, you can make lots of money out of it."
+
+"A pool," sez I in dignified axents, and some stern, for I wuz
+weary with his importunities.  "What do I want a pool for?  Don't
+you s'pose there's any pools in Jonesville, and I never thought
+nothin' on 'em, I always preferred runnin' water.  But if I wuz a
+goin' to buy one, what under the sun do you s'pose I would buy
+one way off here for, hundreds of miles from Jonesville?"
+
+"I might possibly," sez I, not wantin' to hurt his feelin's and
+tryin' to think of some use I could put it tot " might if you had
+a good small American pool, that wuz a sellin' cheap; and I could
+have it set right in our back yard, clost to the horse barn, why
+I might possibly try to make a dicker with you for it.  I might
+use it for raisin' ducks and geese, though I'd rather have a
+runnin' stream then.  But how under the sun you think I could
+take a pool home on a tower, how I could pack it, or transport
+it, or drive it home is a mystery to me."
+
+Again he sez mechinecally, "Lots of wimmen do get 'em."
+
+"Wall, some wimmen," sez I mildly, for I see he wuz a lookin' at
+me perfect dumbfoundered.  I see I wuz fairly stuntin' him with
+my eloquence.  "Some wimmen will buy anything if it has a French
+name to it.  But I prefer my own country, land or water.  And
+some wimmen," sez I, "will buy anything if they can get it cheap,
+things they don't need, and would be better off without, from a
+eliphant down to a magnificent nothin' to call husband.  They'll
+buy any worthless and troublesome thing jest to get 'em to goin'.
+Now such wimmen would jest jump at that pool.  But that haint my
+way.  No, I don't want to purchase your pool."
+
+Sez he, "You are mistaken, mom!"
+
+"No I haint," sez I firmly and with decesion.  "No I haint.  I
+don't need no pool.  It wouldn't do me no good to keep it on my
+hands, and I haint no notion of settin' up in the pool or pond
+business, at my age."
+
+"And then," sez I reasonably, "the canal runs jest down below our
+orchard, and if we run short, we could get all the water we
+wanted from there.  And we have got two good cisterns and a well
+on the place."
+
+Sez he, "What I mean is, bettin' on a horse.  Do you want to bet
+on which horse will go the fastest, the black one or the bay one?"
+
+"No," sez I, "I don't want to bet."
+
+But he kep' on a urgin' me, and thinkin' I had disappinted him in
+sellin' a pool, or rather pond, I thought it wouldn't hurt me to
+kinder gin in to him in this, so I sez mildly, "Bettin' is sunthin'
+I don't believe in, but seein' I have disappinted you in sellin'
+your water power, I don't know as it would be wicked to humor you
+in this and say it to please you.  You say the bay horse is the
+best, so I'll say for jest this once - There!  I'll bet the bay
+one will go the best."
+
+"Where is your money?" sez he.  "It is five dollars for a bet.
+You pay five dollars and you have a chance to get back mebby 100."
+
+I riz right up in feerful dignity, and the buggy and I sez that
+one feerful word to him, "Gamblin'!"  He sort a quailed.  But sez
+he, "you had better take a five-dollar chance on the bay horse."
+
+"No," sez I, with a freezin' coldness, that must have made his
+ears fairly tingle it wuz so cold, "no I shall not gamble, neither
+on foot nor on horseback."
+
+Then I sot down and I sez in the same lofty tones to Josiah
+Allen, "Drive on, Josiah, instantly and to once."
+
+He too had heerd the fearful word and his princeples too wuz
+rousted up.  He driv right on rapidly, out of the gate and into
+the highway.  But as he druv on fast and almost furius I heerd
+him murmur words to himself, that accounted for his eager looks
+while the man wuz dickerin' about the pool.  He sez, "It is dumb
+hard work pumpin' water for so many head of cattle."  He thought
+a pool would come handy, so I see.  But it wuz all done and I
+would have done the same thing if it was to do over agin, so I
+didn't say nuthin', but kep' a serene silence, and let him drive
+along in quiet; and anon, I see the turbelence of his feelin's
+subsided in a measure.
+
+It wuz a gettin' along towards sundown and the air wuz a growin'
+cool and balmy, as if it wuz a blowin' over some balm flowers,
+and we begun to feel quite well in our minds, though the crowd
+in the road wuz too big for comfert.  The crowd of carriages and
+horses, and vehicles of all kinds, seemed to go in two big full
+rows or streams, one a goin' down on one side of the road, and
+the other a goin' up on the other.  So the 2 tides swept past
+each other constantly -- but the bubbles on the tide wuzn't foam
+but feathers, and bows, and laces, and parasols, and buttons, and
+diamonds, and etcetry, etcetry, etcetry.
+
+And all of a sudden my Josiah jest turned into a big gate that
+wuz a standin' wide open and we drove into a beautiful quiet road
+that went a windin' in under the shadows of the tall grand old
+trees.  He did it without askin' my advice or sayin' a word to
+me.  But I wuzn't sorry.  Fur it wuz beautiful in there.  It
+seemed as if we had left small cares and vexations and worryments
+out there in the road and dust, and took in with us only repose
+and calmness, and peace, and they wuz a journeyin' along with us
+on the smooth road under the great trees, a bendin' down on each
+side on us.  And pretty soon we came to a beautiful piece of
+water crossed by a rustick bridge, and all surrounded by green
+trees on every side.  Then up on the broad road agin, sweepin'
+round a curve where we could see a little ways off a great mansion
+with a wall built high round it as if to shet in the repose and
+sweet home-life and shet out intrusion, sort a protect it from the
+too curius glances of a curius generation.  Some as I hold my hand
+up before my face to keep off the too-scorchin' rays of the sun,
+when I am a lookin' down the western road for my Josiah.
+
+It wuz a good lookin' spot as I ever want to see, sheltered,
+quiet and lovely.  But we left it behind us as we rode onwards,
+till we came out along another broad piece of the water, and we
+rode along by the side of it for some time.
+
+Beautiful water with the trees growin' up on every side of it,
+and their shadows reflected so clearly in the shinin' surface,
+that they seemed to be trees a growin' downwards, tall grand
+trees, wavin' branches, goin' down into the water and livin' agin
+in another world, -- a more beautiful one.
+
+The sun wuz a gettin' low and piles of clouds wuz in the west and
+all their light wuz reflected in the calm water.  And the beautiful
+soft shadows rested there on that rosy and golden light, some like
+the shadow of a beautiful and sorrowful memory, a restin' down and
+reposin' on a divine hope, an infinite sweetness.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+VISITS TO NOTABLE PLACES.
+
+
+It is a perfect sight to behold, to set on the piazzas at Saratoga,
+and see the folks a goin' past.
+
+Now in Jonesville, when there wuz a 4th of July, or campmeetin',
+or sunthin' of that kind a goin' on, why, I thought I had seen
+the streets pretty full.  Why, I had counted as many as seven
+teams in the road at one time, and I had thought that wuz pretty
+lively times.  But good land?  Good land!  You would have gin up
+in ten minutes time here, that you had never seen a team (as it
+were).
+
+Why I call my head a pretty sound one, but I declare, it did
+fairly make my head swim to set there kinder late in the
+afternoon, and see the drivin' a goin' on.  See the carriages a
+goin' this way, and a goin' that way; horses of all colers, and
+men and wimmen of all colers, and parasols of all colers, and
+hats, and bonnets and parasols, and satins, and laces, and
+ribbins, and buttons, and dogs, and flowers, and plumes, and
+parasols.  And horses a turnin' out to go by, and horses havin'
+gone by, and horses that hadn't gone by.  And big carriages with
+folks inside all dressed up in every coler of the rain beaux.
+And elligent gentlemen dressed perfectly splendid, a settin' up
+straight behind.  With thin yellow legs, or stripes down the side
+on 'em, and their hats all trimmed off with ornaments and buttons
+up and down their backs.
+
+Haughty creeters they wuz, I make no doubt.  They showed it in
+their looks.  But I never loved so much dress in a man.  And I
+would jest as soon have told them so; as to tell you.  I hain't
+one to say things to a man's back that I won't say to his face,
+whether it be a plain back or buttoned.
+
+Wall, as I say, it wuz a dizzy sight to set there on them piazzas
+and see the seemin'ly endless crowd a goin' by; back and forth,
+back and forth; to and fro, to and fro.  I didn't enjoy it so
+much as some did, though for a few  minutes at a time I looked
+upon it as a sort of a recreation, some like a circus, only more
+wilder.
+
+But some folks enjoyed it dretfully.  Yes, they set a great deal
+on piazzas at Saratoga.  And when I say set on 'em, I mean they
+set a great store on 'em, and they set on 'em a great deal.  Some
+folks set on 'em so much, that I called them setters.  Real likely
+creeters they are too, some on 'em, and handsome;  some pious,
+sober ones, some sort a gay.  Some not married at all, and some
+married a good deal, and when I say a good deal I meen, they have
+had various companions and lost 'em.
+
+Now there wuz one woman that I liked quite well.
+
+She had had 4 husbands countin' in the present one.  She wuz a
+good lookin' woman and had seen trouble.  It stands to reeson she
+had with 4 husbands.  Good land!
+
+She showed me one day a ring she wore.  She had took the weddin'
+rings of her 4 pardners and had 'em all run together, and the
+initials of their first names carved inside on it.  Her first
+husband's name wuz Franklin, her next two wuz Orville and Obed,
+and her last and livin' one Lyman.  Wall, she meant well, but she
+never see what would be the end on't and how it would read till
+she had got their initials all carved out on it.
+
+She wuz dretfully worked up about it, but I see that it wuz right.
+ For nobody but a fool would want to run all these recollections
+and memories together, all the different essociations and emotions,
+that must cluster round each of them rings.  The idee of runnin'
+'em all together with the livin' one!  It wuz ectin' like a fool
+and it seemed fairly providential that their names run in jest
+that way.
+
+Why, if I had had 2 husbands, or even 4, I should want to keep
+'em apart - settin' up in high chairs on different sides of my
+heart.  Why, if I'd had 4, I'd have 'em to the different pints of
+the compass, east, west, north, south, as far apart from each
+other as my heart would admit of.  Ketch me a lumpin' in all the
+precious memories of my Josiah with them of any other man, bond
+or free, Jew or Genteel; no, and I'd refrain from tellin' to the
+new one about the other ones.
+
+No, when a pardner dies and you set out to take another one, bury
+the one that has gone right under his own high chair in your heart,
+don't keep him up there a rattlin' his bones before the eyes of
+the 2d, and angerin' him, and agonizen' your own heart.  Bury him
+before you bring a new one into the same room.
+
+And never! never! even in moments of the greatest anger, dig him
+up agin or even weep over his grave, before the new pardner.  No;
+under the moonlight, and the stars, before God only, and your own
+soul, you may lay there in spirit on that grave, weep over it,
+keep the turf green.  But not before any one else.  And I wouldn't
+advise you to go there alone any too often.  I would advise you to
+spend your spare time ornementin' the high chair where the new one
+sets, wreathin' it round with whatever blossoms and trailin' vines
+of tenderness and romance you have left over from the first great
+romance of life.
+
+It would be better for you in the end.
+
+I said some few of these little thoughts to the female mentioned;
+and I s'pose I impressed her dretfully, I s'pose I did.  But I
+couldn't stay to see the full effects on't, for another female
+setter came up at that minute to talk with her, and my companion
+came up at that very minute to ask me to go a walkin' with him up
+to the cemetery.
+
+That is a very favorite place for Josiah Allen.  He often used to
+tell the children when they wuz little, that if they wuz real
+good he would take 'em out on a walk to the grave-yard.
+
+And when I first married to him, if I hadn't broke it up, that
+would have been the only place of resort that he would have took
+me to Summers.  But I broke it up after a while.  Good land!
+there is times to go any where and times to stay away.  I didn't
+want to go a trailin' up there every day or two; jest married
+too!
+
+But to-day I felt willin' to go.  I had been a lookin' so long at
+the crowd a fillin' the streets full, and every one on 'em in
+motion, that I thought it would be sort a restful to go out to a
+place where they wuz still.  And so after a short walk we came to
+the village that haint stirred by any commotion or alarm.  Where
+the houses are roofed with green grass and daisies, and the white
+stun doors don't open to let in trouble or joy, and where the
+inhabitants don't ride out in the afternoon.
+
+Wall, if I should tell the truth which I am fur from not wantin'
+to do, I should say that at first sight, it wuz rather of a
+bleak, lonesome lookin' spot, kinder wild and desolate lookin'.
+But as we went further along in it, we came to some little nooks
+and sheltered paths and spots, that seemed more collected
+together and pleasant.  There wuz some big high stuns and
+monuments, and some little ones but not one so low that it hadn't
+cast a high, dark shadow over somebody's life.
+
+There wuz one in the shape of a big see shell.  I s'pose some
+mariner lay under that, who loved the sea.  Or mebby it wuz put
+up by some one who had the odd fancy that put a shell to your ear
+you will hear a whisperin' in it of a land fur away, fur away.
+Not fur from this wuz a stun put up over a young engineer who had
+been killed instantly by his engine.  There wuz a picture of the
+locomotive scraped out on the stun, and in the cab of the engine
+wuz his photograph, and these lines wuz underneath:
+
+           My engine now lies still and cold,
+           No water does her boiler hold;
+           The wood supplies its flames no more,
+           My days of usefulness are o'er.
+
+We wended our way in and out of the silent streets for quite a
+spell, and then we went and sot down on the broad piazza of the
+sort of chapel and green-house that stood not fur from the
+entrance.  And while we sot there we see another inhabitent come
+there to the village to stay.
+
+It wuz a long procession, fur it wuz a good man who had come.
+And many of his friends come with him jest as fur as they could:
+wife, children, and friends, they come with him jest as fur as
+they could, and then he had to leave 'em and go on alone.  How
+weak love is, and how strong.  It wuz too weak to hold him back,
+or go with him, though they would fain have done so.  But it wuz
+strong enough to shadow the hull world with its blackness, blot
+out the sun and the stars, and scale the very mounts of heaven
+with its wild complaints and pleadin's.  A strange thing love is,
+haint it?
+
+Wall, we sot there for quite a spell and my companion wantin', I
+spose, to make me happy, took out a daily paper out of his pocket
+and went to readin' the deaths to me.  He always loves to read
+the deaths and marriages in a paper.  He sez that is the
+literature that interests him.  And then I s'pose he thought at
+such a time, it wuz highly appropriate.  So I didn't break it up
+till he began to read a long obituary piece about a child's
+death; about its being cut down like a flower by a lightin'
+stroke out of a cloudless sky, and about what a mysterious
+dispensation of Providence it wuz, etc., etc.  And then there wuz
+a hull string of poetry dedicated to the heart-broken mother
+bewailin' the mystery on't, and wonderin' why Providence should
+do such strange, onlookedfor things, etc., and etcetery, and so
+4th.
+
+And I spoke right up and sez, "That is a slander onto Providence
+and ort to be took as such by every lover of justice."
+
+Josiah wuz real horrified, he had been almost sheddin' tears he
+wuz so affected by it; to think the little creeter should be torn
+away by a strange chance of Providence from a mother who worshipped
+her, and whose whole life and every thought wuz jest wrapped up in
+the child, and who never had thought nor cared for anything else
+only just the well bein' of the child and wardin' trouble off of
+her, for so the piece stated.  And he sez in wild amaze, "What do
+you mean, Samantha?  What makes you talk so?"
+
+"Because," sez I, "I know it is the truth.  I know the hull
+story;" and then I went on and told it to him, and he agreed with
+me and felt jest as I did.
+
+You see, the mother of the child wuz a perfect high flyer of
+fashion and she always wore dresses so tight, that she couldn't
+get her hands up to her head to save her life, after her corset
+wuz on.  Wall, she wuz out a walkin' with the child one day, or
+rather toddlin' along with it, on her high-heeled sboes.  They
+wuz both dressed up perfectly beautiful, and made a most splendid
+show.  Wall, they went into a store on their way to the park, and
+there wuz a big crowd there, and the mother and the little girl
+got into the very middle of the crowd.  They say there wuz some
+new storks for sale that day, and some cattail flags, and so
+there wuz naturelly a big crowd of wimmen a buyin' 'em, and
+cranes.  And some way, while they stood there a heavy vase that
+stood up over the child's head fell down and fell onto it, and
+hurt the child so, that it died from the effects of it.
+
+The mother see the vase when it flrst begun to move, she could
+have reached up her hands and stiddied it, and kep' it from
+fallin', if she could have got 'em up, but with that corset on,
+the hull American continent might have tumbled onto the child's
+head and she couldn't have moved her arms up to keep it off;
+couldn't have lifted her arms up over the child's head to save
+her life.  No, she couldn't have kep' one of the States off, nor
+nothin'.  And then talk about her wardin' trouble offen the
+child, why she COULDN'T ward trouble off, nor nothin' else with
+that corset on.  She screemed, as she see it a comin' down onto
+the head of her beloved little child, but that wuz all she could
+do.  The child wuz wedged in by the throng of folks and couldn't
+stir, and they wuz all engrossed in their own business which wuz
+pressin', and very important, a buyin' plates, and plaks, with
+bull-rushes, and cranes, and storks on 'em, so naturelly, they
+didn't mind what wuz a goin' on round 'em.  And down it come!
+
+And there it wuz put down in the paper, "A mysterious dispensation
+of Providence."  Providence slandered shamefully and I will say so
+with my last breath.
+
+What are mothers made for if it haint to take care of the little
+ones God gives 'em.  What right have they to contoggle themselves
+up in a way that they can see their children die before 'em, and
+they not able to put out a hand to save 'em.  Why, a savage
+mother is better than this, a heathen one.  And if I had my way,
+there would be a hull shipload of savages and heathens brought
+over here to teach and reform our too civilized wimmen.  I'd
+bring 'em over this very summer.
+
+Wall, we sot there on the stoop for quite a spell and then we
+wended our way down to the highway, and as we arrived there my
+companion proposed that we should take a carriage and go to the
+Toboggen slide.  Sez I, "Not after where we have been today,
+Josiah Allen."
+
+And he sez, "Why not?"
+
+And I sez, "It wouldn't look well, after visitin' the folks we
+have jest now."
+
+"Wall," sez he, "they won't speak on't to anybody, if that is
+what you are afraid on, or sense it themselves."
+
+And I see in a minute, he had some sense on his side, though his
+words shocked me some at first, kinder jarred aginst some
+sensitive spot in my nater, jest as pardners will sometimes,
+however devoted they may be to each other.  Yet I see he wuz in
+the right on't.
+
+They wouldn't sense anything about it.  And as for us, we wuz in
+the world of the livin' still, and I still owed a livin' duty to
+my companion, to make him as happy as possible.  And so I sez,
+mildly, "Wall, I don't know as there is anything wrong in slidin'
+down hill, Josiah.  I s'pose I can go with you."
+
+"No," sez he, "there haint nothin' wrong about slidin' down hill
+unless you strike too hard, or tip over, or sunthin'."  So he
+bagoned to a carriage that wuz passin', and we got into it, and
+sot sail for the Toboggen slide.
+
+We passed through the village.  (Some say it is a city, but if it
+is, it is a modest, retirin' one as I ever see; perfectly
+unassumin', and don't put on a air, not one.)
+
+But howsumever, we passed through it, through the rows and rows
+of summer tarvens and boardin' houses, good-lookin' ones too;
+past some good-lookin' private houses -- a long tarven and a
+pretty red brick studio and rows of summer stores, little nests
+that are filled up summers, and empty winters, then by some more
+of them monster big tarvens where some of the 200,000 summer
+visitors who flock here summers, find a restin' place; and then
+by the large respectable good-lookin' stores and shops of the
+natives, that stand solid, and to be depended on summer and
+winter; by churches and halls, and etc., and good-lookin' houses
+and then some splendid-lookin' houses all standin' back on their
+grassy lawns behind some trees, and fountains, and flower beds,
+etc., etc.
+
+Better-lookin' houses, I don't want to see nor broader, handsomer
+streets.  And pretty soon fur away to the east you could see
+through the trees a glimpse of a glorious landscape, a broad
+lovely view of hill and valley, bounded by blue mountain tops.
+It was a fair seen - a fair seen.  To be perfectly surrounded by
+beauty where you, wuz, and a lookin' off onto more.  There I
+would fain have lingered, but time and wagons roll stidily
+onward, and will not brook delay, nor pause for women to soar
+over seenery.
+
+So we rolled onwards through still more beautiful, and quiet
+pictures.  Pictures of quiet woods and bendin' trees, and a
+country road windin' tranquilly beneath, up and down gentle hills,
+and anon a longer one, and then at our feet stood the white walls
+of a convent, with 2 or 3 brothers, a strollin' along in their
+long black gowns, and crosses, a readin' some books.
+
+I don't know what it wuz, what they wuz a readin' out of their
+books, or a readin' out of their hearts.  Mebby sunthin' kinder
+sad and serene.  Mebby it wuz sunthin' about the gay world of
+human happiness, and human sorrows, they had turned backs to
+forever.  Mebby it wuz about the other world that they had sot
+out for through a lonesome way.  Mebby it wuz "Never" they wuz a
+readin' about, and mebby it wuz "Forever."  I don't know what it
+wuz.  But we went by 'em, and anon, yes it wuz jest anon, for it
+wuz the very minute that I lifted my eyes from the Father's calm
+and rather sad-lookin' face, that I ketched sight on't, that I
+see a comin' down from the high hills to the left on us, an
+immense sort of a trough, or so it looked, a comin' right down
+through the trees, from the top of the mountain to the, bottom.
+And then all acrost the fields as fur, as fur as from our house
+way over to Miss Pixley's wuz a sort of a road, with a row of
+electric lights along the side on't.
+
+We drove up to a buildin' that stood at the foot of that immense
+slide, or so they called it, and a female woman who wuz there
+told us all about it.  And we went out her back door, and see way
+up the slide, or trough.  There wuz a railin' on each side on't,
+and a place in the middle where she said the Toboggen came down.
+
+And sez Josiah, "Who is the Toboggen, anyway?  Is he a native of
+the place or a Injun?  Anyway," sez he, "I'd give a dollar bill
+to see him a comin' down that place."
+
+And the woman said, "A Toboggen wuz a sort of a long sled, that
+two or three folks could ride on, and they come down that slide
+with such force that they went way out acrost the fields as far
+as the row of lights, before it stopped."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, did you ever see the beat on't?"  Sez I,
+"Haint that as far as from our house to Miss Pixley's?"
+
+"Yes," says he, "and further too.  It is as far as Uncle Jim
+Hozzleton's."
+
+"Wall," says I, "I believe you are in the right on't."
+
+And sez Josiah, "How do they get back agin?  Do they come in the
+cars, or in their own conveniences?"
+
+"There is a sleigh to bring 'em back, but sometime they walk
+back," sez the woman.
+
+"Walk back!" sez I, in deep amaze.  "Do they walk from way out
+there, and cleer up that mountain agin?"
+
+"Yes," sez she.  "Don't you see the place at the side for 'em to
+draw the Toboggen up, and the little flights of steps for 'em to
+go up the hill?"
+
+"Wall," sez I, in deep amaze, and auxins as ever to get
+information on deep subjects, "where duz the fun come in, is it
+in walkin' way over the plain and up the hills, or is it in
+comin' down?"
+
+And she said she didn't know exactly where the fun lay, but she
+s'posed it wuz comin' down.  Anyway, they seemed to enjoy it
+first rate.  And she said it wuz a pretty sight to see 'em all on
+a bright clear night, when the sky wuz blue and full of stars,
+and the earth white and glistenin' underneath to see 7 or 800,
+all dressed up in to gayest way, suits of white blankets, gay
+borders and bright tasseled caps of every color, and suits of
+every other pretty color all trimmed with fur and embroideries,
+to see 'em all a laughin' and a talkin', with their cheeks and
+eyes bright and glowin', to see 'em a comin' down the slide like
+flashes of every colored light, and away out over the white
+glistenin' plains; and then to see the long line of happy laughin'
+creeters a walkin' back agin' drawin' the gay Toboggens.  She
+said it wuz a sight worth seein'.
+
+"Do they come down alone?" sez Josiah.
+
+"Oh no!" sez she.  "Boys and their sweethearts, men and wives,
+fathers and mothers and children, sometimes 4 on a Toboggan."
+
+Sez Josiah, lookin' anamated and clever, "I'd love to take you on
+one on 'em, Samantha.'
+
+"Oh no!" sez I, "I wouldn't want to be took."
+
+But a bystander a standin' by said it wuz a sight to behold to
+stand up on top and start off.  He said the swiftness of the
+motion, the brightness of the electric lights ahead, the gleam of
+the snow made it seem like plungin' down a dazzlin' Niagara of
+whiteness and glitterin' light; and some, like bein' shot out of
+a cannon.  Why, he said they went with such lightnin' speed, that
+if you stood clost by the slide a waitin' to see a friend go by,
+you might stand so near as to touch her, but you couldn't no more
+see her to recognize her, than you could recognize one spoke from
+another in the wheel of a runaway carriage.  You would jest see a
+red flash go by, if so be it wuz a red gown she had on.  A red
+flash a dartin' through the air, and a disappearin' down the long
+glitterin' lane of light.
+
+You could see her a goin' back, so they said, a laughin' and a
+jokin' with somebody, if so be she walked back, but there wuz
+long sleighs to carry 'em back, them and their Toboggens, if they
+wanted to ride, at the small expenditure of 10 cents apiece.
+They go, in the fastest time anybody can make till they go on the
+lightnin', a way in which they will go before long, I think, and
+Josiah duz too.
+
+"They said there wuzn't nothin' like it.  And I said, "Like as
+not."  I believed 'em.  And then the woman said, "This long room
+we wuz a standin' in," for we had gone back into the house,
+durin' our interview, this long room wuz all warm and light for
+'em to come into and get warm, and she said as many as 600 in a
+night would come in there and have supper there.
+
+And then she showed us the model of a Toboggen, all sculped out,
+with a man and a woman on it.  The girl wuz ahead sort a drawin'
+the Toboggen, as you may say, and her lover.  (I know he wuz,
+from his looks.)  He wuz behind her, with his face right clost to
+her shoulder.
+
+And I'll bet that when they started down that gleamin' slide,
+they felt as if they 2 wuz alone under the stars and the heavens,
+and wuz a glidin' down into a dazzlin' way of glory.  You could
+see it in their faces.  I liked their faces real well.
+
+But the sight on 'em made Josiah Allen crazier'n ever to go too,
+and he sez, "I feel as if I must Toboggen, Samantha!"
+
+Sez I, "Be calm! Josiah, you can't slide down hill in July."
+
+"How do you know?" sez he, "I'm bound to enquire."  And he asked
+the woman if they ever Toboggened in the summer.
+
+"No, never!" sez she.
+
+And I sez, "You see it can't be done."
+
+"She never see it tried," sez he.  "How can you tell what you can
+do without tryin'?" sez he lookin' shrewdly, and longingly, up
+the slide.  I trembled, for I knew not what the next move of his
+would be.  But I bethought me of a powerful weepon I had by me.
+And I sez, "The driver will ask pay for every minute we are
+here."
+
+And as I sez this, Josiah turned and almost flew down the steps
+and into the buggy.  I had skairt him.  Truly I felt relieved,
+and sez I to myself, "What would wimmen do if it wuzn't for these
+little weepons they hold in their hands, to control their
+pardners with."  I felt happy.
+
+But the next words of Josiah knocked down all that palace of
+Peace, that my soul had betook herself to.  Sez he, "Samantha
+Allen, before I leave Saratoga I shall Toboggen."
+
+Wall, I immegetly turned the subject round and talked wildly and
+almost incoherently on politicks.  I praised the tariff amost
+beyond its deserts.  I brung up our foreign relations, and spoke
+well on 'em.  I tackled revenues and taxation, and hurried him
+from one to the other on 'em, almost wildly, to get the idee out
+of his head.  And I congratulated myself on havin' succeeded.
+Alas! how futile is our hopes, sometimes futiler than we have any
+idee on!
+
+By night all thoughts of danger had left me, and I slept sweetly
+and peacefully.  But early in the mornin' I had a strange dream.
+I dreamed I wuz in the woods with my head a layin' on a log, and
+the ground felt cold that I wuz a layin' on.  And then the log
+gin way with me, and my head came down onto the ground.  And then
+I slept peaceful agin, but chilly, till anon, or about that time,
+I beard a strange sound and I waked up with a start.  It wuz in
+the first faint glow of mornin' twilight.  But as faint as the
+light wuz, for the eye of love is keen, I missed my beloved
+pardner's head from the opposite pillow, and I riz up in wild
+agitation and thinkses I, "Has rapine took place here; has Josiah
+Allen been abducted away from me?  Is he a kidnapped Josiah?"
+
+At that fearful thought my heart begun to beat so voyalently as
+to almost stop my breath, and I felt I wuz growin' pale and wan,
+wanner, fur wanner than I had been sense I came to Saratoga.  I
+love Josiah Allen, he is dear to me.
+
+And I riz up feelin' that I would find that dear man and rescue
+him or perish in the attempt.  Yes, I felt that I must perish if
+I did not find him.  What would life be to me without him?  And
+as I thought that thought the light of the day that wuz a
+breakin', looked sort of a faint to me, and sickish.  And like a
+flash it came to me, the thought that that light seemed like the
+miserable dawns of wretched days without him, a pale light with
+no warmth or brightness in it.
+
+But at that very minute I heard a noise outside the door, and I
+heard that beloved voice a sayin' in low axents the words I had
+so often heard him speak, words I had oft rebuked him for, but
+now, so weak will human love make one, now, I welcome them gladly
+-- they sounded exquisitely sweet to me.  The words wuz, "Dumb
+'em!"
+
+And I joyfully opened the door.  But oh! what a sight met my eye.
+There stood Josiah Allen, arrayed in a blanket he had took from
+our bed (that accounted for my cold feelin' in my dream).  The
+blanket wuz white, with a gay border of red and yellow.  He had
+fixed it onto him in a sort of a dressy way, and strapped it
+round the waist with my shawl strap.  And he had took a bright
+yeller silk handkerchief of hisen, and had wrapped it round his
+head so's it hung down some like a cap, and he wuz a tryin' to
+fasten it round his forward with one of my stockin' supporters.
+He couldn't buckle it, and that is what called forth his
+exclamations.  At his feet, partly upon the stairs, wuz the
+bolster from our bed (that accounted for the log that had gin
+way).  And he had spread a little red shawl of mine over the top
+on't, and as I opened the door he wuz jest ready to embark on the
+bolster, he waz jest a steppin' onto it.  But as he see me he
+paused, and I sez in low axents, "What are you a goin' to do,
+Josiah Allen?"
+
+"I'm a goin' to Toboggen," sez he.
+
+Sez I, "Do you stop at once, and come back into your room."
+
+"No, no!" sez he firmly, and preparin' to embark on the bolster,
+"I am a goin' to Toboggen.  And you come and go to.  It is so
+fashionable," sez he, "such a genteel diversion."
+
+Sez I, "Do you stop it at once, and come back to your room.
+Why," sez I, "the hull house will be routed up, and be up here in
+a minute."
+
+"Wall," sez he, "they'll see fun if they do and fashion.  I am a
+goin', Samantha!" and be stepped forward.
+
+Sez I, "They'll see sunthin' else that begins with a f, but it
+haint fun or fashion.'  And agin I sez, "Do you come back, Josiah
+Allen.  You'll break your neck and rout up the house, and be
+called a fool."
+
+"Oh no, Samantha! I must Toboggen.  I must go down the slide
+once."  And he fixed the bolster more firmly on the top stair.
+
+"Wall," sez I, feelin' that I wuz drove to my last ambush by him,
+sez I, "probably five dollars won't make the expenses good,
+besides your doctor's bill, and my mornin'.  And I shall put on
+the deepest of crape, Josiah Allen," sez I.
+
+I see he wavered and I pressed the charge home.  Sez I, "That
+bolster is thin cloth, Josiah Allen, and you'll probably have to
+pay now for draggin' it all over the floor.  If anybody should
+see you with it there, that bolster would be charged in your
+bill.  And how would it look to the neighbors to have a bolster
+charged in your bill?  And I should treasure it, Josiah Allen, as
+bein' the last bill you made before you broke your neck !"
+
+"Oh, wall," sez he, "I s'pose I can put the bolster back."  But
+he wuz snappish, and he kep' snappish all day.
+
+He wuzn't quelled.  Though he had gin in for the time bein' I see
+he wuzn't quelled down.  He acted dissatisfied and highheaded,
+and I felt worried in my mind, not knowin' what his next move
+would be.
+
+Oh! the tribulations it makes a woman to take care of a man.  But
+then it pays.  After all, in the deepest of my tribulations I
+feel, I do the most of the time feel, that it pays.  When he is
+good he is dretful good.
+
+Wall, I went over to see Polly Pixley the next night, and when I
+got back to my room, there stood Josiah Allen with both of his
+feet sort a bandaged and tied down onto sumthin', which I didn't
+at first recognize.  It waz big and sort a egg shaped, and open
+worked, and both his feet wuz strapped down tight onto it, and he
+wuz a pushin' himself round the room with his umberell.
+
+And I sez, "What is the matter now, Josiah Allen; what are you a
+doin' now?"
+
+"Oh I am a walkin' on snow-shoes, Samantha!  But I don't see,"
+sez he a stoppin' to rest, for he seemed tuckered out, "I don't
+see how the savages got round as they did and performed such
+journeys.  You put 'em on, Samantha," sez he, "and see if you can
+get on any faster in 'em."
+
+Sez I, coldly, "The savages probable did'nt have both feet on one
+shoe, Josiah Allen, as you have.  I shall put on no snowshoes in
+the middle of July; but if I did, I should put 'em on accordin'
+to a little mite of sense.  I should try to use as much sense as
+a savage any way."
+
+"Why, how it would look to have one foot on that great big
+snow-shoe.  I always did like a good close fit in my shoes.  And
+you see I have room enough and to spare for both on 'em on this.
+Why it wouldn't look dressy at all, Samantha, to put 'em on as
+you say."
+
+Sez I very coldly, "I don't see anything over and above dressy in
+your looks now, Josiah Allen, with both of your feet tied down
+onto that one shoe, and you a tryin' to move off when you can't.
+I can't see anything over and above ornamental in it, Josiah
+Allen."
+
+"Oh! you are never willin' to give in that I look dressy,
+Samantha.  But I s'pose I can put my feet where you say.  You are
+so sot, but they are too big for me -- I shall look like a fool."
+
+I looked at him calmly over my specks, and sez I, "I guess I
+sha'n't notice the difference or realize the change.  I wonder,"
+sez I, in middlin' cold axents, "how you think you are a lookin'
+now, Josiah Allen."
+
+"Oh! keep a naggin' at me!" sez he.  But I see he wuz a gittin'
+kinder sick of the idee.
+
+"What you mean by puttin' 'em on at all is more than I can say,"
+sez I, "a tryin to walk on snowshoes right in dog-days."
+
+"I put 'em on," Samantha, sez he, a beginnin' to unstrap 'em, "I
+put 'em on because I wanted to feel like a savage."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "I have seen you at times durin' the last 20 years,
+when I thought you realized how they felt without snow-shoes on,
+either."
+
+(These little interchanges of confidence will take place in
+every-day life.)  But at that very minute Ardelia Tutt rapped at
+the door, and Josiah hustled them snow-shoes into the closet, and
+that wuz the last trial I had with him about 'em.  He had
+borrowed 'em.
+
+Wall, Ardelia wuz dretful pensive, and soft actin' that night,
+she seemed real tickled to see us, and to get where we wuz.  She
+haint over and above suited with the boardin' place where she is,
+I think.  I don't believe they have very good food, though she
+won't complain, bein' as they are relations on her own side.  And
+then she is sech a good little creeter anyway.  But I had my
+suspicions.  She didn't seem very happy.  She said she had been
+down to the park that afternoon, she and the young chap that has
+been a payin' her so much attention lately, Bial Flamburg.  She
+said they had sot down there by the deer park most all the
+afternoon a watchin' the deer.  She spoke dretful well of the
+deer.  And they are likely deer for anything I know.  But she
+seemed sort a pensive and low spirited.  Mebby she is a beginnin'
+to find Bial Flamburg out.  Mebby she is a beginnin' to not like
+his ways.  He drinks and smokes, that I know, and I've mistrusted
+worse things on him.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+LAKE GEORGE AND MOUNT McGREGOR.
+
+
+It wuz on a nice pleasant day that Ardelia Tuit, Josiah Allen,
+and me, met by previous agreement quite early in the mornin', A.
+M., and sot out for Lake George.  It is so nigh, that you can
+step onto the cars, and go out and see George any time of day.
+
+It seemed to me jest as if George wuz glad we had come, for there
+wuz a broad happy smile all over his face, and a sort of a dimplin'
+look, as if he wanted to laugh right out.  All the beckonin' shores
+and islands, with their beautiful houses on 'em, and the distant
+forests, and the trees a bendin' over George, all seemed to sort a
+smile out a welcome to us.  We had a most beautiful day, and got
+back quite late in the afternoon, P. M.
+
+And the next day, a day heavenly calm and fair, Josiah Allen and
+me sot sail for Mount McGregor -- that mountain top that is
+lifted up higher in the hearts of Americans than any other peak
+on the continent -- fur higher.  For it is the place where the
+memory of a Hero lays over all the peaceful landscape like a
+inspiration and a benediction, and will rest there forever.
+
+The railroad winds round and round the mountain sometimes not
+seemin'ly goin' up at all, but gradually a movin' in' on towards
+the top, jest as this brave Hero did in his career.  If some of
+the time he didn't seem to move on, or if some of the time he
+seemed to go back for a little, yet there wuz a deathless fire
+inside on him, a power, a strength that kep' him a goin' up, up,
+up, and drawin' the nation up with him onto the safe level ground
+of Victory.
+
+We got pleasant glimpses of beauty, pretty pictures on't, every
+little while as we wended our way on up the mountains.  Anon we
+would go round a curve, a ledge of rocks mebby, and lo! far off a
+openin' through the woods would show us a lovely picture of hill
+and dell, blue water and blue mountains in the distance.  And
+then a green wood picture, shut in and lonely, with tall ferns,
+and wild flowers, and thick green grasses under the bendin'
+trees.  Then fur down agin' a picture of a farmhouse, sheltered
+and quiet, with fields layin' about it green and golden.
+
+But anon, we reached the pretty little lonesome station, and
+there we wuz on top of Mount McGregor.  We disembarked from the
+cars and wended our way up the hill up the windin' foot path,
+wore down by the feet of pilgrims from every land, quite a tegus
+walk though beautiful, up to the good-lookin', and good appearin'
+tarven.
+
+I would fain have stopped at that minute at the abode the Hero
+had sanctified by his last looks.  But my companion said to me
+that he wuz in nearly a starvin' state.  Now it wuzn't much after
+11 A. M. forenoon, and I felt that he would not die of starvation
+so soon.  But his looks wuz pitiful in the extreme and he reminded
+me in a sort of a weak voice that he didn't eat no breakfast
+hardly.
+
+I sez truthfully, "I didn't notice it, Josiah."  But sez I, "I
+will accompany you where your hunger can be slaked."  So we went
+straight up to the tarven.
+
+But I would stop a minute in front of it, to see the lovely,
+lovely seen that wuz spread out before our eyes.  For fur off
+could we see milds and milds of the beautiful country a layin'
+fur below us.  Beautiful landscape, dotted with crystal lakes,
+laved by the blue Hudson and bordered by the fur-away mountains.
+
+It wuz a fair seen, a fair seen.  Even Josiah wuz rousted up by
+it, and forgot his hunger.  I myself wuz lost in the contemplation
+on it, and entirely by the side of myself.  So much so, that I
+forgot where I wuz, and whether I wuz a wife or a widow, or what
+I wuz.
+
+But anon, as my senses came back from the realm of pure beauty
+they had been a traversin', I recollected that I wuz a wife, that
+Providence and Elder Minkley had placed a man in my hands to take
+care on; and I see he wuz gone from me, and I must look him up.
+
+And I found that man in one of the high tallish lookin' swing
+chairs that wuz a swingin' from high poles all along the brow of
+the hill.  They looked some like a stanchol for a horse, and some
+like a pair of galluses that criminals are hung on.
+
+Josiah wuzn't able to work it right and it did require a deep
+mind to get into one without peril.  And he wuz on the brink of
+a catastrophe.  I got him out by siezin' the chair and holdin'
+it tight, till he dismounted from it -- which he did with words
+unadapted to the serenity of the atmosphere.  And then we went
+out the broad pleasant door-yard up into the tarven, and my
+companion got some coffee, and some refreshments, to refresh
+ourselves with.  And then he, feelin' clever and real
+affectionate to me (owin' partly I s'pose to the good dinner),
+we wended our way down to the cottage where the Hero met his
+last foe and fell victorious.
+
+We went up the broad steps onto the piazza, and I looked off from
+it, and over all the landscape under the soft summer sky, lay
+that same beautiful tender inspired memory.  It lay like the hush
+that follows a prayer at a dyin' bed.  Like the glow that rests
+on the world when the sun has gone down in glory.  Like the
+silence full of voices that follows a oriter's inspired words.
+
+The air, the whole place, thrilled with that memory, that
+presence that wuz with us, though unseen to the eyes of our
+spectacles.  It followed us through the door way, it went ahead
+on us into the room where the pen wuz laid down for the last
+time, where the last words wuz said.  That pen wuz hung up over
+the bed where the tired head had rested last.  By the bedside wuz
+the candle blowed out, when he got to the place where it is so
+light they don't need candles.  The watch stopped at the time
+when he begun to recken time by the deathless ages of immortality.
+And as I stood there, I said to myself, "I wish I could see the
+faces that wuz a bendin' over this bed, August 11th, 1885."
+
+All the ministerin' angels, and heroes, and conquerors, all a
+waitin' for him to join 'em.  All the Grand Army of the Republic,
+them who fell in mountain and valley; the lamented and the
+nameless, all, all a waitin' for the Leader they loved, the
+silent, quiet man, whose soul spoke, who said in deeds what
+weaker spirits waste in language.
+
+I wished I could see the great army that stood around Mount
+McGregor that day.  I wished I could hear the notes of the
+immortal revelee, which wuz a soundin' all along the lines
+callin' him to wake from his earth sleep into life -- callin'
+him from the night here, the night of sorrow and pain, into
+the mornin'.
+
+And as I lifted my eyes, the eyes of the General seemed to look
+cleer down into my soul, full of the secrets that he could tell
+now, if he wanted to, full of the mysteries of life, the mysteries
+of death.  The voiceless presence that filled the hull landscape,
+earth and air, looked at us through them eyes, half mournful,
+prophetic, true and calm, they wuz a lookin' through all the past,
+through all the future.  What did they see there?  I couldn't tell,
+nor Josiah.
+
+In another room wuz the flowers from many climes.  Flowers
+strewed onto the stage from hands all over the world, when the
+foot lights burned low, and the dark curtain went down for the
+last time on the Hero.  Great masses of flowers, every one on
+'em, bearin' the world's love, the world's sorrow over our
+nation's loss.
+
+I had a large quantity of emotions as I stood there, probably as
+many as 48 a minute for quite a spell, and that is a large number
+of emotions to have, when the size of 'em is as large as the
+sizes of 'em wuz.  I thought as I stood there of what I had hearn
+the Hero said once in his last illness, that, liftin' up his
+grand right arm that had saved the Nation, he said, "I am on duty
+from four to six."
+
+Yes, thinkses I, he wuz on duty all through the shadows and the
+darkness of war, all through the peril, and the heartache, and
+the wild alarm of war, calm and dauntless, he wuz on duty till
+the mornin' of peace came, and the light wuz shinin'.
+
+On duty through the darkness.  No one believed, no one dared to
+think that if peril had come again to the country, he would not
+have been ready,-- ready to face danger and death for the people
+he had saved once, the people whom he loved, because he had dared
+death for 'em.
+
+Yes, he wuz on duty.
+
+There wuz a darker shadow come to him than any cloud that ever
+rose over a battle-field when, honest and true himself as the
+light, he still stood under the shadow of blame and impendin'
+want, stood in the blackest shadow that can cover generous,
+faithful hearts, the heart-sickenin' shadow of ingratitude; when
+the people he had saved from ruin hesitated, and refused to give
+him in the time of his need the paltry pension, the few dollars
+out of the millions he had saved for them, preferring to allow
+him, the greatest hero of the world, the man who had represented
+them before the nations, to sell the badges and swords he had
+worn in fightin' their battles, for bread for himself and wife.
+
+But he wuz on duty all through this night.  Patient, uncomplainin'.
+And not one of these warriors fightin' their bloodless battle of
+words aginst him, would dare to say that he would not have been
+ready at any minute, to give his life agin for these very men, had
+danger come to the country and they had needed him.
+
+And when hastened on by the shock, and the suspense, death seemed
+to be near him, so near that it seemed as if the burden must needs
+be light -- the tardy justice that came to him must have seemed
+like an insult, but if he thought so he never said it; no, brave
+and patient, he wuz on duty.
+
+And all through the long, long time that he looked through the
+shadows for a more sure foe than had ever lain in Southern ambush
+for him, he wuz on duty.  Not an impatient word, not an anxious
+word.  Of all the feerin', doubtin', hopin', achin' hearts about
+him, he only wuz calm.
+
+For, not only his own dear ones, but the hull country, friends
+and foes alike, as if learnin' through fear of his loss how grand
+a hero he wuz, and how greatly and entirely he wuz beloved by
+them all, they sent up to Heaven such a great cloud of prayers
+for his safety as never rose for any man.  But he only wuz calm,
+while the hull world wuz excited in his behalf.
+
+For the sight of his patient work, the sight of him who stopped
+dyin' (as it were) to earn by his own brave honest hand the
+future comfort of his family, amazed, and wonderin' at this
+spectacle, one of the greatest it seems to me that ever wuz seen
+on earth, the hull nation turned to him in such a full hearted
+love, and admiration, and worship, that they forgot in their
+quicker adorin' heart-throbs, the slower meaner throbs they had
+gin him, this same brave Hero, jest as brave and true-hearted in
+the past as he wuz on his grand death-bed.
+
+They forgot everything that had gone by in their worship, and I
+don't know but I ort to.  Mebby I had.  I shouldn't wonder a mite
+if I had.  But all the while, all through the agony and the labor,
+and when too wearied he lay down the pen, -- he wuz on duty.
+
+Waitin' patiently, fearlessly, till he should see in the first
+glow of the sunrise the form of the angel comin' to relieve his
+watch, the tall, fair angel of Rest, that the Great Commander
+sent down in the mornin' watches to relieve his weary soldier,
+that divinest angel that ever comes to the abode of men, though
+her beauty shines forever through tears, led by her hand, he has
+left life's battle-field forever; and what is left to this nation
+but memory, love, and mebby remorse.
+
+But little matters it to him, the Nation's love or the Nation's
+blame, restin' there by the calm waters he loved.  The tides come
+in, and the tides go out; jest as they did in his life; the
+fickle tide of public favor that swept by him, movin' him not on
+his heavenly mission of duty and patriotism.
+
+The tides go out, and the tides come in; the wind wails and the
+wind sings its sweet summer songs; but he does not mind the
+melody or the clamor.  He is resting.  Sleep on, Hero beloved,
+while the world wakes to praise thee.
+
+Wall, we sot sail from Mount McGregor about half-past four P. M.,
+afternoon.  And we wound round and round the mountain side jest
+as he did, only goin' down into the valley instid of upwards.
+But the trees that clothed the bare back of the mountain looked
+green and shinin' in the late afternoon sunlight, and the fields
+spread out in the valley looked green and peaceful under the cool
+shadows of approachin' sunset.
+
+And right in the midst of one of these fields, all full of white
+daisies, the cars stopped and the conductor sung out: "Five
+minutes' stop at Daisy station.  Five minutes to get out and pick
+daisies."
+
+And sez Josiah to me in gruff axents, when I asked him if he wuz
+goin' to get out and pick some.  Sez he, "Samantha, no man can go
+ahead of me in hatin' the dumb weeds, and doin' his best towards
+uprootin' 'em in my own land; and I deeply sympathize with any
+man who is over run by 'em.  But why am I beholdin' to the man
+that owns this lot?  Why should I and all the rest of this
+carload of folks, all dressed up in our best too, lay hold and
+weed out these infernal nuisances for nothin'?"
+
+Yes, he said these fearfully profane words to me and I herd him
+in silence, for I did not want to make a seen in public.  Sez I,
+"Josiah, they are pickin' 'em because they love 'em."
+
+"Love 'em!"  Oh, the fearful, scornful unbelievin' look that came
+over my pardner's face, as I said these peaceful words to him.
+And he added a expletive which I am fur from bein' urged to ever
+repeat.  It wuz sinful.
+
+"Love 'em!"  Agin he sez.  And agin follerd a expletive that wuz
+still more forcible, and still more sinful.  And I felt obliged
+to check him which I did.  And after a long parlay, in which I
+used my best endeavors of argument and reason to convince him
+that I wuz in the right on't, I see he wuzn't convinced.  And
+then I spoke about its bein' fashionable to get out and pick 'em,
+and he looked different to once.  I could see a change in him.
+All my arguments of the beauty and sweetness of the posies had no
+effect, but when I said fashionable, he faltered, and he sez, "Is
+it called a genteel diversion?"
+
+And I sez, "Yes."
+
+And finally he sez, "Wall, I s'pose I can go out and pick some
+for you.  Dumb their dumb picters."
+
+Sez I, "Don't go in that spirit, Josiah Allen."
+
+"Wall, I shall go in jest that sprit," he snapped out, "if I go
+at all."  And he went.
+
+But oh! it wuz a sight to set and look on, and see the look onto
+his face, as he picked the innocent blossoms.  It wuz a look of
+such deep loathin', and hatred, combined with a sort of a genteel,
+fashionable air.
+
+Altogether it wuz the most curius, and strange look, that I ever
+see outside of a menagery of wild animals.  And he had that same
+look onto his face as he came in and gin 'em to me.  He had
+yanked'em all up by their roots too, which made the Bokay look
+more strange.  But I accepted of it in silence, for I see by his
+mean that he wuz not in a condition to brook another word.
+
+And I trembled when a bystander a standin' by who wuz arrangin'
+a beautiful bunch of 'em, a handlin' 'em as flowers ort to be
+handled, as if they had a soul, and could feel a rough or tender
+touch, -- this man sez to Josiah, "I see that you too love this
+beautiful blossom."
+
+I wuz glad the man's eyes wuz riveted onto his Bokay, for the
+ferocity of Josiah Allen's look wuz sunthin' fearful.  He looked
+as if he could tear him lim' from lim'.
+
+And I hastily drawed Josiah to a seat at the other end of the
+car, and voyalently, but firmly, I drawed his attention off onto
+Religion.
+
+I sez, "Josiah, do you believe we had better paint the steeple of
+the meetin'-house, white or dark colered?"
+
+This wuz a subject that had rent Jonesville to its very twain.
+And Josiah had been fearfully exercised on it.  And this plan of
+mine succeeded.  He got eloquent on it, and I kinder held off,
+and talked offish, and let him convince me.
+
+I did it from principle.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+ADVENTURES AT VARIOUS SPRINGS.
+
+
+A few days after this, Josiah Allen came in, and sez he, "The
+Everlastin' spring is the one for me, Samantha!  I believe it
+will keep me alive for hundreds and hundreds of years."
+
+Sez I, "I don't believe that, Josiah Allen."
+
+"Wall, it is so, whether you believe it or not.  Why, I see a
+feller just now who sez he don't believe anybody would ever die
+at all, if they kep' themselves' kind a wet through all the time
+with this water."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, you are not talkin' Bible.  The Bible sez,
+'all flesh is as grass.'"
+
+"Wall, that is what he meant; if the grass wuz watered with that
+water all the time, it would never wilt."
+
+"Oh, shaw!" sez I.  (I seldom say shaw, but this seemed to me a
+time for shawin'.)
+
+But Josiah kep' on, for he wuz fearfully excited.  Sez he, "Why,
+the feller said, there wuz a old man who lived right by the side
+of this spring, and felt the effects of it inside and out all the
+time, it wuz so healthy there.  Why the old man kep' on a livin',
+and a livin' till he got to be a hundred.  And he wuz kinder lazy
+naturally and he got tired of livin'.  He said he wuz tired of
+gettin' up mornin's and dressin' of him, tired of pullin' on his
+boots and drawin' on his trowsers, and he told his grandson Sam
+to take him up to Troy and let him die.
+
+"Wall, Sam took him up to Troy, and he died right away, almost.
+And Sam bein' a good-hearted chap, thought it would please the
+old man to he buried down by the spring, that healthy spot.  So
+he took him back there in a wagon he borrowed.  And when he got
+clost to the spring, Sam heard a sithe, and he looked back, and
+there the old gentleman wuz a settin' up a leanin' his head on
+his elbo and he sez, in a sort of a sad way, not mad, but
+melanecolly, `You hadn't ort to don it, Sam.  You hadn't ort to.
+I'm in now for another hundred years.'"
+
+I told Josiah I didn't believe that.  Sez I, "I believe the
+waters are good, very good, and the air is healthy here in the
+extreme, but I don't believe that."
+
+But he said it wuz a fact, and the feller said he could prove it.
+"Why," Josiah sez, "with the minerals there is in that spring, if
+you only take enough of it, I don't see how anybody can die."
+And sez Josiah, "I am a goin' to jest live on that water while I
+am here."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "you must do as you are a mind to, with fear and
+tremblin'."
+
+I thought mebby quotin' Scripture to him would kinder quell him
+down, for he wuz fearfully agitated and wrought up about the
+Everlastin' spring.  And he begun at once to calculate on it, on
+how much he could drink of it, if he begun early in the mornin'
+and drinked late at night.
+
+But I kep' on megum.  I drinked the waters that seemed to help me
+and made me feel better, but wuz megum in it, and didn't get over
+excited about any on 'em.  But oh! oh! the quantities of that
+water that Josiah Allen took!  Why, it seemed as if he would make
+a perfect shipwreck of his own body, and wash himself away, till
+one day he came in fearful excited agin, and sez he, in agitated
+axents, "I made a mistake, Samantha.  The Immortal spring is the
+one for me."
+
+"Why?" sez I.
+
+"Oh, I have jest seen a feller that has been a tellin' me about it."
+
+"What did he say?" sez I, in calm axents.
+
+"Wall, I'll tell you.  It has acted on my feelin's dretful."  Says
+he, "I have shed some tears."  (I see Josiah Allen had been a
+cryin' when he came in.)
+
+And I sez agin, "What is it?"
+
+"Wall," he said, "this man had a dretful sick wife.  And he wuz a
+carryin' her to the Immortal spring jest as fast as he could, for
+he felt it would save her, if he could get her to it.  But she
+died a mile and a half from the spring.  It wuz night, for he had
+traveled night and day to get her there, and the tarvens wuz all
+shut up, and he laid her on the spring-house floor, and laid down
+himself on one of the benches.  He took a drink himself, the last
+thing before he laid down, for he felt that he must have sunthin'
+to sustain him in his affliction.
+
+"Wall, in the night he heard a splashin', and he rousted up, and
+he see that he had left the water kinder careless the night before,
+and it had broke loose and covered the floor and riz up round the
+body, and there she wuz, all bright and hearty, a splashin' and a
+swimmin' round in the water."  He said the man cried like a child
+when he told him of it.
+
+And sez Josiah, "It wuz dretful affectin'.  It brought tears from
+me, to hear on't.  I thought what if it had been you, Samantha!"
+
+"Wall," sez I, "I don't see no occasion for tears, unless you
+would have been sorry to had me brung to."
+
+"Oh!" sez Josiah, "I didn't think!  I guess I have cried in the
+wrong place."
+
+Sez I coldly, "I should think as much."
+
+And Josiah put on his hat and hurried out.  He meant well.  But
+it is quite a nack for pardners to know jest when to cry, and
+when to laff.
+
+Wall, he follered up that spring, and drinked more, fur more than
+wuz good for him of that water.  And then anon, he would hear of
+another one, and some dretful big story about it, and he would
+foller that up, and so it went on, he a follerin' on, and I a
+bein' megum, and drinkin' stiddy, but moderate.  And as it might
+be expected, I gained in health every day, and every hour.  For
+the waters is good, there haint no doubt of it.
+
+But Josiah takin' em as he did, bobbin' round from one to the
+other, drinkin' 'em at all hours of day and night, and floodin'
+himself out with 'em, every one on 'em -- why, he lost strength
+and health every day, till I felt truly, that if it went on much
+longer, I should go home in weeds.  Not mullein, or burdock, or
+anything of that sort, but crape.
+
+But at last a event occurred that sort a sot him to thinkin' and
+quelled him down some.  One day we sot out for a walk, Josiah and
+Ardelia Tutt and me.  And in spite of all my protestations, my
+pardner had drinked 11 glasses full of the spring he wuz a
+follerin' then.  And he looked white round the lips as anything.
+And Ardelia and I wuz a sittin' in a good shady place, and Josiah
+a little distance off, when a man ackosted him, a man with black
+eyes and black whiskers, and sez, "You look pale, Sir.  What
+water are you a drinkin'?"
+
+And Josiah told him that at that time he wuz a drinkin' the water
+from the Immortal spring.
+
+"Drinkin' that water?" sez the man, startin' back horrefied.
+
+"Yes," sez Josiah, turnin' paler than ever, for the man's looks
+wuz skairful in the extreme.
+
+"Oh! oh!" groaned the man.  "And you are a married man?" he groaned
+out mournfully, a lookin' pitifully at him.  "With a family?"
+
+"Yes," sez Josiah, faintly.
+
+"Oh dear," sez the man, "must it be so, to die, so -- so lamented?"
+
+"To die!" sez Josiah, turnin' white jest round the lip.
+
+"Yes, to die!  Did you not say you had been a drinkin' the water
+from the Immortal spring?"
+
+"Yes," sez Josiah.
+
+"Wall, it is a certain, a deadly poison."
+
+"Haint there no help for me?" sez Josiah.
+
+"Yes," sez the man, "You must drink from the Live-forever spring,
+at the other end of the village.  That water has the happy effect
+of neutralizin' the poisons of the Immortal spring.  If anything
+can save you that can.  Why," sez he, "folks that have been
+entirely broke down, and made helpless and hopeless invalids,
+them that have been brung down on their death-beds by the use of
+that vile Immortal water, have been cured by a few glasses of the
+pure healin' waters of the Live-forever spring.  I'd advise you
+for your own sake, and the sake of your family, who would mourn
+your ontimely decese, to drink from that spring at once."
+
+"But," sez Josiah, with a agonized and hopeless look, "I can't
+drink no more now."
+
+"Why?" sez the man.
+
+"Because I don't hold any more.  I don't hold but two quarts, and
+I have drinked 11 tumblers full now."
+
+"Eleven glasses of that poison?" sez the man.
+
+"Wall, if it is too late I am not to blame.  I've warned you.
+Farewell," sez he, a graspin' holt of Josiah's hand.  "Farewell,
+forever.  But if you do live," sez he, "if by a miricle you are
+saved, remember the Live-forever spring.  If there is any help
+for you it is in them waters."
+
+And he dashed away, for another stranger wuz approachin' the
+seen.
+
+I, myself, didn't have no idee that Josiah wuz a goin' to die.
+But Ardelia whispered to me, she must go back to the hotel, so
+she went.  I see she looked kinder strange, and I didn't object
+to it.  And when we got back she handed me some verses entitled:
+
+"Stanzas on the death of Josiah Allen."
+
+She handed 'em to me, and hastened away, quick.  But Josiah Allen
+didn't die.  And this incident made him more megum.  More as I
+wanted him to be.  Why, you have to be megum in everything, no
+matter how good it is.  Milk porridge, or the Bible, or anything.
+You can kill yourself on milk porridge if you drink enough.  And
+you can set down and read the Bible, till you grow to your chair,
+and lose your eyesight.
+
+Now these waters are dretful good, but you have got to use some
+megumness with 'em, it stands to reason you have.  Taint megum to
+drink from 10 to 12 glasses at a time, and mix your drinks goin'
+round from spring to spring like a luny.  No; get a good doctor
+to tell you what minerals you seem to stand in need on the most,
+and then try to get 'em with fear and tremblin'.  You'll get help
+I haint a doubt on't.  For they are dretful good for varius
+things that afflict the human body.  Dretful!
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+AT A LAWN PARTY.
+
+
+Wall, the very next mornin' Miss Flamm sent word for Josiah and me
+to come that night to a lawn party.  And I sez at once, "I must go
+and get some lawn."
+
+Sez Josiah, "What will you do with it?"
+
+And I sez, "Oh, I s'pose I shall wrap it round me, I'll do what
+the rest do."
+
+And sez Josiah, "Hadn't I ort to have some too?  If it is a lawn
+party and everybody else has it, I shall feel like a fool without
+any lawn."
+
+And I looked at him in deep thought, and through him into the
+causes and consequences of things, and sez I, "I s'pose you do ort
+to have a lawn necktie, or handkerchief, or sunthin'."
+
+Sez he, "How would a vest look made out of it, a kinder sprigged
+one, light gay colors on a yaller ground-work?"
+
+But I sez at once, "You never will go out with me, Josiah, with a
+lawn vest on."  And I settled it right there on the spot.
+
+Then he proposed to have some wrapped round his hat, sort a
+festooned.  But I stood like marble aginst that idee.  But I knew
+I had got to have some lawn, and pretty soon we sallied out
+together and wended our way down to where I should be likely to
+find a lawn store.
+
+And who should we meet a comin' out of a store but Ardelia.  Her
+3d cousin had sent her over to get a ingregient for cookin'.
+Good, willin' little creeter!  She walked along with us for a
+spell.  And while she wuz a walkin' along with us, we come onto a
+sight that always looked pitiful to me, the old female that wuz
+always a' sittin' there a singin' and playin' on a accordeun.  And
+it seemed to me that she looked pitifuller and homblier than ever,
+as she sot there amongst the dense crowd that mornin' a singin'
+and a playin'.  Her tone wuz thin, thin as gauze, hombly gause
+too.  But I wondered to myself how she wuz a feelin' inside of her
+own mind, and what voices she heard a speakin' to her own soul,
+through them hombly strains.  And, ontirely unbeknown to myself, I
+fell into a short revery (short but deep) right there in the
+street, as I looked down on her, a settin' there so old, and
+patient and helpless, amongst the gay movin' throng.
+
+And I wondered what did she see, a settin' there with her blind
+eyes, what did she hear through them hombly tones that she wuz a
+singin' day after day to a crowd that wuz indifferent to her, or
+despised her?  Did she hear the song of the mornin', the spring
+time of life?  Did the song of a lark come back to her, a lark
+flyin' up through the sweet mornin' sky over the doorway of a
+home, a lark watched by young eyes, two pairs of 'em, that made
+the seein' a blessedness?  Did a baby's first sweet blunders of
+speech, and happy laughter come back to her, as she sot there a
+drawin' out with her wrinkled hands them miserable sounds from the
+groanin' instrument?  Did home, love, happiness sound out to her,
+out of them hombly strains?  I'd have gin a cent to know.
+
+And I'd have gin a cent quick to know if the tread -- tread --
+tread of the crowd goin' past her day after day, hour after hour,
+seems to her like the trample of Time a marchin' on.  Did she hear
+in 'em the footsteps of child, or lover, or friend, a steppin'
+away from her, and youth and happiness, and hope, a stiddy goin'
+away from her?
+
+Did she ever listen through the constant sound of them steps,
+listen to hear the tread of them feet that she must know wuz a
+comin' nigh to her -- the icy feet that will approach us, if their
+way leads over rocks or roses?
+
+Did she hate to hear them steps a comin' nearer to her, or did she
+strain her ears to hear 'em, to welcome 'em?  I thought like as
+not she did.  For thinkses I to myself, and couldn't help it, if
+she is a Christian she must be glad to change that old accordeun
+for a harp of any size or shape.  For mournfuller and more
+melancholy sounds than her voice and that instrument made I never
+hearn, nor ever expect to hear, and thin.
+
+Poor, old, hombly critter, I gin her quite a lot of change one
+day, and she braced up and sung and drawed out faster than ever,
+and thinner.  Though I'd have gladly hearn her stop.
+
+When I come up out of my revery, I see Ardelia lookin' at her
+stiddy and kind a sot.  And I mistrusted trouble wuz ahead on me,
+and I hurried Josiah down the street.  Ardelia a sayin' she had
+got to turn the corner, to go to another place for her 3d cousin.
+
+Jest as we wuz a crossin' a street my companion drawed my
+attention to a sign that wuz jest overhead, and sez lie, "That
+means me, I'm spoke of right out, and hung up overhead."
+
+And sez I, "What do you mean?"
+
+Sez he, "Read it -- 'The First Man-I-Cure Of The Day.'  That's me,
+Samantha; I haint a doubt of it.  And I s'pose I ort to go in and
+be cured.  I s'pose probably it will be expected of me, that I
+should go in, and let him look at my corns."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, I've heerd you talk time and agin aginst big
+feelin' folks, and here you be a talkin' it right to yourself, and
+callin' yourself the first man of the day."
+
+"Wall," sez he firmly, "I believe it, and I believe you do, and
+you'd own up to it, if you wuzn't so aggravatin'."
+
+"Wall, sez I mildly, "I do think you are the first in some things,
+though what them things are, I would be fur from wantin' to tell
+you.  But," I continued on, "I don't see you should think that
+means you.  Saratoga is full of men, and most probable every man
+of 'em thinks it means him."
+
+"Wall," sez he, "I don't think it means me, I know it.  And I
+s'pose," he continued dreamily, "they'd cure me, and not charge a
+cent."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "wait till another time, Josiah Allen."  And jest
+at this minute, right down under our feet, we see the word "Pray,"
+in big letters scraped right out in stun.  And Josiah sez, "I
+wonder if the dumb fools think anybody is goin to kneel down right
+here in the street, and be run over.  Why a man would be knocked
+over a dozen times, before he got through one prayer, Now I lay me
+down to sleep, or anything."
+
+"Wall," sez I, mildly, "I don't think that would be a very
+suitable prayer under the circumstances.  It haint expected that
+you'd lay down here for a nap -- howsumever," sez I reesunably
+"their puttin' the word there shows what good streaks the folks
+here have, and I don't want you to make light on't, and if you
+don't want to act like a perfect backslider you'll ceese usin'
+such profane language on sech a solemn subject."
+
+Wall, we went into a good lookin'store and I wuz jest a lookin' at
+some lawn and a wonderin' how many yards I should want, when who
+should come in but Miss Flamm to get a rooch for her neck.
+
+And she told me that I didn't need any lawn, and that it wuz a
+Garden party, and folks dressed in anything they wuz a mind to,
+though sez she, "A good many go in full dress."
+
+"Wall," sez I calmly, "I have got one."  And she told me to come
+in good season.
+
+That afternoon, Josiah a bein' out for a walk, I took out of my
+trunk a dress that Alminy Hagidon had made for me out of a very
+full pattern I had got of a peddler, and wanted it all put in,
+so's it would fade all alike, for I mistrusted it wouldn't wash.
+It wuz gethered-in full round the waist, and the sleeves wuz set
+in full, and the waist wuz kinder full before, and it had a deep
+high ruffle gathered-in full round the neck.  It wuz a very full
+dress, though I haint proud, and never wuz called so.  Yet anybody
+duz take a modest pleasure in bein' equal to any occasion and
+comin' up nobly to a emergency.  And I own that I did say to
+myself, as I pulled out the gethers in front, "Wall, there may be
+full dresses there to-night, but there will be none fuller than
+mine."
+
+And I wuz glad that Alminy had made it jest as she had.  She had
+made it a little fuller than even I had laid out to have it, for
+she mistrusted it would shrink in washin'.  It wuz a very full
+dress.  It wuz cambrick dark chocolate, with a set flower of a
+kind of a cinnamon brown and yellow, it wuz bran new and looked
+well.
+
+Wall, I had got it on, and wuz contemplatin' its fullness with
+complacency and a hand-glass, a seein' how nobly it stood out
+behind, and how full it wuz, when Josiah Allen came in.  I had
+talked it over with him, before he went out -- and he wuz as
+tickled as I wuz, and tickleder, to think I had got jest the right
+dress for the occasion.  But he sez to me the first thing --  "You
+are all wrong, Samantha, full dress means low neck and short
+sleeves."
+
+Sez I, "I know better!"
+
+Sez he, "It duz."
+
+Sez I, "Somebody has been a foolin' you, Josiah Allen!  There
+ain't no sense in it.  Do you s'pose folks would call a dress
+full, when there wuzn't more'n half a waist and sleeves to it.
+I'd try to use a little judgment, Josiah Allen! "
+
+But he contended that he wuz in the right on't.  And he took up
+his best vest that lay on the bed, and sot down, and took out his
+jack knife and went a rippin' open one of the shoulders, and sez
+I, "What are you doin', Josiah Allen?"
+
+"Why, you can do as you are a mind to, Samantha Allen," sez he.
+"But I shall go fashionable, I shall go in full dress."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen  do you look me in the face and say you are a
+goin' in a low neck vest, and everything, to that party to-night?"
+
+"Yes, mom, I be.  I am bound to be fashionable."  And he went to
+rollin' up his shirt sleeves and turnin' in the neck of his shirt,
+in a manner that wuz perfectly immodest.
+
+I turned my head away instinctively, for I felt that my cheek wuz
+a gettin' as red as blood, partly through delicacy and partly
+through righteous anger.  Sez I, "Josiah Allen, be you a
+calculatin' to go there right out in public before men and wimmen,
+a showin' your bare bosom to a crowd?  Where is your modesty,
+Josiah Allen?  Where is your decency?"
+
+Sez he firmly, "I keep 'em where all the rest do, who go in full
+dress."
+
+I sot right down in a chair and sez I, "Wall there is one thing
+certain; if you go in that condition, you will go alone.  Why,"
+sez I, "to home, if Tirzah Ann, your own daughter, had ketched you
+in that perdickerment, a rubbin' on linement or anything, you
+would have jumped and covered yourself up, quicker'n a flash, and
+likeways me, before Thomas Jefferson.  And now you lay out to go
+in that way before young girls, and old ones, and men and wimmen,
+and want me to foller on after your example.  What in the world
+are you a thinkin' on, Josiah Allen?"
+
+"Why I'm a thinkin, on full dress," sez be in a pert tone, a
+kinder turnin' himself before the glass, where he could get a good
+view of his bones.  His thin neck wuzn't much more than bones,
+anyway, and so I told him.  And I asked him if he could see any
+beauty in it, and sez I, "Who wants to look at our old bare necks,
+Josiah Allen?  And if there wuzn't any other powerful reeson of
+modesty and decency in it, you'd ketch your death cold, Josiah
+Allen, and be laid up with the newmoan.  You know you would," sez
+I, "you are actin' like a luny, Josiah Allen."
+
+"It is you that are actin' like a luny," sez he bitterly.  "I
+never propose anything of a high fashionable kind but what you
+want to break it up.  Why, dumb it all, you know as well as I do,
+that men haint called as modest as wimmen anyway.  And if they
+have the name, why shouldn't they have the game?  Why shouldn't
+they go round half dressed as well as wimmen do?  And they are as
+strong agin; if there is any danger to health in it they are
+better able to stand it.  But," sez he, in the same bitter axents,
+"you always try to break up all my efforts at high life and
+fashion.  I presume you won't waltz to-night, nor want me to."
+
+I groaned several times in spite of myself, and sithed, "Waltz!"
+sez I in awful axents.  "A classleader! and a grandfather! and
+talkin' about waltzin'!"
+
+Sez Josiah, "Men older than me waltz, and foller it up.  Put their
+arms right round the prettiest girls in the room, hug 'em, and
+swing 'em right round" -- sez he kinder spoony like.
+
+I said nothin' at them fearful words, only my groans and sithes
+became deeper and more voyalent.  And in a minute I see through
+the fingers with which I had nearly covered my face, that he wuz a
+pullin' down his shirt sleeves and a puttin' his jack knife in his
+pocket.
+
+That man loves me.  And love sways him round often times when
+reesun and sound argument are powerless.  Now, the sound reesun of
+the case didn't move him, such as the indelicacy of makin' a
+exhibition of one's self in a way that would, if displayed in a
+heathen, be a call for missionarys to convert 'em, and that makes
+men blush when they see it in a Christian woman.
+
+The sound reason of its bein' the fruitful cause of disease and
+death, through the senseless exposure.
+
+The sound reason of the worse than folly of old and middle-aged
+folks thinkin' that the exhibition is a pretty one when it haint.
+
+The sound reason of its bein' inconsistent for a woman to allow
+the familiarity of a man and a stranger, a walkin' up and puttin'
+his arm round her, and huggin' her up to him as clost as he can;
+that act, that a woman would resent as a deadly insult and her
+incensed relatives avenge with the sword, if it occurred in any
+other place than the ball-room and at the sound of the fiddle.
+The utter inconsistency of her meetin' it with smiles, and making
+frantic efforts to get more such affronts than any other woman
+present -- her male relatives a lookin' proudly on.
+
+The inconsistency of a man's bein' not only held guiltless but
+applauded for doin' what, if it took place in the street, or
+church, would make him outlawed, for where is there a lot of manly
+men who would look on calmly, and see a sweet young girl insulted
+by a man's ketchin' hold of her and embracin' of her tightly for
+half an hour, -- why, he would be turned out of his club and
+outlawed from Christian homes if it took place in silence, but yet
+the sound of a fiddle makes it all right.
+
+And I sez to myself mildly, as I sot there, "Is it that men and
+wimmen lose their senses, or is there a sacredness in the strains
+of that fiddle, that makes immodesty modest, indecency decent, and
+immorality moral?"  And agin I sithe heavy and gin 3 deep groans.
+And I see Josiah gin in.  All the sound reasons weighed as nothin'
+with him, but 2 or 3 groans, and a few sithes settled the matter.
+Truly Love is a mighty conqueror.
+
+And anon Josiah spoke and sez, "Wall, I s'pose I can gin it all
+up, if you feel so about it, but we shall act like fools,
+Samantha, and look like 'em."
+
+Sez I sternly, "Better be fools than naves, Josiah Allen! if we
+have got to be one or the other, but we haint.  We are a standin'
+on firm ground, Josiah Allen," sez I.  "The platform made of the
+boards of consistency, and common sense, and decency, is one that
+will never break down and let you through it, into gulfs and
+abysses.  And on that platform we will both stand to-night, dear
+Josiah."
+
+I think it is always best when a pardner has gin in and you have
+had a triumph of principle, to be bland; blander than common to
+him.  I always love at such times to round my words to him with a
+sweet affectionateness of mean.  I love to, and he loves it.
+
+We sot out in good season for the Garden party.  And it wuz indeed
+a sight to behold!  But I did not at that first minute have a
+chance to sense it, for Miss Flamm sent her hired girl out to ask
+me to come to her room for a few minutes.  Miss Flamm's house is a
+undergoin' repairs for a few weeks, sunthin' had gin out in the
+water works, so she and her hired girl have been to this tarven
+for the time bein'.  The hired girl got us some good seats and
+tellin' Josiah to keep one on 'em for me, I follered the girl, or
+"maid," as Miss Flamm calls her.  But good land! if she is a old
+maid, I don't see where the young ones be.
+
+Miss Flamm had sent for me, so she said, to see if I wanted to
+ride out the next day, and what time would be the most convenient
+to me, and also, to see how I liked her dress.  She didn't know as
+she should see me down below, in the crowd, and she wanted me to
+see it.  (Miss Flamm uses me dretful well, but I s'pose 2/3ds of
+it, is on Thomas J's account.  Some folks think she is goin' to
+have another lawsuit, and I am glad enough to have him convey her
+lawsuits, for they are good, honerable ones, and she pays him
+splendid for carryin' 'em.)
+
+Wall, she had her skirts all on when I went in, all a foamin' and
+a shinin', down onto the carpet, in a glitterin' pile of pink
+satin and white lace and posys.  Gorgus enough for a princess.
+
+And I didn't mind it much, bein' only females present, if she wuz
+exposin' of herself a good deal.  I kinder blushed a little as I
+looked at her, and kep' my eyes down on her skirts all I could,
+and thinkses I to myself, -- "What if G. Washington should come
+in?  I shouldn't know which way to look."  But then the very next
+minute, I says to myself, "Of course he won't be in till she gets
+her waist on.  I'm a borrowin' trouble for nothin'."
+
+At last Miss Flamm spoke and says she, as she kinder craned
+herself before the glass, a lookin' at her back (most the hull
+length on it bare, as I am a livin' creeter); and says she,," How
+do you like my dress?"
+
+"Oh," says I, wantin' to make myself agreeable (both on account of
+principle, and the lawsuit), "the skirts are beautiful but I can't
+judge how the hull dress looks, you know, till you get your waist
+on."
+
+"My waist?" says she.
+
+"Yes," says I.
+
+"I have got it on," says she.
+
+"Where is it?" says I, a lookin' at her closer through my specks,
+"Where is the waist?"
+
+"Here," says she, a pintin' to a pink belt ribbon, and a string of
+beads over each shoulder.
+
+Says I, "Miss Flamm, do you call that a waist?"
+
+"Yes," says she, and she balanced herself on her little pink
+tottlin' slippers.  She couldn't walk in 'em a good honerable walk
+to save her life.  How could she, with the instep not over two
+inches acrost, and the heels right under the middle of her foot,
+more'n a finger high?  Good land, they wuz enuff to lame a Injun
+savage, and curb him in.  But she sort o' balanced herself unto
+'em, the best she could, and put her hands round her waist -- it
+wuzn't much bigger than a pipe-stem, and sort o' bulgin' out both
+ways, above and below, some like a string tied tight round a
+piller, - and says she complacently, "I don't believe there will
+be a dress shown to-night more stylish and beautiful than mine."
+
+Says I, "Do you tell me, Miss Flamm, that you are a goin' down
+into that crowd of promiscus men and women, with nothin' but them
+strings on to cover you?"  Says I, "Do you tell me that, and you a
+perfesser and a Christian?"
+
+"Yes," says she, "I paid 300 dollars for this dress, and it haint
+likely I am goin' to miss the chance of showin' it off to the
+other wimmen who will envy me the possession of it.  To be sure,"
+says she, "it is a little lower than Americans usually wear.  But
+in fashion, as in anything else, somebody has got to go ahead.
+This is the very heighth of fashion," says she.
+
+Says I in witherin' and burnin' skorn, "It is the heighth of
+immodesty."
+
+And I jest turned my back right ont' her, and sailed out of the
+room.  I wuzn't a a goin' to stand that, lawsuit or no lawsuit.  I
+wuz all worked up in my mind, and by the side of myself, and I
+didn't get over it for some time, neither.
+
+Wall, I found my companion seated in that comfertable place, and a
+keepin' my chair for me, and so I sot down by him, and truly we
+sot still, and see the glory, and the magnificence on every side
+on us.  There wuz 3 piazzas about as long as from our house to
+Jonesville, or from Jonesville to Loontown, all filled with folks
+magnificently dressed, and a big garden layin' between 'em about
+as big as from our house to Miss Gowdey's, and so round crossways
+to Alminy Hagidone's brother's, and back agin'.  It wuz full as
+fur as that, and you know well that that is a great distance.
+
+There wuz some big noble trees, all twinklin' full of lights, of
+every coler, and rows of shinin' lights, criss-crossed every way,
+or that is, every beautiful way, from the high ornimental pillers
+of the immense house, that loomed up in the distance round us on
+every side, same as the mountains loom up round Loontown.
+
+There wuz a big platform built in the middle of the garden, with
+sweet music discoursin' from it the most enchantin' strains.  And
+the fountains wuz sprayin' out the most beautiful colers you ever
+see in your life, and fallin' down in pink, and yellow, and gold,
+and green, and amber, and silver water; sparklin' down onto the
+green beautiful ferns and flowers that loved to grow round the big
+marble basin which shone white, risin' out of the green velvet of
+the grass.
+
+Josiah looked at that water, and sez he, "Samantha, I'd love to
+get some of that water to pass round evenin's when we have
+company."  Sez he, "It would look so dressy and fashionable to
+pass round pink water, or light blue, or light yeller.  How it
+would make Uncle Nate Gowdey open his eyes.  I believe I shall buy
+some bottles of it, Samantha, to take home.  What do you say? I
+don't suppose it would cost such a dretful sight, do you?"
+
+Sez he, "I s'pose all they have to do is to put pumps down into a
+pink spring, or a yeller one, as the case may be, and pump.  And I
+would be willin' to pump it up myself, if it would come cheaper."
+
+But my companion soon forgot to follow up the theme in lookin'
+about him onto the magnificent, seen, and a seein' the throngs of
+men and wimmen growin' more and more denser, and every crowd on
+'em that swept by us, and round us, and before us, a growin' more
+gorgus in dress, or so it seemed to us.  Gemms of every gorgus
+coler under the heavens and some jest the coler of the heavens
+when it is blue and shinin' or when it is purplish dark in the
+night time, or when it is full of white fleecy clouds, or when it
+is a shinin' with stars.
+
+Why, one woman had so many diamonds on that she had a detective
+follerin' her all round wherever she went.  She wuz a blaze of
+splendor and so wuz lots of 'em, though like the stars, they
+differed from each other in glory.
+
+But whatever coler their gowns wuz, in one thing they wuz most all
+alike -- most all of 'em had waists all drawed in tight, but a
+bulgin' out on each side, more or less as the case might be.  Why
+some of them waists wuzn't much bigger than pipe's tails and so I
+told Josiah.
+
+And he whispered back to me, and sez he, "I wonder if them wimmen
+with wasp waists, think that we men like the looks on 'em.  They
+make a dumb mistake if they do.  Why," sez he, "we men know what
+they be; we know they are nothin' but crushed bones and flesh."
+Sez he, "I could make my own waist look jest like 'em, if I should
+take a rope and strap myself down."
+
+"Wall," sez I, in agitated axents, "don't you try to go into no
+such enterprise, Josiah Allen."
+
+I remembered the eppisode of the afternoon, and I sez in anxins
+axents, and affectionate, "Besides not lookin' well, it is
+dangerous, awful dangerous.  And how I should blush," sez I, "if I
+wuz to see you with a leather strap or a rope round your waist
+under your coat, a drawin' you in ; a changin' your good honerable
+shape.  And God made men's and wimmen's waists jest alike in the
+first place, and it is jest as smart for men to deform themselves
+in that way as it is for wimmen.  But oh, the agony of my soul if
+I should see you a tryin' to disfigure yourself in that way."
+
+"You needn't be afraid, Samantha," sez he, "I am dressy, and
+always wuz, but I haint such a fool as that, as to kill myself in
+perfect agony, for fashion."
+
+I didn't say nothin' but instinctively I looked down at his feet,
+"Oh, you needn't look at my feet, Samantha, feet are very
+different from the heart, and lungs, and such.  You can squeeze
+your feet down, and not hurt much moren the flesh and bones.  But
+you are a destroyin' the very seat of life when you draw your
+waist in as them wimmen do."
+
+"I know it," sez I, "but I wouldn't torture myself in any way if I
+wuz in your place."
+
+"I don't lay out to," sez he.  "I haint a goin' to wear corsets,
+it haint at all probable I shall, though I am better able to stand
+it, than wimmen be."
+
+"I know that," sez I.  "I know men are stronger and better able to
+bear the strain of bein' drawed in and tapered."  I am reesonable,
+and will ever speak truthful and honest, and this I couldn't deny
+and didn't try to.
+
+"Wall, dumb it, what makes men stronger?" sez he.
+
+"Why," sez I, "I s'pose one great thing is their dressin'
+comfortable."
+
+"Wall, I am glad you know enough to know it," sez he.  "Why," sez
+he, "jest imagine a man tyin' a rope round his waist, round and
+round; or worse yet, take strong steel, and whalebones, and bind
+and choke himself down with 'em, and tottlin' himself up on high
+heel slippers, the high heels comin' right up in the ball of his
+foot -- and then havin' heavy skirts a holdin' him down, tied back
+tight round his knees and draggin' along on the ground at his feet
+-- imagine me in that perdickerment, Samantha."
+
+I shuddered, and sez I, "Don't bring up no such seen to harrow up
+my nerve."  Sez I, "You know I couldn't stand it, to see you a
+facin' life and its solemn responsibilities in that condition.  It
+would kill me to witness your sufferin'," sez I.  And agin' I
+shuddered, and agin I sithed.
+
+And he sez, "Wall, it is jest as reasonable for a man to do it as
+for a woman; it is far worse and more dangerous for a woman than a
+man."
+
+"I know it," sez I, between my sithes.  "I know it, but I can't, I
+can't stand it, to have you go into it."
+
+"Wall, you needn't worry, Samantha, I haint a fool.  You won't
+ketch men a goin' into any such performances as this, they know
+too much."  And then he resumed on in a lighter agent, to get my
+mind still further off from his danger, for I wuz still a sithin',
+frequent and deep.
+
+Sez he, as he looked down and see some wimmen a passin' below; sez
+hey "I never see such a sight in my life, a man can see more here
+in one evenin' than he can in a life time at Jonesville."
+
+"That is so, Josiah," sez I, "you can."  And I felt every word I
+said, for at that very minute a lady, or rather a female woman,
+passed with a dress on so low in the neck that I instinctively
+turned away my head, and when I looked round agin, a deep blush
+wuz mantlin' the cheeks of Josiah Allen, a flushin' up his face,
+clear up into his bald head.
+
+I don't believe I had ever been prouder of Josiah Allen, than I
+wuz at that minute.  That blush spoke plainer than words could, of
+the purity and soundness of my pardner's morals.  If the whole
+nation had stood up in front of me at that time, and told me his
+morals wuz a tottlin' I would have scorned the suggestion.  No,
+that blush telegraphed to me right from his soul, the sweet
+tidin's of his modesty and worth.
+
+And I couldn't refrain from sayin' in encouragin', happy axents,
+"Haint you glad now, Josiah Allen, that you listened to your
+pardner; haint you glad that you haint a goin' round in a low
+necked coat and vest, a callin' up the blush of skern and outraged
+modesty to the cheeks 'of noble and modest men?"
+
+"Yes," sez he, graspin' holt of my hand in the warmth of his
+gratitude, for he see what I had kep' him from.  "Yes, you wuz in
+the right on't, Samantha.  I see the awfulness of the peril from
+which you rescued of me.  But never," sez he, a lookin' down
+agin over the railin', onto some more wimmen a passin' beneath,
+"never did I see what I have seen here to-night.  Not," sez he
+dreemily, "sense I wuz a baby."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "don't try to look, Josiah; turn your eyes away."
+
+And I believe he did try to -- though such is the fascination of a
+known danger in front of you, that it is hard to keep yourself
+from contemplatin' of it.  But he tried to.  And he tried to not
+look at the waltzin' no more than he could help, and I did too.
+But in spite of himself he had to see how clost the young girls
+wuz held; how warmly the young men embraced 'em.  And as he looked
+on, agin I see the hot blush of shame mantillied Josiah's cheeks,
+and again he sez to me in almost warm axents, "I realize what you
+have rescued me from, Samantha."
+
+And I sez, "You couldn't have looked Elder Minkley in the face,
+could you? if you had gone into that shameful diversion."
+
+"No, I couldn't, nor into yourn nuther.  I couldn't have looked
+nobody in the face, if I had gone on and imposed on any young girl
+as they are a doin', and insulted of her.  Why," sez he, "if it
+wuz my Tirzah Ann that them, men wuz a embracin', and huggin', and
+switchin' her round, as if they didn't have no respect for her at
+all, -- why, if it wuz Tirzah Ann, I would tear 'em 'em from lim."
+
+And he looked capable on't.  He looked almost sublime (though
+small).  And I hurried him away from the seen, for I didn't know
+what would ensue and foller on, if I let him linger there longer.
+He looked as firm and warlike as one of our bantam fowls, a male
+one, when hawks are a hoverin' over the females of the flock.  And
+when I say Bantam I say it with no disrespect to Josiah Allen.
+Bantams are noble, and warlike fowls, though small boneded.
+
+I got one more glimps of Miss Flamm jest as we left the tarven.
+She wuz a standin' up in the parlor, with a tall man a standin' up
+in front of her a talkin'.  He seemed to be biddin' of her
+good-bye, for he had holt of her hand, and be wuz a sayin' as we
+went by 'em, sez he, "I am sorry not to see more of you."
+
+"Good land!" thinkses I, "what can the man be a thinkin' on? the
+mean, miserable creeter!  If there wuz ever a deadly insult gin to
+a woman, then wuz the time it wuz gin.  Good land! good land!"
+
+I don't know whether Miss Flamm resented it, or not, for I hurried
+Josiah along.  I didn't want to expose him to no sich sights,
+good, innocent old creeter.  So I kep' him up on a pretty good jog
+till I got him home.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+A TRIP TO SCHUYLERVILLE.
+
+
+It wuz a lovely mornin' when my companion and me sot out to visit
+Schuylerville to see the monument that is stood up there in honor
+of the Battle of Saratoga, one of 7 great decisive battles of the
+world.
+
+Wall, the cars rolled on peacefully, though screechin' occasionally,
+for, as the poet says, "It is their nater to," and rolled us away
+from Saratoga.  And at first there wuzn't nothin' particularly
+insperin' in the looks of the landscape, or ruther woodscape.  It
+wuz mostly woods and rather hombly woods too, kinder flat lookin'.
+But pretty soon the scenery became beautiful and impressive.  The
+rollin' hills rolled down and up in great billowy masses of green
+and pale blue, accordin' as they wuz fur or near, and we went by
+shinin' water, and a glowin' landscape, and pretty houses, and
+fields of grain and corn, etc., etc.  And anon we reached a place
+where "Victory Mills" wuz printed up high, in big letters.  When
+Josiah see this, he sez, "Haint that neighborly and friendly in
+Victory to come over here and put up a mill?  That shows, Samantha,"
+sez he, "that the old hardness of the Revolution is entirely done
+away with."
+
+He wuz jest full of Revolutionary thoughts that mornin', Josiah
+Allen wuz.  And so wuz I too, but my strength of mind is such,
+that I reined 'em in and didn't let 'em run away with me.  And I
+told him that it didn't mean that.  Sez I, "The Widder Albert
+wouldn't come over here and go to millin', she nor none of her
+family."
+
+"But," sez he, "the name must mean sunthin'.  Do you s'pose it is
+where folks get the victory over things?  If it is, I'd give a
+dollar bill to get a grist ground out here, and," sez he, in a
+sort of a coaxin' tone, "le's stop and get some victory, Samantha."
+
+And I told him, that I guessed when he got a victory over the
+world, the flesh, or the -- David, he would have to work for it,
+he wouldn't get it ground out for him.  But anon, he cast his eyes
+on sunthin' else and so forgot to muse on this any further.  It
+wuz a fair seen.
+
+Anon, a big manufactory, as big as the hull side of Jonesville
+almost, loomed up by the side of us.  And anon, the fair, the
+beautiful country spread itself out before our vision.  While fur,
+fur away the pale blue mountains peeked up over the green ones, to
+see if they too could see the monument riz up to our National
+Liberty.  It belonged to them, jest as much as to the hill it wuz
+a standin' on, it belongs to the hull liberty-lovin' world.
+
+Wall, the cars stopped in a pretty little village, a clean,
+pleasant little place as I ever see, or want to see.  And Josiah
+and me wended our way up the broad roomy street, up to where the
+monument seemed to sort a beegon to us to come.  And when we got
+up to it; we see it wuz a sight, a sight to behold.
+
+The curius thing on't wuz, it kep a growin' bigger and bigger all
+the time we wuz approachin' it, till, as we stood at its base, it
+seemed to tower up into the very skies.
+
+There wuz some flights of stun steps a leadin' up to some doors in
+the side on't.  And we went inside on't after we had gin a good
+look at the outside.  But it took us some time to get through
+gazin' at the outside on't.
+
+Way up over our heads wuz some sort a recesses, some like the
+recess in my spare bed-room, only higher and narrower, and kinder
+nobler lookin'.  And standin' up in the first one, a lookin'
+stiddy through storm and shine at the North star, stood General
+Gates, bigger than life considerable, but none too big; for his
+deeds and the deeds of all of our old 4 fathers stand out now and
+seem a good deal bigger than life.  Yes, take 'em in all their
+consequences, a sight bigger.
+
+Wall, there he stands, a leanin' on his sword.  He'll be ready
+when the enemy comes, no danger but what he will.
+
+On the east side, is General Schuyler a horsback, ready to dash
+forward against the foe, impetuous, ardent, gallant.  But oh! the
+perils and dangers that obstruct his pathway; thick underbrush and
+high, tall trees stand up round him that he seemin'ly can't get
+through.
+
+But his gallant soldiers are a helpin' him onward, they are a
+cuttin' down the trees so's he can get through 'em and dash at the
+enemy.  You see as you look on him that he will get through it
+all.  No envy, nor detraction, nor jealousy, no such low
+underbrush full of crawlin' reptiles, nor no high solid trees, no
+danger of any sort can keep him back.  His big brave, generous
+heart is sot on helpin' his country, he'll do it.
+
+On the south side, is the saddest sight that a patriotic American
+can see.  On a plain slab stun, lookin' a good deal like a
+permanent grave-stun, sot up high there, for Americans to weep
+over forever, bitter tears of shames, is the name, "Arnold."
+
+He wuz a brave soldier; his name ort to be there; it is all right
+to have it there and jest where it is, on a gravestun.  All
+through the centuries it will stand there, a name carved by the
+hand of cupidity, selfishness, and treachery.
+
+On the west side, General Morgan is standin' up with his hands
+over his eyes; lookin' away into the sunset.  He looked jest like
+that when he wuz a lookin' after prowlin' red skins and red coats;
+when the sun wuz under dark clouds, and the day wuz dark 100 years
+ago.
+
+But now, all he has to do is to stand up there and look off into
+the glowin' heavens, a watchin' the golden light of the sun of
+Liberty a rollin' on westward.  He holds his hand over his eyes;
+its rays most blind him, he is most lost a thinkin' how fur, how
+fur them rays are a spreadin', and a glowin',way, way off, Morgan
+is a lookin' onto our future, and it dazzles him.  Its rays
+stretch off into other lands; they strike dark places; they burn!
+they glow! they shine! they light up the world!
+
+Hold up your head, brave old General, and your loyal steadfast
+eyes.  You helped to strike that light.  Its radience half-frights
+you.  It is so heavenly bright, its rays, may well dazzle you.
+Brown old soldiers, I love to think of you always a standin' up
+there, lifted high up by a grateful Nation, a lookin' off over all
+the world, a lookin' off towards the glowin' west, toward our
+glorious future.
+
+On the inside too, it wuz a noble seen.  After you rose up the
+steps and went inside, you found yourself in a middlin' big room
+all surrounded by figures in what they called Alto Relief, or
+sunthin' to that effect.  I don't know what Alto they meant.  I
+don't know nobody by that name, nor I don't know how they relieved
+him.  But I s'pose Alto when he wuz there wuz relieved to think
+that the figures wuz all so noble and impressive.  Mebby he had
+been afraid they wouldn't suit him and the nation.  But they did,
+they must have.  He must have been hard to suit, Alto must, if he
+wuzn't relieved, and pleased with these.
+
+On one side wuz George the 3d of England, in his magnificent
+palace, all dressed up in velvet and lace, surrounded by his slick
+drestup nobles, and all of 'em a sittin' there soft and warm, in
+the lap of Luxury, a makin' laws to bind the strugglin' colonies.
+
+And right acrost from that, wuz a picture of them Colonists, cold
+and hungry, a havin' a Rally for Freedom, and a settin' up a Town
+meetin! right amongst the trees, and under-brush that hedged 'em
+all in and tripped 'em up at every step; and savages a hidin'
+behind the trees, and fears of old England, and dread of a
+hazerdous unknown future, a hantin' and cloudin' every glimpse of
+sky that came down on 'em through the trees.  But they looked
+earnest and good, them old 4 fathers did, and the Town meetin'
+looked determined, and firm principled as ever a Town meetin'
+looked on the face of the earth.
+
+Then there wuz some of the women of the court, fine ladies, all
+silk, and ribbons, and embroideries, and paint, and powder, a
+leanin' back in their cushioned arm-chairs, a wantin' to have the
+colonies taxed still further so's to have more money to buy lace
+with and artificial flowers.  And right acrost from 'em wuz some
+of our old 4 mothers, in a rude, log hut, not strong enough to
+keep out the cold, or the Injuns.
+
+One wuz a cardin' wools, one of 'em wuz a spinnin' 'em, a tryin'
+to make clothes to cover the starved, half-naked old 4 fathers who
+wuz a tramplin' round in the snow with bare feet and shiverin'
+lims.  And one of 'em had a gun in her hand.  She had smuggled the
+children all in behind her and she wuz a lookin' out for the foe.
+These wimmen hadn't no ribbons on, no, fur from it.
+
+And then there wuz General Schuyler a fellin' trees to obstruct
+the march of the British army.  And Miss Schuyler a settin' fire
+to a field of wheat rather than have it help the enemy of her
+country.  Brave old 4 mother, worthy pardner of a grand man, she
+wuz a takin' her life in her hand and a destroyin' her own
+property for the sake of the cause she loved.  A emblem of the way
+men and women sot fire to their own hopes, their own happiness,
+and burnt 'em up on the altar of the land we love.
+
+And there wuz some British wimmen a follerin' their husbands
+through the perils of danger and death, likely old 4 mothers they
+wuz, and thought jest as much of their pardners as I do of my
+Josiah.  I could see that plain.  And could see it a shinin'
+still plainer in another one of the pictures -- Lady Aukland a
+goin' over the Hudson in a little canoe with the waves a dashin'
+up high round her, to get to the sick bed of her companion.  The
+white flag of truce wuz a wavin' over her head and in her heart
+wuz a shinin' the clear white light of a woman's deathless
+devotion.  Oh! there wuz likely wimmen amongst the British, I
+haint a doubt of it, and men too.
+
+And then we clim a long flight of stairs and we see some more
+pictures, all round that room.  Alto relieved agin, or he must
+have been relieved, and happified to see 'em, they wuz so
+impressive.  I myself had from 25 to 30 emotions a minute while I
+stood a lookin' at em -- big lofty emotions too.
+
+There waz Jennie McCrea a bein' dragged offen her horse, and
+killed by savages.  A dreadful sight -- a woman settin' out
+light-hearted toward happiness and goin' to meet a fearful doom.
+Dreadful sight that has come down through the centuries, and
+happens over and over agin amongst female wimmen.  But here it wuz
+fearful impressive for the savages that destroyed her wuz in
+livin' form, they haint always materialized.
+
+Yes, it wuz a awful seen.  And jest beyond it, wuz Burgoyne a
+scoldin' the savages for the cruelty of the deed.  Curius, haint
+it?  How the acts and deeds of a man that he sets to goin', when
+they have come to full fruition skare him most to death, horrify
+him by the sight.  I'll bet Burgoyne felt bad enough, a lookin' on
+her dead body, if it wuz his doin's in the first place, in lettin'
+loose such ignerance and savagery onto a strugglin' people.
+
+Yes, Mr. Burgoyne felt bad and ashamed, I haint a doubt of it.
+His poet soul could suffer as well as enjoy -- and then I didn't
+feel like sayin' too much aginst Mr. Burgoyne, havin' meditated so
+lately in the treachery of Arnold, one of our own men doin' a act
+that ort to keep us sort a humble-minded to this day.
+
+And then there wuz the killin' and buryin' of Frazier both
+impressive.  He wuz a gallant officer and a brave man.  And then
+there wuz General Schuyler (a good creeter) a turnin' over his
+command to Gates.  And I methought to myself as I looked on it,
+that human nater wuz jest about the same then; it capered jest
+about as it duz now in public affairs and offices.  Then there wuz
+the surrender of Burgoyne to Gates.  A sight impressive enough to
+furnish one with stiddy emotions for weeks and weeks.  A thinkin'
+of all he surrendered to him that day, and all that wuz took.
+
+The monument is dretful high.  Up, up, up, it soars as if it wuz
+bound to reach up into the very heavens, and carry up there these
+idees of ourn about Free Rights, and National Liberty.  It don't
+go clear up, though.  I wish it did.  If it had, I should have
+gone up the high ladder clear to the top.  But I desisted from the
+enterprise for 2 reasons, one wuz, that it didn't go, as I say,
+clear up, and the other wuz that the stairs wuzn't finished.
+
+Josiah proposed that he should go up as he clim up our well, with
+one foot on each side on't.  He said he wuz tempted to, for he
+wanted dretfully to look out of them windows on the top.  And he
+said it would probable be expected of him.  And I told him that I
+guessed that the monument wouldn't feel hurt if he didn't go up; I
+guessed it would stand it.  I discouraged the enterprise.
+
+And anon we went down out of the monument, and crossed over to the
+good-lookin' house where the man lives who takes care of the
+monument, and shows off its good traits, a kind of a guardian to
+it.  And we got a first-rate dinner there, though such is not
+their practice.  And then he took us in a likely buggy with 2
+seats, and a horse to draw it, and we sot out to see what the
+march of 100 years has left us of the doin's of them days.
+
+Time has trampled out a good many of 'em, but we found some.  We
+found the old Schuyler mansion, a settin' back amongst the trees,
+with the old knocker on it, that had been pulled by so many a old
+4 father, carryin' tidin's of disappointment, and hope, and
+triumph, and encouragement, and everything.  We went over the
+threshold wore down by the steps that had fell there for a hundred
+years, some light, some heavy steps.
+
+We went into the clean, good-lookin' old kitchen, with the
+platters, and shinin' dressers and trays; the old-fashioned
+settee, half-table and half-seat.  And we see the cup General
+Washington drinked tea out of, good old creeter.  I hope the water
+biled and it wuz good tea, and most probable it wuz.  And we see
+lots of arms that had been carried in the war, and cannon balls,
+and shells, and tommy-hawks, and hatchets, and arrows, and etc.,
+etc.  And down in one room all full of other curiosities and
+relicts, wuz the skull of a traitor.  I should judge from the
+looks on't that besides bein' mean, he wuz a hombly man.  Somebody
+said folks had made efforts to steal it.  But Josiah whispered to
+me, that there wuzn't no danger from him, for he would rather be
+shet right up in the Tombs than to own it, in any way.
+
+And I felt some like him.  Some of his teeth had been stole, so
+they said.  Good land! what did they want with his teeth!  But it
+wuz a dretful interestin' spot.  And I thought as I went through
+the big square, roomy rooms that I wouldn't swap this good old
+house for dozens of Queen Anns, or any other of the fashionable,
+furbelowed houses of to-day.  The orniments of this house wuz more
+on the inside, and I couldn't help thinkin' that this house,
+compared with the modern ornimental cottages, wuz a good deal like
+one of our good old-fashioned foremothers in her plain gown,
+compared with some of the grandma's of to-day, all paint, and
+furbelows, and false hair.
+
+The old 4 mothers orniments wuz on the inside, and the others wuz
+more up on the roof, scalloped off and gingerbreaded, and
+criss-crossed.
+
+The old house wuz full of rooms fixed off beautiful.  It wuz quite
+a treat to walk throngh'em.  But the old fireplaces, and mantle
+tray shelves spoke to our hearts of the generations that had poked
+them fires, and leaned up against them mantle trays.  They went
+ahead on us through the old rooms; I couldn't see 'em, but I felt
+their presence, as I follered 'em over the old thresholts their
+feet had worn down a hundred years ago.  Their feet didn't make no
+sound, their petticoats and short gowns didn't rustle against the
+old door ways and stair cases.
+
+The dear old grandpas in their embroidered coats, didn't cast no
+shadow as they crossed the sunshine that came in through the
+old-fashioned window panes.  No, but with my mind's eye (the best
+eye I have got, and one that don't wear specks) I see 'em, and I
+follerd 'em down the narrow, steep stair case, and out into the
+broad light of 4 P. M., 1886.
+
+Anon, or shortly after, we drove up on a corner of the street jest
+above where the Fish creek empties into the Hudson, and there,
+right on a tall high brick block, wuz a tablet, showin' that a
+tree once stood jest there, under which Burgoyne surrendered.  And
+agin, when I thought of all that he surrendered that day, and all
+that America and the world gained, my emotions riz up so powerful,
+that they wuzn't quelled down a mite, by seein' right on the other
+side of the house wrote down these words, "Drugs, Oils, etc."
+
+No, oil couldn't smooth 'em down, nor drugs drug 'em; they wuz too
+powerful.  And they lasted jest as soarin' and eloquent as ever
+till we turned down a cross street, and arrove at the place, jest
+the identical spot where the British stacked their arms (and
+stacked all their pride, and their ambitious hopes with 'em).  It
+made a high pile.
+
+Wall, from there we went up to a house on a hill, where poor
+Baroness Riedesel hid with her three little children, amongst the
+wounded and dyin' officers of the British army, and stayed there
+three days and three nights, while shots and shells wuz a
+bombardin' the little house -- and not knowin' but some of the
+shots had gone through her lover husband's heart, before they
+struck the low ruff over her head.
+
+What do you s'pose she wuz a thinkin' on as she lay hid in that
+suller all them three days and three nights with her little girls'
+heads in her lap?  Jest the same thoughts that a mother thinks
+to-day, as she cowers down with the children she loves, to hide
+from danger; jest the same thoughts that a wife thinks today when
+her heart is out a facing danger and death, with the man she
+loves.
+
+She faced danger, and died a hundred deaths in the thought of the
+danger to them she loved.  I see the very splinters that the cruel
+shells and cannon balls split and tore right over her head.  Good
+honorable splinters and not skairful to look at today, but hard,
+and piercin', and harrowin' through them days and nights.
+
+Time has trampled over that calash she rode round so much in (I
+wish I could a seen it); but Time has ground it down into dust.
+Time's hand, quiet but heavy, rested down on the shinin' heads of
+the three little girls, and their Pa and Ma, and pushed 'em gently
+but firmly down out of sight; and all of them savages who used to
+follow that calash as it rolled onwards, and all their canoes, and
+war hoops, and snowshoes, etc., etc.
+
+Yes, that calash of Miss Riedesel has rolled away, rolled away
+years ago, carryin' the three little girls, their Pa and Ma and
+all the fears, and hopes, and dreads, and joys, and heartaches of
+that time it has rolled on with 'em all; on, on, down the dusty
+road of Oblivion, -- it has disappeared there round the turn of
+road, and a cloud of dust comes up into our faces, as we try to
+follow it.  And the Injuns that used to howl round it, have all
+follered on the trail of that calash, and gone on, on, out of
+sight.  Their canoes have drifted away down the blue Hudson, away
+off into the mist and the shadows.  Curius, haint it?
+
+And there the same hills and valleys lay, calm and placid, there
+is the same blue sparklin' Hudson.  Dretful curius, and sort a
+heart breakin' to think on't -- haint it?  Only jest a few more
+years and we, too, shall go round the turn of the road, out of
+sight, out of sight, and a cloud of dust will come up and hide us
+from the faces of them that love us, and them, too, from the eyes
+of a newer people.
+
+All our hopes, all our ambitious, all our loves, our joys, our
+sorrows, -- all, all will be rolled away or floated away down the
+river, and the ripples will ripple on jest as happy; the Sunshine
+will kiss the hills jest as warmly, and lovin'ly; but other eyes
+will look on 'em, other hearts will throb and burn within 'em at
+the sight.
+
+Kinder sad to think on, haint it?
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETING.
+
+
+One day Josiah and me went into a meetin' where they wuz kinder
+fixin' over the world, sort a repairin' of it, as you may say.
+Some of the deepest, smartest speeches I ever hearn in my life, I
+hearn there.
+
+You know it is a middlin' deep subject.  But they rose to it.
+They rose nobly to it.  Some wuz for repairin' it one way, and
+some another -- some wanted to kinder tinker it up, and make it
+over like.  Some wanted to tear it to pieces, and build it over
+new.  But they all meant well by the world, and nobody could help
+respectin' 'em.
+
+I enjoyed them hours there with 'em, jest about as well as it is
+in my power to enjoy anything.  They wuz all on 'em civilized
+Christian folks and philanthropists of different shades and
+degrees, all but one.  There wuz one heathen there.  A Hindoo
+right from Hindoostan, and I felt kinder sorry for him.  A
+heathen sot right in the midst of them folks of refinement, and
+culture, who had spent their hull lives a tryin' to fix over the
+world, and make it good.
+
+This poor little heathen, with a white piller case, or sunthin'
+wound round his head (I s'pose he hadn't money to buy a hat), and
+his small black eyes lookin' out kinder side ways from his dark
+hombly little face, rousted up my pity, and my sympathy.  There
+had been quite a firm speech made against allowin' foreigners on
+our shores.  And this little heathen, in his broken speech, said,
+It all seemed so funny to him, when everybody wuz foreigners in
+this country, to think that them that got here first should say
+they owned it, and send everybody else back.  And he said, It
+seemed funny to him, that the missionarys we sent over to his
+land to teach them the truth, told them all about this land of
+Liberty, where everybody wuz free, and everybody could earn a
+home for themselves, and urged 'em all to come over here, and
+then when they broke away from all that held 'em in their own
+land, and came thousands and thousands of milds, to get to this
+land of freedom and religion,then they wuz sent back agin, and
+wuzn't allowed to land.  It seemed so funny.
+
+And so it did to me.  And I said to myself, I wonder if they
+don't lose all faith in the missionarys, and what they tell them.
+I wonder if they don't have doubts about the other free country
+they tell 'em about.  The other home they have urged 'em to prepare
+for, and go to.  I wonder if they haint afraid, that when they
+have left their own country and sailed away for that home of
+Everlastin' freedom, they will be sent back agin, and not allowed
+to land.
+
+But it comferted me quite a good deal to meditate on't, that that
+land didn't have no laws aginst foreign emigration.  That its
+ruler wuz one who held the rights of the lowest, and poorest, and
+most ignerent of His children, of jest as much account as he did
+the rights of a king.  Thinkses I that poor little head with the
+piller case on it will be jest as much looked up to, as if it wuz
+white and had a crown on it.  And I felt real glad to think it
+wuz so.
+
+But I went to every meetin' of 'em, and enjoyed every one of 'em
+with a deep enjoyment.  And I said then, and I say now, for folks
+that had took such a hefty job as they had, they done well, nobody
+could do better, and if the world wuzn't improved by their talk it
+wuz the fault of the world, and not their'n.
+
+And we went to meetin' on Sunday mornin' and night, and hearn
+good sermons.  There's several high big churches at Saratoga, of
+every denomination, and likely folks belong to the hull on 'em:
+There is no danger of folks losin' their way to Heaven unless
+they want to, and they can go on their own favorite paths too, be
+they blue Presbyterian paths, or Methodist pasters, or by the
+Baptist boat, or the Episcopalian high way, or the Catholic
+covered way, or the Unitarian Broadway, or the Shadow road of
+Spiritualism.
+
+No danger of their losin' their way unless they want to.  And I
+thought to myself as I looked pensively at the different steeples,
+"What though there might be a good deal of'wranglin', and screechin',
+and puffin' off steam, at the different stations, as there must
+always be where so many different routes are a layin' side by side,
+each with its own different runners, and conductors, and porters,
+and managers, and blowers, still it must be, that the separate
+high ways would all end at last in a serener road, where the true
+wayfarers and the earnest pilgrims would all walk side by side, and
+forget the very name of the station they sot out from.
+
+I sez as much to my companion, as we wended our way home from one
+of the meetin's, and he sez, "There haint but one right way, and
+it is a pity folks can't see it."  Sez he a sithin' deep, "Why
+can't everybody be Methodists?"
+
+We wuz a goin' by the 'Piscopal church then, and he sez a lookin'
+at it, as if he wuz sorry for it, "What a pity that such likely
+folks as they be, should believe in such eronious doctrines.
+Why," sez he, "I have hearn that they believe that the bread at
+communion is changed into sunthin' else.  What a pity that they
+should believe anything so strange as that is, when there is a
+good, plain, practical, Christian belief that they might believe
+in, when they might be Methodists.  And the Baptists now," sez
+he, a glancin' back at their steeple, "why can't they believe
+that a drop is as good as a fountain?  Why do they want to
+believe in so much water?  There haint no need on't.  They might
+be Methodists jest as well as not, and be somebody."
+
+And he walked along pensively and in deep thought, and I a feelin'
+somewhat tuckered didn't argue with him, and silence rained about
+us till we got in front of the hall where the Spiritualists hold
+their meetin's, and we met a few a comin' out on it and then he
+broke out and acted mad, awful mad and skernful, and sez he
+angrily, "Them dumb fools believe in supernatural things.  They
+don't have a shadow of reason or common sense to stand on.  A man
+is a fool to gin the least attention to them, or their doin's.  Why
+can't they believe sunthin' sensible?  Why can't they jine a church
+that don't have anything curius in it?  Nothin' but plain, common
+sense facts in it: Why can't they be Methodists?"
+
+"The idee!" sez he, a breakin' out fresh.  "The idee of believin'
+that folks that have gone to the other world can come back agin
+and appear.  Shaw!" sez he, dretful loud and bold.  I don't believe
+I ever heard a louder shaw in my life than that wuz, or more kinder
+haughty and highheaded.
+
+And then I spoke up, and sez, "Josiah, it is always well, to shaw
+in the right place, and I am afraid you haint studied on it as
+much as you ort.  I am afraid you haint a shawin' where you ort
+to."
+
+"Where should I shaw?" sez he, kinder snappish.
+
+"Wall," sez I, "when you condemn other folkses beliefs, you ort
+to be careful that you haint a condemin' your own belief at the
+same time.  Now my belief is grounded in the Methodist meetin'
+house like a rock; my faith has cast its ancher there inside of
+her beliefs and can't be washed round by any waves of opposin'
+doctrines.  But I am one who can't now, nor never could, abide
+bigotry and intolerance either in a Pope, or a Josiah Allen.
+
+"And when you condemn a belief simply on the ground of its bein'
+miraculous and beyond your comprehension, Josiah Allen, you had
+better pause and consider on what the Methodist faith is founded.
+
+"All our orthodox meetin' houses, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist,
+Episcopalian, every one on 'em, Josiah Allen, are sot down on a
+belief, a deathless faith in a miraculous birth, a life of
+supernatural events, the resurrection of the dead, His appearance
+after death, a belief in the graves openin' and the dead comin'
+forth, a belief in three persons inhabitin' one soul, the constant
+presence and control of spiritual influences, the Holy Ghost, and
+the spirits of just men.  And while you are a leanin' up against
+that belief, Josiah Allen, and a leanin' heavy, don't shaw at any
+other belief for the qualities you hold sacred in your own."
+
+He quailed a very little, and I went on.
+
+"If you want to shaw at it, shaw for sunthin' else in it, or else
+let it entirely alone.  If you think it lacks active Christian
+force, if you think it is not aggressive in its assaults at Sin,
+if you think it lacks faith in the Divine Head of the church, say
+so, do; but for mercy's sake try to shaw in the right place."
+
+"Wall," sez he, "they are a low set that follers it up mostly,
+and you know it."  And his head was right up in the air, and he
+looked very skernful.
+
+But I sez, "Josiah Allen, you are a shawin' agin in the wrong
+place," sez I.  "If what you say is true, remember that 1800
+years ago, the same cry wuz riz up by Pharisees, `He eats with
+Publicans and sinners.'  They would not have a king who came in
+the guise of the poor, they scerned a spiritual truth that did
+not sparkle with worldly lustre.
+
+"But it shone on; it lights the souls of humanity to-day.  Let us
+not be afraid, Josiah Allen.  Truth is a jewel that cannot be
+harmed by deepest investigation, by roughest handlin'.  It can't
+be buried, it will shine out of the deepest darkness.  What is
+false will be washed away, what is true will remain.  For all
+this frettin', and chafing, all this turbelence of conflectin'
+beliefs, opposin' wills, will only polish this jewel.  Truth,
+calm and serene, will endure, will shine, will light up the
+world."
+
+He begun to look considerable softer in mean, and I continued
+on: "Josiah Allen, you and I know what we believe the beautiful
+religion (Methodist Episcopal) that we both love, makes a light
+in our two souls.  But don't let us stand in that light and yell
+out, that everybody else's light is darkness; that our light is
+the only one.  No, the heavens are over all the earth; the twelve
+gates of heaven are open and a shinin' down on all sides of us.
+
+"Jonesville meetin' house (Methodist Episcopal) haint the only
+medium through which the light streams.  It is dear to us, Josiah
+Allen, but let us not think that we must coller everybody and
+drag 'em into it.  And let us not cry out too much at other
+folkses superstitions, when the rock of our own faith, that
+comforts us in joy and sorrow, is sot in a sea of supernaturalism.
+
+"You know how that faith comforts our two souls, how it is to us,
+like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, but they say,
+their belief is the same to them, let us not judge them too
+hardly.  No, the twelve gates of heaven are open, Josiah Allen,
+and a shinin' down onto the earth.  We know the light that has
+streamed into our own souls, but we do not know exactly what rays
+of radience may have been reflected down into some other lives
+through some one of those many gates.
+
+"The plate below has to be prepared, before it can ketch the
+picture and hold it.  The light does not strike back the same
+reflection from every earthly thing.  The serene lake mirrors
+back the light, in a calm flood of glory, the flashin' waterfall
+breaks it into a thousand dazzlin' sparkles.  The dewy petal of
+the yellow field lily, reflects its own ray of golden light back,
+so does the dark cone of the pine tree, and the diamond, the
+opal, the ruby, each tinges the light with its own coloring, but
+the light is all from above.  And they all reflect the light, in
+their own way for which the Divine skill has prepared them.
+
+"Let us not try to compel the deep blue Ocean waves and the
+shinin' waterfall, and the lily blow, to reflect back the light,
+in the same identical manner.  No, let the light stream down into
+high places, and low ones, let the truth shine into dark hearts,
+and into pure souls.  God is light.  God is Love.  It is His
+light that shines down out of the twelve gates, and though the
+ruby, or the amethyst, may color it by their own medium, the
+light that is reflected, back is the light of Heaven.  And Josiah
+Allen," sez I in a deeper, earnester tone, "let us who know so
+little ourselves, be patient with other ignerent ones.  Let us
+not be too intolerent, for no intolerence, Josiah Allen is so
+cruel as that of ignerence, an' stupidity."
+
+Sez Josiah, "I won't believe in anything I can't see, Samantha
+Allen."
+
+I jest looked round at him witheringly, and sez I, "What have
+you ever seen, Josiah Allen, I mean that is worth sein'?  Haint
+everything that is worth havin' in life, amongst the unseen?  The
+deathless loves, the aspirations, the deep hopes, and faiths,
+that live in us and through us, and animate us and keep us alive,
+-- Whose spectacles has ever seen 'em?  What are we, all of us
+human creeters, any way, but little atoms dropped here, Heaven
+knows why, or how, into the midst of a perfect sea of mystery,
+and unseen influences.  What hand shoved us forwards out of the
+shadows, and what hand will reach out to us from the shadows and
+draw us back agin?  Have you seen it Josiah Allen?  You have felt
+this great onseen force a movin' you along, but you haint sot
+your eyes on it.
+
+"What is there above us, below us, about us, but a waste of
+mystery, a power of onseen influences?.
+
+"You won't believe anything you can't see: -- Did you ever see
+old Gravity, Josiah Allen, or get acquainted with him?  Yet his
+hands hold the worlds together.  Who ever see the mysterious
+sunthin' in the North that draws the ship's compass round?  Who
+ever see that great mysterious hand that is dropped down in the
+water, sweepin' it back and forth, makin' the tides come in, and
+the tides go out?  Who ever has ketched a glimpse of them majestic
+fingers, Josiah Allen?  Or the lips touched with lightnin', whose
+whispers reach round the world, and through the Ocean?  You haint
+see 'em, nor I haint,  No, Josiah Allen, we don't know much of
+anything, and we don't know that for certain.  We are all on us
+only poor pupils down in the Earth's school-room, learnin' with
+ difficulty and heart ache the lessons God sets for us.
+
+Tough old Experience gives us many a hard floggin', before we
+learn the day's lessons.  And we find the benches hard, long
+before sundown.  And it makes our hearts ache to see the mates we
+love droop their too tired heads in sleep, all round us before
+school is out.  But we grind on at our lessons, as best we may.
+Learnin' a little maybe.  Havin' to onlearn a sight, as the
+pinters move on towards four.  Clasping hands with fellow toilers
+and (hard task) onclaspin' 'em, as they go up above us, or down
+nearer the foot.  Havin' little `intermissions' of enjoyment,
+soon over.  But we plod on, on, and bimeby -- and sometimes we
+think we do not care how soon -- the teacher will say to us, that
+we can be 'dismissed.'  And then we shall drop out of the rank of
+learners, and the school will go without us, jest as busily, jest
+as cheerfully, jest as laboriously, jest as sadly.  Poor learners
+at the hard lessons of life.  Learnin' out of a book that is held
+out to us from the shadows by an onseen, inexorable hand.
+Settin' on hard benches that may fall out from under us at any
+time.  Poor ignerent creeters that we are, would it not be a too
+arrant folly for us to judge each other hardly, we, all on us, so
+deplorably ignerent, so weakly helpless?"
+
+Sez Josiah, in earnest axcents, "Le's walk a little faster."
+
+And, in lookin' up, I see that he wuz readin' a advertisement.  I
+ketched sight of a picture ornamentin' of it.  It wuz Lydia
+Pinkham.  And as I see that benine face, I found and recovered
+myself.  Truly, I had been a soarin' up, up, fur above Saratoga,
+Patent Medicines, Josiah Allen, etc., etc.
+
+But when I found myself by the side of Josiah Allen once more, I
+moved onwards in silence, and soon we found ourselves right by
+the haven where I desired to be, -- our own tried and true
+boardin' house.
+
+Truly eloquence is tuckerin', very, especially when you are a
+soarin' and a walkin' at the same time.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+ST. CHRISTINA'S HOME.
+
+
+Wall, it wuz that very afternoon, almost immegetly after dinner,
+that Josiah Allen invited me warmly to go with him to the Roller
+Coaster.  And I compromised the matter by his goin' with us first
+to St. Christina's Home, and then, I told him, I would proceed
+with him to the place where he would be.  They wuz both on one
+road, nigh to each other, and he consented after some words.
+
+I felt dretfully interested in this Home, for it is a place where
+poor little sick children are took to, out of their miserable,
+stiflin', dirty garrets, and cellars, and kep' and made well and
+happy in their pleasant, home-like surroundin's.  And I thought
+to myself, as I looked ont on the big grounds surroundin' it, and
+walked through the clean wide rooms, that the change to these
+children, brought out of their narrow dark homes of want and woe,
+into this great sunshiny Home with its clean fresh rooms, its
+good food, its cheery Christian atmosphere, its broad sunshiny
+playgrounds, must seem like enterin' Paradise to 'em.
+
+And I thought to myself how thankful I wuz that this pleasant
+House Beautiful, wuz prepared for the rest and refreshment of the
+poor little pilgrims, worn out so early in the march of life.
+And I further thinkses I, "Heaven bless the kind heart that first
+thought on't, and carried out the heavenly idee."
+
+The children's faces all looked, so happy, and bright, it wuz a
+treat to see 'em.  And the face of the sister who showed us round
+the rooms looked as calm, and peaceful, and happy, as if her face
+wuz the sun from which their little lights wuz reflected.
+
+Up amongst the rooms overhead, every one on 'em clean as a pin
+and sweet and orderly, wuz one room that specially attracted my
+attention.  It wuz a small chapel where the little ones wuz took
+to learn their prayers and say 'em.  It wuzn't a big, barren barn
+of a room, such as I have often seen in similar places, and which
+I have always thought must impress the children with a awful sense
+of the immensity and lonesomeness of space, and the intangebility,
+and distance of the Great Spirit who inhabiteth Eternity.  No, it
+wuz small, and cozy, and cheerful, like a home.  And the stained
+glass window held a beautiful picture of love and charity, which
+might well touch the children's hearts, sweetly and unconsciously,
+with the divine worth of love, and beauty, and goodness.
+
+And I could fancy the dear, little ones kneelin' here, and
+prayin' "Our Father, who art in Heaven," and feelin' that He wuz
+indeed their Father, and not a stranger, and that Heaven wuz not
+fur off from 'em.
+
+And I thought to myself "Never! never! through all their life
+will they get entirely away from the pure, sweet lessons they
+learn here."
+
+I enjoyed the hour I spent here with a deep, heart enjoyment, and
+so did Josiah.  Or, that is, I guess he did, though he whispered
+to me from time to time, or even oftener, as we went through the
+buildin', that we wuz a devourin' time that we might be spendin'
+at the Roller Coaster.
+
+Wall, at last, greatly to my pardner's satisfaction, we sot out
+for the place where he fain would be.  On our way there we roamed
+through another Indian Encampment, a smaller one than that where
+we had the fearful incident of the Mermaid and Sarah.
+
+No, it wuzn't so big, but it had many innocent diversions and a
+photograph gallery, and other things for its comfert.  And a
+standin' up a leanin' aginst a tree, by one of the little houses
+stood a Injun.  He wuz one of the last left of his tribe.  He
+seemed to be a lookin' pensively on -- and seein' how the land
+that had belonged to 'em, the happy huntin'-grounds, the springs
+they believed the Great Spirit had gin to 'em, had all passed
+away into the bands of another race.
+
+I wuz sorry for that Injun, real sorry.  And thinkses I to
+myself, we feel considerable pert now, and lively, but who knows
+in another three or four hundred years, but what one of the last
+of our race, may be a leanin' up aginst some new tree, right in
+the same spot, a watchin' the old places passed away into other
+hands, mebby black hands, or some other colored ones; mebby
+yellow ones, who knows?  I don't, nor Josiah don't.  But my
+pardner wuz a hurryin' me on, so I dropped my revery and my
+umberell in my haste to foller on after his footsteps.
+
+Josiah picked up my umberell, but he couldn't pick up my soarin'
+emotions for me.  No, he haint never been able, to get holt of
+'em.  But suffice it to say, that soon, preceded by my companion,
+I found myself a mountin' the nearly precipitus stairs, that led
+to the Roller Coaster.
+
+And havin' reached the spot, who should we find there but Ardelia
+Tutt and Bial Flamburg.  They had been on the Roller Coaster
+seven times in succession, and the car.  And they wuz now a
+sittin' down to recooperate their energies, and collect their
+scattered wits together.  The Roller Coaster is very scatterin'
+to wits that are not collected firm and sound, and cemented by
+strong common sense.
+
+The reason why the Roller Coaster don't scatter such folkses wits
+is supposed to be because, they don't go on to it.  Ardelia
+looked as if her idees wuz scattered to the four pints of the
+compass.  As for Bial, it seemed to me, as if he never had none
+to scatter.  But he spoke out to once, and said, he didn't care
+to ride on 'em.  (Bial Flamburg's strong pint, is his
+truthfulness, I can't deny that.)
+
+Ardelia wouldn't own up but what she enjoyed it dretfully.  You
+know folks are most always so.  If they partake of a pleasure and
+recreation that is doubtful in its effects, they will always say,
+what a high extreme of enjoyment they enjoyed a partakin' of it.
+Curius, haint it?  Wall, Josiah had been anticipatin' so much
+enjoyment from the exercise, that I didn't make no move to
+prevent him from embarkin' on it -- though it looked hazardous
+and dangerous in the extreme.
+
+I looked down on the long valleys, and precipitous heights of the
+assents and desents, in which my pardner wuz so soon to be
+assentin' and desentin' and I trembled, and wuz jest about to
+urge him to forego his diversion, for the sake of his pardner's
+happiness, but as I turned to expostulate with him, I see the
+beautiful, joyous, hopeful look on his liniment, and the words
+fell almost dead on my tongue.  I felt that I had ruther suffer
+in silence than to say one word to mar that bliss.
+
+Such is the love of pardners, and such is some of the agonies
+they suffer silently to save from woundin' the more opposite one.
+No, I said not a word; but silently sat, and see him makin' his
+preparations to embark.  He see the expression onto my face, and
+he too wuz touched by it.  He never said one word to me about
+embarkin' too, which I laid to two reasons.  One wuz my immovable
+determination not to embark on the voyage, which I had confided
+to him before.
+
+And the other wuz, the added expenses of the journey if he took
+his companion with him.
+
+No, I felt that he thought it wuz better we should part temporarily
+than that the expenditure should be doubled.  But as the time drew
+near for him to leave me, I see by his meen that he felt bad about
+leavin' me.  He realized what a companion I had been to him.  He
+realized the safety and repose he had always found at my side and
+the unknown dangers he wuz a rushin' into.
+
+And he got up and silently shook hands with me.  He would have
+kissed me, I make no doubt, if folks hadn't been a standin' by.
+He then embarked, and with lightnin' speed wuz bore away from me,
+as he dissapeared down the desent, his few gray hairs waved back,
+and as he went over the last precipitus hill, I heard him cry out
+in agonizin' axents, "Samantha! Samantha!"
+
+And I rushed forwards to his rescue but so lightnin' quick wuz
+their movements that I met my companion a comin' back, and I sez,
+the first thing, "I heard your cry, Josiah!  I rushed to save
+you, my dear pardner."
+
+"Yes," sez he, "I spoke out to you, to call your attention to the
+landscape, over the woods there!"
+
+I looked at him in a curious, still sort of a way, and didn't say
+nothin' only just that look.  Why, that man looked all trembly
+and broke up, but he kep' on.
+
+"Yes, it wuz beautiful and inspirin', and I knew you wuz such a
+case for landscapes, I thought I would call your attention to
+it."
+
+Sez I, coldly, "You wuz skairt, Josiah Allen, and you know it."
+
+"Skairt! the idee of me bein' skairt.  I wuz callin' your
+attention to the beauty of the view, over in the woods."
+
+"What wuz it?" sez I, still more coldly; for I can't bear deceit,
+and coverin' up.
+
+"Oh, it wuz a house, and a tree, and a barn, and things."
+
+"A great seen to scream about," sez I.  "It would probable have
+stood there till you got back, but you couldn't seem to wait."
+
+"No, I have noticed that you always wanted to see things to once.
+I have noticed it in you."
+
+"I could most probable have waited till you got back, to see a
+house and a tree."  And in still more -- frigid axents, I added,
+"Or a barn."  And I sez, kinder sarkastikly, "You enjoyed your
+ride, I s'pose."
+
+"Immensely, it wuz perfectly beautiful!  So sort a free and
+soarin' like.  It is jest what suits a man."
+
+"You'd better go right over it agin," sez I.
+
+"Yes," sez the man who runs the cars.  "You'd better go agin."
+
+"Oh no," sez Josiah.
+
+"Why not?" sez I.
+
+"Why not?" sez the man.
+
+Josiah Allen looked all around the room, and down on the grass,
+as if trying to find a good reasonable excuse a layin' round
+loose somewhere, so's he could get holt of it.
+
+"You'd better go," sez I, "I love to see you happy, Josiah
+Allen."
+
+"Yes, you'd better go," sez the man.
+
+"No!" sez Josiah, still a lookin' round for a excuse, up into the
+heavens and onto the horizon.  And at last his face kinder
+brightenin' up, as if he had found one: "No, it looks so kinder
+cloudy, I guess I won't go.  I think we shall have rain between
+now and night."  And so we said no more on the subject and sot
+out homewards.
+
+Ardelia wrote a poem on the occasion, wrote it right there, with
+rapidity and a lead pencil, and handed it to me, before I left
+the room.  I put it into my pocket and didn't think on it, for
+some days afterwards.
+
+That night after we got home from the Roller Coaster, I felt
+dretful sort a down hearted about Abram Gee, I see in that little
+incident of the day, that Bial, although I couldn't like him, yet
+I see he had his good qualities, I see how truthful he wuz.  And
+although I love truth -- I fairly worship it -- yet I felt that
+if things wuz as he said they wuz, he would more'n probable get
+Ardelia Tutt, for I know the power of Ambition in her, and I felt
+that she would risk the chances of happiness, for the name of
+bein' a Banker's Bride.
+
+So I sat there in deep gloom, and a chocolate colored wrapper,
+till as late as half past nine o'clock P. M.  And I felt that the
+course of Abram's love wuz not runnin' smooth.  No, I felt that
+it wuz runnin' in a dwindlin' torrent over a rocky bed, and a
+precipitus one.  And I felt that if he wuz with me then and
+there, if we didn't mingle our tears together we could our
+sithes, for I sithed, powerful and frequent.
+
+Poor short-sighted creeter that I wuz, a settin' in the shadow,
+when the sun wuz jest a gettin' ready to shine out onto Abram and
+reflect off onto my envious heart.  Even at that very time the
+hand of righteous Retribution had slipped its sure noose over
+Bial Flamburg's neck, and wuz a walkin' him away from Ardelia,
+away from happiness (oritory).
+
+At that very hour, half past nine P. M., Ardelia Tutt and Abram
+Gee had met agin, and rosy love and happiness wuz even then a
+stringin' roses on the chain that wuz to bind 'em together
+forever.
+
+The way on't wuz: It bein' early when Ardelia got here, Bial
+proposed to take her out for a drive and she consented.  He got a
+livery horse, and buggy, and they say that the livery man knew
+jest what sort of a creeter the horse wuz, and knew it wuz liable
+to break the buggy all to pieces and them to, and he let 'em have
+it for goin.'  But howsumever, whether that is so or not, when
+they got about five or six milds from Saratoga the horse skeert
+out of the road, and throwed 'em both out.
+
+It wuz a bank of sand that skeert it, a high bank that wuz piled
+up by a little hovel that stood by the side of the road.  The
+ground all round the hut wuz too poor to raise anything else but
+sand, and had raised sights of that.
+
+A man and woman, dretful shabby lookin', wuz a standin' by the
+door of the hut, and the man had a shovel in his hand, and had
+been a loadin' sand into a awful big wheelbarrow that wuz a
+standin' by -- seemin'ly ready to carry it acrost the fields, to
+where some man wuz a mixin' some motar, to lay the foundations of
+a barn.
+
+Wall, the old man stood a pantin' by the side of the wheelbarrow,
+as if he had indeed got on too heavy a load.  It wuz piled up
+high.  The horse shied, and Ardelia wuz throwed right out onto
+the bank of sand, Bial by the side of her.  And the old man and
+woman came a runnin' up, and callin' out, "Bial, my son, my son,
+are you wounded?"
+
+And there it all wuz.  Ardelia see the hull on it.  The Banker
+wuz before her, and she wuz a layin' on the bank.  And the banker
+wuz a doin' a heavy business, if anybody doubted it, let 'em take
+holt and cart a load on it acrost the fields.
+
+Wall, Ardelia wuz jarred fearful, in her heart, her ambition, her
+pride, and her bones.  And as the horse wuz a fleein' far away,
+and no other conveyance could be found to transport her to the
+next house (Ardelia wouldn't go into his'n), and night wuz
+approachin' with rapid strides, the old Banker jest unloaded the
+load of sand (good old creeter, he would have to load it all over
+agin), and took Ardelia into the wheelbarrow, and wheeled her
+over to the next house and unloaded her.
+
+The old Banker told Ardelia that when his neighbor got home he
+would take her back to Saratoga, which he did.  He had been to
+the village for necessaries, but he turned right round and
+carried her back to Mr. Pixleyses.  And I s'pose Ardelia paid
+him, mebby as high as 75 cents.  As for Bial, he tramped off
+into the house, and she didn't see him agin, nor didn't want to.
+Wall, I s'pose it wuz durin' that ride on the wheelbarrow, that
+Ardelia's ambition quelled to softer emotions.  I s'pose so.  She
+never owned it right up to me, but I s'pose so.
+
+Bial Flamburg hadn't lied a word to her.  In all her agony she
+realized that.  But she had built a high towerin' structure of
+ambition on what he said, and it had tottered.  And as is natural
+in times of danger, the heart turns instinctively to its true
+love, she thought of Abram Gee, she wanted him.  And as if in
+answer to her deep and lovin' thought, who should come out to the
+buggy to help her out at Mr. Pixleyses gate, but Abram Gee?  He
+had come unexpected, and on the eight o'clock train, and wuz
+there waitin' for her.
+
+If Bial Flamburg had been with her, he wouldn't have gone a nigh
+the buggy, but he see it was a old man, and he rushed out.
+Ardelia couldn't walk a step on her feet (owin' to bein shaken
+up, in bones and feelin's), and Abram jest took her in his strong
+lovin' arms and carried her into the house, and she sort a clung
+round his neck, and seemed tickled enough to see him,
+
+But she wuz dretful shook up and agitated, and it wuzn't till way
+along in the night some time, that she wuz able to write a poem
+called, "a lay on a wheelbarrow; or, the fallen one."
+
+Which I thought when I read it, wuz a good name for it, for truly
+she had fell, and truly she had lay on it.  Howsumever, Ardelia
+wrote that jest because it wuz second nater to write poetry on
+every identical thing she ever see or did.
+
+She wuz glad enough to get rid of Bial Flamburg, and glad enough
+to go back to her old love.  Abram wuz too manly and tender to
+say a word to Ardelia that night on the subject nearest to his
+heart.  No, he see she needed rest.  But the next day, when they
+wuz alone together, I s'pose he put the case all before her.  All
+his warm burnin' love for her, all his jealousy, and his
+wretchedness while she wuz a waverin' between Banks and Bread,
+how his heart had been checked by the thought that Bial would
+vault over him, and in the end hold him at a discount.
+
+Why, I s'pose he talked powerful and melted Ardelia's soft little
+heart till it wuz like the softest kind of dough in his hands.
+And then he went on tenderly to say, how he needed her, and how
+she could mould him to her will.  I s'pose he talked well, and
+eloquent, I s'pose so.  Anyhow she accepted him right there in
+full faith and a pink and white cambric dress.
+
+And they came over and told me about it in the afternoon P. M.
+And I felt well and happy in my mind, and wished 'em joy with a
+full heart and a willin' mind.
+
+They are both good creeters.  And she bein' so soft, and he so
+kinder hardy and stout-hearted, I believe they will get along
+firstrate.  And when she once let her mind and heart free to
+think on him, she worships him so openly and unreservedly (though
+soft), that I don't, believe there is a happier man in the hull
+country.
+
+Wall, I lay out to give'em a handsome present when they be
+married, which will be in the fall.  Mother Gee (who has got as
+well as can be expected) is goin' to live with Susan.  And I'm
+glad on't.  Mother Gee is a good old female no doubt, but it is
+resky work to take a new husband to live with, and when you take
+a mother-in-law too it adds to the resk.
+
+But she is goin' to live with Susan; it is her prefference.
+
+And Abram has done so well, that he has bought another five acres
+onto his place, and is a goin' to fix his house all over splendid
+before the weddin' day.  And Ardelia is to go right from the
+altar to her home -- it is her own wishes.
+
+She knows enough in her way, Ardelia duz.  And she has a wisdom
+of the heart which sometimes I think, goes fur ahead of the
+wisdom of the head.  And then agin, I think they go well
+together, wisdom of the head and the heart too.  (The times I
+think this is after readin' her poetry.)
+
+But any way she will make Abram a good soft little wife, lovin'
+and affectionate always.  And good land! he loves her to that
+extent that it wouldn't make no difference to him if she didn't
+know enough to come in when it rained.  He would fetch her in,
+drippin' and worship her, damp or dry.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+AN ACCIDENT WITH RESULTS.
+
+
+Wall, it wuz on the very day before we laid out to leave for
+home.  I wuz a settin' in my room a mendin' up a rip in my
+pardner's best coat, previous to packin' in his trunk, when all
+of a sudden Miss Flamm's hired girl came in a cryin', and sez I,
+"What is the matter?"
+
+And sez she, "Ah!  Miss Flamm has sent for you and Mr. Allen to
+come over there right away.  There has been a axident."
+
+"A axident!" sez I.
+
+"Yes," sez she.  "The little girl has got hurt, and they don't
+think she will live.  Poor little pretty thing," sez the hired
+girl, and busted out a cryin' agin.
+
+"How did she get hurt?" sez I, as I laid down the coat, and went
+to tyin' on my bunnet mekanically.
+
+"Wall, the nurse had her out with the baby and the little boys.
+And we s'pose she had been drinkin' too much.  We all knew she
+drinked, and she wuzn't in a condition to go out with the
+children this mornin', and Miss Flamm would have noticed it and
+kep' 'em in, but the dog wuz sick all night, and Miss Flamm wuz
+up with it most all night, and she felt wore out this mornin'
+with her anxtety for the dog, and her want of sleep, and so they
+went out, and it wuzn' more'n half an hour before it took place.
+She left the baby carriage and the little boys and girl in a
+careless place, not knowin' what she wuz about, and they got run
+over.  The baby and the little boys wuzn't hurt much, but they
+think the little girl will die.  Miss Flamm went right into a
+caniption fit," sez she, "when she wuz brung in."
+
+"It is a pity she hadn't went into one before," sez I very dryly,
+dry as a chip almost.  My axents wuz fairly dusty they wuz so
+dry.  But my feelin's for Miss Flamm moistened up and melted down
+when I see her, when we went into the room.  It didn't take us
+long for they are still to the tarven, and we met Josiah Allen at
+the door, so he went with us.
+
+Yes, Miss Flamm felt bad enough, bad enough.  She has got a
+mother's heart after all, down under all the strings and girtins,
+and laces, and dogs, etc., etc., that have hid it, and surrounded
+it.  Her face wuz jest as white and deathly as the little girl's,
+and that wuz jest the picture of stillness and death.  And I
+remembered then that I had heard that the little girl wuz her
+favorite amongst her children, whenever she had any time to
+notice 'em.  She wuz a only daughter and a beauty, besides bein'
+smart.
+
+The doctor had been there and done what he could, and go gone
+away.  He said there wuz nothin' more to do till she came out of
+that stuper, if she ever did.
+
+But it looked like death, and there Miss Flamm sot alone with her
+child, and her conscience.  She wuzn't a cryin' but there wuz a
+look in her eyes, in her set white face that went beyond tears,
+fur beyond 'em.  She gripped holt of my hand with her icy cold
+ones, and sez she, "Pray for me!"  She wuz brung up a Methodist,
+and knew we wuz the same.  My feelin's overcame me as I looked in
+her face and the child's, both lookin' like dyin' faces, and I
+sez with the tears a jest runnin' down my cleeks and a layin' my
+hand tender on her shoulder, "Is there anything I can do for you,
+you poor little creeter?"
+
+"Pray for me," sez she agin, with her white lips not movin' in a
+smile, nor a groan.
+
+Now my companion, Josiah Allen, is a class-leader, and though I
+say it that mebby shouldn't -- That man is able in prayer.  He
+prays as if he meant what he said.  He don't try to show off in
+oritory as so many do, or give the Lord information.  He never
+sez, "Oh Lord, thou knowest by the mornin' papers, so and so."
+No, he prays in simple words for what he wants.  And he always
+seems to feel that somebody is nigh to him, a hearin' him, and if
+it is best and right, his requests will be granted.
+
+So I motioned for that man to kneel down by the bed and pray,
+which he did.  He wuz to the fore side of the bed, and Miss Flamm
+and I on the other side.  Wall, Josiah commenced his prayer, in a
+low earnest askin' voice, then all of a sudden he begun to
+hesitate, waver, and act dretful agitated.  And his actions and
+agitations seemed to last for some time.  I thought it wuz his
+feelin's overcomin' of him, and of course, my hand bein' over my
+eyes in a respectful, decent way, I didin't see nothin'.
+
+But at last, after what wuz seemingly a great effort, he began to
+go on as usual agin.  About that time I heard sunthin' hit the
+wall hard on the other side of the room, and I heard a yelp.  But
+then everything wuz still and Josiah Allen made a good prayer.
+And before it wuz through Miss Flamm laid her head down onto my
+shoulder, and busted into tears.
+
+And what wuz rooted up and washed away by them tears I don't
+know, and I don't s'pose anybody duz.  Whether vanity, and a
+mistaken ambition, and the poor empty successes of a fashionable
+life wuz uprooted and floated away on the awakened, sweepin' tide
+of a mother's love and remorse; whether the dog floated down that
+stream, and low necked dresses, and high hazardus slippers, and
+strings for waists and corsets, and fashion, and folly, and
+rivalry, and waltzin', and glitter, and buttons, and show; whether
+they all went down that stream, swept along like bubbles on a
+heavin' tumultuous tide, I don't know, nor I don't s'pose anybody
+duz.
+
+But any way, from that day on Miss Flamm has been a different
+woman.  I stayed with her all that night and the next day, she a
+not leavin' the child's bed for a minute, and we a not gettin' of
+her to, much as we tried to; eatin' whatever we could make her
+eat right there by the bedside.  And on the 2d day the doctor see
+a change in the child and she began to roust a little out of that
+stuper, and in a week's time, she wuz a beginnin' to get well.
+
+We stayed on till she wuz out of danger and then we went home.
+But I see that she wuz to be trusted with her children after
+that.  She dismissed that nurse, got a good motherly one, who she
+said would help her take care of the children for the future;
+only help her, for she should have the oversight of 'em herself,
+always.
+
+The hired girl told me (Miss Flamm never mentioned it to me), and
+she wuz glad enough of it, that the dog wuz dead.  It died the
+day the little girl wuz hurt.  The hired girl said the doctor had
+told Miss Flamm, that it couldn't live long.  But it wuzn't till
+we wuz on our way home that I found out one of the last eppisodes
+in that dog's life.  You see, sick as that dog wuz, it wuz bound
+to bark at my pardner as long as it had a breath left in its body.
+And Josiah told me in confidence (and it must be kep', it is right
+that it should be); he said jest after he had knelt down and began
+to pray he felt that dog climb up onto his heels, and pull at his
+coat tails, and growl a low mad growl, and naw at 'em.
+
+He tried to nestle round and get it off quietly but no, there it
+stood right onto Josiah Allen's heels, and hung on, and tugged at
+them coat-tails, and growled at 'em that low deep growl, and shook
+'em, as if determined to worry 'em off.  And there my companion
+wuz.  He couldn't show his feelin's in his face; he had got to
+keep his face all right towards Miss Flamm.  And his feelin's was
+rousted up about her, and he wuz a wantin', and knew he wuz
+expected, to have his words and manner soothin' and comfortin',
+and that dog a standin' on his heels and tearin' off his coat-tails.
+
+What to do he didn't know.  He couldn't stop his prayer on such a
+time as this and kill a dog, though he owned up to me that he
+felt like it, and he couldn't keep still and feel his coat-tails
+tore off of him, and be growled at, and shook, and pawed at all
+day.  So he said after the dog had gin a most powerful tug, almost
+a partin' the skirts asunder from his coat, he drew up one foot
+carefully (still a keepin' his face straight and the prayer agoin')
+and brung it back sudden and voyalent, and he heard the dog strike
+aginst the opposite side of the room with one short, sharp yelp,
+and then silence rained down and he finished the prayer.
+
+But he said, and owned it up to me, that it didn't seem to him so
+much like a religious exercise, as he could wish.  It didn't seem
+to help his spiritual growth much, if any.
+
+And I sez, "I should think as much," and I sez, "You wuz in a
+hard place, Josiah Allen."
+
+And he sez, "It wuz the dumbest hard place any one wuz ever in on
+earth."
+
+And I sez, "I don't know but it wuz."  That man wuz to be pitied,
+and I told him so, and he acted real cheerful and contented at
+hearin' my mind.  He owned up that he had dreaded tellin' me
+about it, for fear I would upbraid him.  But, good land!  I would
+have been a hard hearted creeter if I could upbraid a man for
+goin' through such a time as that.  He said he thought mebby I
+would think it wuz irreverent or sunthin', the dog's actions, at
+such a time.
+
+"Wall," sez I, "you didn't choose the actions, did you?  It
+wuzn't nothin' you wanted."
+
+"No," sez he feelin'ly.  "Heaven knows I didn't.  And I done the
+best I could," sez he sort a pitiful.
+
+Sez I, "I believe you, Josiah Allen," and sez I warmly, "I don't
+believe that Alexander, or Cezar, or Grover Cleveland, could have
+done any better."
+
+He brightened all up at this, he felt dretful well to think I
+felt with him, and my feelin's wuz all rousted up to think of the
+sufferin's he had went through, so we felt real well towards each
+other.  Such is some of the comforts and consolations of pardners.
+Howsumever, the dog died, and I wuz kinder sorry for the dog.  I
+think enough of dogs (as dogs) and always did.  Always use 'em
+dretful well, only it mads me to have 'em put ahead of children,
+and sot up in front of 'em.  I always did and always shall like a
+dog as a dog.
+
+Wall, they say that when that dog died, Miss Flamm hardly
+inquired about it, she wuz so took up in gettin' acquainted with
+her own children.  And I s'pose they improved on acquaintance,
+for they say she is jest devoted to 'em.  And she got acquainted
+with G. Washington too, so they say.  He wuz a stiddy, quiet man,
+and she had got to lookin' on him as her banker and business man.
+But they say she liked him real well, come to get acquainted with
+him.  He always jest worshipped her, so they are real happy.
+There wuz always sunthin' kinder good about Miss Flamm.
+
+Thos. J. is a carryin' on another lawsuit for her (more money
+that descended onto her from her father, or that ort to descend).
+And he is carryin' it stiddy and safe.  It will bring Thomas
+Jefferson over 900 dollars in money besides fame, a hull lot of
+fame.
+
+Wall, we sot sail for home in good spirits, and the noon train.
+And we reached Jonesville with no particular eppisodin' till we
+got to the Jonesville Depot.
+
+I rather think Ardelia Tutt wrote a poem on the cars goin' home,
+though I can't say for certain.
+
+She and Abram sot a few seats in front of us, and I thought I see
+a certain look to the backside of her head that meant poetry.  It
+wuz a kind of a sot look, and riz up like.  But I can't say for
+certain for she didn't have no chance to tell me about it.  Abram
+looked down at her all the time as if he jest worshipped her.
+And she is a good little creeter, and will make him a happy wife;
+I don't make no doubt.  As I said, the old lady is goin' to live
+with Susan.  They went right on in the train, for Ardelia's home
+lays beyond Jonesville, and Abram wuz goin' home with her by
+Deacon Tutt's request.  They are willin'.
+
+Wall, we disembarked from the cars, and we found the old mair and
+the "Democrat" a waitin' for us.  Thomas J. wuz a comin' for us,
+but had spraint his wrist and couldn't drive.  Wall, Josia lifted
+our saddul bags in, and my umbrell, and the band box.  But when
+he went to lift my trunk he faltered.  It wuz heavy.  I had got
+relicts from Mount McGregor, from the Battlefield, from the
+various springs, minerals, stuns, and things, and Josiah couldn't
+lift it.
+
+What added to the hardness of the job, the handles had broken
+offen it, and he had to grip hold on it, by the might of his
+finger nails.  It wuz a hard job, and Josiah's face got red and I
+felt, as well as see, that his temper wuz a risin'.  And I sez,
+instinctively, "Josiah, be calm!"  For I knew not what unguarded
+word he might drop as he vainly tried to grip hold on't, and it
+eluded his efferts and came down on the ground every time, a
+carryin' with it, I s'pose, portions of his fingernails, broke
+off in the fray.
+
+Wall, he wuz a strugglin' with it and with his feelin's, for I
+kep' on a sayin', "Josiah, do be calm!  Do be careful about usin'
+a profane word so nigh home and at this time of day, and you jest
+home from a tower."
+
+And he kep' his feelin's nobly under control, and never said a
+word, only to wonder "what under the High Heavens a woman wanted
+to lug round a ton of stuns in her trunk for."  And anon sayin'
+that he would be dumbed if he didn't leave it right there on the
+platform.
+
+Savin' these few slight remarks that man nobly restrained
+himself, and lugged and lifted till the blood almost gushed
+through his bald head.  And right in the midst of the fray, a
+porter came up and went to liftin' the trunk in the usual
+highheaded, haughty way Railroad officials have.  But anon a
+change came over his linement.  And as it fell back from his
+fingers to the platform for the 3d time, he broke out in a
+torrent of swearin' words dretful to hear.
+
+I felt as if I should sink through the "Democrat".  But Josiah
+listened to the awful words with a warm glow of pleasure and
+satisfaction a beamin' from his face.  I never saw him look more
+complacent.  And as the man moistened his hands and with another
+frightful burst of profanity histed it into the end of the buggy.
+
+Wall, I gin the man a few warnin' words aginst profanity, and
+Josiah gin him a quarter for liftin' in the trunk, he said, and
+we drove off in the meller glow of the summer sunset.
+
+But it wuz duskish before we got to the turn of the road, and
+considerable dark before we got to the Corners.  But we went on
+tbgough the shadows, a feelin' we could bear 'em, for we wuz
+together, and we wuz a goin' home.
+
+And pretty soon we got there!  The door wuz open, the warm light
+wuz a streamin' out from doors and windows, and there stood the
+children!
+
+There they all wuz, all we loved best, a waitin' to welcome us.
+Love, which is the light of Heaven, wuz a shinin' on their faces,
+and we had got home.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Samantha at Saratoga, by Marietta Holley
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Samantha at Saratoga, by Marietta Holley
+by Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
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+Title: Samantha at Saratoga
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+Author: Marietta Holley
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+Official Release Date: September 2002  [Etext #3425]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[Date first posted:  04/26/01]
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+Edition: 10
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Samantha at Saratoga, by Marietta Holley
+********This file should be named saman10.txt or saman10.zip*******
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+
+SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA  BY JOSIAH ALLEN'S WIFE
+                          (Marietta Holly)
+
+
+
+Dedication:
+
+                       TO THE GREAT ARMY OF
+                          SUMMER TRAMPS
+                      THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
+               BY THEIR COMRADE AND FELLOW WANDERER
+                            THE AUTHOR
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER I. SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA
+
+CHAPTER II. ARDELIA TUTT AND HER MOTHER
+
+CHAPTER III. THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS
+
+CHAPTER IV. ARDELIA AND ABRAM GEE
+
+CHAPTER V. WE ARRIVE AT SARATOGA
+
+CHAPTER VI. SARATOGA BY DAYLIGHT
+
+CHAPTER VII. SEEING THE DIFFERENT SPRINGS
+
+CHAPTER VIII. JOSIAH AND SAMANTHA TAKE A LONG WALK
+
+CHAPTER IX. JOSIAH'S FLIRTATIONS
+
+CHAPTER X. MISS G. WASHINGTON FLAMM
+
+CHAPTER XI. VISIT TO THE INDIAN ENCAMPMENT
+
+CHAPTER XII. A DRIVE TO SARATOGA LAKE
+
+CHAPTER XIII. VISITS TO NOTABLE PLACES
+
+CHAPTER XIV. LAKE GEORGE AND MOUNT McGREGOR
+
+CHAPTER XV. ADVENTURES AT VARIOUS SPRINGS
+
+CHAPTER XVI. AT A LAWN PARTY
+
+CHAPTER XVII. A TRIP TO SCHUYLERVILLE
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. THE SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETING
+
+CHAPTER XIX. ST. CHRISTINA'S HOME
+
+CHAPTER XX. AN ACCIDENT WITH RESULTS
+
+
+
+
+ A SORT OF PREFACE.
+
+WHICH IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO READ.
+
+When Josiah read my dedication he said "it wuz a shame to dedicate
+a book that it had took most a hull bottle of ink to write, to a
+lot of creeters that he wouldn't have in the back door yard."
+
+But I explained it to him, that I didn't mean tramps with broken
+hats, variegated pantaloons, ventilated shirt-sleeves, and
+barefooted.  But I meant tramps with diamond ear-rings, and
+cuff-buttons, and Saratoga trunks, and big accounts at their
+bankers.
+
+And he said, "Oh, shaw!"
+
+But I went on nobly, onmindful of that shaw, as female pardners
+have to be, if they accomplish all the talkin' they want to.
+
+And sez I, "It duz seem sort o' pitiful, don't it, to think how
+sort o' homeless the Americans are a gettin'?  How the posys that
+blow under the winders of Home are left to waste their sweet
+breaths amongst the weeds, while them that used to love 'em are a
+climbin' mountain tops after strange nosegays."
+
+The smoke that curled up from the chimbleys, a wreathin' its way
+up to the heavens -- all dead and gone.  The bright light that
+shone out of the winder through the dark a tellin' everybody that
+there wuz a Home, and some one a waitin' for somebody -- all dark
+and lonesome.
+
+Yes, the waiter and the waited for are all a rushin' round
+somewhere, on the cars, mebby, or a yot, a chasin' Pleasure, that
+like as not settled right down on the eves of the old house they
+left, and stayed there.
+
+I wonder if they will find her there when they go back again.
+Mebby they will, and then agin, mebby they won't.  For Happiness
+haint one to set round and lame herself a waitin' for folks to
+make up their minds.
+
+Sometimes she looks folks full in the face, sort o' solemn like
+and heart-searchin', and gives 'em a fair chance what they will
+chuse.  And then if they chuse wrong, shee'll turn her back to
+'em, for always.  I've hearn of jest such cases.
+
+But it duz seem sort o' solemn to think -- how the sweet restful
+felin's that clings like ivy round the old familier door steps --
+where old 4 fathers feet stopped, and stayed there, and baby feet
+touched and then went away -- I declare for't, it almost brings
+tears, to think how that sweet clingin' vine of affection, and
+domestic repose, and content -- how soon that vine gets tore up
+nowadays.
+
+It is a sort of a runnin' vine anyway, and folks use it as sech,
+they run with it.  Jest as it puts its tendrils out to cling round
+some fence post, or lilock bush, they pull it up, and start off
+with it.  And then its roots get dry, and it is some time before
+it will begin to put out little shoots and clingin' leaves agin
+round some petickular mountain top, or bureau or human bein'.  And
+then it is yanked up agin, poor little runnin' vine, and run with
+-- and so on -- and so on -- and so on.
+
+Why sometimes it makes me fairly heart-sick to think on't.  And I
+fairly envy our old 4 fathers, who used to set down for several
+hundred years in one spot.  They used to get real rested, it must
+be they did.
+
+Jacob now, settin' right by that well of his'n for pretty nigh two
+hundred years.  How much store he must have set by it during the
+last hundred years of 'em!  How attached he must have been to it!
+
+Good land!  Where is there a well that one of our rich old
+American patriarks will set down by for two years, leavin' off the
+orts.  There haint none, there haint no such a well.  Our
+patriarks haint fond of well water, anyway.
+
+And old Miss Abraham now, and Miss Isaac -- what stay to home
+wimmen they wuz, and equinomical!
+
+What a good contented creeter Sarah Abraham wuz.  How settled
+down, and stiddy, stayin' right to home for hundreds of years.
+Not gettin' rampent for a wider spear, not a coaxin' old Mr.
+Abraham nights to take her to summer resorts, and winter hants of
+fashion.
+
+No, old Mr. Abraham went to bed, and went to sleep for all of her.
+
+And when they did once in a hundred years, or so, make up their
+minds to move on a mile or so, how easy they traveled.  Mr.
+Abraham didn't have to lug off ten or twelve wagon loads of
+furniture to the Safe Deposit Company, and spend weeks and weeks a
+settlin' his bisness, in Western lands, and Northern mines,
+Southern railroads, and Eastern wildcat stocks, to get ready to
+go.  And Miss Abraham didn't have to have a dozen dress-makers in
+the house for a month or two, and messenger boys, and dry goods
+clerks, and have to stand and be fitted for basks and polenays,
+and back drapery, and front drapery, and tea gowns, and dinner
+gowns, and drivin' gowns, and mornin' gowns, and evenin' gowns,
+and etectery, etcetery, etcetery.
+
+No, all the preperations she had to make wuz to wrop her mantilly
+a little closter round her, and all Mr. Abraham had to do wuz to
+gird up his lions.  That is what it sez.  And I don't believe it
+would take much time to gird up a few lions, it don't seem to me
+as if it would.
+
+And when these few simple preperations had been made, they jest
+histed up their tent and laid it acrost a camel, and moved on a
+mild or two, walkin' afoot.
+
+Why jest imagine if Miss Abraham had to travel with eight or ten
+big Saratoga trunks, how could they have been got up onto that
+camel?  It couldn't lave been done.  The camel would have died,
+and old Mr. Abraham would also have expired a tryin' to lift 'em
+up.  No, it was all for the best.
+
+And jest think on't, for all of these simple, stay to home ways,
+they called themselves Pilgrims and Sojourners.  Good land!  What
+would they have thought nowadays to see folks make nothin' of
+settin' off for China, or Japan or Jerusalem before breakfast.
+
+And what did they know of the hardships of civilization?  Now to
+sposen the case, sposen Miss Abraham had to live in New York
+winters, and go to two or three big receptions every day, and to
+dinner parties, and theatre parties, and operas and such like,
+evenin's, and receive and return about three thousand calls, and
+be on more 'n a dozen charitable boards (hard boards they be too,
+some on 'em) and lots of other projects and enterprizes -- be on
+the go the hull winter, with a dress so tight she couldn't breathe
+instead of her good loose robes, and instead of her good
+comfortable sandals have her feet upon high-heeled shoes pinchin'
+her corns almost unto distraction.  And then to Washington to go
+all through it agin, and more too, and Florida, and Cuba; and then
+to the sea-shore and have it all over agin with sea bathin' added.
+
+And then to the mountains, and all over agin with climbin' round
+added.  Then to Europe, with seas sickness, picture galleries,
+etc., added.  And so on home agin in the fall to begin it all over
+agin.
+
+Why Miss Abraham would be so tuckered out before she went half
+through with one season, that she would be a dead 4 mother.
+
+And Mr. Abraham -- why one half hour down at the stock exchange
+would have been too much for that good old creeter.  The yells and
+cries, and distracted movements of the crowd of Luker Gatherers
+there, would have skairt him to death.  He never would have lived
+to follow Miss Abraham round from pillow to post through summer
+and winter seasons -- he wouldn't have lived to waltz, or
+toboggen, or suffer other civilized agonies.  No, he would have
+been a dead patriark.  And better off so, I almost think.
+
+Not but what I realize that civilization has its advantages.  Not
+but what I know that if Mr. Abraham wanted Miss Abraham to part
+his hair straight, or clean off his phylackrity when she happened
+to be out a pickin' up manny, he couldn't stand on one side of his
+tent and telephone to bring her back, but had to yell at her.
+
+And I realize fully that if one of his herd got strayed off into
+another county, they hadn't no telegraf to head it off, but the
+old man had to poke off through rain or sun, and hunt it up
+himself.  And he couldn't set down cross-legged in front of his
+tent in the mornin', and read what happened on the other side of
+the world, the evenin' before.
+
+And I know that if he wanted to set down some news, they had to
+kill a sheep, and spend several years a dressin' off the hide into
+parchment -- and kill a goose, or chase it up till they wuz beat
+out, for a goose-quill.
+
+And then after about 20 years or so, they could put it down that
+Miss Isaac had got a boy -- the boy, probably bein' a married man
+himself and a father when the news of his birth wuz set down.
+
+I realize this, and also the great fundimental fact that underlies
+all philosophies, that you can't set down and stand up at the same
+time -- and that no man, however pure and lofty his motives may
+be, can't lean up against a barn door, and walk off simultanious.
+And if he don't walk off, then the great question comes in, How
+will he get there?  And he feels lots of times that he must stand
+up so's to bring his head up above the mullien and burdock stalks,
+amongst which he is a settin', and get a wider view-a broader
+horizeon.  And he feels lots of time, that he must get there.
+
+This is a sort of a curius world, and it makes me feel curius a
+good deal of the time as we go through it.  But we have to make
+allowances for it, for the old world is on a tramp, too.  It can't
+seem to stop a minute to oil up its old axeltrys -- it moves on,
+and takes us with it.  It seems to be in a hurry.
+
+Everything seems to be in a hurry here below.  And some say Heaven
+is a place of continual sailin' round and goin' up and up all the
+time.  But while risin' up and soarin' is a sweet thought to me,
+still sometimes I love to think that Heaven is a place where I can
+set down, and set for some time.
+
+I told Josiah so (waked him up, for he wuz asleep), and he said he
+sot more store on the golden streets, and the wavin' palms, and
+the procession of angels.  (And then he went to sleep agin.)
+
+But I don't feel so.  I'd love, as I say, to jest set down for
+quite a spell, and set there, to be kinder settled down and to
+home with them whose presence makes a home anywhere.  I wouldn't
+give a cent to sail round unless I wuz made to know it wuz my duty
+to sail.  Josiah wants to.
+
+But, as I say, everybody is in a hurry.  Husbands can't hardly
+find time to keep up a acquaintance with their wives.  Fathers
+don't have no time to get up a intimate acquaintance with their
+children.  Mothers are in such a hurry -- babys are in such a
+hurry -- that they can't scarcely find time to be born.  And I
+declare for't, it seems sometimes as if folks don't want to take
+time to die.
+
+The old folks at home wait with faithful, tired old eyes for the
+letter that don't come, for the busy son or daughter hasn't time
+to write it -- no, they are too busy a tearin' up the running vine
+of affection and home love, and a runnin' with it.
+
+Yes, the hull nation is in a hurry to get somewhere else, to go
+on, it can't wait.  It is a trampin' on over the Western slopes, a
+trampin' over red men, and black men, and some white men a
+hurryin' on to the West -- hurryin' on to the sea.  And what then?
+
+Is there a tide of restfulness a layin' before it?  Some cool
+waters of repose where it will bathe its tired forward, and its
+stun-bruised feet, and set there for some time?
+
+I don't s'pose so.  I don't s'pose it is in its nater to.  I
+s'pose it will look off longingly onto the far off somewhere that
+lays over the waters -- beyend the sunset.
+
+
+                                           JOSIAH ALLEN'S WIFE.
+NEW YORK, June, 1887.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA.
+
+
+The idee on't come to me one day about sundown, or a little before
+sundown.  I wuz a settin' in calm peace, and a big rockin' chair
+covered with a handsome copperplate, a readin' what the Sammist
+sez about "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity."  The words struck deep,
+and as I said, it was jest that very minute that the idee struck
+me about goin' to Saratoga.  Why I should have had the idee at
+jest that minute, I can't tell, nor Josiah can't.  We have talked
+about it sense.
+
+But good land! such creeters as thoughts be never wuz, nor never
+will be.  They will creep in, and round, and over anything, and
+get inside of your mind (entirely unbeknown to you) at any time.
+Curious, haint it? -- How you may try to hedge 'em out, and shet
+the doors and everything.  But they will creep up into your mind,
+climb up and draw up their ladders, and there they will be, and
+stalk round independent as if they owned your hull head; curious!
+
+Well, there the idee wuz -- I never knew nothin' about it, nor how
+it got there.  But there it wuz, lookin' me right in the face of
+my soul, kinder pert and saucy, sayin', "You'd better go to
+Saratoga next summer; you and Josiah."
+
+But I argued with it.  Sez I, "What should we go to Saratoga for?
+None of the relations live there on my side, or on hison; why
+should we go?"
+
+But still that idee kep' a hantin me; "You'd better go to Saratoga
+next summer, you and Josiah."  And it whispered, "Mebby it will
+help Josiah's corns."  (He is dretful troubled with corns.)  And
+so the idee kep' a naggin' me, it nagged me for three days and
+three nights before I mentioned it to my Josiah.  And when I did,
+he scorfed at the idee.  He said, "The idee of water curing them
+dumb corns -- "
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, stranger things have been done;" sez I,
+"that water is very strong.  It does wonders."
+
+And he scorfed agin and sez, "Don't you believe faith could cure
+em?"
+
+Sez I, "If it wuz strong enough it could."
+
+But the thought kep a naggin' me stiddy, and then -- here is the
+curious part of it -- the thought nagged me, and I nagged Josiah,
+or not exactly nagged; not a clear nag; I despise them, and always
+did.  But I kinder kep' it before his mind from day to day, and
+from hour to hour.  And the idee would keep a tellin' me things
+and I would keep a tellin' 'em to my companion.  The idee would
+keep a sayin' to me, "It is one of the most beautiful places in
+our native land.  The waters will help you, the inspirin' music,
+and elegance and gay enjoyment you will find there, will sort a
+uplift you.  You had better go there on a tower;" and agin it sez,
+"Mebby it will help Josiah's corns."
+
+And old Dr. Gale a happenin' in at about that time, I asked him
+about it (he doctored me when I wuz a baby, and I have helped 'em
+for years.  Good old creetur, he don't get along as well as he ort
+to.  Loontown is a healthy place.)  I told him about my strong
+desire to go to Saratoga, and I asked him plain if he thought the
+water would help my pardner's corns.  And he looked dreadful wise
+and he riz up and walked across the floor 2 and fro several times,
+probably 3 times to, and the same number of times fro, with his
+arms crossed back under the skirt of his coat and his eyebrows
+knit in deep thought, before he answered me.  Finely he said, that
+modern science had not fully demonstrated yet the direct bearing
+of water on corn.  In some cases it might and probably did
+stimulate 'em to greater luxuriance, and then again a great flow
+of water might retard their growth.
+
+Sez I, anxiously, "Then you'd advise me to go there with him?"
+
+"Yes," sez he, "on the hull, I advise you to go."
+
+Them words I reported to Josiah, and sez I in anxious axents, "Dr.
+Gale advises us to go."
+
+And Josiah sez, "I guess I shan't mind what that old fool sez."
+
+Them wuz my pardner's words, much as I hate to tell on 'em.  But
+from day to day I kep' it stiddy before him, how dang'r'us it wuz
+to go ag'inst a doctor's advice.  And from day to day he would
+scorf at the plan.  And I, ev'ry now and then, and mebby oftener,
+would get him a extra good meal, and attack him on the subject
+immegatly afterwards.  But all in vain.  And I see that when he
+had that immovible sotness onto him, one extra meal wouldn't
+soften or molify him.  No, I see plain I must make a more voyalent
+effort.  And I made it.  For three stiddy days I put before that
+man the best vittles that these hands could make, or this brain
+could plan.
+
+And at the end of the 3d day I gently tackled him agin on the
+subject, and his state wuz such, bland, serene, happified, that he
+consented without a parlay.  And so it wuz settled that the next
+summer we wuz to go to Saratoga.  And he began to count on it and
+make preparation in a way that I hated to see.
+
+Yes, from the very minute that our two minds wuz made up to go to
+Saratoga Josiah Allen wuz set on havin' sunthin new and uneek in
+the way of dress and whiskers.  I looked coldly on the idee of
+puttin' a gay stripe down the legs of the new pantaloons I made
+for him, and broke it up, also a figured vest.  I went through
+them two crisises and came out triumphent.
+
+Then he went and bought a new bright pink necktie with broad long
+ends which he intended to have float out, down the front of his
+vest.  And I immegatly took it for the light-colored blocks in my
+silk log-cabin bedquilt.  Yes, I settled the matter of that pink
+neck-gear with a high hand and a pair of shears.  And Josiah sez
+now that he bought it for that purpose, for the bedquilt, because
+he loves to see a dressy quilt, -- sez he always enjoys seein' a
+cabin look sort o' gay.  But good land! he didn't.  He intended
+and calculated to wear that neck-tie into Saratoga, -- a sight for
+men and angels, if I hadn't broke it up.
+
+But in the matter of whiskers, there I was powerless.  He trimmed
+'em (unbeknow to me) all off the side of his face, them good
+honerable side whiskers of hisen, that had stood by him for years
+in solemnity and decency, and begun to cultivate a little patch on
+the end of his chin.  I argued with him, and talked well on the
+subject, eloquent, but it wuz of no use, I might as well have
+argued with the wind in March.
+
+He said, he wuz bound on goin' into Saratoga with a fashionable
+whisker, come what would.
+
+And then I sithed, and he sez, -- " You have broke up my pantaloons,
+my vest, and my neck-tie, you have ground me down onto plain
+broadcloth, but in the matter of whiskers I am firm! Yes!" sez he
+"on these whiskers I take my stand!"
+
+And agin I sithed heavy, and I sez in a dretful impressive way, as
+I looked on 'em, "Josiah Allen, remember you are a father and a
+grandfather!"
+
+And he sez firmly, "If I wuz a great-grandfather I would trim my
+whiskers in jest this way, that is if I wuz a goin' to set up to
+be fashionable and a goin' to Saratoga for my health."
+
+And I groaned kinder low to myself, and kep' hopin' that mebby
+they wouldn't grow very fast, or that some axident would happen to
+'em, that they would get afire or sunthin'.  But they didn't.  And
+they grew from day to day luxurient in length, but thin.  And his
+watchful care kep' 'em from axident, and I wuz too high princepled
+to set fire to 'em when he wuz asleep, though sometimes, on a
+moonlight night, I was tempted to, sorely tempted.
+
+But I didn't, and they grew from day to day, till they wuz the
+curiusest lookin' patch o' whiskers that I ever see.  And when we
+sot out for Saratoga, they wuz jest about as long as a shavin'
+brush, and looked some like one.  There wuz no look of a
+class-leader, and a perfesser about 'em, and I told him so.  But
+he worshiped 'em, and gloried in the idee of goin' afar to show
+'em off.
+
+But the neighbors received the news that we wuz goin' to a
+waterin' place coldly, or with ill-concealed envy.
+
+Uncle Jonas Bently told us he shouldn't think we would want to go
+round to waterin' troughs at our age.
+
+And I told him it wuzn't a waterin' trough, and if it wuz, I
+thought our age wuz jest as good a one as any, to go to it.
+
+He had the impression that Saratoga wuz a immense waterin' trough
+where the country all drove themselves summers to be watered.  He
+is deef as a Hemlock post, and I yelled up at him jest as loud as
+I dast for fear of breakin' open my own chest, that the water got
+into us, instid of our gettin' into the water, but I didn't make
+him understand, for I hearn afterwards of his sayin' that, as nigh
+as he could make out we all got into the waterin' trough and wuz
+watered.
+
+The school teacher, a young man, with long, small lims, and some
+pimpley on the face, but well meanin', he sez to me: "Saratoga is
+a beautiful spah."
+
+And I sez warmly, "It aint no such thing, it is a village, for I
+have seen a peddler who went right through it, and watered his
+horses there, and he sez it is a waterin' place, and a village."
+
+"Yes," sez he, "it is a beautiful village, a modest retiren city,
+and at the same time it is the most noted spah on this continent."
+
+I wouldn't contend with him for it wuz on the stoop of the meetin'
+house, and I believe in bein' reverent.  But I knew it wuzn't no
+"spah," -- that had a dreadful flat sound to me.  And any way I
+knew I should face its realities soon and know all about it.  Lots
+of wimen said that for anybody who lived right on the side of a
+canal, and had two good, cisterns on the place, and a well, they
+didn't see why I should feel in a sufferin' condition for any more
+water; and if I did, why didn't I ketch rain water?
+
+Such wuz some of the deep arguments they brung up aginst my
+embarkin' on this enterprise, they talked about it sights and
+sights; -- why, it lasted the neighbors for a stiddy conversation,
+till along about the middle of the winter.  Then the Minister's
+wife bought a new alpacky dress -- unbeknown to the church till it
+wuz made up -- and that kind o' drawed their minds off o' me for a
+spell.
+
+Aunt Polly Pixley wuz the only one who received the intelligence
+gladly.  And she thought she would go too.  She had been kinder
+run down and most bed rid for years.  And she had a idee the water
+might help her.  And I encouraged Aunt Polly in the idee, for she
+wuz well off.  Yes, Mr. and Miss Pixley wuz very well off though
+they lived in a little mite of a dark, low, lonesome house, with
+some tall Pollard willows in front of the door in a row, and jest
+acrost the road from a grave-yard.
+
+Her husband had been close and wuzn't willin' to have any other
+luxury or means of recreation in the house only a bass viol, that
+had been his father's -- he used to play on that for hours and
+hours.  I thought that wuz one reason why Polly wuz so nervous.  I
+said to Josiah that it would have killed me outright to have that
+low grumblin' a goin' on from day to day, and to look at them tall
+lonesome willows and grave stuns.
+
+But, howsumever, Polly's husband had died durin' the summer, and
+Polly parted with the bass viol the day after the funeral.  She
+got out some now, and wuz quite wrought up with the idee of goin'
+to Saratoga.
+
+But Sister Minkley; sister in the church and sister-in-law by
+reason of Wbitefield, sez to me, that she should think I would
+think twice before I danced and waltzed round waltzes.
+
+And I sez, "I haint thought of doin' it, I haint thought of
+dancin' round or square or any other shape."
+
+Sez she, "You have got to, if you go to Saratoga."
+
+Sez I, "Not while life remains in this frame."
+
+And old Miss Bobbet came up that minute -- it wuz in the store
+that we were a talkin' -- and sez she, "It seems to me, Josiah
+Allen's wife, that you are too old to wear low-necked dresses and
+short sleeves."
+
+"And I should think you'd take cold a goin' bareheaded," sez Miss
+Luman Spink who wuz with her.
+
+Sez I, lookin' at 'em coldly, "Are you lunys or has softness begun
+on your brains?"
+
+"Why," sez they, "you are talking about goin' to Saratoga, hain't
+you?"
+
+"Yes," sez I.
+
+"Well then you have got to wear 'em," says Miss Bobbet.  "They
+don't let anybody inside of the incorporation without they have
+got on a low-necked dress and short sleeves."
+
+"And bare-headed," sez Miss Spink; "if they have' got a thing on
+their heads they won't let 'em in."
+
+Sez I, "I don't believe it"
+
+Sez Miss Bobbet, "It is so, for I hearn it, and hearn it straight.
+James Robbets's wife's sister had a second cousin who lived
+neighbor to a woman whose niece had been there, been right there
+on the spot.  And Celestine Bobbet, Uncle Ephraim's Celestine,
+hearn it from James'es wife when she wuz up there last spring, it
+come straight.  They all have to go in low necks."
+
+"And not a mite of anything on their heads," says Miss Spink.
+
+Sez I in sarcastical axents, "Do men have to go in low necks too?"
+
+"No," says Miss Bobbet.  "But they have to have the tails of their
+coats kinder pinted.  Why," sez she, "I hearn of a man that had
+got clear to the incorporation and they wouldn't let him in
+because his coat kinder rounded off round the bottom, so he went
+out by the side of the road and pinned up his coat tails, into a
+sort of a pinted shape, and good land the incorporation let him
+right in, and never said a word."
+
+I contended that these things wuzn't so, but I found it wuz the
+prevailin' opinion.  For when I went to see the dressmaker about
+makin' me a dress for the occasion, I see she felt just like the
+rest about it.  My dress wuz a good black alpacky.  I thought I
+would have it begun along in the edge of the winter, when she
+didn't have so much to do, and also to have it done on time.  We
+laid out to start on the follerin' July, and I felt that I wanted
+everything ready.
+
+I bought the dress the 7th day of November early in the forenoon,
+the next day after my pardner consented to go, and give 65 cents a
+yard for it, double wedth.  I thought I could get it done on time,
+dressmakers are drove a good deal.  But I felt that a dressmaker
+could commence a dress in November and get it done the follerin'
+July, without no great strain bein' put onto her; and I am fur
+from bein' the one to put strains onto wimmen, and hurry 'em
+beyend their strength.  But I felt Almily had time to make it on
+honor and with good buttonholes.
+
+"Well," she sez, the first thing after she had unrolled the
+alpacky, and held it up to the light to see if it was firm -- sez
+she:
+
+"I s'pose you are goin' to have it made with a long train, and low
+neck and short sleeves, and the waist all girted down to a taper?"
+
+I wuz agast at the idee, and to think Alminy should broach it to
+me, and I give her a piece of my mind that must have lasted her
+for days and days.  It wuz a long piece, and firm as iron.  But
+she is a woman who likes to have the last word and carry out her
+own idees, and she insisted that nobody was allowed in Saratoga --
+that they wuz outlawed, and laughed at if they didn't have trains
+and low necks, and little mites of waists no bigger than
+pipe-stems.
+
+Sez I, "Alminy Hagidone, do you s'pose that I, a woman of my age,
+and a member of the meetin' house, am a goin' to wear a low-necked
+dress?"
+
+"Why not?," sez she, "it is all the fashion and wimmen as old agin
+as you be wear 'em."
+
+Well, sez I, "It is a shame and a disgrace if they do, to say
+nothin' of the wickedness of it.  Who do you s'pose wants to see
+their old skin and bones?  It haint nothin' pretty anyway.  And as
+fer the waists bein' all girted up and drawed in, that is nothin'
+but crushed bones and flesh and vitals, that is just crowdin' down
+your insides into a state o' disease and deformity, torturin' your
+heart down so's the blood can't circulate, and your lungs so's you
+can't breathe, it is nothin' but slow murder anyway, and if I ever
+take it into my head to kill myself, Alminy Hagidone, I haint a
+goin' to do it in a way of perfect torture and torment to me, I'd
+ruther be drownded."
+
+She quailed, and I sez, "I am one that is goin' to take good long
+breaths to the very last."  She see I wuz like iron aginst the
+idee of bein' drawed in, and tapered, and she desisted.  I s'pose
+I did look skairful.  But she seemed still to cling to the idee of
+low necks and trains, and she sez sort a rebukingly:
+
+"You ortn't to go to Saratoga if you haint willin' to do as the
+rest do.  I spose," sez she dreamily, "the streets are full of
+wimmen a walkin' up and down with long trains a hangin' down and
+sweepin' the streets, and ev'ry one on 'em with low necks and
+short sleeves, and all on 'em a flirting with some man"
+
+"Truly," sez I, "if that is so, that is why the idee come to me.
+I am needed there.  I have a high mission to perform about.  But I
+don't believe it is so."
+
+"Then you won't have it made with a long train?" sez she, a holdin'
+up a breadth of the alpacky in front of me, to measure the skirt.
+
+"No mom!" sez I, and there wuz both dignity and deep resolve in
+that "mom."  It wuz as firm and stern principled a "mom" as I ever
+see, though I say it that shouldn't.  And I see it skairt her.
+She measured off the breadths kinder trembly, and seemed so
+anxious to pacify me that she got it a leetle shorter in the back
+than it wuz in the front.  And (for the same reason) it fairly
+clicked me in the neck it wuz so high, and the sleeves wuz that
+long that I told Josiah Allen (in confidence) I was tempted to
+knit some loops across the bottom of 'em and wear 'em for mits.
+
+But I didn't, and I didn't change the dress neither.  Thinkses I,
+mebby it will have a good moral effect on them other old wimmen
+there.  Thinkses I, when they see another woman melted and
+shortened and choked fur principle's sake, mebby they will pause
+in their wild careers.
+
+Wall, this wuz in November, and I wuz to have the dress, if it wuz
+a possible thing, by the middle of April, so's to get it home in
+time to sew some lace in the neck.  And so havin' everything
+settled about goin' I wuz calm in my frame most all the time, and
+so wuz my pardner.
+
+And right here, let me insert this one word of wisdom for the
+special comfort of my sect and yet it is one that may well be laid
+to heart by the more opposite one.  If your pardner gets restless
+and oneasy and middlin' cross, as pardners will be anon, or even
+oftener -- start them off on a tower.  A tower will in 9 cases out
+of 10 lift 'em out of their oneasiness, their restlessness and
+their crossness.
+
+Why this is so I cannot tell, no more than I can explain other
+mysteries of creation, but I know it is so.  I know they will come
+home more placider, more serener, and more settled-downer.  Why I
+have known a short tower to Slab City or Loontown act like a charm
+on my pardner, when crossness wuz in his mean and snappishness wuz
+present with him.  I have known him to set off with the mean of a
+lion and come back with the liniment of a lamb.  Curious, haint
+it?
+
+And jest the prospect of a tower ahead is a great help to a woman
+in rulin' and keepin' a pardner straight and right in his
+liniments and his acts.  Somehow jest the thought of a tower sort
+a lifts him up in mind, and happifys him, and makes him easier to
+quell, and pardners must be quelled at times, else there would be
+no livin' with 'em.  This is known to all wimmen companions and
+and men too.  Great great is the mystery of pardners.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+ARDELLA TUTT AND HER MOTHER.
+
+
+But to resoom and continue on.  I was a settin' one day, after it
+wuz all decided, and plans laid on; I wuz a settin' by the fire a
+mendin' one of Josiah's socks.  I wuz a settin' there, as soft and
+pliable in my temper as the woosted I wuz a darnin' 'em with, my
+Josiah at the same time a peacefelly sawin' wood in the
+wood-house, when I heard a rap at the door and I riz up and opened
+it, and there stood two perfect strangers, females.  I, with a
+perfect dignity and grace (and with the sock still in my left
+hand) asked 'em to set down, and consequently they sot.  Then
+ensued a slight pause durin' which my two gray eyes roamed over
+the females before me.
+
+The oldest one wuz very sharp in her face and had a pair of small
+round eyes that seemed when they were sot onto you to sort a bore
+into you like two gimlets.  Her nose was very sharp and defient,
+as if it wuz constantly sayin' to itself, "I am a nose to be
+looked up to, I am a nose to be respected, and feared if
+necessary."  Her chin said the same thing, and her lips which wuz
+very thin, and her elbow, which wuz very sharp.
+
+Her dress was a stiff sort of a shinin' poplin, made tight acrost
+the chest and elboes.  And her hat had some stiff feathers in it
+that stood up straight and sort a sharp lookin'.  She had a long
+sharp breast-pin sort a stabbed in through the front of her stiff
+standin' collar, and her knuckles sot out through her firm lisle
+thread gloves, her umberell wuz long and wound up hard, to that
+extent I have never seen before nor sense.  She wuz, take it all
+in all, a hard sight, and skairful.
+
+The other one wuzn't no more like her in looks than a soft fat
+young cabbage head is like the sharp bean pole that it grows up by
+the side on, in the same garden.  She wuz soft in her complexion,
+her lips, her cheeks, her hands, and as I mistrusted at that first
+minute, and found out afterwards, soft in her head too.  Her dress
+wuz a loose-wove parmetty, full in the waist and sort a drabbly
+round the bottom.  Her hat wuz drab-colored felt with some loose
+ribbon bows a hangin' down on it, and some soft ostridge tips.
+She had silk mits on and her hands wuz fat and kinder
+moist-lookin'.  Her eyes wuz very large and round, and blue, and
+looked sort o' dreamy and wanderin' and there wuz a kind of a
+wrapped smile on her face all the time.  She had a roll of paper
+in her hand and I didn't dislike her looks a mite.
+
+Finally the oldest female opened her lips, some as a steel trap
+would open sudden and kinder sharp, and sez she: "I am Miss Deacon
+Tutt, of Tuttville, and this is my second daughter Ardelia.
+Cordelia is my oldest, and I have 4 younger than Ardelia."
+
+I bowed real polite and said, "I wuz glad to make the acquaintance
+of the hull 7 on 'em."  I can be very genteel when I set out,
+almost stylish.
+
+"I s'pose," says she, "I am talkin' to Josiah Allen's wife?"
+
+I gin her to understand that that wuz my name and my station, and
+she went on, and sez she: "I have hearn on you through my
+husband's 2d cousin, Cephas Tutt."
+
+"Cephas," sez she, "bein' wrote to by me on the subject of
+Ardelia, the same letter containin' seven poems of hern, and on
+bein' asked to point out the quickest way to make her name and
+fame known to the world at large, wrote back that he havin' always
+dealt in butter and lard, wuzn't up to the market price in poetry,
+and that you would be a good one to go to for advice.  And so,"
+sez she a pointin' to a bag she carried on her arm (a hard lookin'
+bag made of crash with little bullets and knobs of embroidery on
+it), "and so we took this bag full of Ardelia's poetry and come on
+the mornin' train, Cephas'es letter havin' reached us at nine
+o'clock last night.  I am a woman of business."
+
+The bag would hold about 4 quarts and it wuz full.  I looked at it
+and sithed.
+
+"I see," sez she, "that you are sorry that we didn't bring more
+poetry with us.  But we thought that this little batch would give
+you a idee of what a mind she has, what a glorious, soarin' genus
+wuz in front of you, and we could bring more the next time we
+come."
+
+I sithed agin, three times, but Miss Tutt didn't notice 'em a mite
+no more'n they'd been giggles or titters.  She wouldn't have took
+no notice of them.  She wuz firm and decided doin' her own errent,
+and not payin' no attention to anything, nor anybody else.
+
+"Ardelia, read the poem you have got under your arm to Miss Allen!
+The bag wuz full of her longer ones," sez she, "but I felt that I
+must let you hear her poem on spring.  It is a gem.  I felt it
+would be wrongin' you, not to give you that treat.  Read it
+Ardelia."
+
+I see Ardelia wuz used to obeyin' her ma.  She opened the sheet to
+once, and begun.
+
+Jest the minute Ardelia stopped readin' Miss Tatt says proudly:
+"There! haint that a remarkable poem,?"
+
+Sez I, calmly, "Yes it is a remarkable one."
+
+"Did you ever hear anything like it?" says she, triumphly.
+
+"No," sez I honestly, "I never did."
+
+"Ardelia, read the poem on Little Ardelia Cordelia; give Miss
+Allen the treat of hearin' that beautiful thing."
+
+I sort a sithed low to myself; it wuz more of a groan than a
+common sithe, but Miss Tutt didn't heed it, she kep' right on --
+
+"I have always brought up my children to make other folks happy,
+all they can, and in rehearsin' this lovely and remarkable poem,
+Ardelia will be not only makin' you perfectly happy, givin' you a
+rich intellectual feast, that you can't often have, way out here
+in the country, fur from Tuttville; but she will also be attendin'
+to the business that brought us here.  I have always fetched my
+children up to combine joy and business; weld 'em together like
+brass and steel.  Ardelia, begin!"
+
+So Ardelia commenced agin'.  It wuz wrote on a big sheet of paper
+and a runnin' vine wuz a runnin' all 'round the edge of the paper,
+made with a pen.
+
+Jest as soon as Ardelia stopped rehearsin' the verses, Miss Tutt
+sez agin to me:
+
+"Haint that a most remarkable poem?"
+
+And agin I sez calmly, and trutbfully, "Yes, it is a very
+remarkable one!"
+
+"And now," sez Miss Tutt, plungin' her hand in the bag, and
+drawin' out a sheet of paper, "to convince you that Ardelia has
+always had this divine gift of poesy -- that it is not, all the
+effect of culture and high education -- let me read to you a poem
+she wrote when she wuz only a mere child," and Miss Tutt read:
+
+                         "LINES ON A CAT
+
+                       "WRITTEN BY ARDELIA TUTT,
+    "At the age of fourteen years, two months and eight days.
+
+                "Oh Cat! Sweet Tabby cat of mine;
+              6 months of age has passed o'er thee,
+                  And I would not resign, resign
+                 The pleasure that I find in you.
+                          Dear old cat!"
+
+"Don't you think," sez Miss Tutt, "that this poem shows a fund of
+passion, a reserve power of passion and constancy, remarkable in
+one so young?"
+
+"Yes," sez I reasonably, "no doubt she liked the cat.  And," sez
+I, wantin' to say somethin' pleasant and agreeable to her, "no
+doubt it was a likely cat."
+
+"Oh the cat itself is of miner importance," sez Miss Tutt.  "We
+will fling the cat to the winds.  It's of my daughter I would
+speak.  I simply handled the cat to show the rare precocious
+intellect.  Oh! how it gushed out in the last line in the
+unconquerable burst of repressed passion -- `Dear old cat!'
+Shakespeare might have wrote that line, do you not think so?"
+
+"No doubt he might," sez I, calmly, "but he didn't."
+
+I see she looked mad and I hastened to say: "He wuzn't aquainted
+with the cat."
+
+She looked kinder mollyfied and continued:
+
+"Ardelia dashes off things with a speed that would astonish a mere
+common writer.  Why she dashed off thirty-nine verses once while
+she wuz waitin' for the dish water to bile, and sent 'em right off
+to the printer, without glancin' at 'em agin.'
+
+"I dare say so," sez I, "I should judge so by the sound on 'em."
+
+"Out of envy and jealousy, the rankest envy, and the shearest
+jealousy, them verses wuz sent back with the infamous request that
+she should use 'em for curl papers.  But she sot right down and
+wrote forty-eight verses on a `Cruel Request,' wrote 'em inside of
+eighteen minutes.  She throws off things, Ardelia does, in half an
+hour, that it would take other poets, weeks and weeks to write."
+
+"I persume so," sez I, "I dare persume to say, they never could
+write 'em."
+
+"And now," sez Miss Tutt, "the question is, will you put Ardelia
+on the back of that horse that poets ride to glory on?  Will you
+lift her onto the back of that horse, and do it at once?  I
+require nothin' hard of you," sez she, a borin' me through and
+through with her eyes.  "It must be a joy to you, Josiah Allen's
+wife, a rare joy, to be the means of bringin' this rare genius
+before the public.  I ask nothin' hard of you, I only ask that you
+demand, demand is the right word, not ask; that would be grovelin'
+trucklin' folly, but demand that the public that has long ignored
+my daugther Ardelia's claim to a seat amongst the immortal poets,
+demand them, compel them to pause, to listen, and then seat her
+there, up, up on the highest, most perpendiciler pinnacle of
+fame's pillow.  Will you do this?"
+
+I sat in deep dejection and my rockin' chair, and knew not what to
+say -- and Miss Tutt went on:
+
+"We demand more than fame, deathless, immortal fame for 'em.  We
+want money, wealth for 'em, and want it at once!  We want it for
+extra household expenses, luxuries, clothing, jewelry, charity,
+etc.  If we enrich the world with this rare genius, the world must
+enrich us with its richest emmolients.  Will you see that we have
+it!  Will you at once do as I asked you to?  Will you seat her
+immegately where I want her sot?
+
+Sez I, considerin', "I can't get her up there alone, I haint
+strong enough."  Sez I, sort a mekanikly, "I have got the
+rheumatez."
+
+"So you scoff me do you?  I came to you to get bread, am I to get
+worse than a stun -- a scoff?"
+
+"I haint gin you no scoff," sez I, a spunkin' up a little, "I
+haint thought on it.  I like Ardelia and wish her well, but I
+can't do merikles, I can't compel the public to like things if
+they don't."
+
+Sez Miss Tutt, "You are jealous of her, you hate her."
+
+"No, I don't," sez I, "I haint jealous of her, and I like her
+looks first-rate.  I love a pretty young girl," sez I candidly,
+"jest as I love a fresh posy with the dew still on it, a dainty
+rose-bud with the sweet fragrance layin' on its half-folded heart.
+I love 'em," sez I, a beginnin' to eppisode a little unbeknown to
+me, "I love 'em jest as I love the soft unbroken silence of the
+early spring mornin', the sun all palely tinted with rose and
+blue, and the earth alayin' calm and unwoke-up, fresh and fair.  I
+love such a mornin' and such a life, for itself and for the
+unwritten prophecis in it.  And when I see genius in such a sweet,
+young life, why it makes me feel as it duz to see through all the
+tender prophetic beauty of the mornin' skies, a big white dove a
+soarin' up through the blue heavens."
+
+Sez Miss Tutt, "You see that in Ardelia, but you wont own it, you
+know you do."
+
+"No!" sez I, "I would love to tell you that I see it in Ardelia; I
+would honest, but I can't look into them mornin' skies and say I
+see a white dove there, when I don't see nothin' more than a plump
+pullet, a jumpin' down from the fence or a pickin' round calmly in
+the back door-yard.  Jest as likely the hen is, as the white dove,
+jest as honerable, but you mustn't confound the two together."
+
+"A hen," sez Miss Tutt bitterly.  "To confound my Ardelia with a
+hen!  And I don't think there wuz ever a more ironieler `hen' than
+that wuz, or a scornfuller one."
+
+"Why," sez I reasonably.  "Hens are necessary and useful in any
+position, both walkin' and settin', and layin'.  You can't get'em
+in any position hardly, but what they are useful and respectable,
+only jest flyin'.  Hens can't fly.  Their wings haint shaped for
+it.  They look some like a dove's wings on the outside, the same
+feathers, the same way of stretchin' 'em out.  But there is
+sunthin lackin' in 'em, some heaven-given capacity for soarin' an
+for flight that the hens don't have.  And it makes trouble, sights
+and sights of trouble when hens try to fly, try to, and can't!
+
+"At the same time it is hard for a dove to settle down in a back
+yard and stay there, hard and tegus.  She can and duz sometimes,
+but never till after her wings have been clipped in some way.
+Poor little dove!  I am always sorry for 'em to see 'em a walkin'
+round there, a wantin' to fly -- a not forgettin' how it seemed to
+have their wings soarin' up through the clear sky, and the rush of
+the pure liquid windwaves a sweepin' aginst 'em, as they riz up,
+up, in freedom, and happiness, and glory.  Poor little creeters.
+
+"Yes, but doves can, if you clip their wings, settle down and
+walk, but hens CAN'T fly, not for any length of time they can't.
+No amount of stimulatin' poultices applied to the ends of their
+tail feathers and wings can ever make 'em fly.  They can't; it
+haint their nater.  They can make nests, and fill them with pretty
+downy chicks, they can be happy and beautiful in life and mean;
+they can spend their lives in jest as honerable and worthy a way
+as if they wuz a flyin' round, and make a good honerable
+appearance from day to day, till they begin to flop their wings,
+and fly -- then their mean is not beautiful and inspirin'; no, it
+is fur from it.  It is tuff to see 'em, tuff to see the floppin',
+tuff to see their vain efforts to soar through the air, tuff to
+see 'em fall percepitously down onto the ground agin.  For they
+must come there in the end; they are morally certain to.
+
+"Now Ardelia is a sweet pretty lookin' girl, she can set down in a
+cushioned arm-chair by a happy fireside, with pretty baby faces a
+clusterin' around her and some man's face like the sun a
+reflectin' back the light of her happy heart.  But she can't sit
+up on the pinnacle of fame's pillow.  I don't believe she can ever
+get up there, I don't.  Honestly speakin', I don't."
+
+"Envy!" sez Miss Tutt, "glarin', shameless envy!  You don't want
+Ardelia to rise!  You don't want her to mount that horse I spoke
+of; you don't want to own that you see genius in her.  But you do,
+Josiah Allen's wife, you know you do -- "
+
+"No," sez I, "I don't see it.  I see the sweetness of pretty
+girlhood, the beauty and charm of openin' life, but I don't see
+nothin' else, I don't, honest.  I don't believe she has got
+genius," sez I, "seein' you put the question straight to me and
+depend a answer; seein' her future career depends on her choice
+now, I must tell you that I believe she would succeed better in
+the millionary trade or the mantilly maker's than she will in
+tryin' to mount the horse you speak on.
+
+"Why," sez I, candidly, "some folks can't get up on that horse,
+their legs haint strong enough.  And if they do manage to get on,
+it throws 'em, and they lay under the heels for life.  I don't
+want to see Ardelia there, I don't want to see her maimed and
+lamed and stunted so early in the mornin' of life, by a kick from
+that animal, for she can't ride it," sez I, "honestly she can't.
+
+"There is nothin' so useless in life, and so sort a wearin' as to
+be a lookin' for sunthin' that haint there.  And when you pretend
+it is there when it haint, you are addin' iniquity to uselessness;
+so if you'll take my advice, the advice of a wellwisher, you will
+stop lookin', for I tell you plain that it haint there."
+
+Sez Miss Tutt, "Josiah Allen's wife, you have for reasens best
+known to your conscience baulked my hopes of a speedy immortality.
+You have willfully tried to break down my hopes of an immense,
+immediate income to flow out of them poems for luxuries, jewelry,
+charity, etc.  But I can at least claim this at your hands, I
+demand honesty.  Tell me honestly what you yourself think of them
+poems."
+
+Sez I (gettin' up sort a quick and goin' into the buttery, and
+bringin' out a little basket), "Here are some beautiful sweet
+apples, won't you have one?"
+
+"Apples, at such a time as this;" sez Miss Tutt
+
+"When the slumberin' world trembles before the advancin' tread of
+a new poet -- When the heavens are listenin' intently to ketch the
+whispers of an Ardelia's fate -- Sweet apples! in such a time as
+this!" sez she.  But she took two.
+
+"I demand the truth," sez she.  "And you are a base, trucklin'
+coward, if you give it not."
+
+Sez I, tryin' to carry off the subject and the apples into the
+buttery; "Poetry ort to have pains took with it."
+
+"Jealousy!" sez Miss Tutt.  "Jealousy might well whisper this.
+Envy, rank envy might breathe the suspicion that Ardelia haint
+been took pains with.  But I can see through it," sez she.  "I can
+see through it."
+
+"Well," sez I, wore out, "if they belonged to me, and if she wuz
+my girl, I would throw the verses into the fire, and set her to a
+trade."
+
+She stood for a minute and bored me through and through with them
+eyes.  Why it seemed as if there wuz two holes clear through my
+very spirit, and sole; she partly lifted that fearful lookin'
+umberell as if to pierce me through and through; it wuz a fearful
+seen.
+
+At last she turned, and flung the apple she wuz a holdin' onto the
+floor at my feet -- and sez she, "I scorn 'em, and you too."  And
+she kinder stomped her feet and sez, "I fling off the dust I have
+gethered here, at your feet."
+
+Now my floor wuz clean and looked like yeller glass, almost, it
+wuz so shinin' and spotless, and I resented the idee of her sayin'
+that she collected dust off from it.  But I didn't say nothin'
+back.  She had the bag of poetry on her arm, and I didn't feel
+like addin' any more to her troubles.
+
+But Ardelia, after her mother had swept out ahead, turned round
+and held out her hand, and smiled a sweet but ruther of a
+despondent and sorrowful smile, and I kissed her warmly.  I like
+Ardelia.  And what I said, I said for her good, and she knew it.
+I like Ardelia.
+
+Well, Miss Tutt and Ardelia went from our house to Eben Pixley's.
+They are distant relatives of hern, and live about 3 quarters of a
+mile from us.  The Pixleys think everything of Ardelia but they
+can't bear her mother.  There has been difficulties in the family.
+
+But Ardelia stayed there mor'n two weeks right along.  She haint
+very happy to home I believe.  And before she went back home it
+wuz arranged that she should teach the winter's school and board
+to Miss Pixley's.  But Miss Pixley wuz took sick with the tyfus
+before she had been there two weeks -- and, for all the world, if
+the deestrict didn't want us to board her.  Josiah hadn't much to
+do, so he could carry her back and forth in stormy weather, and it
+wuz her wish to come.  And it wuz Josiah's wish too, for the pay
+wuz good, and the work light -- for him.  And so I consented after
+a parlay.
+
+But I didn't regret it.  She is a good little creeter and no more
+like her mother than a feather bed is like a darnin' needle.  I
+like Ardelia: so does Josiah.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS.
+
+
+We have been havin' a pound party here in Jonesville.  There wuz a
+lot of children left without any father or mother, nobody only an
+old grandma to take care of 'em, and she wuz half bent with the
+rheumatiz, and had a swelled neck, and lumbago and fits.
+
+They lived in an old tumble-down house jest outside of Jonesville.
+The father wuz, I couldn't deny, a shiftless sort of a chap,
+good-natured, always ready to obleege a neighbor, but he hadn'nt
+no faculty.  And I don't know, come to think of it, as anybody is
+any more to blame if they are born without a faculty, than if they
+are born with only one eye.  Faculty is one of the things that you
+can't buy.
+
+He loved to hunt.  That is, he loved to hunt some kinds of things.
+He never loved to hunt stiddy, hard work, and foller on the trail
+of it till he evertook success and captured it.  No, he druther
+hunt after catamounts and painters, in woods where catamounts
+haint mounted, and painters haint painted sence he wuz born.
+
+He generally killed nothin' bigger than red squirrels and chipmunks.
+The biggest game he ever brought down wuz himself.  He shot himself
+one cold day in the fall of the year.  He wuz gettin' over a brush
+fence, they s'posed the gun hit against somethin' and went off, for
+they found him a layin' dead at the bottom of the fence.
+
+I always s'posed that the shock of his death comin' so awful
+sudden unto her, killed his wife.  She had been sick for a long
+spell, she had consumption and dropsy, and so forth, and so forth,
+for a long time, and after he wuz brought in dead, she didn't live
+a week.  She thought her eyes of him, for no earthly reason as I
+could ever see.  How strange, how strange a dispensation of
+Providence it duz seem, that some women love some men, and vicy
+versey and the same.
+
+But she did jest about worship him, and she died whisperin' his
+name, and reachin' out her hands as if she see him jest ahead of
+her.  And I told Josiah I didn't know but she did.  I shouldn't
+wonder a mite if she did see him, for there is only the veil of
+mystery between us and the other world at any time, and she had
+got so nigh to it, that I s'pose it got so thin that she could
+see through it.
+
+Just as you can see through the blue haze that lays before our
+forest in Injun summer.  Come nigh up to it and you can see the
+silvery trunks of the maples and the red sumac leaves, and the
+bright evergreens, and the forms of the happy hunters a passin'
+along under the glint of the sunbeams and the soft shadows.
+
+They died in Injun summer.  I made a wreath myself of the
+bright-colored leaves to lay on their coffins.  Dead leaves, dead
+to all use and purpose here, and yet with the bright mysterious
+glow upon them that put me in mind of some immortal destiny and
+blossoming beyond our poor dim vision.  Jane Smedley wuz a good
+woman, and so wuz Jim, good but shiftless.
+
+But I made the same wreath for her and Jim, and the strange mellow
+light lay on both of 'em, makin' me think in spite of myself of
+some happy sunrisin' that haply may dawn on some future huntin'
+ground, where poor Jim Smedley even, may strike the trail of
+success and happiness, hid now from the sight of Samantha, hid
+from Josiah.
+
+Wall, they died within a week's time of each other, and left nine
+children, the oldest one of 'em not quite fifteen.  She, the
+oldest one, wuz a good girl, only she had the rickets so that when
+she walked, she seemed to walk off all over the house backwards,
+and sideways, and every way, but when she sot down, she wuz a good
+stiddy girl, and faithful; she took after her mother, and her
+mother took after her grandmother, so there wuz three takin' after
+each other, one right after the other.
+
+Jane wuz a good, faithful, hard-workin' creeter when she wuz well,
+brought up her children good as she could, learnt 'em the
+catechism, and took in all kinds of work to earn a little
+somethin' towards gettin' a home for 'em; she and her mother both
+did, her mother lived with 'em, and wuz a smart old woman, too,
+for one that wuz pretty nigh ninety.  And she wuzn't worrysome
+much, only about one thing  --  she wanted a home, wanted a home
+dretfully.  Some wimmen are so; she had moved round so much, from
+one poor old place to another, that she sort o' hankered after
+bein' settled down into a stiddy home.
+
+Wall, there wuz eight children younger than Marvilla, that wuz the
+oldest young girl's name.  Eight of 'em, countin' each pair of
+twins as two, as I s'pose they ort.  The Town buried the father
+and mother, which wuz likely and clever in it, but after that it
+wouldn't give only jest so much a week, which wuz very little,
+because it said, Town did, that they could go to the poor-house,
+they could be supported easier there.
+
+I don't know as the Town could really be blamed for sayin' it, and
+yet it seemed kinder mean in it, the Town wuz so big, and the
+children, most of 'em, wuz so little.
+
+But any way, it wuz jest sot on it, and there wuz the end of it,
+for you might jest as well dispute the wind as to dispute the Town
+when it gets sot.
+
+Wall, the old grandma said she would die in the streets before she
+would go to the poor-house.  She had come from a good family in
+the first place,
+
+They say she run away and left a good home and got married, and
+did dretful poor in the married state.  He waz shiftless and didn't
+have nothin' and didn't lay up any.  And she didn't keep any of
+her old possessions only jest her pride.  She kept that, or enough
+of it to say that she would die on the road before she would go to
+the poor-house.  And once I see her cry she wanted a home so bad.
+
+And lots of folks blamed her for it, blamed the old woman awfully.
+They said pride wuz so wicked.  Wimmen who would run like deers if
+company came when they wuzn't dressed up slick, they would say the
+minute they got back into the room, all out of breath with hurryin'
+into their best clothes, they'd say a pantin' "That old woman ought
+to be made to go to the poorhouse, to take the pride out of her,
+pride wuz so awfully, dretfully wicked, and it wuz a shame that she
+wuz so ongrateful as to want a home of her own."  And then they
+would set down and rest.
+
+Wall, the family wuz in a sufferin' state.  The Town allowed 'em
+one dollar a week.  But how wuz ten human beings to live on a
+dollar a week.  The children worked every chance they got, but
+they couldn't earn enough to keep 'em in shoes, let alone other
+clothin' and vittles.  And the old house wuz too cold for 'em to
+stay in durin' the cold weather, it wuz for Grandma Smedley,
+anyway, if the children could stand it she couldn't.  And what wuz
+to be done.  A cold winter wuz a cumin' on, and it wouldn't delay
+a minute because Jim Smedley had got shot, and his wife had
+follered him, into, let us hope, a happier huntin' ground than he
+had ever found in earthly forests.
+
+Wall, I proposed to have a pound party for 'em.  I said they might
+have it to our house if they wanted it, but if they thought they
+wanted it in a more central place (our house wuz quite a little to
+one side), why we could have it to the schoolhouse.
+
+I proposed to Josiah the first one.  He wuz a settin' by the fire
+relapsed into silence.  It wuz a cold night outside, but the red
+curtains wuz down at our sitting-room winders, shettin' out the
+cold drizzlin' storm of hail and snow that wuz a deseendin' onto
+the earth.  The fire burned up warm and bright, and we sot there
+in our comfortable home, with the teakettle singin' on the stove,
+and the tea-table set out cosy and cheerful, for Josiah had been
+away and I had waited supper for him.
+
+As I sot there waitin' for the tea-kettle to bile (and when I say
+bile, I mean bile, I don't, mean simmer) the thought of the
+Smedleys would come in.  The warm red curtains would keep the
+storm out, but they couldn't keep the thought of the children, and
+the feeble old grandmother out of the room.  They come right in,
+through the curtains, and the firelight, and everything, and sot
+right down by me and hanted me.
+
+And what curious creeters thoughts be, haint they? and oncertain,
+too.  You may make all your plans to get away from 'em.  You may
+shet up your doors and winders, and set with a veil on and an
+umbrell up - but good land! how easy they jest ontackle the doors
+and windows, with no sounds of ontacklin' and come right in by
+you.
+
+First you know there they be right by the side of you, under your
+umbrell, under your veil, under your spectacles, a lookin' right
+down into your soul, and a hantin' you.
+
+And then agin, when you expect to be hanted by 'em, lay out to,
+why, they'll jest stand off somewhere else, and don't come nigh
+you.  Don't want to.  Oncertain creeters, thoughts be, and
+curious, curious where they come from, and how.
+
+Why, I got to thinkin' about it the other day, and I got lost,
+some like children settin' on a log over a creek a ridin'; there
+they be, and there the log is, but they don't seem to be there,
+they seem to be a floatin' down the water.
+
+And there I wuz, a settin' in my rockin' chair, and I seemed to be
+a floatin' down deep water, very deep.  A thinkin' and a wonderin'.
+A thinkin' how all through the ages what secrets God had told to
+man when the time had come, and the reverent soul below was ready
+to hear the low words whispered to his soul, and a wonderin' what
+strange revelation God held now, ready to reveal when the soul
+below had fitted itself to hear, and comprehend it.
+
+Ah! such mysteries as He will reveal to us if we will listen.  If
+we wait for God's voice.  If we did not heed so much the confusing
+clamor of the world's voices about us.  Emulation, envy, anger,
+strife, jealousy; if we turned our heads away from these discords,
+and in the silence which is God's temple, listened, listened, --
+who knows the secrets He would make known to us?
+
+Secrets of the day, secrets of the night, the sunshine, the
+lightning, the storm.  The white glow of that wonderful light that
+is not like the glow of the sun or of the moon, but yet lighteth
+the world.  That strange light that has a soul - that reads our
+thoughts, translates our wishes, overleaps distance, carrying our
+whispered words after holding our thoughts for ages, and then
+unfoldin' 'em at will.  What other wondrous mysteries lie
+concealed, wrapped around by that soft pure flame, mysteries that
+shall lie hidden until some inspired eye shall be waiting, looking
+upward at the moment when God's hand shall draw back the shining
+veil for an instant, and let him read the glowing secret.
+
+Secrets of language! shall some simple power, some symbol be
+revealed, and the nations speak together?
+
+Secrets of song! shall some serene, harmonious soul catch the note
+to celestial melodies?
+
+Secrets of sight! shall the eyes too dim now, see the faces of the
+silent throngs that surround them, "the great cloud of witnesses"?
+
+Secrets of the green pathways that lead up through the blue silent
+fields of space - shall we float from star to star?
+
+Secrets of holiness! shall earthly faces wear the pure light of
+the immortals?
+
+But oh! who shall be the happy soul that shall be listening when
+the time has fully come and He shall reveal His great secret?  The
+happy soul listening so intently that it shall catch the low,
+clear whisper.
+
+Listening, maybe, through the sweet twilight shadows for the
+wonderful secret, while the silver shallop of the moon is becalmed
+over the high northern mountains, as if a fleet of heavenly guests
+had floated down through the clear ocean waves of the sky to
+listen too - to hear the wonderful heavenly secret revealed to man
+- and a clear star looks out over the glowing rose of the western
+heavens, looking down like God's eye, searching his soul,
+searching if it be worthy of the great trust.
+
+Maybe it will be in the fresh dawning of the day, that the great
+secret will grow bright and clear and luminous, as the dawning of
+the light.
+
+Maybe it will be in the midst of the storm - a mighty voice borne
+along by the breath of the wind and the thunder, clamoring and
+demanding the hearer to listen.
+
+Oh! if we were only good enough, only pure enough, what might not
+our rapt vision discern?
+
+But we know not where or when the time shall be fully come, but
+who, who, shall be the happy soul that shall, at the time, be
+listening?
+
+Oh! how deep, how strange the waters wuz, and how I floated away
+on 'em, and how I didn't.  For there I wuz a settin in my own
+rockin' chair and there opposite me sot my own Josiah a whittlin',
+for the "World" hadn't come, and he wuz restless and ill at ease,
+and time hung heavy on his hands.
+
+There I sot the same Samantha - and the thought of the Smedleys,
+the same old Smedleys, was a hantin' of me, the same old hant, and
+I says to my Josiah, says I: "Josiah, I can't help thinkin' about
+the Smedleys," says I.  "What do you think about havin' a pound
+party for 'em, and will you take holt, and do your part?"
+
+"Good land, Samantha!  Are you crazy?  Crazy as a loon?  What
+under the sun do you want to pound the Smedleys for?  I should
+think they had trouble enough without poundin' 'em.  Why," says
+he, "the old woman couldn't stand any poundin' at all, without
+killin' her right out and out, and the childern haint over tough
+any of 'em.  Why, what has got into you?  I never knew you to
+propose anything of that wicked kind before.  I sha'n't have
+anything to do with it.  If you want 'em pounded you must get
+your own club and do your own poundin'."
+
+Says I, "I don't mean poundin' 'em with a club, but let folks buy
+a pound of different things to eat and drink and carry it to 'em,
+and we can try and raise a little money to get a warmer horse for
+'em to stay in the coldest of the weather."
+
+"Oh!" says he, with a relieved look.  "That's a different thing.
+I am willin' to do that.  I don't know about givin' 'em any money
+towards gettin' 'em a home, but I'll carry 'em a pound of crackers
+or a pound of flour, and help it along all I can."
+
+Josiah is a clever creeter (though close), and he never made no
+more objections towards havin' it.
+
+Wall, the next day I put on my shawl and hood (a new brown hood
+knit out of zephyr worsted, very nice, a present from our daughter
+Maggie, our son Thomas Jefferson's wife), and sallied out to see
+what the neighbor's thought about it.
+
+The first woman I called on wuz Miss Beazley, a new neighbor who
+had just moved into the neighborhood.  They are rich as they can
+be, and I expected at least to get a pound of tea out of her.
+
+She said it wuz a worthy object, and she would love to help it
+along, but they had so many expenses of their own to grapple with,
+that she didn't see her way clear to promise to do anything.  She
+said the girls had got to have some new velvet suits, and some
+sealskin sacques this winter, and they had got to new furnish the
+parlors, and send their oldest boy to college, and the girls
+wanted to have some diamond lockets, and ought to have 'em but she
+didn't know whether they could manage to get them or not, if they
+did, they had got to scrimp along every way they could.  And then
+they wuz goin' to have company from a distance, and had got to get
+another girl to wait on 'em.  And though she wished the poor well,
+she felt that she could not  dare to promise a cent to 'em.  She
+wished the Smedley family well -- dretful well -- and hoped I
+would get lots of things for 'em.  But she didn't really feel as
+if it would be safe for her to promise'em a pound of anything,
+though mebby she might, by a great effort, raise a pound of flour
+for 'em, or meal.
+
+Says I dryly (dry as meal ever wuz in its dryest times), "I
+wouldn't give too much.  Though," says I, "A pound of flour would
+go a good ways if it is used right."  And I thought to myself that
+she had better keep it to make a paste to smooth over things.
+
+Wall, I went from that to Miss Jacob Hess'es, and Miss Jacob Hess
+wouldn't give anything because the old lady wuz disagreeable, old
+Grandma Smedley, and I said to Miss Jacob Hess that if the Lord
+didn't send His rain and dew onto anybody only the perfectly
+agreeable, I guessed there would be pretty dry times.  It wuz my
+opinion there would be considerable of a drouth.
+
+There wuz a woman there a visitin' Miss Hess -- she wuz a stranger
+to me and I didn't ask her for anything, but she spoke up of her
+own accord and said she would give, and give liberal, only she wuz
+hampered.  She didn't say why, or who, or when, but she only sez
+this that "she wuz hampered," and I don't know to this day what
+her hamper wuz, or who hampered her.
+
+And then I went to Ebin Garven'ses, and Miss Ebin Garven wouldn't
+help any because she said "Joe Smedley had been right down lazy,
+and she couldn't call him anything else."
+
+"But," says I, "Joe is dead, and why should his children starve
+because their pa wasn't over and above smart when he wuz alive?"
+But she wouldn't give.
+
+Wall, Miss Whymper said she didn't approve of the manner of
+giving.  Her face wuz all drawed down into a curious sort of a
+long expression that she called religus and I called somethin'
+that begins with "h-y-p-o" -- and I don't mean hypoey, either.
+
+No, she couldn't give, she said, because she always made a
+practise of not lettin' her right hand know what her left hand
+give.
+
+And I said, for I wuz kinder took aback, and didn't think, I said
+to her, a glancin' at her hands which wuz crossed in front of her,
+that I didn't see how she managed it, unless she give when her
+right hand was asleep.
+
+And she said she always gave secret.
+
+And I said, "So I have always s'posed -- very secret."
+
+I s'pose my tone was some sarcastic, for she says, "Don't the
+Scripter command us to do so?"
+
+Says I firmly, "I don't believe the Scripter means to have us
+stand round talkin' Bible, and let the Smedleys starve," says I.
+"I s'pose it means not to boast of our good deeds."
+
+Says she, "I believe in takin' the Scripter literal, and if I
+can't git my stuff there entirely unbeknown to my right hand I
+sha'n't give."
+
+"Wall," says I, gettin' up and movin' towards the door, "you must
+do as you're a mind to with fear and tremblin'."
+
+I said it pretty impressive, for I thought I would let her see I
+could quote Scripter as well as she could, if I sot out.
+
+But good land! I knew it wuz a excuse.  I knew she wouldn't give
+nothin' not if her right hand had the num palsy, and you could
+stick a pin into it -- no, she wouldn't give, not if her right
+hand was cut off and throwed away.
+
+Wall, Miss Bombus, old Dr. Bombus'es widow, wouldn't give -- and
+for all the world -- I went right there from Miss Whymper'ses.
+Miss Bombus wouldn't give because I didn't put the names in the
+Jonesville Augur or Gimlet, for she said, "Let your good deeds so
+shine."
+
+"Why," says I, "Miss Whymper wouldn't give because she wanted to
+give secreter, and you won't give because you want to give
+publicker, and you both quote Scripter, but it don't seem to help
+the Smedleys much."
+
+She said that probably Miss Whymper was wrestin' the Scripter to
+her own destruction."
+
+"Wall," says I, "while you and Miss Whymper are a wrestin' the
+Scripter, what will become of the Smedleys?  It don't seem right
+to let them 'freeze to death, and starve to death, while we are a
+debatin' on the ways of Providence."
+
+But she didn't tell, and she wouldn't give.
+
+A woman wuz there a visitin', Miss Bombus'es aunt, I think, and
+she spoke up and said that she fully approved of her niece
+Bombus'es decision.  And she said, "As for herself, she never
+give to any subject that she hadn't thoroughly canvassed."
+
+Says I, "There they all are in that little hut, you can canvass
+them at any time.  Though," says I, thoughtfully, "Marvilla might
+give you some trouble."  And she asked why.
+
+And I told her she had the rickets so she couldn't stand still to
+be canvassed, but she could probably follow her up and canvass
+her, if she tried hard enough.  And says I, "There is old Grandma
+Smedley, over eighty, and five children under eight, you can
+canvass them easy."
+
+Says she, "The Bible says, `Search the Sperits.'"
+
+And I was so wore out a seein' how place after place, for three
+times a runnin the Bible was lifted up and held as a shield before
+stingy creeters, to ward off the criticism of the world and their
+own souls, that I says to myself -- loud enough so they could hear
+me, mebbe, "Why is it that when anybody wants to do a mean,
+ungenerous act, they will try to quote a verse of Scripter to
+uphold 'em, jest as a wolf will pull a lock of pure white wool
+over his wolfish foretop, and try to look innocent and sheepish."
+
+I don't care if they did hear me, I wuz on the step mostly when I
+thought it, pretty loud.
+
+Wall, from Miss Bombus'es I went to Miss Petingill's.
+
+Miss Petingill is a awful high-headed creeter.  She come to the
+door herself and she said, I must excuse her for answerin' the
+door herself.  (I never heard the door say anything and don't
+believe she did, it was jest one of her ways.)  But she said I
+must excuse her as her girl wuz busy at the time.
+
+She never mistrusted that I knew her hired girl had left, and she
+wuz doin' her work herself.  She had ketched off her apron I knew,
+as she come through the hall, for I see it a layin' behind the
+door, all covered with flour.  And after she had took me into the
+parlor, and we had set down, she discovered some spots of flour on
+her dress, and she said she "had been pastin' some flowers into a
+scrap book to pass away the time."  But I knew she had been bakin'
+for she looked tired, tired to death almost, and it wuz her bakin'
+day.  But she would sooner have had her head took right off than
+to own up that she had been doin' housework -- why, they say that
+once when she wuz doin' her work herself, and was ketched lookin'
+awful, by a strange minister, that she passed herself off' for a
+hired girl and said, "Miss Petingill wasn't to home, and when
+pressed hard she said she hadn't "the least idee where Miss
+Petingill wuz."
+
+Jest think on 't once -- and there she wuz herself.  The idee!
+
+Wall, the minute I sot down before I begun my business or
+anything, Miss Petingill took me to do about puttin' in Miss
+Bibbins President of our Missionary Society for the Relief of
+Indignent Heathens.
+
+The Bibbins'es are good, very good, but poor.
+
+Says Miss Petingill: "It seems to me as if there might be some
+other woman put in, that would have had more influence on the
+Church."
+
+Says I, "Haint Miss Bibbins a good Christian sister, and a great
+worker?"
+
+"Why yes, she wuz good, good in her place.  But," she said, "the
+Petingills hadn't never associated with the Bibbins'es."
+
+And I asked her if she s'posed that would make any difference with
+the heathen;  if the heathen would be apt to think less of Miss
+Bibbins because she hadn't associated with the Petingills?
+
+And she said, she didn't s'pose "the heathens would ever know it;
+it might make some difference to 'em if they did," she thought,
+"for it couldn't be denied," she said, "that Miss Bibbins did not
+move in the first circles of Jonesville."
+
+It had been my doin's a puttin' Miss Bibbins in and I took it
+right to home, she meant to have me, and I asked her if she
+thought the Lord would condemn Miss Bibbins on the last day,
+because she hadn't moved in the first circles of Jonesville?
+
+And Miss Petingill tosted her head a little, but had to own up,
+that she thought "He wouldn't."
+
+"Wall, then," sez I, "do you s'pose the Lord has any objections
+to her working for Him now?"
+
+"Why no, I don't know as the Lord would object."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "we call this work the Lord's work, and if He is
+satisfied with Miss Bibbins, we ort to be."
+
+But she kinder nestled round, and I see she wuzn't satisfied, but
+I couldn't stop to argue, and I tackled her then and there about
+the Smedleys.  I asked her to give a pound, or pounds, as she felt
+disposed.
+
+But she answered me firmly that she could't give one cent to the
+Smedleys, she wuz principled against it.
+
+And I asked her, "Why?"
+
+And she said, because the old lady wuz proud and wanted a home,
+and she thought that pride wuz so wicked, that it ort to be put
+down.
+
+Wall, Miss Huff, Miss Cephas Huff, wouldn't give anything because
+one of the little Smedleys had lied to her.  She wouldn't
+encourage lyin'.
+
+And I told her I didn't believe she would be half so apt to reform
+him on an empty stomach, as after he wuz fed up.  But she wouldn't
+yield.
+
+Wall, Miss Daggett said she would give, and give abundant, only
+she didn't consider it a worthy object.
+
+But it wuzn't nothin' only a excuse, for the object has never been
+found yet that she thought wuz a worthy one.  Why, she wouldn't
+give a cent towards painting the Methodist steeple, and if that
+haint a high and worthy object, I don't know what is.  Why, our
+steeple is over seventy feet from the ground.  But she wouldn't
+help us a mite -- not a single cent.
+
+Take such folks as them and the object never suits 'em.  They
+won't come right out and tell the truth that they are too stingy
+and mean to give away a cent, but they will always put the excuse
+onto the object -- the object don't suit 'em.
+
+Why, I do believe it is the livin' truth that if the angel Gabriel
+wuz the object, if he wuz in need and we wuz gittin' up a pound
+party for him -- she would find fault with Gabriel, and wouldn't
+give him a ounce of provisions.
+
+Yes, I believe it -- I believe they would tost their heads and
+say, they always had had their thoughts about anybody that tooted
+so loud -- it might be all right but it didn't look well, and
+would be apt to make talk.  Or they would say that he wuz
+shiftless and extravagant a loafin' round in the clouds, when he
+might go to work -- or that he might raise the money himself by
+selling the feathers offen his wings for down pillers -- or some
+of the rest of the Gabriel family might help him -- or something,
+or other -- anyway they would propose some way of gittin' out of
+givin' a cent to Gabriel.  I believe it as much as I believe I
+live and breathe; and so does Josiah.
+
+Wall, Miss Mooney wouldn't give anything because she thought Jane
+Smedley wuzn't so sick as she thought she wuz; she said "she was
+spleeny."
+
+And I told Miss Mooney that when a woman was sick enough to die, I
+thought she ort to be called sick.
+
+But Miss Mooney wouldn't give up, and insisted to the very last
+that Miss Smedley wuz hypoey and spleeny -- and thought she wuz
+sicker than she really wuz.  And she held her head and her nose up
+in a very disagreeable and haughty way, and said as I left, that
+she never could bear to help spleeny people.
+
+Wall, all that forenoon did I traipse through the street and not
+one cent did I get for the Smedleys, only Miss Gowdey said she
+would bring a cabbage and Miss Deacon Peedick and Miss Ingledue
+partly promised a squash apiece.  And I mistrusted that they give
+'em more to please me than anything else.
+
+Wall, I wuz clean discouraged and beat out, and so I told Josiah.
+But he encouraged me some by sayin':
+
+"Wall, I could have told you jest how it would be," and, "You
+would have done better, Samantha, to have been to home a cookin'
+for your own famishin' family."  And several more jest such
+inspirin' remarks as men will give to the females of their
+families when they are engaged in charitable enterprises.
+
+But I got a good, a very good dinner, and it made me feel some
+better, and then I haint one to give up to discouragements,
+anyway.
+
+So I put on a little better dress for after noon, and my best
+bonnet and shawl, and set sail again after dinner.
+
+And if I ever had a lesson in not givin' up to discouragements in
+the first place I had it then.  For whether it wuz on account of
+the more dressy look of my bonnet and shawl -- or whether it wuz
+that folks felt cleverer in the afternoon -- or whether it wuz
+that I had gone to the more discouragin' places in the forenoon,
+and the better ones in the afternoon -- or whether it wuz that I
+tackled on the subject in a better way than I had tackled 'em --
+whether it wuz for any of these reasons, or all of 'em or somethin'
+ -- anyway my luck turned at noon, 12 M., and all that afternoon
+I had one triumph after another -- place after place did I collect
+pound or pounds as the case may be (or collected the promises of
+'em, I mean).  I did splendid, and wuz prospered perfectly amazing
+ -- and I went home feelin' as happy and proud as a king or a zar.
+
+And the next Tuesday evenin' we had the pound party.  They
+concluded to have it to our house.  And Thomas Jefferson and
+Maggie, and Tirzah Ann and Whitefield came home early in the
+afternoon to help trim the parlor and setin' room with evergreens
+and everlastin' posies, and fern leaves.
+
+They made the room look perfectly beautiful.  And they each of
+'em, the two childern and their companions, brought home a motto
+framed in nice plush and gilt frames, which they put up on each
+side of the settin' room, and left them there as a present to
+their pa and me.  They think a sight of us, the childern do --
+and visey versey, and the same.
+
+One of 'em wuz worked in gold letters on a red back-ground "Bear
+Ye One Another's Burdens."  And the other wuz "Feed my Lambs."
+
+They think a sight on us, the childern do -- they knew them
+mottoes would highly tickle their pa and me.  And they did seem to
+kinder invigorate up all the folks that come to the party.
+
+And they wuz seemingly legions.  Why, they come, and they kept a
+comin'.  And it did seem as if every one of 'em had tried to see
+who could bring the most.  Why, they brought enough to keep the
+Smedleys comfortable all winter long.  It wuz a sight to see 'em.
+
+It wuz a curious sight, too, to set and watch what some of the
+folks said and done as they brought their pounds in.
+
+I had to be to the table all the time a'most, for I wuz appointed
+a committee, or a board -- I s'pose it would be more proper to
+call myself a board, more business like.  Wall, I wuz the board
+appointed to lay the things on -- to see that they wuz all took
+care of, and put where they couldn't get eat up, or any other
+casuality happen to 'em.
+
+And I declare if some of the queerest lookin' creeters didn't come
+up to the table and talk to me.  There wuz lots of 'em there that
+I didn't know, folks that come from Zoar, Jim Smedley's old
+neighborhood.
+
+There wuz a long table stretched acrost one end of the settin'
+room, and I stood behind it some as if I wuz a dry goods merchant
+or grocery, and some like a preacher.
+
+And the women would come up to me and talk.  There wuz one woman
+who got real talkative to me before the evenin' wuz out.  She said
+her home wuz over two miles beyond Zoar.
+
+She had a young babe with her, a dark complexioned babe, with a
+little round black head, that looked some like a cannon ball.  She
+said she had shingled the child that day about eight o'clock in
+the forenoon; she talked real confidential to me.
+
+She said the babe had sights of hair, and she told her husband
+that day that if he would shingle the babe she would come to the
+party and if he wouldn't shingle it she wouldn't come.  It seemed
+they had had a altercation on the subject; she wanted it shingled
+and he didn't.  But it seemed that ruther than stay away from the
+party -- he consented, and shingled it.  So they come.
+
+They brought a eight pound loaf of maple sugar and two dozen eggs.
+They did well.  Then there wuz another woman who would walk her
+little girl into the bedroom every few minutes, and wet her hair,
+and comb it over, and curl it on her fingers.  The child had a
+little blue flannel dress on, with a long plain waist, and a long
+skirt gethered on full all round.  Her hair lay jest as smooth and
+slick as glass all the time, but five times did she walk her off,
+and go through with that performance.  She brought ten yards of
+factory cloth, and a good woollen petticoat for the old grandma.
+She did first-rate.
+
+And then there wuz another woman who stayed by the table most all
+the evenin'.  She would gently but firmly ask everybody who
+brought anything, what the price of the article wuz -- and then
+she would tackle the different women who come up to the table for
+patterns.  I do believe she got the pattern of every bask waist
+there wuz there, and every mantilly.
+
+And Abram Gee brought twenty-five loaves of bread -- of different
+sizes, but all on 'em good.  And he looked at Ardelia Tutt every
+minute of the time.  And Ardelia brought a lot of verses, --
+"Stanzas on a Grandmother."  I didn't think they would do Grandma
+Smedley much good, and then on the other hand I didn't s'pose they
+would hurt her any.
+
+But we had a splendid good time after the things wuz all brought
+in -- of course, bein' a board the fore part of the evenin' I
+naturally had a harder time than I did the latter part, after I
+had got over it.
+
+The children, Thomas J., and Tirzah Ann, and Ardelia Tutt, and
+Abram Gee, and some of the rest of the young folks sung and played
+some beautiful pieces, and they had four tablows, which wuz
+perfectly beautiful.
+
+And then we passed good nice light biscuit and butter, and hot
+coffee, and pop corn and apples.  And it did seem, and all the
+neighbors said so, that it wuz the very best party they had ever
+attended to.
+
+And before they went away they made a motion some of the
+responsable men did -- some made the motions and some seconded 'em
+-- that they would adjourn till jest one year from that night,
+when if the Smedleys was still alive and in need -- we would have
+jest such a party ag'in.
+
+And at the last on't Elder Minkley made a prayer -- a very
+thankful and good prayer, but short.  And then they went home.
+
+Wall, the next mornin' we started to carry the things to the
+Smedleys.  It wuz very early, for Josiah had got to go clear to
+Loontown on business, and I wuz goin' to stay with the childern
+till he got back.
+
+It wuz a very cold mornin'.  We hadn't heard from the Smedleys for
+two or three days, because we wanted to surprise 'em, so we didn't
+want to give 'em a hint beforehand of what we wuz a doin'.  So, as
+I say, it wuz a number of days sense we had heard from 'em, and
+the weather wuz cold.
+
+When we got to the door it seemed to be dretful still there
+inside.  And there wuz some white frost on the latch jest as if a
+icy, white hand had onlatched the door, and had laid on it last.
+
+We rapped, but nobody answered.  And then we opened the door and
+went in, and there they all lay asleep.  The children waked up.
+But old Grandma didn't.
+
+There wuzn't any fire in the room, and you could see by the
+freezing coldness of the air that there hadn't been any for a day
+or two.
+
+Grandma Smedley had took the poor old coverin's all off from
+herself, and put 'em round the youngest baby, little Jim.  And he
+lay there all huddled up tight to his Grandma, with his red cheek
+close to her white one, for he loved her.
+
+Josiah cried and wept, and wept and cried onto his bandana -- but
+I didn't.
+
+The tears run down my face some, to see the childern feel so bad
+when Grandma couldn't speak to 'em.
+
+But I knew that the childern would be took care of now, I knew the
+Jonesvillians would be all rousted up and sorry enough for 'em,
+and would be willin' to do anything now, when it wuz some too
+late.
+
+And I felt that I couldn't cry nor weep (and told Josiah so), the
+tears jest dripped down my face in a stream, but I wouldn't weep
+-- for as I said to myself:
+
+While the Jonesvillians had been a disputin' back and forth, and
+wrestin' Scripter, and the meanin' of Providence in regard to
+helpin' Grandma Smedley and gittin' her a comfortable place to
+stay in, and somethin' to eat, the Lord himself had took the case
+in hand and had gin her a home and the bread that satisfies."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+ARDELIA AND ABRAM GEE.
+
+
+Wall, I don't s'pose there had been a teacher in our deestrict
+for years and years that gin' better satisfaction than Ardelia
+Tutt.  Good soft little creeter, the scholars any one of 'em felt
+above hurtin' on her or plagin' her any way.  She sort a made 'em
+feel they had to take care on her, she wuz so sort a helpless
+actin', and good natured, and yet her learnin' wuz good,
+fust-rate.
+
+Yes, Ardelia was thought a sight on in Jonesville by scholars and
+parents and some that wuzn't parents.  One young chap in
+perticiler, Abram Gee by name, who had just started a baker's
+shop in Jonesville, he fell so deep in love with her from the
+very start that I pitied him from about the bottom of my heart.
+It wuz at our house that he fell.
+
+The young folks of our meetin'-house had a sort of a evenin'
+meetin' there to see about raisin' some money for the help of the
+steeple -- repairin' of it.  Abram is a member, and so is
+Ardelia, and I see the hull thing.  I see him totter and I see
+him fall.  And prostrate he wuz, from that first night.  Never
+was there a feller that fell in love deeper, or lay more
+helpless.  And Ardelia liked him, that wuz plain to see; at fust
+as I watched and see him totter, I thought she wuz a sort o'
+wobblin' too, and when he fell deep, deep in love, I looked to
+see her a follerin' on.  But Ardelia, as soft as she wuz, had an
+element of strength.  She wuz ambitious.  She liked Abram, but
+she had read novels a good deal, and she had for years been
+lookin' for a prince to come a ridin' up to their dooryard in
+disguise with a crown on under his hat, and woo her to be his
+bride.
+
+And so she braced herself against the sweet influence of love and
+it wuz tuff -- I could see for myself that it wuz, when she had
+laid out to set on a throne by the side of a prince, he a holdin'
+his father's scepter in his hand -- to descend from that elevation
+and wed a husband who wuz a moulder of bread, with a rollin' pin
+in his hand.  It wuz tuff for Ardelia; I could see right through
+her mind (it wuzn't a great distance to see), and I could see jest
+how a conflict wuz a goin' on between love and ambition.
+
+But Abram had my best wishes, for he wuz a boy I had always
+liked.  The Gees had lived neighbor to us for years.  He wuz a
+good creeter and his bread wuz delicious (milk emptin's).  He wuz
+a sort of a hard, sound lookin' chap, and she, bein' so oncommon
+soft, the contrast kinder sot each other off and made 'em look
+well together.
+
+He had a house and lot all paid for, with no incumbrances only a
+mortgage of 150 dollars and a lame mother.  But he laid out to
+clear off the mortgage this year, and I wuz told that mother Gee
+wuz a goin' to live with her daughter Susan, who had jest come
+into a big property -- as much as 700 dollars worth of land,
+besides cows, 2 heads of cow, and one head of a calf.
+
+I knew Mother Gee and she wuz goin' to stay with Abram till he
+got married and then she wuz goin' to live with Susan.  And I
+s'pose it is so.  She is a likely old woman with a milk leg.
+
+Wall, Abram paid Ardelia lots of attention, sech as walkin' home
+with her from protracted meetin's nights, and lookin' at her
+durin' the meetin's more protracted than the meetin's wuz fur.
+And 3 times he sent her a plate of riz biscuit sweetened,
+sweetened too sweet almost, he went too fur in this and I see it.
+
+Yes, he done his part as well as his condition would let him,
+paralyzed by his feelin's -- but she acted kinder offish, and I
+see that sonthin' wuz in the way.  I mistrusted at first, it
+might be Abram's incumbrance, but durin' a conversation I had
+with her, I see I wuz in the wrong on't.  And I could see plain,
+though some couldn't, that she liked Abram as she did her eyes.
+Somebody run him down a little one day before me and she sprouted
+right up and took his part voyalent.  I could see her feelin's
+towards him though she wouldn't own up to 'em.  But one day she
+came out plain to me and lamented his condition in life.
+Somebody had attact her that day before me about marryin' of him
+-- and she owned up to me, that she had laid out to marry
+somebody to elevate her.  Some one with a grand pure mission in
+life.
+
+And I spoke right up and sez, "Why bread is jest as pure and
+innocent as anything can be, you won't find anything wicked about
+good yeast bread, nor," sez I, cordially, "in milk risin', if it
+is made proper."
+
+But she said she preferred a occupation that wuz risin', and
+noble, and that made a man necessary and helpful to the masses.
+
+And I sez agin -- "Good land! the masses have got to eat.  And I
+guess you starve the masses a spell and they'll think that good
+bread is as necessary and helpful to 'em as anything can be.  And
+as fer its bein' a risin' occupation, why," sez I, "it is stiddy
+risen' -- risin' in the mornin,' and risin' at night, and all
+night, both hop and milk emptin's.  Why," sez I, "I never see a
+occupation so risin' as his'n is, both milk and hop."  But she
+wouldn't seem to give in and encourage him much only by spells.
+
+And then Abram didn't take the right way with her.  I see he wuz
+a goin' just the wrong way to win a woman's love.  For his love,
+his great honest love for her made him abject, he groveled at her
+feet, loved to grovel.
+
+I told him, for he confided in me from the first on't and
+bewailed her coldness to me, I told him to sprout up and act as
+if he had some will of his own and some independent life of his
+own.  Sez I, "Any woman that sees a man a layin' around under her
+feet will be tempted to step on him," sez I.  "I don't see how
+she can help it, if she calcerlates to get round any, and walk."
+Sez I, "Sprout up and be somebody.  She is a good little creeter,
+but no better than you are, Abram; be a man."
+
+And he would try to be.  I could see him try.  But one of her
+soft little glances, specially if it wuz kind and tender to him,
+es it wuz a good deal of the time, why it would just overthrow
+him ag'in.  He would collapse and become nothin' ag'in, before
+her.  Why I have hearn him sing that old him, a lookin' right at
+Ardelia stiddy:
+
+"Oh to be nothin', nothin'!"
+
+And thinks I to myself, "if this keeps on, you are in a fairway
+to git your wish."
+
+He wuz a good singer, a beartone, and she a secent.  They loved
+to sing together.  They needed some air, but then they got along
+without it; and it sounded quite well, though rather low and
+deep.
+
+Wall, it run along for weeks and weeks, he with his hopes a
+risin' up sometimes like his yeast and then bein' pounded down
+ag'in like his bread, under the hard knuckles of a woman's
+capricious cruelty.  For I must say that she did, for sech a soft
+littte creeter, have cold and cruel ways to Abram.  (But I s'pose
+it wuz when she got to thinkin' about the Prince, or some other
+genteel lover.)
+
+But her real feelin's would break out once in a while, and lift
+him up to the 3d heaven of happiness and then he'd have to totter
+and fall down ag'in.  Abram Gee had a hard time on't.  I pitied
+him from nearly the bottom of my heart.  But I still kep' a
+thinkin' it would turn out well in the end.  For it wuz jest
+about this time that I happened to find this poetry in a book
+where she had, I s'posed, left it.  And I read 'em, almost
+entirely unbeknown to myself.
+
+It wuz wrote in a dreatful blind way but I recognized it at once.
+I looked right through it, and see what she wuz a writin' about
+though many wouldn't, it wuz wrote in sech a deep style.
+
+                       "STANZAS ON BREAD;
+
+                              "or
+
+                   "A LAY OF A BROKEN HEART.
+
+       "Oh Bread, dear Bread, that seemest to us so cold,
+        Oft'times concealed thee within, may be a sting!
+        Sweet buried hopes may in thy crust be rolled;
+         A sad, burnt crust of deepest suffering.
+
+        "There are some griefs the female soul don't tell,
+          And she may weep, and she may wretched be;
+         Though she may like the name of Abram well
+          And she may not like dislike the name of G ,
+
+        "Oh Fel Ambition, how thou lurest us on,
+          How by thy high, bold torch we're stridin' led:
+         Thou lurest us up, cold mountain top upon,
+          And seated by us there, thou scoffest at bread.
+
+        "Thou lookest down, Ambition, on the ovens brim;
+          Thou brookest not a word of him save with contumalee:
+         And yet, wert thou afar, how sweet to set by him
+          And cut low slices of sweet joy with G ,
+
+        "Oh! Fel Ambition, wert but thou away,
+          Could we thy hauntin' form no more, nor see;
+         How sweet 'twould be to linger on with A-,
+          How sweet 'twould be to dwell for aye with G-."
+
+Wall, as I say, she gin good satisfaction in the deestrict and I
+declare for it, I got to likin' her dretful well before the
+winter wuz over.  Softer she wuz, and had to be, than any fuz
+that was ever on any cotton flannel fur or near.  And more verses
+she wrote than wuz good for her, or for anybody else, -   Why she
+would write "Lines on the Tongs," or "Stanzas on the Salt
+Suller," if she couldn't do any better; it beats all!  And then
+she would read 'em to me to get my idees on 'em.  Why I had to
+call on every martyr in the hull string of martyrs sometimes to
+keep myself from tellin' her my full mind about 'em unbeknown to
+me.  For, if I had, it would have skairt the soft little creeter
+out of what little wit she had.
+
+So I kep' middlin' still, and see it go on.  For she wuz a good
+little soul, affectionate and kinder helpful.  A good creeter now
+to find your speks.  Why she found 'em for me times out of
+number, and I got real attached to her and visey versey.  And
+when she came a visitin' me in the spring (at my request), and I
+happened to mention that Josiah and me laid out to go to Saratoga
+for the summer, what did the soft little creeter want to do but
+to go too.  Her father was well off and wuz able to send her, and
+she had relatives there on her own side, some of the Pixleys, so
+her board wouldn't cost nothin'.  So it didn't look nothin'
+unreasonable, though whether I could get her there and back
+without her mashin' all down on my hands, like a over ripe peach,
+she wuz that soft, wuz a question that hanted me, and so I told
+Josiah.
+
+But Josiah kinder likes young girls (nothin' light; a calm
+meetin'-house affection), it is kinder nater that he should, and
+he sez: "Better let her go, she won't make much trouble."
+
+"No," sez I, "not to you, but if you had to set for hours and
+hours and hear her verses read to you on every subject -- on
+heaven, and earth, and the seas, and see her a measurin' of it
+with a stick to get the lines the right length; if you had to go
+through all this, mebby you would meditate on the subject before
+you took it for a summer's job."
+
+" Wall," sez he, "mebby she won't write so much when she gets
+started; she will be kinder jogged round and stirred up in body
+and mebby her feelins' will kinder rest.  I shouldn't wonder a
+mite if they did," sez he.  "And then she can take a good many
+steps for you, and I love to see you favored," sez he.
+
+He wanted her to go, I see that, and I see that it wuz natur that
+he should, and so I consented in my mind -- after a parlay.
+
+She found his specks a sight and his hat.  Nothin' seemed to
+please her better than to be gropin' round after things to please
+somebody; her disposition wuz such.  So it wuz settled that she
+should accompany and go with us.  And the mornin' we started she
+met us at the Jonesville Depot in good sperits and a barege
+delaine dress, cream color, and a hat of the same.
+
+I hadn't seen her for some weeks, and she seemed softly tickled
+to see Josiah and me, and asked a good many questions about
+Jonesville, kinder turnin' the conversation gradually round onto
+bread, as I could see.  So I branched right out, knowin' what she
+wanted of me, and told her plain, that "Abram Gee wuz a lookin'
+kinder mauger.  But doin' his duty stiddy," sez I, lookin' keenly
+at her, "a doin' his duty by everybody, and beloved by everybody,
+him and his bread too."
+
+She turned her head away and kinder sithed, and I guess it wuz as
+much as a quarter of a hour after that, that I see her take out a
+pencil and a piece of paper out of her portmonny, and a little
+stick, and she went to makin' some verses, a measurin' 'em
+careful as she wrote 'em, and when she handed 'em to me they wuz
+named
+
+
+
+                        "A LAY ON A CAR;
+
+                              "or
+
+                 "THE LESSON OF A LOCOMOTIVE."
+
+After I had read it and handed it back to her, she sez, "Don't
+you think I improve on the melody and rhythm of my poetry?  I
+take this little stick with me now wherever I go, and measure my
+lines by it.  They are jest of a length, I am very particular;
+you know you advised me to be."
+
+"Yes," sez I mechaniklly, "but I didn't mean jest that."  Sez I,
+"the poetry I wuz a thinkin' on, is measured by the soul, the
+enraptured throb of heart and brain; it don't need takin' a stick
+to it.  Howsumever," sez I, for I see she looked sort a
+disapinted, "howsumever, if you have measured 'em, they are
+probable about the same length:  it is a good sound stick, I
+haint no doubt;" and I kinder sithed.
+
+And she sez, "What do you think of the first verse?  Haint that
+verse as true as fate, or sadness, or anything else you know of?"
+
+"Oh yes," sez I candidly, "yes; if the cars run backwards we
+shouldn't go on; that is true as anything can be.  But if I wuz
+in your place, Ardelia," sez I, "I wouldn't write any more
+to-day.  It is a kind of muggy damp day.  It is a awfully bad day
+for poetry to-day.  And," sez I, to get her mind offen it, "Have
+you seen anything of my companion's specks?"
+
+And that took her mind offen poetry and she went a huntin' for
+'em, on the seat and under the seat.  She hunted truly high and
+low and at last she found 'em on my pardner's foretop, the last
+place any of us thought of lookin'.  And she never said another
+word about poetry, or any other trouble, nor I nuther.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+WE ARRIVE AT SARATOGA.
+
+
+We arrived at Saratoga jest as sunset with a middlin' gorgeous
+dress on wuz a walkin' down the west and a biddin' us and the
+earth good-bye.  There wuz every color you could think on almost,
+in her gown and some stars a shinin' through the floatin' drapery
+and a half moon restin' up on her cloudy foretop like a beautiful
+orniment.
+
+(I s'pose mebby it is proper to describe sunset in this way on
+goin' to such a dressy place, though it haint my style to do so, I
+don't love to describe sunset as a female and don't, much of the
+time, but I love to see things correspond.)
+
+Wall, we descended from the cars and went to the boardin' place
+provided for us beforehand by the look out of friends.  It wuz a
+good place, there haint no doubt of that, good folks; good fare
+and clean.
+
+Ardelia parted away from us at the depo.  She wuz a goin' to board
+to a smaller boardin' house kep' by a second cousin of her
+father's brother's wife's aunt.  It wuz her father's request that
+she should get her board there on account of its bein' in the
+family.  He loved "to see relations hang together;" so he said,
+and "get their boards of each other."  But I thought then, and I
+think now, that it wuz because they asked less for the board.
+Deacon Tutt is close.  But howsumever Ardelia went there, and my
+companion and me arrove at the abode where we wuz to abide, with
+no eppisode only the triflin' one of the driver bein' dretful
+mistook as to the price he asked to take us there.
+
+I thought, and Josiah thought, that 50 cents wuz the outlay of
+expendatur he required to carry us where we would be; it wuz but a
+short distance.  But no!  He said that 5 dollars wuz what he said,
+that is, if we heard anything about a 5.  But he thought we wuz
+deef, and dident hear him.  He thought he spoke plain, and said 4
+dollars for the trip.
+
+And on that price he sot down immovible.  They arged, and Josiah
+Allen even went so far as to use language that grated on my nerve,
+it wuz so voyalent and vergin' on the profane.  But there the man
+sot, right onto that price, and he had to me the appeerance of one
+who wuz goin' to sot there on it all night.  And so rather than to
+spend the night out doors, in conversation with him, he a settin'
+on that price, and Josiah a shakin' his fist at it, and a jawin'
+at it, I told Josiah that he had better pay it.  And finally he
+did, with groanin's that could hardly be uttered.
+
+Wall, after supper (a good supper and enough on't), Josiah proposed
+that we should take a short walk, we two alone, for Ardelia wuz
+afar from us, most to the other end of the village, either asleep
+or a writin' poetry, I didn't know which, but I knew it wuz one or
+the other of 'em.  And I wuz tired enough myself to lay my head
+down and repose in the arms of sleep, and told my companion so,
+but he said:
+
+"Oh shaw!  Let old Morpheus wait for us till we get back, there'll
+be time enough to rest then."
+
+Josiah felt so neat, that he wuz fairly beginnin' to talk high
+learnt, and classical.  But I didn't say nothin' to break it up,
+and tied on my bonnet with calmness (and a double bow knot) and we
+sallied out.
+
+Soon, or mebby a little after, for we didn't walk fast on account
+of my deep tucker, we stood in front of what seemed to be one hull
+side of a long street, all full of orniments and open work, and
+pillows, and flowers, and carvin's, and scallops, and down between
+every scollop hung a big basket full of posys, of every beautiful
+color under the heavens.  And over all, and way back as fur as we
+could see, wuz innumerable lights of every color, gorgeousness a
+shinin' down on gorgeousness, glory above, a shinin' down on glory
+below.  And sweet strains of music wuz a floatin, out from
+somewhere, a shinin' somewhere, renderin' the seen fur more
+beautiful to all 4 of our wraptured ears.
+
+And Josiah sez, as we stood there nearly rooted to the place by
+our motions, and a picket fence, sez he dreamily,
+
+"I almost feel as if we had made a mistake, and that this is the
+land of Beuler."  And he murmured to himself some words of the old
+him:
+
+"Oh Beuler land! Sweet Beuler land!"
+
+And I whispered back to him and sez - "Hush they don't have brass
+bands in Beulah land."
+
+And he sez, "How do you know what they have in Beuler?"
+
+"Wall," sez I, "'taint likely they do."
+
+But I don't know as I felt like blamin' him, for it did seem to me
+to be the most beautiful place that I ever sot my eyes on.  And it
+did seem fairly as if them long glitterin' chains and links of
+colored lights, a stretchin' fur back into the distance sort a
+begoned for us to enter into a land of perfect beauty and Pure
+Delight.
+
+And then them glitterin' chains of light would jine onto other
+golden, and crimson, and orange, and pink, and blue, and amber
+links of glory and hang there all drippin' with radiance, and way
+back as fur as we could see.  And away down under the shinin'
+lanes the white statues stood, beautiful snow-white females, a
+lookin' as if they enjoyed it all.  And the lake mirrowed back all
+of the beauty.
+
+Right out onto the lake stood a fairy-like structure all glowin'
+with big drops of light and every glitterin' drop reflected down
+in the water and the fountain a sprayin' up on each side.  Why it
+sprayed up floods of diamonds, and rubys, and sapphires, and
+topazzes, and turkeys, and pearls, and opals, and sparklin' 'em
+right back into the water agin.
+
+And right while we stood there, neerly rooted to the spot and
+gazin' through extacy and 2 pickets, the band gin a loud burst of
+melody and then stopped, and after a minute of silence, we hearn a
+voice angel-sweet a risin' up, up, like a lark, a tender-hearted,
+golden-throated lark.
+
+High, high above all the throngs of human folks who wuz cheerin'
+her down below - up above the sea of glitterin' light - up above
+the bendin' trees that clasped their hands together in silent
+applaudin' above her, up, up, into the clear heavens, rose that
+glorious voice a singin' some song about love, love that wuz
+deathless, eternal.
+
+Why it seemed as if the very clouds wuz full of shadowy faces a
+bendin' down to hear it, and the new moon, shaped just like a
+boat, had glided down, down the sky to listen.
+
+If the man of the moon was there he wuz a layin' in the bottom of
+the boat, he wuzn't in sight.  But if he heard that music I'll bet
+he would say he wuzn't in the practice of hearin' any better.  And
+Josiah stood stun still till she had got done, and then he sort a
+sithed out:
+
+"Oh, it seems as if it must be Beuler land!  Do you s'pose,
+Samantha, Beuler land is any more beautiful?"
+
+And I sez, "I haint a thinkin' about Beulah."  I sez it pretty
+middlin' tart, partly to hide my own feelin's, which wuz perfectly
+rousted up, and partly from principle, and sez I, "Don't for
+mercy's sake call it Beuler."
+
+Josiah always will call it so.  I've got a 4th cousin, Beulah Smith
+(my own age and unmarried up to date), and he always did and would
+call her Beuler.  Truly in some things a pardner's influence and
+encouragement fails to accomplish the ends aimed at.
+
+Wall, it wuz after some words that I drew Josiah away from that
+seen of enchantment - or he me, I don't exactly know which way it
+wuz - and we wended onwards in our walk.
+
+The hull broad streets wuz full of folks, full as they could be,
+all on 'em perfect strangers to us and who knew what motives or
+weapons they wuz a carryin' with 'em; but we knew we wuz safe,
+Josiah and me did, for way up over all our heads, stood a big
+straight soldier, a volunteer volunteerin, to see to the hull crew
+on 'em below, a seein' that they behaved themselves.  His age wuz
+seventy-seven as near as I could make out but he didn't look
+more'n half that.  He had kep' his age remarkable.
+
+Wall, it wuz, if I remember right, jest about now that we see a
+glitterin' high up over our heads some writen in flame.  I never
+see such brilliant writin, before nor don't know as I ever shall
+ag'in.
+
+And Josiah stopped stun still, and stood a lookin' perfectly
+dumfoundered at it.  And finally he sez, "I'd give a dollar bill
+if I could write like that."
+
+I see he wuz deeply rousted up for 2 cents is as high as he
+usually goes in betted.  I see he felt deep and I didn't blame
+him.  Why," sez he, "jest imagine, Samantha, a hull letter wrote
+like that! how I'd love to send one back to Uncle Nate Gowdey.
+
+"How Uncle Nate's eyes would open, and he wouldn't want no
+spectacles nor nothin' to read it with, would he?  I wonder if I
+could do it," sez he, a beginnin' to be all rousted up.
+
+But I sez, "Be calm," for so deep is my mind that I grasped the
+difficuties of the undertaken' at once.  "How could yon send it,
+Josiah Allen?  Where would you get a envelop?  How could you get
+it into the mail bag?"  Sez I, "When anybody would send a letter
+wrote like that, they would want to write it on sheets of
+lightnin', and fold it up in the envelopin' clouds of the skies,
+and it should be received by a kneelin' and reverent soul.  Who is
+Uncle Nate that he should get it?  He has not a reverent Soul and
+he has also rheumatiz in his legs."
+
+And then I thought, so quick and active is my mind when it gets to
+startin' off on a tower, I thought of what I had hearn a few days
+before, of how the secret had been learnt by somebody who lived
+right there in the village, of floatin' letters up at sea from one
+ship to another, sigualin' out in letters of flame -
+
+"Help!  I'm a sinkin'!" or "Danger ahead!  Look out!"
+
+And I thought what it must be to stand on a dusky night on a lone
+deck and see up on the broad, dark; lonesome sky above, a sudden
+message, a flash of vivid lightnin', takin' to itself the form of
+language.  And I wondered to myself if in the future we should use
+the great pages of the night-sky to write messages from one city
+to another, or from sea to land, of danger and warnin'; and then I
+thought to myself, if souls clog-bound to earth are able to
+accomplish so much, who knows but the freed soul goin' outward and
+onward from height to height of wisdom may yet be able to signal
+down from the Safe Land messages of help and warnin' to the souls
+it loved below.
+
+The souls a sailin' and a driftin' through the dark night of
+despair - a dashin' along through fog and mist and darkness aginst
+rocks.  What it would be to one kneelin' in the lonesome night
+watches by a grave, if the dark sky could grow luminous and he
+could read, - "Do not despair!  I am alive!  I love you!"
+
+Or, in the hour of the blackest temptation and dread, when the
+earth is hollow and the sky a black vault, and the only way of
+happiness on God's earth seems down the dangerous, beautiful way,
+God-forbidden, what would it be to have the empty vault lit up
+with "Danger ahead!  We will help you! be patient a little
+longer!"
+
+Oh how fur my thoughts wuz a travellin', and at what a good jog,
+but not one trace did my companion see on my forward of these
+thoughts that wuz a passin' through my foretop: and at that very
+minute, we came up nigh enough to see that right back of the
+glitterin' language overhead, went a long line of big, glowin'
+stars of glory way up over our heads, and leadin' down a gentle
+declivity and Josiah sez, "Let's foller on, and see what it will
+lead us to, Samantha."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "light is pretty generally, safe to foller, Josiah
+Allen."  And so we meandered along, keepin' our 2 heads as nigh as
+we could under that long glitterin' chain of golden drops that wuz
+high overhead.  And on, and on, we follered it dilligently; till
+for the land's sake! if it didn't lead us to another one of them
+openwork buildin's, fixed off beautiful, and we could see inside 2
+big wells like, with acres of floor seemin'ly on each side of 'em,
+and crowds of folks a walkin' about and settin' at little tables
+and most all of 'em a drinkin'.
+
+The water they drinked we could see wuz a bubblin' up and a
+runnin' over all the time, in big round crystal globes.  And up,
+up on a slender pole way up over one of the wells hung another one
+of them crystal bowls, a bubblin' over with the water and
+sparklin'.
+
+And ag'in Josiah asked me if I thought Beuler land could compare
+with it?
+
+And I told him ag'in kinder sharp, That I wuzn't a thinkin' about
+Beuler, I didn't know any sech a place or name.  I wish he would
+call things right.
+
+Wall, he wuz so dead tired by this time, that we sot sail homewards;
+that is, my feet wuz tired, and my bones, but my mind seemed more
+rousted up than common.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+SARATOGA BY DAYLIGHT.
+
+
+Wall, the next mornin' Josiah and me sallied out middlin' early to
+explore still further the beauties and grandness of Saratoga.  I
+had on a black straw bonnet, a green vail, and a umbrell.  I also
+have my black alpacky, that good moral dress.
+
+My dress bein' such a high mission one choked me.  It wuz so high
+in the neck it held my chin up in a most uncomfortable position,
+but sort a grand and lofty lookin'.  My sleeves wuz so long that
+more'n half the time my hand wuz covered up by 'em and I wuz too
+honerable to wear 'em for mits; no, in the name of principle I
+wore 'em for sleeves, good long sleeves, a pattern to other
+grandmas that I might meet.
+
+I felt that when they see me and see what I wuz a doin' and
+endurin' fur the cause of female dressin' they would pause in
+their wild career, and cover up their necks and pull their sleeves
+down.
+
+Wall, it haint to be expected that I could walk along carryin'
+such hefty emotions as I wuz a carryin', and havin' my neck held
+high and stiddy both by principle and alpacky, and see to every
+step I wuz a takin'.  And, first I knew, right while I was
+enjoyin' the loftiest of these emotions, I ketched my foot in
+sunthin', and most fell down.  Instinctively (such is the power of
+love) I put out my hand and clutched at the arm of my pardner.
+But he too wuz nearly fallin' at the same time.  It wuz a narrow
+chance that we wuz a runnin' from having our prostrate forms a
+layin' there outstretched on the highway.
+
+Instinctively I sez, "Good land!" and Josiah sez -- wall, it is
+fur from me to tell what he said, but it ended up with these
+words, "Dumb them dumb sidewalks anyway;" and sez he, "I should
+think it would pay to have a little less gilt paint and spangles
+and orniments overhead and a few more solid bricks unless they
+want more funerals here, dumb 'em!"
+
+Sez I,"Be calm! who be you a talkin' about? who do you want to
+bring down your fearful curses on, Josiah Allen?"
+
+"Why, onto the dumb bricks," sez he.
+
+He wuz agitated and I said no more.  But four times in that first
+walk, did I descend almost precipitously into declivities amongst
+the bricks, risin' simultaneously on similar elevations.
+
+It wuz a fearful ordeel and I felt it so, but upheld by principle
+and Josiah, I moved onwards, through what seemed to be 5 great
+throngs and masses of people, 3 on the ground and 2 hinted up
+above us on tall pillows.
+
+Them immense places overhead long as the streets, wuz kinder
+scalloped out and trimmed off handsum with railin's, etc.  And on
+it -- oh! what a vast congregation of heads of all sorts and sizes
+and colors.  And oh! what a immense display of parasols; why no
+parasol store in the land could begin with what I see there.
+
+I can truly say that I thought I knew somethin' about parasols;,
+havin' owned 3 different ones in the course of my life, and havin'
+one covered over.  I thought I knew somethin' of their nater and
+habits, which is a good deal, so I had always s'posed, like a
+umbrell's.  But good land!  I gin up that I knew them not, nor
+never had.
+
+Why anybody could learn more on 'em through one jerney down that
+street, than from a hull lifetime in Jonesville.  Truly travel is
+very upliftin' and openin' and spreadin' out to the mind, both in
+parasols and human nater.
+
+Wall, them 2 masses over our heads wuz 2, then the one in which we
+wuz a strugglin' and the one opposite to it made 4.  For anybody
+with any pretence to learnin' knows that twice 2 is 4.  And then
+in the middle of the broad street was a bigger mass of chariots
+and horsemen, and carts and carriages, and great buggies and
+little ones, and big loads of barrels, and big loads of ladies,
+and then a load of wood, and then a load of hay, and then a pair
+of young folks pretty as a picture.  And then came some high big
+coaches as big as our spare bedroom, and as high as the roof on
+our horse barn, with six horses hitched to e'm, all runnin' over
+on top with men; and wimmen, and children, and parasols, and
+giggles, and ha ha's.  And a man wuz up behind a soundin' out on a
+trumpet, a dretful sort of a high, sweet note, not dwindlin' down
+to the end as some music duz, but kinder crinklin' round and
+endin' up in the air every time.
+
+Josiah wuz dretful took with it and he told me in confidence that
+he laid out when he got home to buy a trumpet and blow out jest
+them strains every time he went into Jonesville or out of it.  He
+said it would sound so sort a warlike and impressive.
+
+I expostulated aginst the idee.  But sez he, "You'll enjoy it when
+you get used to it."
+
+"Never!" sez I.
+
+"Yes you will," sez he, "and while I live I lay out that you shall
+have advantages, and shall enjoy things new and uneek."
+
+"Yes," sez I feelin'ly, "I expect to, Josiah Allen, as long as I
+live with you."  And I sithed.  But I had little time to enjoy
+even sithin', for oh! the crowd that wuz a pressin' onto us and
+surroundin' us on every side, some on 'em curius and strange
+lookin', some on 'em beautiful and grand.  Pretty young girls
+lookin' sweet enough to kiss, and right behind 'em a Chinese man
+with a long dress, and wooden shoes, and his hair in a long braid
+behind, and his eyes sot in sideways.  And then would come on a
+hull lot of wimmen in dresses ev'ry color of the rainbow, and some
+men.  Then a few childern, lookin' sweet as roses, with their
+mothers a pushin' the little carts ahead on 'em.  And if you'll
+believe it, I don't s'pose you will, but it is true, that lots of
+black ma's had childern jest as white as snow, and pretty as
+rosebuds, took after their fathers I s'pose.  But I don't believe
+in a mixin' of the races.  And when I see 'em a kissin' the pretty
+babys, I begun to muse a very little on the feelin's of the
+indignent South, at havin' a colered girl set in the same car with
+'em, or on a bench in the same school room.
+
+I mewsed on how they held the white forms clost to their black
+breasts at birth, and in the hour of death -- the black lips
+pressed to the white cheeks and lips, in both cases.  And all the
+way between life and death they mingle clost as they can, some in
+some cases like the hill of knowledge.  Then the contact is too
+clost, when they sot out to climb up by 'em.  Truly there are deep
+conundrums and strange ones, all along through life; though the
+white man may be, and is, cleer up out of his way, on the sunshiny
+brow of the hill, and the black man at the foot, way down amongst
+the shadows and darkness of the low grounds.  They don't come very
+nigh each other.  But the arms that have felt the clasp and the
+lips that have felt the kisses of that very same black climber all
+through life, moves 'em and shouts 'em to "go down," to "go back,"
+
+"The contact is getting too clost, danger is ahead."  Curious,
+haint it?  Jest as if any danger is so dangerous as ignorance and
+brutality.  Curious, haint it?  But I am a eppisodin', and to
+resoom.
+
+Wall, right after the babies we'd meet a Catholic priest with a
+calm and fur away look on his face, a lookin' at the crowd as if
+he wuz in it, but not of it.  And then a burgler, mebby, anyway a
+mean lookin' creeter, ragged and humble.  And then 2 or 3 men
+foreign lookin', jabberin' in a tongue I know nothin' of, nor
+Josiah either.  And then some more childern, and wimmen, and dogs,
+and parasols, and men, and babies, and Injuns, and Frenchmen, and
+old young wimmen, and young old ones, and handsome ones, and
+hombly ones, and parasols, and some sweet young girls ag'in, and
+some black men, and some white men, and some more wimmen, and
+parasols, and silk, and velvet, and lace, and puckers, and
+raffles, and gethers, and gores, and flowers, and feathers, and
+fringes, and frizzles, and then some men, some Southerners from
+the South, some Westerners from the West, some Easterners from the
+East, and some Cubebs from Cuba, and some Chinamen from China.
+
+Oh! what a seen!  What a seen! back and forth, passin' and
+repassin', to and fro, parasols, and dogs, and wimmen, and men,
+and babies, and parasols, to and fro, to and fro.  Why, if I stood
+there long so crazed would I have become at the seen, that I
+should have felt that Josiah wuz a To and I wuz a Fro, or I wuz a
+parasol and he wuz a dog.
+
+And to prevent that fearful catastrophe, I sez, "If we ever get
+beyond this side of the village that seems all run together, if we
+ever do get beyond it, which seems doubtful, le's go and sit down,
+in some quiet spot, and try to collect our scattered minds."  Sez
+I, "I feel curius, Josiah Allen!" and sez I, "How do you feel?"
+
+His answer I will not translate; it was neither Biblical nor even
+moral.  And I sez agin, "Hain't it strange that they have the
+village all run together with no streets turnin' off of it."  Sez
+I, "It makes me feel queer, Josiah Allen, and I am a goin' to
+enquire into it."  So we wended our way some further on amongst
+the dense crowd I have spoken of, only more crowded and more
+denser, and anon, if not oftener, Josiah's head would be scooped
+in by passin' parasols, and then in low, deep tones, Josiah would
+use words that I wouldn't repeat for a dollar bill, till at last I
+asked a by bystander a standin' by, and sez I, "Is this village
+all built together -- don't you have no streets a turnin' off of
+it?"
+
+"Yes," sez he, "you'll find a street jest as soon as you get by
+this hotel."
+
+I stopped right in my tracts; I wuz dumbfoundered.  Sez I, "Do you
+mean to say that this hull side of the street that we have been a
+traversin' anon, or long before anon, -- do you say that this is
+all one buildin'?"
+
+"Yes mom," sez he.
+
+Sez I, in faint axents, "When shall we get to the end on it?"
+
+Sez he, "You have come jest about half way."
+
+Josiah gin a deep groan and turned him round in his tracts and
+sez, "Le's go back this minute."
+
+I too thought of the quiet haven from whence we had set out, with
+a deep longin', but sech is the force and strength of my mind that
+I grasped holt of the situation and held it there tight.  If we
+wuz half way across it wouldn't be no further to go on than it
+would to go back.  Such wuz my intellect that I see it to once,
+but Josiah's mind couldn't grasp it, and with words murmured in my
+ears which I will never repeat to a livin' soul he wended on by my
+side through the same old crowd -- parasols, and wimmen, and dogs,
+and babies, and men, and parasols, and Injuns, and Spanards, and
+Creoles, and pretty girls, and old wimmen, and puckers, and
+gethers, and bracelets, and diamonds, and lace, and parasols.
+Several times, if not more, wuz Josiah Allen scooped in by a
+parasol held by a female, and I felt he wuz liable to be torn from
+me.  His weight is but small.  3 times his hat fell off in the
+operation and wuz reskued with difficulty, and he spoke words I
+blush to recall as havin' passed my pardner's lips.
+
+Wall, in the fullness of time, or a little after, for truly I wuz
+not in a condition to sense things much, we arrove at a street and
+we gladly turned our 2 frames into it, and wended our way on it,
+goin' at a pretty good jog.  The crowd a growin' less and less and
+we kep a goin', and kep a goin', till Josiah sez in weary axents:
+
+"Where be you a goin', Samantha?  Haint you never goin' to stop?
+I am fairly tuckered out."
+
+And I sez in faint axents, "I would fain reach a land where
+parasols and puckers are not and dogs and diamonds are no more."
+
+I wuz middlin' incoherent from my agitation.  But I meant well.  I
+wuz truly in hopes I would reach some quiet place where Josiah and
+me could set down alone.  Where I could look in quiet and repose
+upon that dear bald head, and recooperate my strength.
+
+We went by beautiful places, grand houses of different colors but
+every one on 'em good lookin' ones, a settin' back amongst their
+green trees, with shady grass-covered yards, and fountains and
+flower beds in front of 'em, and more grand handsome houses, and
+more big beautiful yards, green velvet grass and beautiful flowers
+and fountains, and birds and beauty on every side on us.
+
+And though I felt and knew that in them big carriages that was a
+passin' 2 and fro all the time, though I felt that parasols, and
+puckers, and laces, and dogs, and diamonds, wuz a bein' borne past
+me all the time, yet sech is the force of my mind that I could
+withdraw my specks from 'em, and look at the beautiful works of
+nater (assisted by man) that wuz about me on every hand.
+
+Finally my long search wuz rewarded, we came to a big open gateway
+that seemed to lead into a large, quiet delightful forest.  And in
+that lovely, lonesome place, Josiah and me sot down to recooperate
+our 2 energies.
+
+Josiah looked good to me.  Men are nice creeters, but you don't
+want to see too meny of 'em to once, likeways with wimmen.  Josiah
+looked to me at that moment some like a calico dress that you have
+picked out of a dense quantity of patterns of calico at a store,
+it looks better to you when you get it away from the rest.  Josiah
+Allen looked good to me.
+
+But anon, after I had bathed my distracted eyes (as you may say)
+in the liniment of my pardner, I began to take in the rare beauty
+of the seen laid out before me and we arose and wended our way
+onwards peaceful and serene, as 2 childern led on by their mother.
+
+Dear Mother Nature! how dost thou rest and soothe thy distracted
+childern when too hardly used by the grindin', oppressive hands of
+fashion,and the weerisome elements of a too civilized life.  Maybe
+thou art a heathen mother, oneducated and ignorant in all but the
+wisdom of love, but thy bosom is soft and restful, and thy arms
+lovin' and tender.  And, heathen if thou art, we love thee first
+and at last.  We are glad to slip out of all the vain and gilded
+supports that have held us weerily up, and lay down our tired
+heads on thy kindly and unquestionin' bosom and rest.
+
+As we rose from the soft turf, on which we had been a restin', and
+meandered on through that beautiful park, (so tenderly had nature
+used him,) not one trace of the wild commotion that had almost
+rent Josiah Allen's breast, could be seen save one expirin'
+threeoh of agony.  As we started out ag'in, he looked down onto my
+faithful umberell, that had stiddied me on so many towers of
+principle, and sez he, in low concentrated axents of skern and
+bitterness, "If that wuz a dumb parasol, Samantha, I would crush
+it to the earth and grind it to atoms."
+
+Truly he could not forget how his bald head had been gethered in
+like a ripe sheaf, by 7 females, during that very walk, hombly
+ones too, so it had happened.  But I sez nothin' in reply to this
+expirin' note of the crysis he had passed through, knowin' this
+was not the time for silver speech but for golden silence, and so
+we meandered onwards.
+
+And it wuz anon that we see in the distance a fair white female a
+standin' kinder still in the edge of the woods, and Josiah spoke
+in a seemin'ly careless way, and sez he, "She don't seem to have
+many clothes on, Samantha."
+
+Sez I, "Hush, Josiah! she has probably overslept herself, and come
+out in a hurry, mebby to look for some herbs or sunthin'.  I
+persoom one of her childern are sick, and she sprung right up out
+of bed, and come out to get some weather-wort, or catnip, or
+sunthin'."
+
+And as I spoke I drawed Josiah down a side path away from her.
+But he stopped stun still and sez he, "Mebby I ought to go and
+help her Samantha."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, sense I lived with you, I don't think I have
+been shamder of you;" sez I, "it would mortify her to death if she
+should mistrust you had seen her in that condition."
+
+"Wall," sez he, still a hangin' back, "if the child is very sick,
+and I can be any help to her, it is my duty to go."
+
+His eye had been on her nearly every moment of the time, in spite
+of my almost voyalent protests, and sez he, kinder excited like,
+"She is standin' stun still, as if she is skarit; mebby there is a
+snake in front of her or sunthin', or mebby she is took paralysed,
+I'd better go and see."
+
+Sez I, in low, deep axents, "You stay where you be, Josiah Allen,
+and I will go forward, bein' 2 females together, it is what it is
+right to do and if we need your help I will holler."
+
+And finally he consented after a parlay.
+
+Wall, as I got up to her I see she wuzn't a live, meat woman, but
+a statute and so I hastened back to my Josiah and told him there
+wuzn't no need of his help and he wuz in the right on't -- she wuz
+stun still."
+
+He said he guessed we'd better go that way.  And I sez, "No,
+Josiah, I want to go round by the other road."
+
+Wall, we got back to our abode perfectly tuckered out, but
+perfectly happy.  And we concluded that after dinner we would set
+out and see the different springs and partake of 'em.  Had it not
+been for our almost frenzied haste to get away from parasols and
+dogs and destraction into a place of rest we should have beheld
+them sooner.  And our afternoon's adventures I will relate in
+another epistol.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+SEEING THE DIFFERENT SPRINGS.
+
+
+Immegeatly after dinner (a good one) Josiah Allen, Ardelia Tutt
+and me sot out to view and look at the different springs and to
+partake of the same.  We hadn't drinked a drop of it as yet.
+Ardelia had come over to go with us.  She had on a kind of a
+yellowish drab dress and a hat made of the same, with some drab
+and blue bows of ribbon and some pink holly-hawks in it, and she
+had some mits on (her hands prespired dretfully, and she sweat
+easy).  As I have said, she is a good lookin' girl but soft.  And
+most any dress she puts on kinder falls into the same looks.  It
+may be quite a hard lookin' dress before she puts it on, but
+before she has wore it half a hour it will kinder crease down into
+the softest lookin, thing you ever see.  And so with her bonnets,
+and mantillys, and everything.
+
+The down onto a goslin's breast never looked softer than every rag
+she had on this very afternoon, and no tender goslin' itself wuz
+ever softer than she wuz on the inside on't.  But that didn't
+hinder my likin' her.
+
+Wall, anon, or a little before, we came to that long, long
+buildin', beautiful and dretful ornimental, but I could see plain
+by daylight what I had mistrusted before, that it wuzn't built for
+warmth.  It must be dretful cold in the winter, and I don't see
+how the wimmen folks of the home could stand it, unless they hang
+up bed quilts and blankets round the side, and then, I should
+think they would freeze.  They couldn't keep their house plants
+over winter any way - and I see they had sights of 'em - unless
+they kep' 'em down suller.
+
+But howsumever, that is none of my lookout.  If they want to be so
+fashionable, as to try to live out doors and in the house too,
+that is none of my business.  And of course it looked dretful
+ornimental and pretty.  But I will say this, it haint bein' mejum.
+I should rather live either out doors, or in the house, one of the
+2.  But I am a eppisodin'.  And to resoom.
+
+Josiah Allen paid the money demanded of him and we went in and
+advanced onwards to where a boy wuz a pullin' up the water and
+handin' of it round.
+
+It looked dretful bubblin' and sparklin'.  Why sunthin' seemed to
+be a sparklin' up all the time in the water and I thought to
+myself mebby it wuz water thoughts, mebby it wanted to tell
+sunthin', mebby it has all through these years been a tryin' to
+bubble up and sparkle out in wisdom but haint found any one yet
+who could understand its liquid language.  Who knows now?
+
+I took my glass and looked close - sparkle, sparkle, up came the
+tiny thought sparks!  But I wuzn't wise enough to read the
+glitterin' language.  No I wuzn't deep enough.  It would take a
+deep mind, mebby thousands of feet deep, to understand the great
+glowin' secret that it has been a tryin' to reveal and couldn't.
+Mebby it has been a tryin' to tell of big diamond mines that it
+has passed through - great cliffs and crags of gold sot deep with
+the crystalized dew of diamonds.
+
+But no, I didn't believe that wuz it.  That wouldn't help the
+world, only to make it happier, and these seemed to me to be
+dretful inspirin', upliftin' thoughts.  No, mebby it is a tryin'
+to tell a cold world about a way to heat it.  Mebby it has been a
+runnin' over and is sparklin' with bright thoughts about how deep
+underneath the earth lay a big fireplace, that all the cold
+beggars of mortality could set round and warm their frozen fingers
+by, - a tryin' to tell how the heat of that fire that escapes now
+up the chimbleys of volcanoes, and sometimes in sudden drafts
+blows out sideways into earthquakes, etc., could be utilized by
+conveyin' it up on top of the ground, and have it carried into the
+houses like Croton water.  Who knows now?  Mebby that is it!
+
+Oh!  I felt that it would be a happy hour for Samantha when she
+could bile her potatoes by the heat of that large noble fire-place.
+And more than that, far more wuz the thought that heat might become,
+in the future, as cheap as cold.  That the little cold hands that
+freeze every winter in the big cities, could be stretched out before
+the big generous warmth of that noble fire-place.  And who built
+that fire in the first place?  Who laid the first sticks on the
+handirons, and put the match to it?  Who wuz it that did it, and
+how did he look, and when wuz he born, and why, and where?
+
+These, and many other thoughts of similar size and shape, filled
+my brane almost full enough to lift up the bunnet, that reposed
+gracefully on my foretop, as I stood and held the sparklin' glass
+in my hands.
+
+Sparkle! sparkle! sparkle! what wuz it, it wuz a tryin' to say to
+me and couldn't?  Good land!  I couldn't tell, and Josiah
+couldn't, I knew instinctively he couldn't, though I didn't ask
+him.
+
+No, I turned and looked at that beloved man, for truly I had for
+the time bein' been by the side of myself, and I see that he wuz
+a drinkin' lavishly of the noble water.  I see that he wuz a
+drinkin' more than wuz for his good, his linement showed it, and
+sez I, for he wuz a liftin' another tumbler full onto his lips,
+sez I, "Pause, Josiah Allen, and don't imbibe too much."
+
+"Why," he whispered, "you can drink all you are a mind to for 5
+cents.  I am bound for once, Samantha Allen, to get the worth of
+my money."
+
+And he drinked the tumbler full down at one swoller almost, and
+turned to the weary boy for another.  He looked bad, and eager,
+and sez I, "How many have you drinked?"
+
+Sez he, in a eager, animated whisper, "9."  And he whispered in
+the same axents, "5 times 9 is 45 ; if it had been to a fair, or
+Fourth of July, or anything, it would have cost me 45 cents, and
+if it had been to a church social - lemme see - 9 times 10 is 90.
+It would have cost me a dollar bill!  And here I am a havin' it
+all for 5 cents.  Why," sez he, "I never see the beat on't in my
+life."
+
+And ag'in he drinked a tumbler full down, and motioned to the
+frightened boy for another.
+
+But I took him by the vest and whispered to him, sez I, "Josiah
+Allen, do you want to die, because you can die cheap?  Why," sez
+I, "it will kill you to drink so much."
+
+"But think of the cheapness on't Samantha!  The chance I have of
+getting the worth of my money."
+
+But I whispered back to him in anxus axents and told him, that I
+guessed if funeral expenses wuz added to that 5 cents it wouldn't
+come so cheap, and sez I, "you wont live through many more glasses,
+and you'll see you wont.  Why," sez I, "you are a drowndin' out
+your insides."
+
+He wuz fairly a gettin' white round the mouth, and I finally got
+him to withdraw, though he looked back longingly at the tumblers
+and murmured even after I had got him to the door, that it wuz a
+dumb pity when anybody got a chance to get the worth of their
+money, which wuzn't often, to think they couldn't take advantage
+on it.
+
+And I sez back to him in low deep axents, "There is such a thing
+as bein' too graspin', Josiah Allen."  Sez I, "The children of
+Israel used to want to lay up more manny than they wanted or
+needed, and it spilte on their hands."  And sez I, "you see if it
+haint jest so with you; you have been in too great haste to enrich
+yourself, and you'll be sorry for it, you see if you haint."
+
+And he was.  Though he uttered language I wouldn't wish to repeat,
+about the children of Israel and about me for bringin' of 'em up.
+But the man wuz dethly sick.  Why he had drinked 11 tumblers full,
+and I trembled to think what would have follered on, and ensued,
+if I hadn't interfered.  As it wuz, he wuz confined to our abode
+for the rest of the day.
+
+But I wouldn't have Josiah Allen blamed more than is due for this
+little incedent, for it only illustrates a pervailin' trait in
+men's nater, and sometimes wimmen's - a too great desire to amass
+sudden riches, and when opportunity offers, burden themselves with
+useless and wearysome and oft-times painful gear.
+
+They don't need it but seeing they have a chance to get it cheap,
+"dog cheap " as the poet observes, why they weight themselves down
+with it, and then groan under the burden of unnecessary and wearin'
+wealth.  This is a deep subject, deep as the well from which my
+companion drinked, and nearly drinked himself into a untimely grave.
+
+Men heap up more riches than they can enjoy and then groan and
+rithe under the taxes, the charity given, the envy, the noteriety,
+the glare, and the glitter, the crowd of fortune-hunters and
+greedy hangers-on, and the care and anxiety.  They orniment the
+high front of their houses with the paint, the gildin', the
+fashion, and the show of enormous wealth, and while the crowd of
+fashion-seekers and fortune-hunters pour in and out of the lofty
+doorway they set out on the back stoop a groanin' and a sithin' at
+the cares and sleepless anxietes of their big wealth, and then
+they git up and go down street and try their best to heap up more
+treasure to groan over.
+
+And wimmen now, when wuz there ever a woman who could resist a
+good bargain?  Her upper beauro draws may be a runnin' over with
+laces and ribbons, but let her see a great bargain sold for
+nothin' almost, and where is the female woman that can resist
+addin' to that already too filled up beauro draw.
+
+A baby, be he a male, or be he a female child, when he has got a
+appel in both hands, will try to lay holt of another, if you hold
+it out to him.  It is human nater.  Josiah must not be considered
+as one alone in layin' up more riches than he needed.  He suffered,
+and I also, for sech is the divine law of love, that if one member
+of the family suffers, the other members suffer also, specially
+when the sufferin' member is impatient and voyalent is his distress,
+and talks loud and angry at them who truly are not to blame.
+
+Now I didn't make the springs nor I wuzn't to blame for their
+bein' discovered in the first place.  But Josiah laid it to me.
+And though I tried to make him know that it wuz a Injun that
+discovered 'em first, he wouldn't gin in and seemed to think they
+wouldn't have been there if it hadn't been for me.
+
+I hated to hear him go on so.  And in the cause of Duty, I brung
+up Sir William Johnson and others.  But he lay there on the lounge,
+and kep' his face turned resolute towards the wall, in a dretful
+oncomfertable position (sech wuz his temper of mind), and said,
+he never had heard of them, nor the springs nuther, and shouldn't
+if it hadn't been for me.
+
+Why, sez I, "A Injun brought Sir William Johnson here on his
+back."
+
+"Wall," sez he, cross as a bear, "that is the way you'll have to
+take me back, if you go on in this way much longer."
+
+"In what way, Josiah?" sez I.
+
+"Why a findin' springs and draggin' a man off to 'em, and makin'
+him drink."
+
+"Why, Josiah Allen," sez I, "I told you not to drink - don't you
+remember?"
+
+"No!  I don't remember nuthin', nor don't want to.  I want to go
+to sleep!" sez he, snappish as anything, so I went out and let him
+think if he wanted to, that I made the Springs, and the Minerals,
+and the Gysers, and the Spoutin' Rock, and everything.  Good land!
+I knew I didn't; but I had to rest under the unkind insinnuation.
+Such is some of the trials of pardners.
+
+But Josiah waked up real clever.  And I brung him up some delicate
+warm toast and some fragrant tea, and his smile on me wuz dretful
+good-natured, almost warm.  And I forgot all his former petulence
+and basked in the rays of love and happiness that beamed on me out
+of the blue sky of my companion's eyes.  The clear blue sky that
+held two stars, to which my heart turned.
+
+Such is some of the joys of pardners with which the world don't
+meddle with, nor can't destroy.
+
+But to resoom.  Ardelia sot down awhile in our room before she
+went back to her boardin' house.  I see she wuz a writin' for she
+had a long lead pencil in her right hand and occasionally she
+would lean her forrerd down upon it, in deep thought, and before
+she went, she slipped the verses into my hand.
+
+Sez I, a lookin' over my specks at Ardelia after I had finished
+readin' the verses: "What does 'ron' mean?  I never heerd of that
+word before, nor knew there wuz sech a one."
+
+Sez she, "I meant ran, but I s'pose it is a poetical license to
+say 'ron,' don't you think so?"
+
+"Oh, yes," sez I, "I s'pose so, I don't know much about licenses,
+nor don't want to, they are suthin' I never believed in.  But,"
+sez I, for I see she looked red and overcasted by my remarks, "I
+don't s'pose it will make any difference in a 100 years whether
+you say ran or ron."
+
+But sez I, "Ardelia, it is a hot day, and I wouldn't write any
+more if I wuz in your place.  If you should heat your bra-, the
+upper part of your head, you might not get over it for some time."
+
+"But," sez she, "you have told me sometimes to stop on account of
+cold weather."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "most any kind of weather is hard on some kinds of
+poetry."  Sez I, "Poetry is sunthin' that takes particular kinds
+of folks and weather to be successful."  Sez I, "It is sunthin'
+that can't be tampered with with impunity by Christians or world's
+people.  It is a kind of a resky thing to do, and I wouldn't write
+any more to-day, Ardelia."
+
+And she heard to me and after a settin' a while with us, she went
+back to Mr. Pixley's.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+JOSIAH AND SAMANTHA TAKE A LONG WALK.
+
+
+Wall, we hadn't been to Saratoga long before Aunt Polly Pixley
+came over to see us, for Aunt Polly had been as good as her word
+and had come to Saratoga, to her 2d cousins, the Mr. Pixley'ses,
+where Ardelia wuz a stopping.  Ardelia herself is a distant
+relation to Aunt Polly, quite distant, about 40 or 50 miles
+distant when they are both to home.
+
+Wall, the change in Aunt Polly is wonderful, perfectly wonderful.
+She don't look like the same woman.
+
+She took her knittin' work and come in the forenoon, for a all
+day's visit, jest as she wuz used to in the country, good old soul
+- and I took her right to my room and done well by her, and we
+talked considerable about other wimmen, not runnin' talk, but good
+plain talk.
+
+She thinks a sight of the Saratoga water, and well she may, if
+that is what has brung her up, for she wuz always sick in
+Jonesville, kinder bedrid.  And when she sot out for Saratoga she
+had to have a piller to put on the seat behind her to sort a prop
+her up (hen's feather).
+
+And now, she told me she got up early every mornin' and walked
+down to the spring for a drink of the water - walked afoot.  And
+she sez, "It is astonishin' how much good that water is a doin'
+me; for," sez she, "when I am to home I don't stir out of the
+house from one day's end to the other; and here," sez she, "I set
+out doors all day a'most, a listenin' to the music in the park
+mornin' and evenin' I hear every strain on't."
+
+Aunt Polly is the greatest one for music I ever see, or hearn on.
+And I sez to her, "Don't you believe that one great thing that is
+helpin' you, is bein' where you are kep' gay and cheerful, - by
+music and good company; and bein' out so much in the sunshine and
+pure air."  (Better air than Saratoga has got never wuz made; that
+is my opinion and Josiah's too.)  And sez I, "I lay a good deal to
+that air."
+
+"No," she said, "it wuz the water."
+
+Sez I, "The water is good, I don't make no doubts on't."  But I
+continued calmly - for though I never dispute, I do most always
+maintain my opinion - and I sez again calmly, "There has been a
+great change in you for the better, sense you come here, Miss
+Pixley.  But some on't I lay to your bein' where things are so
+much more cheerful and happyfyin'.  You say you haint heerd a
+strain of music except a base viol for over 14 years before you
+come here.  And though base viols if played right may be
+melodious, yet Sam Pixley's base viol wuz a old one, and sort a
+cracked and grumbly in tone, and he wuzn't much of a player
+anyway, and to me, base viols always sounded kinder base anyway."
+
+And sez I, "Don't you believe a gettin' out of your little low
+dark rooms, shaded by Pollard willers and grave stuns, and gettin'
+out onto a place where you can heer sweet music from mornin' till
+night, a liftin' you up and makin' you happier - don't you believe
+that has sunthin' to do with your feelin' so much better - that
+and the pure sweet air of the mountains comin' down and bein'
+softened and enriched by the breath of the valley, and the minerals,
+makin' a balmy atmosphere most full of balm - I lay a good deal to
+that."
+
+"Oh no," sez she, "it is the water."
+
+"Yes," sez I, in a very polite way, - I will be polite, "the water
+is good, first rate."
+
+But at that very minute, word come to her that she had company,
+and she sot sail homewards immegetly, and to once.
+
+And now I don't care anything for the last word, some wimmen do,
+but I don't.  But I sez to her, as I watched her a goin' down the
+stairway, steppin' out like a girl almost, sez I, "How well you do
+seem, Aunt Polly; and I lay a good deal on't to that air."
+
+Now who would have thought she would speak out from the bottom of
+the stairway and say, "No, it is the water?"
+
+Wall, the water is good, there haint no doubt, and anyway, through
+the water and the air, and bein' took out of her home cares, and
+old surroundin's onto a brght happy place, the change in Polly
+Pixley is sunthin' to be wondered at.
+
+Yes, the water is good.  And it is dretful smart, knowin' water
+too.  Why, wouldn't anybody think that when it all comes from the
+same place, or pretty nigh the same place anyway, that they would
+get kinder flustrated and mixed up once in a while?
+
+But they don't.  These hundreds and thousands of years, and I
+don't know how much longer, they have kep' themselves separate
+from each other, livin' nigh neighbors there down under the
+ground, but never neighborin' with each other, or intermarryin' in
+each other's families.  No, they have kep' themselves apart,
+livin' exclosive down below and bubblin' up exclosive.
+
+They know how to make each other keep their proper distance, and I
+s'pose through all the centuries to come they will bubble up,
+right side by side, entirely different from each other.
+
+Curius, hain't it?  Dretful smart, knowin' waters they be, fairly
+sparklin' and flashin' with light and brightness, and intelligence.
+They are for the healin' and refreshin' of ,the nations, and the
+nations are all here this summer, a bein' healed by 'em.  But still
+I lay a good deal to that air.
+
+Amongst the things that Aunt Polly told me about wimmen that day,
+wuz this, that Ardelia Tutt had got a new Bo, Bial Flamburg, by
+name.
+
+She said Mr. Flamburg had asked Ardelia's 3d cousin to introduce
+him to her, and from that time his attentions to her had been
+unremittent, voyalent, and close.  She said that to all human
+appearance he wuz in love with her from his hat band down to his
+boots and she didn't know what the result would be, though she
+felt that the situation wuz dangerus, and more'n probable Abram
+Gee had more trouble ahead on him.  (Aunt Polly jest worships
+Abram Gee, jest as everybody duz that gets to know him well.)
+And I too, felt that the situation wuz dubersome.  For Ardelia I
+knew wuz one of the soft little wimmen that has got to have men
+a trailin' round after 'em; and her bein' so uncommon tender
+hearted, and Mr. Flamburg so deep in love, I feared the result.
+
+Wall, I wuz jest a thinkin' of this that day after dinner when
+Josiah proposed a walk, so we sot out.  He proposed we should walk
+through the park, so we did.  The air wuz heavenly sweet and that
+park is one of the most restful and beautiful places this side of
+Heaven, or so it seemed to us that pleasant afternoon.  The music
+was very soft and sweet that day, sweet with a undertone of
+sadness, some like a great sorrowful soul in a beautiful body.
+
+The balmy south wind whispered through the branches of the bendin'
+trees on the hill where we sot.  The light was a shinin' and a
+siftin' down through the green leaves, in a soft golden haze, and
+the music seemed to go right up into them shadowy, shinin' pathways
+of golden misty light, a climbin' up on them shadowy steps of mist
+and gold, and amber, up, up into the soft depths of the blue
+overhead - up to the abode of melody and love.
+
+Down the hill in the beautiful little valley, all amongst the
+fountains and windin' walks and white statutes, and green, green,
+grass, little children wuz a playin'.  Sweet little toddlers, jest
+able to walk about, and bolder spirits, though small, a trudgin'
+about with little canes, and jumpin' round, and havin' a good
+time.
+
+Little boys and little girls (beautiful creeters, the hull on
+'em), for if their faces, every one on 'em, wuzn't jest perfect!
+They all had the beauty of childhood and happiness.  And crowds of
+older folks wuz there.  And some happy young couples, youths and
+maidens, wuz a settin' round, and a wanderin' off by themselves,
+and amongst them we see the form of Ardelia, and a young man by
+her side.
+
+She wuz a leanin' on the stun railin' that fences in the trout
+pond.  She wuz evidently a lookin' down pensively at the shinin'
+dartin' figures of the trout, a movin' round down in the cool
+waters.
+
+I wuzn't nigh enough to 'em to see really how her companion
+looked, but even at that distance I recognized a certain air and
+atmosphere a surroundin' Ardelia that I knew meant poetry.
+
+And Josiah recognized it too, and he sez to me, "We may as well go
+round the hill and out to the road that way," sez he, (a pointin'
+to the way furthest from Ardelia) "and we may as well be a goin'."
+
+That man abhors poetry.
+
+Wall, we wandered down into the high way and havin' most the hull
+afternoon before us, we kinder sauntered round amongst the stores
+that wuz pretty nigh to where we wuz.  There is some likely good
+lookin' stores kep' by the natives, as they call the stiddy
+dwellers in Saratoga.  Good lookin' respectable stores full of
+comfort and consolation, for the outer or inner man or woman.  (I
+speak it in a mortal sense).
+
+But with the hundred thousand summer dwellers, who flock here with
+the summer birds, and go out before the swallers go south, there
+comes lots of summer stores, and summer shops, and picture
+studios, etc., etc.  Like big summer bird's-nests, all full and a
+runnin' over with summer wealth, to be blowed down by the autumn
+winds.  These shops are full of everything elegant and beautiful
+and useful.  The most gorgeous vases and plaks and chiner ware of
+every description and color, and books, and jewelry, and rugs, and
+fans, and parasols, and embroideries, and laces, and etc., etc.,
+etc.
+
+And one shop seemed to be jest full of drops of light, light and
+sunshine, crystalized in golden, clear, tinted amber.  There wuz a
+young female statute a standin' up in the winder of that store
+with her hands outstretched and jest a drippin' with the great
+glowin' amber drops.  Some wuz a hangin' over her wings for she
+was a young flyin' female.  And I thought to myself it must be she
+would fly better with all that golden light a drippin' about her.
+
+Josiah liked her looks first rate.  And he liked the looks of some
+of the pictures extremely.  There wuz lots of places all full of
+pictures.  A big collection of water colors, though as Josiah said
+and well said, How they could get so many colors out of water wuz
+a mystery to him.
+
+But my choice out of all the pictures I see, wuz a little one
+called "The Sands of Dee."  It wuz "Mary a callin' the cattle
+home."  The cruel treacherus water wuz a risin' about her round
+bare ankles as she stood there amongst the rushes with her little
+milk-bucket on her arm.
+
+Her pretty innocent face wuz a lookin' off into the shadows, and
+the last ray of sunset was a fallin' on her.  Maybe it wuz the
+pity on't that struck so hard as I looked at it, to know that the
+"cruel, crawli'n foam" wuz so soon to creep over the sweet young
+face and round limbs.  And there seemed to be a shadow of the
+comin' fate, a sweepin' in on the gray mist behind her.
+
+I stood for some time, and I don't know but longer, a lookin' at
+it, my Josiah a standin' placidly behind me, a lookin' over my
+shoulder and enjoyin' of it too, till the price wuz mentioned.
+But at that fearful moment, my pardner seized me by the arm, and
+walked me so voyalently out of that store and down the walk that I
+did not find and recover myself till we stood at the entrance to
+Philey street.
+
+And I wuz so out of breath, by his powerful speed, that she didn't
+look nateral to me, I hardly recognized Philey.  But Josiah
+hurried me down Philey and wanted to get my mind offen Mary Dee I
+knew, for he says as we come under a sign hangin' down over the
+road, "Horse Exchange," sez he, "What do you say, Samantha, do you
+spose I could change off the old mair, for a camel or sunthin'?
+How would you like a camel to ride?"
+
+I looked at him in speechless witherin' silence, and he went on
+hurridly, "It would make a great show in Jonesville, wouldn't it,
+to see us comin' to meetin' on a camel, or to see us ridin' in a
+cutter drawed by one.  I guess I'll see about it, some other
+time."
+
+And he went on hurridly, and almost incoherently as we see another
+sign, over the road - oh! how vollubly he did talk - "Quick,
+Livery."
+
+"I hate to see folks so dumb conceeted!  Now I don't spose that
+man has got any hosses much faster than the old mair."
+
+"'Wing's!'  Shaw!  I don't believe no such thing - a livery on
+wings.  I don't believe a word on't.  And you wouldn't ketch me on
+one on 'em, if they had!"
+
+"'Yet Sing!"' sez he, a lookin' accost the street into a laundry
+house.  "What do I care if you do sing?  'Taint of much account if
+you do any way.  I sing sometimes, I yet sing," says he.
+
+"Sing," sez I in neerly witherin' tone.  "I'd love to hear you
+sing, I haint yet and I've lived with you agoin' on 30 years."
+
+"Wall, if you haint heerd me, it is because you are deef," sez he.
+
+But that is jest the way he kep' on, a hurryin' me along, and a
+talkin' fast to try to get the price of that picture out of my
+head.  Anon, and sometimes oftener, we would come to the word in
+big letters on signs, or on the fence, or the sides of barns,
+"Pray."  And sometimes it would read, "Pray for my wife!"  And
+Josiah every time he came to the words would stop and reflect on
+'em.
+
+"`Pray!'  What business is it of yourn, whether I pray or not?
+`Pray for my wife!'  That haint none of your business."
+
+Sez he, a shakin' his fist at the fence, "'Taint likely I should
+have a wife without prayin' for her.  She needs it bad enough,"
+sez he once, as he stood lookin' at it.
+
+I gin him a strange look, and he sez, "You wouldn't like it, would
+you, if I didn't pray for you?"
+
+"No," sez I, "and truly as you say, the woman who is your wife
+needs prayer, she needs help, morn half the time she duz."
+
+He looked kinder dissatisfied at the way I turned it, but he sez,
+"'Plumbin' done here!'"
+
+"I'd love to know where they are goin' to plum.  I don't see no
+sign of plum trees, nor no stick to knock 'em off with."  And agin
+he sez, "You would make a great 'fuss, Samantha, if I should say
+what is painted up right there on that cross piece.  You would say
+I wuz a swearin'."
+
+Sez I coldly, (or as cold as I could with my blood heated by the
+voyalence and rapidity of the walk he had been a leadin' me,)
+"There is a Van in front of it.  Van Dam haint swearin'."
+
+"You would say it wuz if I used it," sez he reproachfully.  "If I
+should fall down on the ice, or stub my toe, and trip up on the
+meetin' house steps, and I should happen to mention the name of
+that street about the same time, you would say I wuz a swearin'."
+
+I did not reply to him; I wouldn't.  And ag'in he hurried me on'ards
+by some good lookin' bildin's, and trees, and tavrens, and cottages,
+and etc., etc., and we come to Caroline street, and Jane, and
+Matilda, and lots of wimmen's names.
+
+And Josiah sez, "I'll bet the man that named them streets wuz love
+sick!"
+
+But he wuzn't no such thing.  It was a father that owned the land,
+and laid out the streets, and named 'em for his daughters.  Good
+old creeter!  I wuzn't goin' to have him run at this late day, and
+run down his own streets too.
+
+But ag'in Josiah hurried me on'ards.  And bimeby we found
+ourselves a standin' in front of a kind of a lonesome lookin'
+house, big and square, with tall pillows in front.  It wuz a
+standin' back as if it wuz a kinder a drawin' back from company,
+in a square yard all dark and shady with tall trees.  And it all
+looked kinder dusky, and solemn like.  And a bystander a standin'
+by told us that it wuz "ha'nted."
+
+Josiah pawed at it, and shawed at the idee of a gost.
+
+But I sez, "There! that is the only thing Saratoga lacked to make
+her perfectly interestin', and that is a gost!"
+
+But agin Josiah pawed at the idee, and sez, "There never wuz such
+a thing as a gost! and never will be."  And sez he, "what an
+extraordenary idiot anybody must be to believe in any sech thing."
+And ag'in he looked very skernful and high-headed, and once ag'in
+he shawed.
+
+And I kep' pretty middlin' calm and serene and asked the
+bystander, when the gost ha'nted, and where?
+
+And he said, it opened doors and blowed out lights mostly, and
+trampled up stairs.
+
+"Openin', and blowin', and tramplin'," sez I dreamily.
+
+"Yes," sez the man, "that's what it duz."
+
+And agin Josiah shawed loud.  And agin I kep' calm, and sez I,
+"I'd give a cent to see it."  And sez I, "Do you suppose it would
+blow out and trample if we should go in?"
+
+But Josiah grasped holt of my arm and sez, "'Taint safe! my dear
+Samantha! don't le's go near the house."
+
+"Why? " sez I coldly, "you say there haint no sech thing as a
+gost, what are you afraid on?"
+
+His teeth wuz fairly chatterin'.  "Oh! there might be spiders
+there, or mice, it haint best to go."
+
+I turned silently round and started on, for my companion's looks
+was pitiful in the extreme.  But I merely observed this, as we
+wended onwards, "I have always noticed this, Josiah Allen, that
+them that shaw the most at sech things, are the ones whose teeth
+chatter when they come a nigh 'em, showin' plain that the shawers
+are really the ones that believe in 'em."
+
+"My teeth chattered," sez he, "because my gooms ache."
+
+"Well," sez I, "the leest said the soonest mended."  And we went
+on fast ag'in by big houses and little, and boardin' houses, and
+boardin' houses, and boardin' houses, and tavrens, and tavrens,
+and he kept me a walkin' till my feet wuz most blistered.
+
+I see what his aim wuz; I had recognized it all the hull time.
+
+But as we went up the stairway into our room, perfectly tuckered
+out, both on us, I sez to him, in weary axents, "That picture wuz
+cheap enough, for the money, wuzn't it?"
+
+He groaned aloud.  And sech is my love for that man, that the
+minute I heard that groan I immegetly added, "Though I hadn't no
+idee of buyin' it, Josiah."
+
+Immegetly he smiled warmly, and wuz very affectionate in his
+demeener to me for as much as two hours and a half.  Sech is the
+might of human love.
+
+His hurryin' me over them swelterin' and blisterin' streets, and
+showin' me all the beauty and glory of the world, and his
+conversation had no effect, skercely on my mind.  But what them
+hours of frenzied effert could not accomplish, that one still,
+small groan did.  I love that man.  I almost worship him, and he
+me, vise versey, and the same.
+
+We found that Ardelia Tutt had been to see us in our absence.  She
+had been into our room I see, for she had dropped one of her mits
+there.  And the chambermaid said she had been in and waited for us
+quite a spell - the young man a waitin' below on the piazza, so I
+s'posed.
+
+I expect Ardelia wanted to show him off to us and I myself wuz
+quite anxus to see him, feelin' worried and oncomfertable about
+Abram Gee and wantin' to see if this young chap wuz anywhere nigh
+as good as Abram.
+
+Well about a hour after we came back, Josiah missed his glasses he
+reads with.  And we looked all over the house for 'em, and under
+the bed, and on the ceilin', and through our trunks and bandboxes,
+and all our pockets, and in the Bible, and Josiah's boots, and
+everywhere.  And finely, after givin' 'em up as lost, the idee
+come to us that they might possibly have ketched on the fringe of
+Ardelia's shawl, and so rode home with her on it.
+
+So we sent one of the office-boys home with her mit and asked her
+if she had seen Josiah's glasses.  And word come back by the boy
+that she hadn't seen 'em, and she sent word to me to look on my
+pardner's head for 'em, and sure enough there we found 'em, right
+on his foretop, to both of our surprises.
+
+She sent also by the boy a poem she had wrote that afternoon, and
+sent word how sorry she wuz I wuzn't to home to see Mr. Flamburg.
+But I see him only a day or two after that, and I didn't like his
+looks a mite.
+
+But he said, and stuck to it, that his father owned a large bank,
+that he wuz a banker, and a doin' a heavy business.
+
+Wall, that raised him dretfully in Ardelia's eyes; she owned up to
+me that it did.  She owned to me that she lead always thought she
+would love to be a Banker's Bride.  She thought it sounded rich.
+She said, "banker sounded so different from baker."
+
+I sez to her coolly, that "it wuz only a difference of one letter,
+and I never wuz much of a one to put the letter N above any of the
+others, or to be haughty on havin' it added to, or diminished from
+my name."
+
+But she kep' on a goin' with him.  She told me it wuz real
+romanticle the way he got aquanted with her.  He see her onbeknown
+to her one day, when she wuz a writin' a poem on one of the
+benches in the park.
+
+"A Poem on a Bench!"
+
+She wuz a settin' on the bench, and a writin' about it, she was a
+writin' on the bench in two different ways.  Curius, haint it?
+
+But to resoom.  He immegetly fell in love with her.  And he got a
+feller who wuz a boardin' to his boardin' place to interduce him
+to Ardelia's relative, Mr. Pixley, and Mr. Pixley interduced him
+to Ardelia.  He told Ardelia's relatives the same story -  That
+his father wuz a banker, that he owned a bank and wuz doin' a
+heavy business.
+
+Wall, I watched that young chap, and watched him close, and I see
+there wuz one thing about him that could be depended on, he wuz
+truthful.
+
+He seemed almost morbid on the subject, and would dispute himself
+half a hour, to get a thing or a story he wuz tellin' jest exactly
+right.  But he drinked; that I know for I know the symptoms.
+Coffee can't blind the eyes of her that waz once Smith, nor
+peppermint cast a mist before 'em.  My nose could have took its
+oath, if noses wuz ever put onto a bar of Justice - my nose would
+have gin its firm testimony that Bial Flamburg drinked.
+
+And there wuz that sort of a air about him, that I can't describe
+exactly - a sort of a half offish, half familier and wholly
+disagreeable mean, that can be onderstood but not described.  No,
+you can't picture that liniment, but you can be affected by it.
+Wall, Bial had it.
+
+And I kep' on a not likin' him, and kep' stiddy onwards a likin'
+Abram Gee.  I couldn't help it, nor did'nt want to.  And I looked
+out constant to ketch him in some big story that would break him
+right down in Ardelia's eyes, for I knew if she had been brought
+up on any one commandment more'n another, it wuz the one ag'inst
+lyin'.  She hated lyin'.
+
+She had been brought up on the hull of the commandments but on
+that one in particeler; she wuz brung up sharp but good.  But not
+one lie could I ketch him in.  And he stuck to it, that his father
+wuz a banker and doin' a heavy business.
+
+Wall, it kep' on, she a goin' with him through ambition, for I see
+plain, by signs I knoo, that she didn't love him half as well as
+she did Abram.  And I felt bad, dretful bad, to set still and see
+Ambition ondoin' of her.  For oft and oft she would speak to me of
+Bial's father's bank and the heft of the business he wuz a doin'.
+
+And I finally got so worked up in my mind that I gin a sly hint to
+Abram Gee, that if he ever wanted to get Ardelia Tutt, he had
+better make a summer trip to Saratoga.  I never told Ardelia what
+I had done, but trusted to a overrulin' destiny, that seems to
+enrap babys, and lunatiks, and soft little wimmen, when their
+heads get kinder turned by a man, and to Abram's honest face when
+she should compare it with Bial Flamburg's, and to Abram's pure,
+sweet breath with that mixture of stale cigars, tobacco, beer, and
+peppermint.
+
+But Abram wrote back to me that his mother wuz a lyin' at the
+p'int of death with a fever - that his sister Susan wuz sick a bed
+with the same fever and couldn't come a nigh her and he couldn't
+leave what might be his mother's death-bed.  And he sez, if
+Ardelia had forgot him in so short a time, mebby it wuz the best
+thing he could do, to try and forget her.  Anyway, he wouldn't
+leave his dying mother for anything or anybody.
+
+That wuz Abram Gee all over, a doin' his duty every time by bread
+and humanity.  But he added a postscript and it wuz wrote in a
+agitated hand - that jest as soon as his mother got so he could
+leave her, he should come to Saratoga.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+JOSIAH 'S FLIRTATIONS.
+
+
+They say there is a sight of flirtin' done at Saratoga.  I didn't
+hear so much about it as Josiah did, naturally there are things
+that are talked of more amongst men than women.  Night after night
+he would come home and tell me how fashionable it wuz, and pretty
+soon I could see that he kinder wanted to follow the fashion.
+
+I told him from the first on't that he'd better let it entirely
+alone.  Says I, "Josiah Allen, you wouldn't never carry it through
+successful if you should undertake it -- and then think of the
+wickedness on't."
+
+But he seemed sot.  He said "it wuz more fashionable amongst
+married men and wimmen, than the more single ones," he said "it
+wuz dretful fashionable amongst pardners."`
+
+"Wall," says I, "I shall have, nothin' to do with it, and I advise
+you, if you know when you are well off, to let it entirely alone."
+
+"Of course," says he, fiercely, "You needn't have nothin' to do
+with it.  It is nothin' you would want to foller up.  And I would
+ruther see you sunk into the ground, or be sunk myself, than to
+see you goin' into it.  Why," says he, savagely, "I would tear a
+man lim from lim, if I see him a tryin' to flirt with you."
+(Josiah Allen worships me.)  "But," says he, more placider like,
+"men have to do things sometimes, that they know is too hard for
+their pardners to do -- men sometimes feel called upon to do
+things that their pardners don't care about -- that they haint
+strong enough to tackle.  Wimmen are fragile creeters anyway."
+
+"Oh, the fallacy of them arguments -- and the weakness of 'em.
+
+But I didn't say nothin' only to reiterate my utterance, that "if
+he went into it, he would have to foller it up alone, that he
+musn't expect any help from me."
+
+"Oh no!" says he.  "Oh! certainly not."
+
+His tone wuz very genteel, but there seemed to be sumthin' strange
+in it.  And I looked at him pityin'ly over my specks.  The hull
+idea on it wuz extremely distasteful to me, this talk about
+flirtin', and etc., at our ages, and with our stations in the
+Jonesville meetin' house, and with our grandchildren.
+
+But I see from day to day that he wuz a hankerin' after it, and I
+almost made up my mind that I should have to let him make a trial,
+knowin' that experience wuz the best teacher, and knowin' that his
+morals wuz sound, and he wuz devoted to me, and only went into the
+enterprize because he thought it wuz fashionable.
+
+There wuz a young English girl a boardin' to the same place we
+did.  She dressed some like a young man, carried a cane, etc.  But
+she wuz one of the upper 10, and wuz as pretty as a picture, and I
+see Josiah had kinder sot his eyes on her as bein' a good one to
+try his experiment with.  He thought she wuz beautiful.  But good
+land!  I didn't care.  I liked her myself.  But I could see, though
+he couldn't see it, that she wuz one of the girls who would flirt
+with the town pump, or the meetin' house steeple, if she couldn't
+get nobody else to flirt with.  She wuz born so, but I suppose
+ontirely unbeknown to her when she wuz born.
+
+Wall, Josiah Allen would set and look at her by the hour --
+dretful admirin'.  But good land!  I didn't care.  I loved to look
+at her myself.  And then too I had this feelin' that his morals
+wuz sound.  But after awhile, I could see, and couldn't help
+seein', that he wuz a tryin' in his feeble way to flirt with her.
+And I told him kindly, but firmly, "that it wuz somethin' that I
+hated to see a goin' on."
+
+But he says, "Well, dumb it all, Samantha, if anybody goes to a
+fashionable place, they ort to try to be fashionable.  'Taint
+nothin' I want to do, and you ort to know it."
+
+And I says in pityin' axents but firm, "If you don't want to,
+Josiah, I wouldn't, fashion or no fashion."
+
+But I see I couldn't convince him, and there happened to be a
+skercity of men jest then -- and he kep' it up, and it kep' me on
+the key veav, as Maggie says, when she is on the tenter hooks of
+suspense.
+
+I felt bad to see it go on, not that I wuz jealous, no, my foretop
+lay smooth from day to day, not a jealous hair in it, not one --
+but I felt sorry for my companion.  I see that while the endurin'
+of it wuz hard and tejus for him (for truly he was not a addep at
+the business; it come tuff, feerful tuff on him), the endin' wuz
+sure to be harder.  And I tried to convince him, from a sense of
+duty, that she wuz makin' fun of him -- he had told me lots of the
+pretty things she had said to him -- and out of principle I told
+him that she didn't mean one word of 'em.  But I couldn't convince
+him, and as is the way of pardners, after I had sot the reasen and
+the sense before him, and he wouldn't hear to me, why then I had
+to set down and bear it.  Such is some of the trials of pardners?
+
+Wall, it kep' agoin' on, and a goin' on, and I kep' a hatin' to
+see it, for if anybody has got to flirt, which I am far from
+approvin' of, but if I have got to see it a goin' on, I would fain
+see it well done, and Josiah's efforts to flirt wuz like an effort
+of our old mair to play a tune on the melodian, no grace in it, no
+system, nor comfort to him, nor me.
+
+I s'pose the girl got some fun out of it; I hope she did, for if
+she didn't it wuz a wearisome job all round.
+
+Wall, a week or so rolled on, and it wuz still in progress.  And
+one day an old friend of ours, Miss Ezra Balch, from the east part
+of Jonesville, come to see me.  She come to Saratoga for the
+rheumatiz, and wuz gettin' well fast, and Ezra was gettin' entirely
+cured of biles, for which he had come, carbunkles.
+
+Wall, she invited Josiah and me to take a ride with 'em, and we
+both accepted of it, and at the appointed time I wuz ready to the
+minute, down on the piazza, with my brown cotton gloves on, and my
+mantilly hung gracefully over my arm.  But at the last minute,
+Josiah Allen said "he couldn't go."
+
+I says "Why can't you go?"
+
+"Oh," he says, kinder drawin' up his collar, and smoothin' down
+his vest, "Oh, I have got another engagement."
+
+He looked real high-headed, and I says to him:
+
+"Josiah Allen didn't you promise Druzilla Balch that you would go
+with her and Ezra to-day?"
+
+"Wall yes," says he, "but I can't."
+
+"Why not?" says I.
+
+"Wall, Samantha, though they are well meanin', good people, they
+haint what you may call fashionable, they haint the upper 10."
+
+Says I, "Josiah Allen you have fell over 15 cents in my estimation,
+sense we have begun talkin', you won't go with 'em because they
+haint fashionable.  They are good, honest Christian Methodists,
+and have stood by you and me many a time, in times of trouble,
+and now," says I, "you turn against 'em because they haint
+fashionable."  Says I, "Josiah Allen where do you think you'll
+go to?"
+
+"Oh, probable down through Congress Park, and we may walk up as
+fur as the Indian Encampment.  I feel kinder mauger to-day, and my
+corns ache feerful."  (His boots wuz that small that they wuz
+sights to behold, sights!)  "We probably shan't walk fur," says
+he.
+
+I see how 'twuze in a minute.  That English girl had asked him to
+walk with her, and my pardner had broken a solemn engagement with
+Ezra and Druzilla Balch to go a walkin' with her.  I see how
+'twuz, but I sot in silence and one of the big rockin' chairs, and
+didn't say nothin'.
+
+Finally he says, with a sort of a anxious look onto his foreward:
+
+"You don't feel bad, do you Samantha?  You haint jealous, are
+you?"
+
+"Jealous!" says I, a lookin' him calmly over from head to feet --
+it wuz a witherin' look, and yet pitiful, that took in the hull
+body and soul, and weighed 'em in the balances of common sense,
+and pity, and justice.  It wuz a look that seemed to envelop him
+all to one time, and took him all in, his bald head, his vest, and
+his boots, and his mind (what he had), and his efforts to be
+fashionable, and his trials and tribulations at it, and -- and
+everything.  I give him that one long look, and then I says:
+
+"Jealous?  No, I haint jealous."
+
+Then silence rained again about us, and Josiah spoke out (his
+conscience was a troublin' him), and he says:
+
+"You know in fashionable life, Samantha, you have to do things
+which seem unkind, and Ezra, though a good, worthy man, can't
+understand these things as I do."
+
+Says I: "Josiah Allen, you'll see the day that you'll be sorry for
+your treatment of Druzilla Balch, and Ezra."
+
+"Oh wall," says he, pullin' up his collar, "I'm bound to be
+fashionable.  While I can go with the upper 10, it is my duty and
+my privilege to go with 'em, and not mingle in the lower classes
+like the Balches."
+
+Says I firmly, "You look out, or some of them 10 will be the death
+of you, and you may see the day that you will be glad to leave
+'em, the hull 10 of em, and go back to Druzilla and Ezra Balch."
+
+But what more words might have passed between us, wuz cut short by
+the arrival of Ezra and Druzilla in a good big carriage, with Miss
+Balch on the back seat, and Ezra acrost from her, and a man up in
+front a drivin'.  It wuz a good lookin' sight, and I hastened down
+the steps, Josiah disappearin' inside jest as quick as he ketched
+sight of their heads.
+
+They asked me anxiously "where Josiah wuz and why he didn't come?"
+And I told 'em, "that Josiah had told me that mornin' that he felt
+manger, and he had some corns that wuz a achin'."
+
+So much wuz truth, and I told it, and then moved off the subject,
+and they seein' my looks, didn't pursue it any further.  They
+proposed to go back to their boardin' place, and take in Deacon
+Balch, Ezra's brother from Chicago, who wuz stayin' there a few
+days to recooperate his energies, and get help for tizick.  So
+they did.  He wuz a widowed man.  Yes, he was the widower of
+Cornelia Balch who I used to know well, a good lookin' and a good
+actin' man.  And he seemed to like my appeerance pretty well,
+though I am fur from bein' the one that ort to say it.
+
+And as we rolled on over the broad beautiful road towards Saratoga
+Lake, I begun to feel better in my mind.
+
+The Deacon wuz edifyin' in conversation, and he thought, and said,
+"that my mind was the heftiest one that he had ever met, and he
+had met hundreds and hundreds of 'em."  He meant it, you could see
+that, he meant every word he said.  And it wuz kind of comfortin'
+to hear the Deacon say so, for I respected the Deacon, and I knew
+he meant just what he said.
+
+He said, and believed, though it haint so, but the Deacon believed
+it, "that I looked younger than I did the day I wuz married."
+
+I told him "I didn't feel so young."
+
+"Wall," he said, "then my looks deceived me, for I looked as
+young, if not younger."
+
+Deacon Balch is a good, kind, Christian man.
+
+His conversation was very edifyin', and he looked kinder good, and
+warm-hearted at me out of his eyes, which wuz blue, some the color
+of my Josiah's.  But alas!  I felt that though some comforted and
+edified by his talk, still, my heart was not there, not there in
+that double buggy with 2 seats, but wuz afur off with my pardner.
+I felt that Josiah Allen wuz a carryin' my heart with him wherever
+he wuz a goin'.  Curious, haint it?  Now you may set and smile,
+and talk, and seem to be enjoyin' yourself first-rate, with
+agreeable personages all around you, and you do enjoy yourself
+with that part of your nater.  But with it all, down deep under
+the laughs, and the bright words, the comfort you get out of the
+answerin' laughs, the gay talk, under it all is the steady
+consciousness that the real self is fur away, the heart, the soul
+is fur away, held by some creeter whether he be high, or whether
+he be low, it don't matter -- there your heart is, a goin' towards
+happiness, or a travellin' towards pain as the case may be --
+curious, haint it?
+
+Wall, Ezra and Druzilla wanted to go to the Sulphur Springs way
+beyend Saratoga Lake, and as the Deacon wuz agreeable, and I also,
+we sot out for it, though, as we all said, it wuz goin' to be a
+pretty long and tegus journey for a hot day.  But we went along
+the broad, beautiful highway, by the high, handsome gates of the
+Racing Park, down, down, by handsome houses and shady woods, and
+fields of bright-colored wild flowers on each side of the road,
+down to the beautiful lake, acrost it over the long bridge, and
+then into the long, cool shadows of the bendin' trees that bend
+over the road on each side, while through the green boughs, jest
+at our side we could ketch a sight of the blue, peaceful waters, a
+lyin' calm and beautiful jest by the side of us -- on, on, through
+the long, sheltered pathway, out into the sunshine for a spell,
+with peaceful fields a layin' about us, and peaceful cattle a
+wanderin' over 'em, and then into the shade agin, till at last we
+see a beautiful mountin', with its head held kinder high, crowned
+with ferns and hemlocks, and its feet washed by the cool water of
+the beautiful lake.
+
+The shadows of this mountin', tree crowned, lay on the smooth,
+placid wave, and a white sail boat wuz a comin' round the side
+on't, and floatin' over the green, crystal branches, and golden
+shadows.  It wuz a fair seen, seen for a moment, and then away we
+went into the green shadows of the woods again, round a corner,
+and here we wuz, at the Sulphur Springs.
+
+It wuz a quiet peaceful spot.  The house looked pleasant, and so
+did the Landlord, and Landlady, and we dismounted and walked
+through a long clean hall, and went out onto a back piazza and sot
+down.  And I thought as I sot there, that I would be glad enough
+to set there, for some time.  Everything looked so quiet and
+serene.  The paths leadin' up the hills in different directions,
+out into the green woods, looked quiet; the pretty, grassy
+backyard leadin' down to the water side looked green and
+peaceable, and around all, and beyond all, wuz the glory of the
+waters.  They lay stretched out beautiful and in heavenly calm,
+and the sun, which wuz low in the West, made a gold path acrost
+'em, where it seemed as if one could walk over only a little ways,
+into Perfect Repose.  The Lake somehow looked like a glowin'
+pavement, it didn't look like water, but it seemed like broad
+fields of azure and palest lavender, and pinky grey, and pearly
+white, and every soft and delicate color that water could be
+crystalized into.  And over all lay the glowin', tender sunset
+skies -- it wuz a fair seen.  And even as I looked on in a almost
+rapped way, the sun come out from behind a soft cloud, and lay on
+the water like a pillow of fire jest as I dream that pillow did,
+that went ahead of my old 4 fathers.
+
+The rest on 'em seemed to be more intent on the lemonade with 2
+straws in 'em.  I didn't make no fuss.  They are nice, clean
+folks, I make no doubt.  I wouldn't make no fuss and tell on the
+hired man -- women of the house have enough to worry 'em anyway.
+But he had dropped some straws into our tumblers, every one on
+'em, I dare presume to say they had been a fillin' straw ticks.  I
+jest took mine out in a quiet way, and throwed 'em to one side.
+The rest on 'em, I see, and it wuz real good in 'em, drinked
+through 'em, as we used to at school.  It wuz real good in
+Druzilla, and Ezra, and also in the Deacon.  It kinder ondeared
+the hull on 'em to me.  I hope this won't be told of, it orto be
+kep -- for he wuz a goodnatured lookin' hired man, black, but not
+to blame for that -- and good land! what is a straw? -- anyway
+they wuz clean.
+
+There wuz some tents sot up there in the back yard, lookin' some
+as I s'pose our old 4 fathers tents did, in the pleasant summer
+times of old.  And I asked a bystander a standin' by, whose tents
+they wuz, and he said they wuz Free Thinkers havin' a convention.
+
+And I says, "How free?"
+
+And he said "they wuz great cases to doubt everything, they
+doubted whether they wuz or not, and if they wuz or when, and if
+so, why?"
+
+And he says, "won't you stay to-night over and attend the meetin'?"
+
+And I says, "What are they goin' to teach tonight?"
+
+And he says, "The Whyness of the What"
+
+I says, "I guess that is too deep a subject for me to tackle," and
+says I, "Don't they believe anything easier than that?"
+
+And he says, "They don't believe anything.  That is their belief
+-- to believe nothin'."
+
+"Nothin'!" says I.
+
+"Yes," says he, "Nothin'."  And, says he, "to-morrer they are
+goin' to prove beyond any question, that there haint any God, nor
+anything, and never wuz anything."
+
+"Be they?" sez I.
+
+"Yes," says he, "and won't you come and be convinced?"
+
+I looked off onto the peaceful waters, onto the hills that lay as
+the mountains did about Jerusalem, onto the pillow of fire that
+seemed to hold in it the flames of that light that had lighted the
+old world onto the mornin' of the new day, -- and one star had
+come out, and stood tremblin' over the brow of the mountain and I
+thought of that star that had riz so long time ago, and had guided
+the three wise men, guided 'em jest alike from their three
+different homes, entirely unbeknown to each other, guidin' 'em to
+the cradle where lay the infant Redeemer of the world, so long
+foretold by bard and prophet.  I looked out onto the heavenly
+glory of the day, and then inside into my heart, that held a faith
+jest as bright and undyin' as the light of that star -- and I
+says, "No, I guess I won't go and be convinced."
+
+Wall, we riz up to go most immediately afterwerds, and the Deacon
+(he is very smart) observed:
+
+"How highly tickled and even highlarious the man seemed in talkin'
+about there not bein' any future."  And he says, "It wuz a good
+deal like a man laughin' and clappin' his hands to see his house
+burn down"
+
+And I sez, "it wuz far wurse, for his home wouldn't stand more'n a
+100 years or so, and this home he wuz a tryin' to destroy, wuz one
+that would last through eternity."  "But," says I, "it hain't
+built by hands, and I guess their hands hain't strong enough to
+tear it down, nor high enough to set fire to it."
+
+And the Deacon says, "Jest so, Miss Allen, you spoke truthfully,
+and eloquent."  (The Deacon is very smart.)
+
+When we got into the buggy to start, the Deacon says, "I would
+like to resoom the conversation with you, Josiah Allen's wife, a
+goin' back."
+
+And Druzilla spoke right out and says, "I will set on the front
+seat by Ezra."  I says, "Oh no, Druzilla, I can hear the Deacon
+from where I sot before."
+
+But the Deacon says, Talkin' loud towards night always offected
+his voice onpleasantly, mebby Druzilla and he had better change
+seats.
+
+Again I demurred.  And then Druzilla said she must set by Ezra,
+she wanted to tell him sumthin' in confidence.
+
+And so it wuz arraigned, for I felt that I wuz not the one to
+come between pardners, no indeed.  The road laid peacefuller and
+beautifuller than ever, or so it seemed under the sunset glory
+that sort o' hung round it.  Jest about half way through the woods
+we met the English girl, a stridin' along alone, each step more'n
+3 feet long, or so it seemed to me.  There wuz a look of health,
+and happy determination on her forwerd as she strided rapidly by.
+
+I would have fain questioned her concernin' my pardner, as she
+strode by, but before I could call out, or begon to her she wuz
+far in the rearwerd, and goin' in a full pressure and in a knot of
+several miles an hour.
+
+Wall, from that minute I felt strange and curious.  And though
+Druzilla and Ezra was agreeable and the Deacon edifyin', I didn't
+seem to feel edified, and the most warm-hearted looks didn't seem
+to warm my heart none, it wuz oppressed with gloomy forebodings
+of, Where wuz my pardner?  They had laid out to set out together.
+Had they sot?  This question was a goverin' me, and the follerin'
+one: If they had sot out together, where wuz my pardner, Josiah
+Allen, now?  As I thought these feerful thoughts, instinctively I
+turned around to see if I could see a trace of his companion in
+the distance.  Yes, I could ketch a faint glimpse of her as she
+wuz mountin' a diclivity, and stood for an instant in sight, but
+long before even, she disopeered agin, for her gait wuz
+tremendous, and at a rate of a good many knots she wuz a goin',
+that I knew.  And the fearful thought would rise, Josiah Allen
+could not go more than half a knot, if he could that.  He wuz a
+slow predestinatur any way, and then his corns was feerful, and
+never could be told -- and his boots had in 'em the elements of
+feerful sufferin'.  It wuz all he could do when he had 'em on to
+hobble down to the spring, and post-office.  Where? where wuz he?
+And she a goin' at the rate of so many knots.
+
+Oh! the agony of them several minutes, while these thoughts wuz
+rampagin through my destracted brain.
+
+Oh! if pardners only knew the agony they bring onto their devoted
+companions, by their onguarded and thoughtless acts, and
+attentions to other females, gin without proper reseerch and
+precautions, it would draw their liniments down into expressions
+of shame and remorse.  Josiah wouldn't have gone with her if he
+had known the number of knots she wuz a goin', no, not one step --
+then why couldn't he have found out the number of them knots --
+why couldn't he?  Why can't pardners look ahead and see to where
+their gay attentions, their flirtations that they call mild and
+innercent, will lead 'em to?  Why can't they realize that it haint
+only themselves they are injurin', but them that are bound to 'em
+by the most sacred ties that folks can be twisted up in?  Why
+can't they realize that a end must come to it, and it may be a
+fearful and a shameful one, and if it is a happiness that stops,
+it will leave in the heart when happiness gets out, a emptiness, a
+holler place, where like as not onhappiness will get in, and mebby
+stay there for some time, gaulin' and heart-breakin' to the
+opposite pardner to see it go on?
+
+If it is indifference, or fashion, or anything of that sort, why
+it don't pay none of the time, it don't seem to me it duz, and the
+end will be emptier and hollerer then the beginnin'.
+
+In the case of my pardner it wuz fashion, nothing but the
+butterfly of fashion he wuz after, to act in a high-toned,
+fashionable manner, like other fashionable men.  And jest see the
+end on't why he had brought sufferin' of the deepest dye onto his
+companion, and what, what hed he brought onto himself -- onto his
+feet?
+
+Oh! the agony of them several moments while them thoughts was a
+rackin' at me.  The moments swelled out into a half hour, it must
+have been a long half hour, before I see far ahead, for the eyes
+of love is keen - a form a settin' on the grass by the wayside,
+that I recognized as the form of my pardner.  As we drew nearer we
+all recognized the figure -- but Josiah Allen didn't seem to
+notice us.  His boots was off, and his stockin's, and even in that
+first look I could see the agony that was a rendin' them toes
+almost to burstin'.  Oh, how sorry I felt for them toes!  He was a
+restin' in a most dejected and melancholy manner on his hand, as
+if it wuz more than sufferin' that ailed him -- he looked a
+sufferer from remorse, and regret, and also had the air of one
+whom mortification has stricken.
+
+He never seemed to sense a thing that wuz passin' by him, till the
+driver pulled up his horses clost by him, and then he looked up
+and see us.  And far be it from me to describe the way he looked
+in his lowly place on the grass.  There wuz a good stun by him on
+which he might have sot, but no, he seemed to feel too mean to get
+up onto that stun; grass, lowly, unassumin' grass, wuz what seemed
+to suit him best, and on it he sot with one of his feet stretched
+out in front of him.
+
+Oh! the pitifulness of that look he gin us, oh! the meakinness of
+it.  And even, when his eye fell on the Deacon a settin' by my
+side, oh! the wild gleam of hatred, and sullen anger that glowed
+within his orb, and revenge!  He looked at the Deacon, and then at
+his boots, and I see the wild thought wuz a enterin' his sole, to
+throw that boot at him.  But I says out of that buggy the very
+first thing the words I have so oft spoke to him in hours of
+danger:
+
+"Joisiah, be calm!"
+
+His eye fell onto the peaceful grass agin, and he says: "Who
+hain't a bein' calm?  I should say I wuz calm enough, if that is
+what you want."
+
+But, oh, the sullenness of that love.
+
+Says Ezra, good man -- he see right through it all in a minute,
+and so did Druzilla and the Deacon -- says Ezra, "Get up on the
+seat with the driver, Josiah Allen, and drive back with us."
+
+"No," says Josiah, "I have no occasion, I am a settin' here,"
+(looking round in perfect agony) "I am a settin' here to admire
+the scenery."
+
+Then I leaned over the side of the buggy, and says I, "Josiah
+Allen, do you get in and ride, it will kill you to walk back; put
+on your boots if you can, and ride, seein' Ezra is so perlite as
+to ask you."
+
+"Yes, I see he is very perlite, I see you have set amongst very
+perlite folks, Samantha," says he, a glarin' at Deacon Balch as if
+he would rend him from lim to lim, "But as I said, I have no
+occasion to ride, I took off my boots and stockin's merely --
+merely to pass away time.  You know at fashionable resorts," says
+he, "it is sometimes hard for men to pass away time."
+
+Says I in low, deep accents, "Do put on your stockin's, and your
+boots, if you can get 'em on, which I doubt, but put your
+stockin's on this minute, and get in, and ride."
+
+"Yes," says Ezra, "hurry up and get in, Josiah Allen, it must be
+dretful oncomfortabe a settin' down there in the grass."
+
+"Oh, no!" says Josiah, and he kinder whistled a few bars of no
+tune that wuz ever heard on, or ever will be heard on agin, so
+wild and meloncholy it wuz -- "I sot down here kind o' careless.
+I thought seein' I hadn't much on hand to do at this time o' year,
+I thought I would like to look at my feet -- we hain't got a very
+big lookin' glass in our room."
+
+Oh, how incoherent and over-crazed he was a becomin'!  Who ever
+heard of seein' anybody's feet in a lookin' glass -- of dependin'
+on a lookin' glass for a sight on 'em?  Oh, how I pitied that man!
+and I bent down and says to him in soothin' axents: "Josiah Allen,
+to please your pardner you put on your stockin's and get into this
+buggy.  Take your boots in your hand, Josiah, I know you can't get
+'em on, you have walked too far for them corns.  Corns that are
+trampled on, Josiah Allen, rise up and rends you, or me, or
+anybody else who owns 'em or tramples on 'em.  It hain't your
+fault, nobody blames you.  Now get right in."
+
+"Yes, do," says the Deacon.
+
+Oh! the look that Josiah Allen gin him.  I see the voyolence of
+that look, that rested first on the Deacon, and then on that,
+boot.
+
+And agin I says, "Josiah Allen."  And agin the thought of his own
+feerful acts, and my warnin's came over him, and again
+mortification seemed to envelop him like a mantilly, the tabs
+goin' down and coverin' his lims -- and agin he didn't throw that
+boot.  Agin Deacon Balch escaped oninjured, saved by my voice, and
+Josiah's inward conscience, inside of him.
+
+Wall, suffice it to say, that after a long parley, Josiah Allen
+wuz a settin' on the high seat with the driver, a holdin' his
+boots in his hand, for truly no power on earth could have placed
+them boots on Josiah Allen's feet in the condition they then wuz.
+
+And so he rode on howewards, occasionally a lookin' down on the
+Deacon with looks that I hope the recordin' angel didn't
+photograph, so dire, and so revengeful, and jealous, and -- and
+everything, they wuz.  And ever, after ketchin' the look in my
+eye, the look in his'n would change to a heart-rendin' one of
+remorse, and sorrow, and shame for what he had done.  And the
+Deacon, wantin' to be dretful perlite to him, would ask him
+questions, and I could see the side of Josiah's face, all glarin'
+like a hyena at the sound of his voice, and then he would turn
+round and ossume a perlite genteel look as he answered him, and
+then he glare at me in a mad way every time I spoke to the Deacon,
+and then his mad look would change, even to one of shame and
+meakinness.  And he in his stockin' feet, and a pertendin' that he
+didn't put his boots on, because it wuzn't wuth while to put 'em
+on agin so near bed-time.  And he that sot out that afternoon a
+feelin' so haughty, and lookin' down on Ezra and Druzilla, and
+bein' brung back by 'em, in that condition -- and bein' goured all
+the time by thoughts of the ignominious way his flirtin' had
+ended, by her droppin' him by the side of the road, like a weed
+she had trampled on too hardly.  And a bein' gourded deeper than
+all the rest of his agonies, by a senseless jealousy of Deacon
+Balch -- and a thinkin' for the first time in his life, what it
+would be, if her affections, that had been like a divine beacon to
+him all his life, if that flame should ever go out, or ever
+flicker in its earthly socket -- oh, those thoughts that he had
+seemed to consider in his own mad race for fashion -- oh, how that
+sass that had seemed sweet to him as a gander, oh how bitter and
+poisonous it wuz to partake of as a goose.
+
+Oh! the agony of that ride.  We went middlin' slow back -- and
+before we got to Saratoga the English girl went past us, she had
+been to the Sulphur Springs and back agin.  She didn't pay no
+attention to us, for she wuz alayin' on a plan in her own mind,
+for a moonlight pedestrian excursion on foot, that evenin', out to
+the old battle ground of Saratoga.
+
+Josiah never looked to the right hand or the left, as she passed
+him, at many, many a knot an hour.  And I felt that my pardner's
+sufferin from that cause was over, and mine too, but oh! by what
+agony wuz it gained.  For 3 days and 3 nights he never stood on
+any of his feet for a consecutive minute and a half, and I bathed
+him with anarky, and bathed his very soul with many a sweet moral
+lesson at the same time.  And when at last Josiah Allen emerged
+from that chamber, he wuz a changed man in his demeanor and
+liniment, such is the power of love and womanly devotion.
+
+He never looked at a woman durin' our hull stay at Saratoga, save
+with the eye of a philosopher and a Methodist.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+MISS G. WASHINGTON FLAMM.
+
+Miss G. Washington Flamm is a very fashionable woman.  Thomas
+Jefferson carried her through a law-suit, and carried her stiddy
+and safe.  (She wuz in the right on't, there haint no doubt of
+that.)
+
+She had come to Jonesville for the summer to board, her husband
+bein' to home at the time in New York village, down on Wall
+street.  He had to stay there, so she said.  I don't know why,
+but s'pose sunthin' wuz the matter with the wall; anyway he
+couldn't leave it.  And she went round to different places a good
+deal for her health.  There didn't seem to be much health round
+where her husband wuz, so she had to go away after it, go a
+huntin' for it, way over to Europe and back ag'in; and away off
+to California, and Colorado, and Long Branch, and Newport, and
+Saratoga, and into the Country.  It made it real bad for Miss
+Flamm.
+
+Now I always found it healthier where Josiah wuz than in any
+other place.  Difference in folks I s'pose.  But they say there
+is sights and sights of husbands and wives jest like Miss Flamm.
+Can't find a mite of health anywhere near where their families
+is, and have to poke off alone after it.  It makes it real bad
+for 'em.
+
+But anyway she came to Jonesville for her health.  And she hearn
+of Thomas Jefferson and employed him.  It wuz money that fell
+onto her from her father, or that should have fell, that she wuz
+a tryin' to git it to fall.  And he won the case.  It fell.  She
+wuz rich as a Jew before she got this money, but she acted as
+tickled over it as if she wuzn't worth a cent.  (Human nater.)
+She paid Thomas J. well and she and Maggie and he got to be quite
+good friends.
+
+She is a well-meanin', fat little creeter, what there is of her.
+I have seen folks smaller than she is, and then ag'in we seen
+them that wuzn't so small.  She is middlin' good lookin', not old
+by any means, but there is a deep wrinkle plowed right into her
+forward, and down each side of her mouth.  They are plowed deep.
+And I have always wondered to myself who held the plow.
+
+It wuz'nt age, for she haint old enough.  Wuz it Worry?  That
+will do as good a day's work a plowin' as any creeter I ever see,
+and work as stiddy after it gits to doin' day's works in a
+female's face.
+
+Waz it Dissatisfaction and Disappointment?  They, too, will plow
+deep furrows and a sight of 'em.  I don't know what it wuz.
+Mebby it wuz her waist and sleeves.  Her sleeves wuz so tight
+that they kep' her hands lookin' a kinder bloated and swelled all
+the time, and must have been dretful painful.  And her waist --
+it wuz drawed in so at the bottom, that to tell the livin' truth
+it wuzn't much bigger'n a pipe's tail.  It beat all to see the
+size immegatly above and below, why it looked perfectly
+meraculous.  She couldn't get her hands up to her head to save
+her life; if she felt her head a tottlin' off her shoulders she
+couldn't have lifted her hands to have stiddied it, and, of
+course, she couldn't get a long breath, or short ones with any
+comfort.
+
+Mebby that worried her, and then ag'in, mebby it wuz dogs.  I
+know it would wear me out to take such stiddy care on one, day
+and night.  I never seemed to feel no drawin's to take care of
+animals, wash 'em, and bathe 'em, and exercise 'em, etc., etc.,
+never havin' been in the menagery line and Josiah always keepin'
+a boy to take care of the animals when he wuzn't well.  Mebby it
+wuz dogs.  Anyway she took splendid care of hern, jest wore
+herself out a doin' for it stiddy day and night and bein'
+trampled on, and barked at almost all the time she wuz a bringin'
+on it up.
+
+Yes, she took perfectly wonderful care on't, for a woman in her
+health.  She never had been able to take any care of her
+children, bein' VERY delicate.  Never had been well enough to
+have any of 'em in the room with her nights, or in the day time
+either.  They tired her so, and she wuz one of the wimmen who
+felt it wuz her DUTY to preserve her health for her family's
+sake.  Though WHEN they wuz a goin' to get the benefit of her
+health I don't know.
+
+But howsumever she never could take a mite of care of her
+children, they wuz brought up on wet nurses, and bottles, etc.,
+etc., and wuz rather weakly, some on 'em.  The nurses, wet and
+dry ones both, used to gin 'em things to make 'em sleep, and
+kinder yank 'em round and scare 'em nights to keep 'em in the
+bed, and neglect 'em a good deal, and keep 'em out in the brilin'
+sun when they wanted to see their bows; and for the same reeson
+keepin' em out in their little thin dresses in the cold, and
+pinch their little arms black and blue if they went to tell any
+of their tricks.  And they learnt the older ones to be deceitful
+and sly and cowerdly.  Learnt 'em to use jest the same slang
+phrases and low language that they did; tell the same lies, and
+so they wuz a spilin' 'em in every way; spilin' their brains with
+narcotics, their bodies by neglect and bad usage, and their minds
+and morals by evil examples.
+
+You see some nurses are dretful good.  But Miss Flamm's health
+bein' so poor and her mind bein' so took up with fashion, dogs,
+etc., that she couldn't take the trouble to find out about their
+characters and they wuz dretful poor unbeknown to her.  She had
+dretful bad luck with 'em, and the last one drinked, so I have
+been told.
+
+Yes, it made it dretful bad for Miss Flamm that her health was so
+poor, and her fashionable engagements so many and arduous that
+she didn't have the time to take a little care of her children
+and the dog too.  For you could see plain, by the care that she
+took of that dog, what a splendid hand she would be with the
+children, if she only had the time and health.
+
+Why, I don't believe there wuz another dog in America, either the
+upper or lower continent, that had more lovin', anxus,
+intelligent, devoted attention than that dog had, day and night,
+from Miss Flamm.  She took 2 dog papers, so they say, to get the
+latest information on the subject; she compared notes with other
+dog wimmen, I don't say it in a runnin' way at all.  I mean
+wimmen who have gin their hull minds to dog, havin', some on 'em,
+renounced husbands, and mothers, and children for dog sake.
+
+You know there are sich wimmen, and Miss Flamm read up and
+studied with constant and absorbed attention all the latest
+things on dog.  Their habits, their diet, their baths, their
+robes, their ribbons, and bells, and collars, their barks --
+nothin' escaped her; she put the best things she learned into
+practice, and studied out new ones for herself.  She said she had
+reduced the subject to a science, and she boasted proudly that
+her dog, the last one she had, went ahead of any dog in the
+country.  And I don't know but it did.  I knew it had a good
+healthy bark.  A loud strong bark that must have made it bad for
+her in the night.  It always slept with her, for she didn't dast
+to trust it out of her sight nights.  It had had some spells in
+the night, kinder chills, or spuzzums like, and she didn't dast
+to be away from it for a minute.
+
+She wouldn't let the wet nurse tech it, for her youngest child,
+little G. Washington Flamm, Jr., wuzn't very healthy, and Miss
+Flamm thought that mebby the dog might ketch his weakness if the
+nurse handled it right after she had been nursin' the baby.  And
+then she objected to the nurse, so I hearn, on account of her
+bein' wet.  She wanted to keep the dog dry.  I hearn this; I
+don't know as it wuz so.  But I hearn these things long enough
+before I ever see her.  And when I did see her I see that they
+didn't tell me no lies about her devotion to the dog, for she
+jest worshiped it, that was plain to be seen.
+
+Wall, she has got a splendid place at Saratoga; a cottage she
+calls it.  I, myself, should call it a house, for it is big as
+our house and Deacon Peddick'ses and Mr. Bobbett'ses all put
+together, and I don't know but bigger.
+
+Wall, she invited Josiah and me to drive with her, and so her dog
+and she stopped for us.  (I put the dog first, for truly she
+seemed to put him forward on every occasion in front of herself,
+and so did her high-toned relatives, who wuz with her.)
+
+Or I s'pose they wuz her relatives for they sot up straight, and
+wuz dretful dressed up, and acted awful big-feelin' and never
+took no notice of Josiah and me, no more than if we hadn't been
+there.  But good land!  I didn't care for that.  What if they
+didn't pay any attention to us?  But Josiah, on account of his
+tryin' to be so fashionable, felt it deeply, and he sez to me
+while Miss Flamm wuz a bendin' down over the dog, a talkin' to
+him, for truly it wuz tired completely out a barkin' at Josiah,
+it had barked at him every single minute sense we had started,
+and she wuz a talkin' earnest to it a tryin' to soothe it, and
+Josiah whispered to me, "I'll tell you, Samantha, why them
+fellers feel above me; it is because I haint dressed up in sech a
+dressy fashion.  Let me once have on a suit like their'n, white
+legs and yellow trimmin's, and big shinin' buttons sot on in
+rows, and white gloves, and rosettes in my hat -- why I could
+appear in jest as good company as they go in."
+
+Sez I, "You are too old to be dressed up so gay, Josiah Allen.
+There is a time for all things.  Gay buttons and rosettes look
+well with brown hair and sound teeth, but they ort to gently pass
+away when they do.  Don't talk any more about it, Josiah, for I
+tell you plain, you are too old to dress like them, they are
+young men."
+
+"Wall," he whispered, in deep resolve, "I will have a white
+rosette in my hat, Samantha.  I will go so far, old or not old.
+What a sensation it will create in the Jonesville meetin'-house
+to see me come a walkin' proudly in, with a white rosette in my
+hat."
+
+"You are goin' to walk into meetin' with your hat on, are you?"
+sez I coldly.
+
+"Oh, ketch a feller up.  You know what I mean.  And don't you
+think I'll make a show?  Won't it create a sensation in
+Jonesville?"
+
+Sez I: "Most probable it would.  But you haint a goin' to wear no
+bows on your hat at your age, not if I can break it up," sez I.
+
+He looked almost black at me, and sez he, "Don't go too fur,
+Samantha!  I'll own you've been a good wife and mother and all
+that, but there is a line that you must stop at.  You mustn't go
+too fur.  There is some things in which a man must be footloose,
+and that is in the matter of dress.  I shall have a white rosette
+on my hat, and some big white buttons up and down the back of my
+overcoat!  That is my aim, Samantha, and I shall reach it if I
+walk through goar."
+
+He uttered them fearful words in a loud fierce whisper which made
+the dog bark at him for more'n ten minutes stiddy, at the top of
+its voice, and in quick short yelps.
+
+If it had been her young child that wuz yellin' at a visitor in
+that way and ketchin' holt of him, and tearin' at his clothes,
+the child would have been consigned to banishment out of the
+room, and mebby punishment.  But it wuzn't her babe and so it
+remained, and it dug its feet down into the satin and laces and
+beads of Miss Flamm's dress, and barked to that extent that we
+couldn't hear ourselves think.
+
+And she called it "sweet little angel," and told it it might
+"bark its little cunnin' bark."  The idee of a angel barkin';
+jest think on't.  And we endured it as best we could with shakin'
+nerves and achin' earpans.
+
+It wuz a curius time.  The dog harrowin' our nerve, and snappin'
+at Josiah anon, if not oftener, and ketchin' holt of him
+anywhere, and she a callin' it a angel; and Josiah a lookin' so
+voyalent at it, that it seemed almost as if that glance could
+stun it.
+
+It wuz a curius seen.  But truly worse wuz to come, for Miss
+Flamm in an interval of silence, sez, "We will go first to the
+Gizer Spring, and then, afterwards, to the Moon."
+
+Or, that is what I understand her to say.  And though I kep'
+still, I wuz determined to keep my eyes out, and if I see her
+goin' into anything dangerus, I wuz goin' to reject her overtures
+to take us.  But thinkses I to myself, "We always said I believed
+we should travel to the stars some time, but I little thought it
+would be to-day, or that I should go in a buggy."
+
+Josiah shared my feelin's I could see, for he whispered to me,
+"Don't le's go, Samantha, it must be dangerus!"
+
+But I whispered back, "Le's wait, Josiah, and see.  We won't do
+nothin' percipitate, but," sez I, "this is a chance that we most
+probable never will have ag'in.  Don't le's be hasty."  We talked
+these things in secret, while Miss Flamm wuz a bendin' over, and
+conversin' with the dog.  For Josiah would ruther have died than
+not be s'pozed to be "Oh Fay," as Maggie would say, in everything
+fashionable.  And it has always been my way to wait and see, and
+count 10, or even 20, before speakin'.
+
+And then Miss Flamin sez sunthin' about what beautiful fried
+potatoes you could get there in the moon, and you could always
+get them, any time you wanted 'em.
+
+And the very next time she went to kissin' the dog so voyalently
+as not to notice us, my Josiah whispered to me and sez, "Did you
+have any idee that wuz what the old man wuz a doin'?  I knew he
+wuz always a settin' up there in the moon, but it never passed my
+mind that he wuz a fryin' potatoes."
+
+But I sez, "Keep still, Josiah.  It is a deep subject, a great
+undertakin', and it requires caution and deliberation."
+
+But he sez,"I haint a goin', Samantha!  Nor I haint a goin' to
+let you go.  It is dangerus."
+
+But I kinder nudged him, for she had the dog down on her lap, and
+was ready to resoom conversation.  And about that time we got to
+the entrance of the spring, and one of her relatives got down and
+opened the carriage door.
+
+I wondered ag'in that she didn't introduce us.  But I didn't care
+if she didn't.  I felt that I wuz jest as good as they wuz, if
+they wuz so haughty.  But Josiah wantin' to make himself
+agreeable to 'em (he hankers after gettin' into high society), he
+took off his hat and bowed low to 'em, before he got out, and sez
+he, "I am proud to know you, sir," and tried to shake hands with
+him.  But the man rejected his overtoors and looked perfectly
+wooden, and oninterested.  A big-feelin', high-headed creeter.
+Josiah Allen is as good as he is any day.  And I whispered to him
+and sez, "Don't demean yourself by tryin' to force your company
+onto them any more."
+
+"Wall," he whispered back, "I do love to move in high circles."
+
+Sez I, "Then I shouldn't think you would be so afraid of the
+undertakin' ahead on us.  If neighborin' with the old man in the
+moon, and eatin' supper with him, haint movin' in high circles,
+then I don't know what is."
+
+"But I don't want to go into anything dangerus," sez he.
+
+But jest then Miss Flamm.spoke to me, and I moved forward by her
+side and into a middlin' big room, and in the middle wuz a great
+sort of a well like, with the water a bubblin' up into a clear
+crystal globe, and a sprayin' up out of it, in a slender misty
+sparklin' spray.  It wuz a pretty sight.  And we drinked a glass
+full of it a piece, and then we wandered out of the back
+door-way, and went down into the pretty; old-fashioned garden
+back of the house.
+
+Josiah and me and Miss Flamm went.  The dog and the two relatives
+didn't seem to want to go.  The relatives sot up there straight
+as two sticks, one of 'em holdin' the dog, and they didn't even
+look round at us.
+
+"Felt too big to go with us," sez Josiah, bitterly, as we went
+down the steps.  "They won't associate with me."
+
+"Wall, I wouldn't care if I wuz in your place, Josiah Allen," sez
+I, "you are jest as good as they be, and I know it."
+
+"You couldn't make 'em think so, dumb 'em," sez he.
+
+I liked the looks of it down there.  It seems sometimes as if
+Happiness gets kinder homesick, in the big dusty fashionable
+places, and so goes back to the wild, green wood, and kinder
+wanders off, and loafs round, amongst the pine trees, and cool
+sparklin' brooks and wild flowers and long shinin' grasses and
+slate stuns, and etc., etc.
+
+I don't believe she likes it half so well up in the big hotel
+gardens or Courtin' yards, as she does down there.  You see it
+seems as if Happiness would have to be more dressed up, up there,
+and girted down, and stiff actin', and on her good behavior, and
+afraid of actin' or lookin' onfashionable.  But down here by the
+side of the quiet little brook, amongst the cool, green grasses,
+fur away from diamonds, and satins, and big words, and dogs, and
+parasols, and so many, many that are a chasin' of her and a
+follerin' of her up, it seemed more as if she loved to get away
+from it all, and get where she could take her crown off, lay down
+her septer, onhook her corset, and put on a long loose gown, and
+lounge round and enjoy herself (metafor).
+
+We had a happy time there.  We went over the little rustick
+bridges which would have been spilte in my eyes if they had been
+rounded off on the edges, or a mite of paint on 'em.  Truly, I
+felt that I had seen enough of paint and gildin' to last me
+through a long life, and it did seem such a treat to me to see a
+board ag'in, jest a plain rough bass-wood board, and some stuns a
+lyin' in the road, and some deep tall grass that you had to sort
+a wade through.
+
+Miss Flamm seemed to enjoy it some down there, though she spoke
+of the dog, which she had left up with her relatives.
+
+"3 big-feelin' ones together," I whispered to Josiah.
+
+And he sez, "Yes, that dog is a big-feelin' little cuss-tomer.
+And if I wuz a chipmunk he couldn't bark at me no more than he
+duz."
+
+And I looked severe at Josiah and sez I, "If you don't jine your
+syllables closer together you will see trouble, Josiah Allen.
+You'll find yourself swearin' before you know it."
+
+"Oh shaw, sez he, "customer haint a swearin' word; ministers use
+it.  I've hearn 'em many a time."
+
+"Yes," sez I, "but they don't draw it out as you did, Josiah
+Allen."
+
+"Oh! wall!  Folks can't always speak up pert and quick when they
+are off on pleasure exertions and have been barked at as long as
+I have been.  But now I've got a minutes chance," sez he, "let me
+tell you ag'in, don't you make no arraingments to go to the Moon.
+It is dangerus, and I won't go myself, nor let you go."
+
+"Let," sez I to myself.  "That is rather of a gaulin' word to me.
+Won't let me go."  But then I thought ag'in, and thought how love
+and tenderness wuz a dictatin' the term, and I thought to myself,
+it has a good sound to me, I like the word.  I love to hear him
+say he won't let me go.
+
+And truly to me it looked hazerdus.  But Miss Flamm seemed ready
+to go on, and onwillin'ly I followed on after her footsteps.  But
+I looked 'round, and said "Good-bye" in my heart, to the fine
+trees, and cleer, brown waters of the brook, the grass, and the
+wild flowers, and the sweet peace that wuz over all.
+
+"Good-bye," sez I.  "If I don't see you ag'in, you'll find some
+other lover that will appreciate you, though I am fur away."
+
+They didn't answer me back, none on 'em, but I felt that they
+understood me.  The pines whispered sunthin' to each other, and
+the brook put its moist lips up to the pebbly shore and whispered
+sunthin' to the grasses that bent down to hear it.  I don't know
+exactly what it wuz, but it wuz sunthin' friendly I know, for I
+felt it speak right through the soft, summer sunshine into my
+heart.  They couldn't exactly tell what they felt towards me, and
+I couldn't exactly tell what I felt towards them, yet we
+understood each other; curi'us, haint it?
+
+Wall, we got into the carriage ag'in, one of her relatives
+gettin' down to open the door.  They knew what good manners is;
+I'll say that for 'em.  And Miss Flamm took her dog into her arms
+seemin'ly glad to get holt of him ag'in, and kissed it several
+times with a deep love and devotedness.  She takes good care of
+that dog.  And what makes it harder for her to handle him is, her
+dress is so tight, and her sleeves.  I s'pose that is why she
+can't breathe any better, and what makes her face and hands red,
+and kinder swelled up.  She can't get her hands to her head to
+save her, and if a assassin should strike her, she couldn't raise
+her arm to ward off the blow if he killed her.  I s'pose it
+worrys her.
+
+And she has to put her bunnet on jest as quick as she gets her
+petticoats on, for she can't lift he arms to save her life after
+she gets her corsets on.  She owned up to me once that it made
+her feel queer to be a walkin' 'round her room with not much on
+only her bunnet all trimmed off with high feathers and artificial
+flowers.
+
+But she said she wuz willing to do anythin' necessary, and she
+felt that she must have her waist taper, no matter what stood in
+the way on't.  She loves the looks of a waist that tapers.  That
+wuz all the fault she found with the Goddus of Liberty
+enlightenin' the world in New York Harber.  We got to talkin'
+about it and she said, "If that Goddus only had corsets on, and
+sleeves that wuz skin tight, and her overskirt looped back over a
+bustle, it would be perfect!"
+
+But I told her I liked her looks as well ag'in as she wuz.  "Why,"
+sez I, "How could she lift her torch above her head?  And how could
+she ever enlighten the world, if she wuz so held down by her corsets
+and sleeves that she couldn't wave her torch?"
+
+She see in a minute that it couldn't be done.  She owned up that
+she couldn't enlighten the world in that condition, but as fur as
+looks went, it would be perfectly beautiful.
+
+But I don't think so at all.  But, as I say, Miss Flamm has a
+real hard time on't, all bard down as she is, and takin' all the
+care of that dog, day and night.  She is jest devoted to it.
+
+Why jest before we started a little lame girl with a shabby
+dress, but a face angel sweet, came to the side of the carriage
+to sell some water lilies.  Her face looked patient, and wistful,
+and she jest held out her flowers silently, and stood with her
+bare feet on the wet ground and her pretty eyes lookin' pitifully
+into our'n.  She wanted to sell 'em awfully, I could see.  And I
+should have bought the hull of 'em immegitly, my feelin's was
+sech, but onfortionably I had left my port-money in my other
+pocket, and Josiah said he had left his (mebby he had).  But Miss
+Flamm would have bought 'em in a minute, I knew, the child's face
+looked so mournful and appealin'; she would have bought 'em, but
+she wuz so engrossed by the dog; she wuz a holdin' him up in
+front of her a admirin' and carressin' of him, so's she never
+ketched sight of the lame child.
+
+No body, not the best natured creeter in the world, can see
+through a dog when it is held clost up to the eye, closer than
+anything else.
+
+Wall, we drove down to what they called Vichy Spring and there on
+a pretty pond clost to the springhouse, we see a boat with a
+bycycle on it, and a boy a ridin' it.  The boat wuz rigged out to
+look like a swan with its wings a comin' up each side of the boy.
+And down on the water, a sailin' along closely and silently wuz
+another swan, a shadow swan, a follerin' it right along.  It wuz
+a fair seen.
+
+And Josiah sez to me, "He should ride that boat before he left
+Saratoga; he said that wuz a undertakin' that a man might be
+proud to accomplish."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, don't you do anything of the kind."
+
+"I MUST, Samantha," sez he.  And then he got all animated about
+fixin' up a boat like it at home.  Sez he, "Don't you think it
+would be splendid to have one on the canal jest beyond the
+orchard?"  And sez he, "Mebby, bein' on a farm, it would be more
+appropriate to have a big goose sculptured out on it; don't you
+think so?"
+
+Sez I, "Yes, it would be fur more appropriate, and a goose a
+ridin' on it.  But," sez I, "you will never go into that
+undertakin' with my consent, Josiah Allen."
+
+"Why," sez he, "it would be a beautiful recreation; so uneek."
+
+But at that minute Miss Flamm gin the order to turn round and
+start for the Moon, or that is how I understood her, and I
+whispered to Josiah and sez, "She means to go in the buggy, for
+the land's sake!"
+
+And Josiah sez, "Wall, I haint a goin' and you haint.  I won't
+let you go into anythin' so dangerus.  She will probably drive
+into a baloon before long, and go up in that way, but jest before
+she drives in, you and I will get out, Samantha, if we have to
+walk back."
+
+"I never heard of anybody goin' up in a baloon with two horses
+and a buggy," sez I.
+
+"Wall, new things are a happenin' all the time, Samantha.  And I
+heard a feller a talkin' about it yesterday.  You know they are a
+havin' the big political convention here, and he said, (he wuz a
+real cute chap too,) he said, 'if the wind wasted in that
+convention could be utilized by pipes goin' up out of the ruff of
+that buildin' where it is held,' he said, 'it would take a man up
+to the moon.'  I heerd him say it.  And now, who knows but they
+have got it all fixed.  There wuz dretful windy speeches there
+this mornin'.  I hearn 'em, and I'll bet that is her idee, of
+bein' the first one to try it; she is so fashionable.  But I
+haint a goin' up in no sech a way."
+
+"No," sez I.  "Nor I nuther.  It would be fur from my wishes to
+be carried up to the skies on the wind of a political convention.
+"Though," sez I reasonably, "I haint a doubt that there wuz
+sights, and sights of it used there."
+
+But jest at this minute Miss Flamm got through talkin' with her
+relatives about the road, and settled down to caressin' the dog
+ag'in, and Josiah hadn't time to remark any further, only to say,
+"Watch me, Samantha, and when I say jump, jump."
+
+And then we sot still but watchful.  And Miss Flamm kissed the
+dog several times and pressed him to her heart that throbbed full
+of such a boundless love for him.  And he lifted his head and
+snapped at a fly, and barked at my companion with a renewed energy,
+and showed his intellect and delightful qualities in sech remarkable
+ways, that filled Miss Flamm's soul deep with a proud joy in him.
+And then he went to sleep a layin, down in her lap, a mashin' down
+the delicate lace and embroidery and beads.  He had been a eating
+the beads, I see him gnaw off more than two dozen of 'em, and I
+called her attention to it, but she said, "The dear little darlin'
+had to have some such recreation."  And she let him go on with it,
+a mowin' 'em down, as long as he seemed to have a appetite for 'em.
+And ag'in she called him "angel."  The idee of a angel a gnawin'
+off beads and a yelpin'!
+
+And I asked her, and I couldn't help it.  How her baby wuz that
+afternoon, and if she ever took it out to drive?
+
+And she said she didn't really know how it wuz this afternoon; it
+wuzn't very well in the mornin'.  The nurse had it out somewhere,
+she didn't really know just where.  And she said, no, she didn't
+take it out with her at all -- fur she didn't feel equal to the
+care of it, in this hot weather.
+
+Miss Flamm haint very well I could see that.  The care of that
+dog is jest a killin' her, a carryin' it round with her all the
+time daytimes, and a bein' up with it so much nights.  She said
+it had a dretful chill the night before, and she had to get up to
+warm blankets to put round it; "its nerves wuz so weak," she
+said, "and it wuz so sensative that she could not trust it to a
+nurse."  She has a hard time of it; there haint a doubt of it.
+
+Wall, it wuz anon, or jest about anon, that Miss Flamm turned to
+me and sez, "Moon's is one of the pleasantest places on the lake.
+I want you to see it; folks drive out there a sight from
+Saratoga."
+
+And then I looked at Josiah, and Josiah looked at me, and peace
+and happiness settled down ag'in onto our hearts.
+
+Wall, we got there considerably before anon and we found that
+Moon's insted of bein' up in another planet wuz a big, long sort
+a low buildin' settled right down onto this old earth, with a
+immense piazza stretchin' along the side on't.
+
+And Miss Flamm and Josiah and me disembarked from the carriage
+right onto the end of it.  But the dog and her relatives stayed
+back in the buggy and Josiah spoke bitterly to me ag'in but low,
+"They think it would hurt 'em to associate with me a little, dumb
+'m; but I am jest as good as they be any day of the week, if I
+haint dressed up so fancy."
+
+"That's so," sez I, whisperin' back to him, "and don't let it
+worry you a mite.  Don't try to act like Haman," sez I.  "You are
+havin' lots of the good things of this world, and are goin' to
+have some fried potatoes.  Don't let them two Mordecais at the
+gate, poison all your happiness, or you may get come up with jest
+as Haman wuz."
+
+"I'd love to hang'em," sez he, "as high as Haman's gallows would
+let 'em hang."
+
+"Why," sez I, "they haint injured you in any way.  They seem to
+eat like perfect gentlemen.  A little too exclusive and
+aristocratic, mebby, but they haint done nothin' to you."
+
+"No," sez he, "that is the stick on it, here we be, three men
+with a lot of wimmen.  And they can't associate with me as man
+with man, but set off by themselves too dumb proud to say a word
+to me, that is the dumb of it."
+
+But at this very minute, before I could rebuke him for his
+feerful profanity, Miss Flamm motioned to us to come and take a
+seat round a little table, and consequently we sot.
+
+It was a long broad piazza with sights and sights of folks on
+it a settin' round little tables like our'n, and all a lookin'
+happy, and a laughin', and a talkin' and a drinkin' different
+drinks, sech as lemonade, etc., and eatin' fried potatoes and
+sech.
+
+And out in the road by which we had come, wuz sights and sights
+of vehicles and conveyances of all kinds from big Tally Ho
+coaches with four horses on 'em, down to a little two wheeled
+buggy.  The road wuz full on'em.
+
+In front of us, down at the bottom of a steep though beautiful
+hill, lay stretched out the clear blue waters of the lake.
+Smooth and tranquil it looked in the light of that pleasant
+afternoon, and fur off, over the shinin' waves, lay the island.
+And white-sailed boats wuz a sailin' slowly by, and the shadow of
+their white sails lay down in the water a floatin' on by the side
+of the boats, lookin' some like the wings of that white dove that
+used to watch over Lake Saratoga.
+
+And as I looked down on the peaceful seen, the feelin's I had
+down in the wild wood, back of the Gizer Spring come back to me.
+The waves rolled in softly from fur off, fur off, bringin' a
+greetin' to me unbeknown to anybody, unbeknown to me.  It come
+into my heart unbidden, unsought, from afur, afur.
+
+Where did it come from that news of lands more beautiful than
+any that lay round Mr. Moons'es, beautiful as it wuz.
+
+Echoes of music sweeter fur than wuz a soundin' from the band
+down by the shore, music heard by some finer sense than heard
+that, heavenly sweet, heavenly sad, throbbin' through the
+remoteness of that country, through the nearness of it, and
+fillin' my eyes with tears.  Not sad tears, not happy ones, but
+tears that come only to them that shet their eyes and behold the
+country, and love it.  The waves softly lappin' the shore brought
+a message to me; my soul hearn it.  Who sent it?  And where, and
+when, and why?
+
+Not a trace of these emotions could be read on my countenance as
+I sot there calmly a eatin' fried potatoes.  And they did go
+beyond anything I ever see in the line of potatoes, and I thought
+I could fry potatoes with any one: Yes, such wuz my feelin's when
+I sot out for Mr. Moons'es.  But I went back a thinkin' that
+potatoes had never been fried by me, sech is the power of a grand
+achievment over a inferior one, and so easy is the sails taken
+down out of the swellin' barge of egotism.
+
+No, them potatoes you could carry in your pocket for weeks right
+by the side of the finest lace, and the lace would be improved by
+the purity of 'em.  Fried potatoes in that condition, you could
+eat 'em with the lightest silk gloves one and the tips of the
+fingers would be improved by 'em; fried potatoes, jest think
+on't!
+
+Wall, we had some lemonade too, and if you'll believe it, -- I
+don't s'pose you will but it is the truth, -- there wuz straws in
+them glasses too.  But you may as well believe it for I tell the
+truth at all times, and if I wuz a goin' to lie, I wouldn't lie
+about lemons.  And then I've always noticed it, that if things
+git to happenin' to you, lots of things jest like it will happen.
+That made twice in one week or so, that I had found straws in my
+tumbler.  But then I have had company three days a runnin', rainy
+days too sometimes.  It haint nothin' to wonder at too much.  Any
+way it is the truth.
+
+Wall, we drinked our lemonade, I a quietly takin' out the straws
+and droppin' 'em on the floor at my side in a quiet ladylike
+manner, and Josiah, a bein' wunk at by me, doin' the same thing.
+
+And anon, our carriage drove up to the end of the piazza agin and
+we sot sail homewards.  And the dog barked at Josiah almost every
+step of the way back, and when we got to our boardin' place, Miss
+Flamm shook hands with us both, and her relatives never took a
+mite of notice of us, further than to jump down and open the
+carriage door for us as we got out.  (They are genteel in their
+manners, and Josiah had to admit that they wuz, much as his
+feelin's wuz hurt by their haughtiness towards him.)
+
+And then the dog, and Miss Flamm and Miss Flamm's relatives drove
+off.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+VISIT TO THE INDIAN ENCAMPMENT.
+
+It wuz a fair sunshiny mornin' (and it duz seem to me that the
+fairness of a Saratoga mornin' seems fairer, and the sunshine
+more sunshiny than it duz anywhere else), that Josiah and Ardelia
+and me sot sail for the Indian Encampment, which wuz encamped on
+a little rise of ground to the eastward of where we wuz.
+
+Ardelia wuz to come to our boardin' place at halfpast 9 A. M.,
+forenoon, and we wuz to set out together from there.  And
+punctual to the very half minute I wuz down on the piazza, with
+my mantilly hung over my arm and my umberel in my left hand.
+Josiah Allen was on the right side on me.  And as Ardelia hadn't
+come yet we sot down in a middlin' quiet part of the piazza, and
+waited for her.  And as we sot there, I sez to Josiah, as I
+looked out on the fair pleasant mornin' and the fair pleasant
+faces environin' of us round, sez I, "Saratoga is a
+good-natured place, haint it, Josiah?"
+
+And he said (I mistrust his corns ached worse than common, or
+sunthin'), he said, he didn't see as it wuz any better-natured
+than Jonesville or Loontown.
+
+And I sez, "Yes it is, Josiah Allen."  Sez I, folks are happier
+here and more generous, the rich ones seem inclined to help them
+that need help to a little comfort and happiness.  Jest as I have
+always said, Josiah Allen.  When folks are happy, they are more
+inclined to do good."
+
+"Oh shaw!" sez Josiah.  "That never made no difference with me."
+
+"What didn't?" sez I.
+
+"I'm always good," sez he, and he snapped out the words real
+snappish, and loud.
+
+And I sez mildly, "Wall, you needn't bring the ruff down to prove
+your goodness."
+
+And he went on: "I don't see as they are so pesky good here; I
+haint seen nothin' of it."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "when I look over Yaddo, and Hilton Park, it makes
+me reconciled, Josiah, to have men get rich; it makes me willin',
+Josiah."
+
+And he sez (cross), He guessed men would get rich whether I wuz
+willin' or not; he guessed they wouldn't ask me.
+
+"Wall, you needn't snap my head off, Josiah Allen," sez I,
+"because I love to see folks use their wealth to make pleasant
+places for poor folks to wander round in, and forget their own
+narrow rocky roads for a spell.  It is a noble thing to do,
+Josiah Allen; they might have built high walls round 'em if they
+had been a mind to, and locked the gates and shet out all the
+poor and tired-out ones, But they didn't, and I am highly tickled
+at the thought on't, Josiah Allen."
+
+"Wall, I don't shet up our sugar lot, do I? and I have never
+heerd you say one word a praisin' me up for that."
+
+"That is far different, Josiah Allen," sez I, "there is nothin'
+there that can git hurt, only stumps.  And you have never laid
+out a cent of money on it.  And they have spent thousands and
+thousands of dollars; and the poorest little child in Saratoga,
+if it has beauty-lovin' eyes, can go in and enjoy these places
+jest as much as the owners can.  And it is a sweet thought to me,
+Josiah Allen."
+
+"Oh wall," sez he, "you have probable said enough about it."
+
+Now I never care for the last word, some wimmen do, but I never
+do.  But still I wuzn't goih' to be shet right eff from talkin'
+about these places, and I intimated as much to him, and he said,
+"Dumb it all!  I could talk about 'em all day, if I wanted to,
+and about Demorist's Woods too."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "that is another place, Josiah Allen, that is a
+likely well-meanin' spot.  Middlin' curius to look at," sez I,
+reesonably.  "It makes one's head feel sort a strange to see them
+criss-cross, curius poles, and floors up in trees, and ladders,
+and teterin' boards, and springs, etc., etc., etc.  But it is a
+well-meanin' spot, Josiah Allen.  And it highly tickled me to
+think that the little fresh air children wuz brung up there by
+the owner of the woods and the poor little creeters, out of their
+dingy dirty homes, and filthy air, wandered round for one happy
+day in the green woods, in the fresh air and sunshine.  That wuz
+a likely thing to do, Josiah Allen, and it raises a man more in
+my estimation when he's doin' sech things as that, than to set up
+in a political high chair, and have a lot of dirty hands clapped,
+and beery breaths a cheerin' him on up the political arena."
+
+"Oh wall," sez Josiah, "the doin's in them woods is enough to
+make anybody a dumb lunatick.  The crazyest lookin' lot of stuff
+I ever set eyes on."
+
+"Wall, anyway," sez I, "it is a good crazy, if it is, and a
+well-meanin' one."
+
+"Oh, how cross Josiah Allen did look as he heered me say these
+words.  That man can't bear to hear me say one word a praisin' up
+another man, and it grows on him.
+
+But good land!  I am a goin' to speak out my mind as long as my
+breath is spared.  And I said quite a number of words more about
+the deep enjoyment it gin' me to see these broad, pleasure
+grounds free for all, rich and poor, bond and free, hombly and
+handsome, etc., etc.
+
+And I spoke about the charitable houses, St. Christiana's home,
+and the Home for Old Female Wimmen, and mentioned the fact in
+warm tones of how a good, noble-hearted woman had started that
+charity in the first on't.
+
+And Josiah, while I wuz talkin' about these wimmen, became meak
+as a lamb.  They seemed to quiet him.  He looked real mollyfied
+by the time Ardelia got there, which wuz anon.  And then we sot
+sail for the Encampment.
+
+The Encampment is encamped on one end of a big, square,
+wild-lookin' lot right back of one of the biggest tarvens in
+Saratoga.  It is jest as wild lookin' and appeerin' a field as
+there is in the outskirts of Loontown or Jonesville.  Why Uncle
+Grant Hozzleton's stunny pasture don't look no more sort a broke
+up and rural than that duz.  I wondered some why they had it
+there, and then I thought mebby they kep' it to remember Nater
+by, old Nater herself, that runs a pretty small chance to be
+thought on in sech a place as this.
+
+You know there is so much orniment and gildin' and art in the
+landscape and folks, that mebby they might forget the great
+mother of us all, that is, right in the thickest of the crowd
+they might, but they have only to take these few steps and they
+will see Ma Nater with her every-day dress on, not fixed up a
+mite.  And I s'pose she looks good to 'em.
+
+I myself think that Mother Nater might smooth herself out a
+little there with no hurt to herself or her children.  I don't
+believe in Mas goin' round with their dresses onhooked, and
+slip-shod, and their hair all stragglin' out of their combs.  (I
+say this in metafor.  I don't spose Ma Nater ever wore a back
+comb or had hooks and eyes on her gown; I say it for oritory, and
+would wish to be took in a oritorius way.
+
+And I don't say right out, that the reeson I have named is the
+one why they keep that place a lookin' so like furey, I said,
+MEBBY.  But I will say this, that it is a wild-lookin' spot, and
+hombly.
+
+Wall, on the upper end on't, standin' up on the top of a sort of
+a hill, the Indian Encampment is encamped.  There is a hull row
+of little stores, and there is swings, and public diversions of
+different kinds, krokay grounds, etc., etc., etc.
+
+Wall, Ardelia stopped at one of these stores kep' by a Injun, not
+a West, but a East one, and began to price some wooden bracelets,
+and try 'em on, and Josiah and me wandered on.
+
+And anon, we came to a tent with some good verses of Scripter on
+it;  good solid Bible it wuz;  and so I see it wuz a good creeter
+in there anyway.  And I asked a bystander a standin' by, Who wuz
+in there, and Why, and When?
+
+And he said it wuz a fortune-teller who would look in the pamm of
+my hand, and tell me all my fortune that wuz a passin' by.  And I
+said I guessed I would go in, for I would love to know how the
+children wuz that mornin' and whether the baby had got over her
+cold.  I hadn't heerd from 'em in over two days.
+
+Josiah kinder hung 'round outside though he wuz willin' to have
+me go in.  He jest worships the children and the baby.  And he
+sees the texts from Job on it, with his own eyes.
+
+So I bid him a affectionate farewell, and we see the woman a
+lookin' out of the tent and witnessin' on't.  But I didn't care.
+If a pair of companions and a pair of grandparents can't act
+affectionate, who can?  And the world and the Social Science
+meetin' might try in vain to bring up any reeson why they
+shouldn't.
+
+So I went in, with my mind all took up with the grandchildern.
+But the first words she sez to me wuz, as she looked close at the
+pamm of my hand, "Keep up good spirits, Mom; you will get him in
+spite of all opposition."
+
+"Get who?" sez I, "And what?"
+
+"A man you want to marry.  A small baldheaded man, a amiable-lookin',
+slender man.  His heart is sot on you.  And all the efferts of the
+light-complected woman in the blue hat will be in vain to break it
+up.  Keep up good courage, you will marry him in spite of all," sez
+she, porin' over my pamm and studyin' it as if it wuz a jography.
+
+"For the land's sake!" sez I, bein' fairly stunted with the idees
+she promulgated.
+
+"Yes, you will marry him, and be happy.  But you have had a
+sickness in the past and your line of happiness has been broken
+once or twice."
+
+Sez I, "I should think as much; let a woman live with a man, the
+best man in the world for 20 years, and if her line of happiness
+haint broke more than once or twice, why it speaks well for the
+line, that is all.  It is a good, strong line."
+
+"Then you have been married?" says she.
+
+"Yes, Mom," sez I.
+
+"Oh, I see, down in the corner of your hand is a coffin, you are
+a widow, you have seen trouble.  But you will be happy.  The
+mild, bald gentleman will make you happy.  He will lead you to
+the altar in spite of the light-complected woman with the blue
+bat on."
+
+Ardelia Tutt had on a blue hat, the idee!  But I let her go on.
+Thinkses I, "I have paid my money and now it stands me in hand to
+get the worth on't."  So she comferted me up with the hope of
+gettin' my Josiah for quite a spell.
+
+Gettin' my pardner!  Gettin' the father of my childern, and the
+grandparent of my grandchildren!  Jest think on't, will you?
+
+But then she branched off and told me things that wuz truly
+wonderful.  Where and how she got 'em wuz and is a mistery to me.
+True things, and strange.
+
+Why it seemed same as if them tall pines, that wuz a whisperin'
+together over the Encampment wuz a peerin' over into my past, and
+a whisperin' it down to her.  Or, in some way or other, the truth
+wuz a bein' filtered down to her comprehension through some
+avenue beyond our sense or sight.
+
+It is a curious thing, so I think, and so Josiah thinks.  We
+talked it over after I came out, and we wuz a wanderin' on about
+the Encampment.  I told him some of the wonderful things she had
+told me and he didn't believe it.  "For," sez he, "I'll be hanged
+if I can understand and I won't believe anything that I can't
+understand!"
+
+And I pointed with the top of my umberel at a weed growin' by the
+side of the road, and sez I, "When you tell me jest how that weed
+draws out of the back ground jest the ingredients she needs to
+make her blue foretop, and her green gown, then I'll tell you all
+about this secret that Nater holds back from us a spell, but will
+reveel to us when the time comes."
+
+"Oh shave!" sez Josiah, "I guess I know all about a jimson weed.
+Why they groin; that is all there is about them.  They grow, dumb
+'em.  I guess if you'd broke your back as many times as I have a
+pullin' 'em up, yon would know all about' em.  Dumb their dumb
+picters," sez he, a scowlin' at 'em.
+
+It wuz the same kind of weed that growed in our onion beds.  I
+recognized it.  Them and white daisies, our garden wuz overrun by
+'em both.
+
+But I sez, "Can you tell how the little seed of this weed goes
+down into the earth and selects jest what she wants out of the
+great storehouse below?  She never comes out in a pink head-dress
+or a yellow gown.  No, she always selects what will make the blue.
+It shows that it has life, intelligence, or else it couldn't think,
+way down under the ground, and grope in the dark, but always
+gropin' jest right, always a thinkin' the right thing, never, never
+in the hundreds and thousands of years makin' a mistake.  Why, you
+couldn't do it, Josiah Allen, nor I couldn't.
+
+"And we set and see these silent mysteries a goin' on right at
+our door-step day by day, and year by year, and think nothin' of
+it, because it is so common.  But if anything else, some new law,
+some new wonder we don't understand comes in our way, we are
+ready to reject it and say it is a lie.  But you know, Josiah
+Allen," sez I, jest ready to go on eloquent -
+
+But I wuz interrupted jest here by my companion hollerin' up in a
+loud voice to a boy, "Here! you stop that, you young scamp!  Don't
+you let me see you a doin' that agin!"
+
+Sez I, "What is it, Josiah Allen?"
+
+"Why look at them young imps, a throwin' sticks at that feeble
+old woman, over there."
+
+I looked, and my own heart wuz rousted up with indignation.  I
+stood where I couldn't see her face, but I see she wuz old,
+feeble, and bent, a withered poor old creeter, and they had
+marked up over her, her name, Aunt Sally.
+
+I too wuz burnin' indignant to see a lot of young creeters a
+throwin' sticks at her, and I cried out loud, "Do you let Sarah
+be."
+
+They turned round and laughed in our faces, and I went on: "I'd
+be ashamed of myself if I wuz in your places to be a throwin'
+sticks at that feeble old woman.  Why don't you spend your
+strengths a tryin' to do sunthin' for her?  Git her a home, and
+sunthin' to eat, and a better dress.  Before I'd do what you are
+a doin' now, I'd growvel in the dust.  Why, if you wuz my boys
+I'd give you as good a spankin' as you ever had."
+
+But they jest laughed at us, the impudent Greeters.  And one of
+the boys at that minute took up a stick and threw it, and hit
+Sarah right on her poor old head.
+
+Sez Josiah, "Don't you hit Sarah agin."
+
+Sez the boys, "We will," and two of 'em hit her at one time.  And
+one of 'em knocked the pipe right out of her mouth.  She wuz a
+smokin', poor old creeter.  I s'pose that wuz all the comfort she
+took.  But did them little imps care?  They knocked her as if
+they hated the sight of her.  And my Josiah (I wuz proud of that
+man) jest advanced onto 'em, and took 'em one in each hand, and
+gin 'em sech a shakin', that I most expected to see their bones
+drop out, and sez he between each shake, "Will you let Sarah
+alone now?"
+
+I wuz proud of my Josiah, but fearful of the effect of so much
+voyalence onto his constitution, and also onto the boys' frames.
+And I advanced onto the seen of carnage and besought him to be
+calm.  Sez he, "I won't be calm!" sez he, "I haint the man,
+Samantha, to stand by and see one of your sect throwed at, as I
+have seen Sarah throwed at, without avengin' of it."
+
+And agin he shook them boys with a vehemence.  The pennies and
+marbles in their pockets rattled and their bones seemed ready to
+part asunder.  I wuz proud of that noble man, my pardner.  But
+still I knew that if their bones was shattered my pardner would
+be avenged upon by incensed parents.  And I sez, "I'd let 'em go
+now, Josiah.  I don't believe they'll ever harm Sarah agin."  Sez
+I, "Boys, you won't, will you ever strike a poor feeble old woman
+agin?."  Sez I, "promise me, boys, not to hurt Sarah."
+
+I don't know what the effect of my words would have been, but a
+man came up just then and explained to me, that Aunt Sally wuz a
+image that they throwed at for one cent apiece to see if they
+could break her pipe.
+
+I see how it wuz, and cooled right down, and so did Josiah.  And
+he gin the boys five cents apiece, and quiet rained down on the
+Encampment.
+
+But I sez to the man, "I don't like the idee of havin' my sect
+throwed at from day to day, and week to week."  Sez I, "Why didn't
+you have a man fixed up to throw at, why didn't you have a Uncle
+Sam?"  Sez I, "I don't over and above like it; it seems to be a
+sort of a slight onto my sect."
+
+Sez the man winkin' kind a sly at Josiah, "It won't do to make
+fun of men, men have the power in their hands and would resent it
+mebby.  Uncle Sam can't be used jest like Aunt Sally."
+
+Sez I, "That haint the right spirit.  There haint nothin' over
+and above noble in that, and manly."
+
+I wuz kinder rousted up about it, and so wuz Josiah.  And that is
+I s'pose the reasun of his bein' so voyalent, at the next place
+of recreation we halted at Josiah see the picture of the mermaid;
+that beautiful female, a, settin' on the rock and combin' her
+long golden hair.  And he proposed that we should go in and see
+it.
+
+Sez I, "It costs ten cents apiece, Josiah Allen.  Think of the
+cost before it is too late."  Sez I, "Your expenditure of money
+today has been unusial."  Sez I, "The sum of ten cents has jest
+been raised by you for noble principles, and I honer you for it.
+But still the money has gone."  Sez I, "Do you feel able to incur
+the entire expense?"
+
+Sez he, "All my life, Samantha, I have jest hankered after seein'
+a mermaid.  Them beautiful creeters, a settin' and combin' their
+long golden tresses.  I feel that I must see it.  I fairly long
+to see one of them beautiful, lovely bein's before I die."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "if you feel like that, Josiah Allen, it is not
+fur from me to balk you in your search for beauty.  I too admire
+loveliness, Josiah Allen, and seek after it."  And sez I, "I will
+faithfully follow at your side, and together we will bask in the
+rays of beauty, together will we be lifted up and inspired by the
+immortal spirit of loveliness."
+
+So payin' our 30 cents we advanced up the steps, I expectin' soon
+to be made happy, and Josiah held up by the expectation of soon
+havin' his eyes blest by that vision of enchantin' beauty, he had
+so long dremp of.
+
+He advanced onto the pen first and before I even glanced down
+into the deep where as I s'posed she set on a rock a combin' out
+her long golden hair, a singin' her lurin' and enchanted song, to
+distant mariners she had known, and to the one who wuz a showin'
+of her off, before I had time to even glance at her, the maid, I
+was dumbfounded and stood aghast, at the mighty change that came
+over my pardner's linement.
+
+He towered up in grandeur and in wrath before me.  He seemed
+almost like a offended male fowl when ravenin' hawks are angerin'
+of it beyond its strength to endure.  I don't like that metafor;
+I don't love to compare my pardner to any fowl, wild or tame; but
+my frenzied haste to describe the fearful seen must be my excuse,
+and also my agitation in recallin' of it.
+
+He towered up, he fluttered so to speak majestically, and he says
+in loud wild axents that must have struck terror to the soul of
+that mariner, "Where is the hair-comb?"
+
+And then he shook his fist in the face of that mariner, and cries
+out once agin, "Where is them long golden tresses?  Bring 'em on
+this instant!  Fetch on that hair-comb, in a minute's time, or
+I'll prosecute you, and sue you, and take the law to you - !"
+
+The mariner quailed before him and sez I, "My dear pardner, be
+calm!  Be calm!"
+
+"I won't be calm!"
+
+Sez I mildly, but firmly, "You must, Josiah Allen; you must! or
+you will break open your own chest.  You must be calm."
+
+"And I tell you I won't be calm.  And I tell you," says he, a
+turnin' to that destracted mariner agin "I tell you to bring on
+that comb and that long hair, this instant.  Do you s'pose I'm
+goin' to pay out my money to see that rack-a-bone that I wouldn't
+have a layin' out in my barn-yard for fear of scerin' the dumb
+scere-crows out in the lot.  Do you s'pose I'm goin' to pay out
+my money for seein' that dried-up mummy of the hombliest thing
+ever made on earth, the dumbdest, hombliest; with 2 or 3 horse
+hairs pasted onto its yellow old shell!  Do you spose I'm goin'
+to be cheated by seein' that, into thinkin' it is a beautiful
+creeter a playin' and combin' her hair?  Bring on that beautiful
+creeter a combin' out her long, golden hair this instant, and
+bring out the comb and I'll give you five minutes to do it in."
+
+He wuz hoorse with emotion, and he wuz pale round his lips as
+anything and leis eyes under his forward looked glassy.  I wuz
+fearful of the result.
+
+Thinkses I, I will look and see what has wrecked my pardner's
+happiness and almost reasen.  I looked in and I see plain that
+his agitation was nothin' to be wondered at.  It did truly seem
+to be the hombliest, frightfulest lookin' little thing that wuz
+ever made by a benignant Providence or a taxy-dermis.  I couldn't
+tell which made it.  I see it all, but I see also, so firm, sot
+is my reasun onto its high throne on my heart, I see that to
+preserve my pardner's sanity, I must control my reasun at the
+sight that had tottered my pardner's.
+
+I turned to him, and tried to calm the seethin' waters, but he
+loudly called for the comb, and for the tresses, and the lookin'
+glass.  And, askin' in a wild' sarcastic way where the song wuz
+that she sung to mariners?  And hollerin' for him to bring on
+that rock at that minute, and them mariners, and ordered him to
+set her to singin'.
+
+The idee! of that little skeletin with her skinny lips drawed
+back from her shinin' fish teeth, a singin'.  The idee on't!
+
+But truly, he wuz destracted and knew not what he did.  The
+mariner in charge looked destracted.  And the bystanders a
+standin' by wuz amazed, and horrowfied by the spectacle of his
+actin' and behavin'.  And I knew not how I should termonate the
+seen, and withdraw him away from where he wuz.
+
+But in my destraction and agony of sole, I bethought me of one
+meens of quietin' him and as it were terrifyin' him into silence
+and be the meens of gettin' on him to leave the seen.  I begoned
+to Ardelia to come forward and I sez in a whisper to her, "Take
+out your pencil and a piece of paper and stand up in front of him
+and go to writin' some of your poetry,"
+
+And then I sez agin in tender agents, "Be calm, Josiah."
+
+"And I tell you that I won't be calm!  And I tell you," a shakin'
+his fist at that pale mariner, "I tell you to bring out -- "
+
+At that very minute he turned his eyes onto Ardelia, who stood
+with a kind of a fur-away look in her eyes in front of him with
+the paper in her hand, and sez he to me, "What is she doin'?"
+
+"She is composin' some poetry onto you, Josiah Allen," sez I, in
+tremblin' axents; for I felt that if that skeme failed, I wuz
+undone, for I knew I had no ingredients there to get him a extra
+good meal.  No, I felt that my tried and true weepon wuz fur
+away, and this wuz my last hope.
+
+But as I thought these thoughts with almost a heatlightnin'
+rapidety, I see a change in his liniment.  It did not look so
+thick and dark; it began to look more natural and clear.
+
+And sez he in the same old way I have heerd him say it so many
+times, "Dumb it all!  What duz she want to write poetry on me
+for?  It is time to go home."  And so sayin', he almost tore us
+from the seen.
+
+I gin Ardelia that night 2 yards of lute-string ribbon, a light
+pink, and didn't begrech it.  But I have never dast, not in his
+most placid and serene moments - I have never dast, to say the
+word "Mermaid' to him.
+
+Truly there is something that the boldest female pardner dassent
+do.  Mermaids is one of the things I don' dast to bring up.  No!
+no, fur be it from me to say "Mermaid" to Josiah Allen.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+A DRIVE TO SARATOGA LAKE.
+
+
+Josiah and me took a short drive this afternoon, he hirin' a
+buggy for the occasion.  He called it "goin' in his own conveniance,"
+and I didn't say nothin' aginst his callin' it so.  I didn't break
+it up for this reasun, thinkses I it is a conveniance for us to
+ride in it, for us 2 tried and true souls to get off for a minute
+by ourselves.
+
+Wall, Josiah wuz dretful good behaved this afternoon.  He helped
+me in a good deal politer than usual and tucked the bright
+lap-robe almost tenderly round my form.
+
+Men do have sech spells.  They are dretful good actin' at times.
+Why they act better and more subdueder and mellerer at sometimes
+than at others, is a deep subject which we mortals cannot as yet
+fully understand.  Also visey versey, their cross, up headeder
+times, over bearin' and actin'.  It is a deep subject and one
+freighted with a great deal of freight.
+
+But Josiah's goodness on this afternoon almost reached the
+Scripteral and he sez, when we first sot out, and I see that the
+horse's head wuz turned towards the Lake.  Sez he, "I guess we'll
+go to the Lake, but where do you want to go, Samantha?  I will go
+anywhere you want to go."
+
+And he still drove almost recklessly on lakewards.  And sez he,
+"We had better go straight on, but say the word, and you can go
+jest where you want to."  And he urged the horse on to still
+greater speed.  And he sez agin, "Do you want to go any
+particular place, Samantha?"
+
+"Yes," sez I, "I had jest as leves go there as not."
+
+"Wall, I knew there would be where you would want to go."  And he
+drove on at a good jog.  But no better jog than we had been a
+goin' on.
+
+Wall the weather wuz delightful.  It wuz soft and balmy.  And my
+feelin's towered my pardner (owin' to his linement) wuz soft and
+balmy as the air.  And so we moved onwards, past the home of one
+who wuz true to his country, when all round him wuz false, who
+governed his state wisely and well, held the lines firm, when she
+wuz balky, and would have been glad to take the lines in her
+teeth and run away onto ruin; past the big grand house of him who
+carried a piece of our American justice way off into Egypt and
+carried it firm and square too right there in the dark.  I s'pose
+it is dark.  I have always hearn about its bein' as dark as
+Egypt.  Wall, anyway he is a good lookin' man.  They both on 'em
+are and Josiah admitted it - after some words.
+
+Wall anon, or perhaps a little after, we came to where we could
+see the face of Beautiful Saratoga Lake, layin' a smilin' up into
+the skies.  A little white cloud wuz a restin' up on the top of
+the tree-covered mountain that riz up on one side of the lake,
+and I felt that it might be the shadow form of the sacred dove
+Saderrosseros a broodin' down over the waters she loved.
+
+That she loved still, though another race wuz a bathin' their
+weary forwards in the tide.  And I wondered as I looked down on
+it, whether the great heart of the water wuz constant; if it ever
+heaved up into deep sithes a thinkin' of the one who had passed
+away, of them who once rested lightly on her bosem, bathed their
+dark forwards and read the meanin' of the heavens, in the moon
+and stars reflected there.
+
+I don't know as she remembered 'em, and Josiah don't.  But I know
+as we stood there, a lookin' down on her, the lake seemed to give
+a sort of a sithe and a shiver kind a run over her, not a cold
+shiver exactly, but a sort of a shinin', glorified shiver.  I see
+it a comin' from way out on the lake and it swept and sort a
+shivered on clean to the shore and melted away there at our feet.
+Mebby it wuz a sort o' sithe, and mebby agin it wuzn't.
+
+I guess it felt that it wuz all right, that a fairer race had
+brought fairer customs and habits of thoughts, and the change wuz
+not a bad one.  I guess she looked forward to the time when a
+still grander race should look down into her shinin' face, a race
+of free men, and free wimmen; sons and daughters of God, who
+should hold their birthright so grandly and nobly that they will
+look back upon the people of to-day, as we look back upon the
+dark sons and daughters of the forest, in pity and dolor.
+
+I guess she thought it wuz all right.  Any way she acted as if
+she did.  She looked real sort o' serene and calm as we left her,
+and sort o' prophetic too, and glowin'.
+
+Wall, we went by a long first rate lookin' sort of a tarven, I
+guess.  It wuz a kind of a dark red color, and dretfully flowered
+off in wood - red wood.  And there we see standin' near the
+house, a great big round sort of a buildin', and my Josiah sez,
+
+"There! that is a buildin' I like the looks on. That is a barn I
+like; built perfectly round.  That is sunthin' uneek.  I'll have
+a barn like that if I live.  I fairly love that barn."  And he
+stopped the horse stun still to look at it.
+
+And I sez in sort o' cool tones, not entirely cold, but coolish:
+"What under the sun do you want with a round barn?  And you don't
+need another one."
+
+"Wall, I don't exactly need it, Samantha, but it would be a
+comfert to me to own one.  I should dearly love a round barn."
+
+And he went on pensively, - "I wonder how much it would cost.  I
+wouldn't have it quite so big as this is.  I'd have it for a
+horse barn, Samantha.  It would look so fashionable, and genteel.
+Think what it would be, Samantha, to keep our old mair in a round
+barn, why the mair would renew her age."
+
+"She wouldn't pay no attention to it," sez I.  "She knows too
+much."  And I added in cooler, more dignifieder tones, but dretful
+meanin' ones, "The old mair, Josiah Allen, don't run after every
+new fancy she hears on.  She don't try to be fashionable, and she
+haint high-headed, except," sez I, reasenably, "when you check her
+up too much."
+
+"Wall," sez he, "I am bound to make some enquiries.  Hello!" says
+he to a bystander a comin' by.  "Have you any idee what such a
+barn as that would cost?  A little smaller one, I don't need so
+big a one.  How many feet of lumber do you s'pose it would take
+for it?  I ask you," sez he, "as between man and man."
+
+I nudged him there, for as I have said, I didn't believe then,
+and I don't believe now, that he or any other man ever knew or
+mistrusted what they meant by that term "as between man and man."
+I think it sounds kind o' flat, and I always oppose Josiah's
+usin' it; he loves it.
+
+Wall, the man broke out a' laughin' and sez he, "That haint a
+barn, that is a tree."
+
+"A tree!" sez I, a sort o' cranin' my neck forward in deep amaze.
+And what exclamation Josiah Allen made, I will not be coaxed into
+revealin'; no, it is better not.
+
+But suffice it to say that after a long explanation my companion
+at last gin in that the man wuz a tellin' the truth, and it wuz
+the lower part of a tree-trunk, that growed once near the Yo Semity
+valley of California.  Good land! good land!
+
+Josiah drove on quick after the man explained it, he felt
+meachin', but I didn't notice his linement so much, I wuz so deep
+in thought, and a wonderin' about it; a wonderin' how the old
+tree felt with her feet a restin' here on strange soil - her
+withered, dry old feet a standin' here, as if jest ready to walk
+away restless like and feverish, a wantin' to get back by the
+rushin' river that used to bathe them feet in the spring overflow
+of the pure cold mountain water.  It seemed to me she felt she
+was a alien, as if she missed her strong sturdy grand old body,
+her lofty head that used to peer up over the mountains, and as if
+some day she wuz a goin' to set off a walkin' back, a tryin' to
+find 'em.
+
+I thought of how it had towered up, how the sun had kissed its
+branches, how the birds had sung and built their nests against
+her green heart, hovered in her great, outstretched arms.  The
+birds of a century, the birds of a thousand years.  How the
+storms had beat upon her; the first autumn rains of a thousand
+years, the first snow-flakes that had wavered down in a slantin'
+line and touched the tips of her outstretched fingers, and then
+had drifted about her till her heart wuz almost frozen and she
+would clap her cold hands together to warm 'em, and wail out a
+dretful moanin' sound of desolation, and pain.
+
+But the first warm rain drops of Spring would come, the sunshine
+warmed her, she swung out her grand arms in triumph agin, and
+joined the majestic psalm of victory and rejoicing with all her
+grand sisterhood of psalmists.  The stars looked down on her, the
+sun lit her lofty forward, the suns and stars of a thousand
+years.  Strange animals, that mebby we don't know anything about
+now, roamed about her feet, birds of a different plumage and song
+sung to her (mebby).
+
+Strange faces of men and women looked up to her.  What faces had
+looked up to her in sorrow and in joy?  I'd gin a good deal to
+know.  I'd have loved to see them strange faces touched with
+strange pains and hopes.  Tribulations and joys of a thousand
+years ago.  What sort of tribulations wuz they, and what sort of
+joys?  Sunthin' human, sunthin' that we hold in common, no doubt.
+The same pain that pained Eve as she walked down out of Eden, the
+same joy that Adam enjoyed while they and the garden wuz
+prosperus, wuz in their faces most probable whether their
+forwards wuz pinted or broad, their faces black, copper colored
+or white.
+
+And the changes, the changes of a thousand years, all these the
+old tree had seen, and I respected her dry dusty old feet and wuz
+sorry for 'em.  And I reveryed on the subject more'n half the way
+home, and couldn't help it.  Anyway my revery lasted till jest
+before we got to the big gate of the Race Course.
+
+And right there, right in front of them big ornamental doors, we
+see Miss G. Washington Flamm, with about a thousand other carriages
+and wagons and Tally ho's and etcetry, and etcetry.  Josiah thinks
+there wuz a million teams, but I don't.  I am mejum; there wuzn't
+probable over a thousand right there in the road.
+
+Miss Flamm recognized us and asked us if we didn't want to go in.
+Wall, Josiah wuz agreeable to the idee and said so.  And then she
+said sunthin' to the man that tended to the gate, probably
+sunthin' in our praise, and handed him sunthin', it might have
+been a ten cent piece, for all I know.
+
+But anyway he wuz dretful polite to us, and let us through.  And
+my land! if it wuzn't a sight to behold!  Of all the big roomy
+places I ever see all filled with vehicles of all shapes and
+sizes and folks on foot and big high platforms, all filled with
+men and wimmen and children!  And Josiah sez to me, "I thought
+the hull dumb world wuz there outside in the road, and here there
+is ten times as many in here."
+
+And I sez, "Yes, Josiah, be careful and not lose me, for I feel
+like a needle in a hay mow."
+
+He looked down on me and sort a smiled.  I s'pose it wuz because
+I compared myself to a needle, and he sez, "A cambric needle, or
+a darnin' needle?"
+
+And I sez, "I wouldn't laugh in such a time as this, Josiah Allen."
+Sez I, "Do jest look over there on the race course."
+
+And it wuz a thrillin' seen.  It wuz a place big enough for all
+the horses of our land to run 'round in and from Phario's horses
+down to them of the present time.  And beautiful broad smooth
+roads cut in the green velvet of the grass, and horses goin'
+'round jest like lightnin', with little light buggys hitched to
+'em, some like the quiver on sheet lightnin' (only different
+shape) and men a drivin' 'em.
+
+And then there wuz a broad beautiful race course with little
+clusters of trees and bushes, every little while right in the
+road, and if you'll believe it, I don't s'pose you will, but it
+is the livin' truth, when them horses, goin' jest like a flash of
+light, with little boys all dressed in gay colors a ridin' 'em --
+when them horses came to them trees instid of goin' 'round 'em,
+or pushin' in between 'em, or goin' back agin, they jumped right
+over 'em.  I don't spose this will be believed by lots of folks
+in Jonesville and Loontown, but it is the truth, for I see it
+with both my eyes.  Josiah riz right up in the buggy and cheered
+jest as the rest of 'em did, entirely unbeknown to himself, so he
+said, to see it a goin' on.
+
+Why he got nearly rampant with excitement.  And so did I, though
+I wouldn't want it known by Tirzah Ann's husband's folks and
+others in Jonesville.  They call it "steeple chasin'" so if they
+should hear on't, it wouldn't sound so very wicked any way.  I
+should probable tell 'em if they said too much, "That it wuz a
+pity if folks couldn't get interested in a steeple and chase it
+up."  But between you and me I didn't see no sign of a steeple,
+nor meetin' house nor nuthin'.  I s'pose they gin it that name to
+make it seem more righter to perfessors.  I know it wuz a great
+comfort to me.  (But I don't think they chased a steeple, and
+Josiah don't, for we think we should have seen it if they had.)
+
+Wall, as I say, we wuz both dretfully interested, excited, and
+wrought up, I s'pose I ort to say, when a chap accosted me and
+says to me sunthin' about buyin' a pool.  And I shook my head and
+sez, "No, I don't want to buy no pool."
+
+But he kep' on a talkin' and a urgin', and sez, "Won't you buy a
+French pool, mom, you can make lots of money out of it."
+
+"A pool," sez I in dignified axents, and some stern, for I wuz
+weary with his importunities.  "What do I want a pool for?  Don't
+you s'pose there's any pools in Jonesville, and I never thought
+nothin' on 'em, I always preferred runnin' water.  But if I wuz a
+goin' to buy one, what under the sun do you s'pose I would buy
+one way off here for, hundreds of miles from Jonesville?"
+
+"I might possibly," sez I, not wantin' to hurt his feelin's and
+tryin' to think of some use I could put it tot " might if you had
+a good small American pool, that wuz a sellin' cheap; and I could
+have it set right in our back yard, clost to the horse barn, why
+I might possibly try to make a dicker with you for it.  I might
+use it for raisin' ducks and geese, though I'd rather have a
+runnin' stream then.  But how under the sun you think I could
+take a pool home on a tower, how I could pack it, or transport
+it, or drive it home is a mystery to me."
+
+Again he sez mechinecally, "Lots of wimmen do get 'em."
+
+"Wall, some wimmen," sez I mildly, for I see he wuz a lookin' at
+me perfect dumbfoundered.  I see I wuz fairly stuntin' him with
+my eloquence.  "Some wimmen will buy anything if it has a French
+name to it.  But I prefer my own country, land or water.  And
+some wimmen," sez I, "will buy anything if they can get it cheap,
+things they don't need, and would be better off without, from a
+eliphant down to a magnificent nothin' to call husband.  They'll
+buy any worthless and troublesome thing jest to get 'em to goin'.
+Now such wimmen would jest jump at that pool.  But that haint my
+way.  No, I don't want to purchase your pool."
+
+Sez he, "You are mistaken, mom!"
+
+"No I haint," sez I firmly and with decesion.  "No I haint.  I
+don't need no pool.  It wouldn't do me no good to keep it on my
+hands, and I haint no notion of settin' up in the pool or pond
+business, at my age."
+
+"And then," sez I reasonably, "the canal runs jest down below our
+orchard, and if we run short, we could get all the water we
+wanted from there.  And we have got two good cisterns and a well
+on the place."
+
+Sez he, "What I mean is, bettin' on a horse.  Do you want to bet
+on which horse will go the fastest, the black one or the bay one?"
+
+"No," sez I, "I don't want to bet."
+
+But he kep' on a urgin' me, and thinkin' I had disappinted him in
+sellin' a pool, or rather pond, I thought it wouldn't hurt me to
+kinder gin in to him in this, so I sez mildly, "Bettin' is sunthin'
+I don't believe in, but seein' I have disappinted you in sellin'
+your water power, I don't know as it would be wicked to humor you
+in this and say it to please you.  You say the bay horse is the
+best, so I'll say for jest this once - There!  I'll bet the bay
+one will go the best."
+
+"Where is your money?" sez he.  "It is five dollars for a bet.
+You pay five dollars and you have a chance to get back mebby 100."
+
+I riz right up in feerful dignity, and the buggy and I sez that
+one feerful word to him, "Gamblin'!"  He sort a quailed.  But sez
+he, "you had better take a five-dollar chance on the bay horse."
+
+"No," sez I, with a freezin' coldness, that must have made his
+ears fairly tingle it wuz so cold, "no I shall not gamble, neither
+on foot nor on horseback."
+
+Then I sot down and I sez in the same lofty tones to Josiah
+Allen, "Drive on, Josiah, instantly and to once."
+
+He too had heerd the fearful word and his princeples too wuz
+rousted up.  He driv right on rapidly, out of the gate and into
+the highway.  But as he druv on fast and almost furius I heerd
+him murmur words to himself, that accounted for his eager looks
+while the man wuz dickerin' about the pool.  He sez, "It is dumb
+hard work pumpin' water for so many head of cattle."  He thought
+a pool would come handy, so I see.  But it wuz all done and I
+would have done the same thing if it was to do over agin, so I
+didn't say nuthin', but kep' a serene silence, and let him drive
+along in quiet; and anon, I see the turbelence of his feelin's
+subsided in a measure.
+
+It wuz a gettin' along towards sundown and the air wuz a growin'
+cool and balmy, as if it wuz a blowin' over some balm flowers,
+and we begun to feel quite well in our minds, though the crowd
+in the road wuz too big for comfert.  The crowd of carriages and
+horses, and vehicles of all kinds, seemed to go in two big full
+rows or streams, one a goin' down on one side of the road, and
+the other a goin' up on the other.  So the 2 tides swept past
+each other constantly -- but the bubbles on the tide wuzn't foam
+but feathers, and bows, and laces, and parasols, and buttons, and
+diamonds, and etcetry, etcetry, etcetry.
+
+And all of a sudden my Josiah jest turned into a big gate that
+wuz a standin' wide open and we drove into a beautiful quiet road
+that went a windin' in under the shadows of the tall grand old
+trees.  He did it without askin' my advice or sayin' a word to
+me.  But I wuzn't sorry.  Fur it wuz beautiful in there.  It
+seemed as if we had left small cares and vexations and worryments
+out there in the road and dust, and took in with us only repose
+and calmness, and peace, and they wuz a journeyin' along with us
+on the smooth road under the great trees, a bendin' down on each
+side on us.  And pretty soon we came to a beautiful piece of
+water crossed by a rustick bridge, and all surrounded by green
+trees on every side.  Then up on the broad road agin, sweepin'
+round a curve where we could see a little ways off a great mansion
+with a wall built high round it as if to shet in the repose and
+sweet home-life and shet out intrusion, sort a protect it from the
+too curius glances of a curius generation.  Some as I hold my hand
+up before my face to keep off the too-scorchin' rays of the sun,
+when I am a lookin' down the western road for my Josiah.
+
+It wuz a good lookin' spot as I ever want to see, sheltered,
+quiet and lovely.  But we left it behind us as we rode onwards,
+till we came out along another broad piece of the water, and we
+rode along by the side of it for some time.
+
+Beautiful water with the trees growin' up on every side of it,
+and their shadows reflected so clearly in the shinin' surface,
+that they seemed to be trees a growin' downwards, tall grand
+trees, wavin' branches, goin' down into the water and livin' agin
+in another world, -- a more beautiful one.
+
+The sun wuz a gettin' low and piles of clouds wuz in the west and
+all their light wuz reflected in the calm water.  And the beautiful
+soft shadows rested there on that rosy and golden light, some like
+the shadow of a beautiful and sorrowful memory, a restin' down and
+reposin' on a divine hope, an infinite sweetness.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+VISITS TO NOTABLE PLACES.
+
+
+It is a perfect sight to behold, to set on the piazzas at Saratoga,
+and see the folks a goin' past.
+
+Now in Jonesville, when there wuz a 4th of July, or campmeetin',
+or sunthin' of that kind a goin' on, why, I thought I had seen
+the streets pretty full.  Why, I had counted as many as seven
+teams in the road at one time, and I had thought that wuz pretty
+lively times.  But good land?  Good land!  You would have gin up
+in ten minutes time here, that you had never seen a team (as it
+were).
+
+Why I call my head a pretty sound one, but I declare, it did
+fairly make my head swim to set there kinder late in the
+afternoon, and see the drivin' a goin' on.  See the carriages a
+goin' this way, and a goin' that way; horses of all colers, and
+men and wimmen of all colers, and parasols of all colers, and
+hats, and bonnets and parasols, and satins, and laces, and
+ribbins, and buttons, and dogs, and flowers, and plumes, and
+parasols.  And horses a turnin' out to go by, and horses havin'
+gone by, and horses that hadn't gone by.  And big carriages with
+folks inside all dressed up in every coler of the rain beaux.
+And elligent gentlemen dressed perfectly splendid, a settin' up
+straight behind.  With thin yellow legs, or stripes down the side
+on 'em, and their hats all trimmed off with ornaments and buttons
+up and down their backs.
+
+Haughty creeters they wuz, I make no doubt.  They showed it in
+their looks.  But I never loved so much dress in a man.  And I
+would jest as soon have told them so; as to tell you.  I hain't
+one to say things to a man's back that I won't say to his face,
+whether it be a plain back or buttoned.
+
+Wall, as I say, it wuz a dizzy sight to set there on them piazzas
+and see the seemin'ly endless crowd a goin' by; back and forth,
+back and forth; to and fro, to and fro.  I didn't enjoy it so
+much as some did, though for a few  minutes at a time I looked
+upon it as a sort of a recreation, some like a circus, only more
+wilder.
+
+But some folks enjoyed it dretfully.  Yes, they set a great deal
+on piazzas at Saratoga.  And when I say set on 'em, I mean they
+set a great store on 'em, and they set on 'em a great deal.  Some
+folks set on 'em so much, that I called them setters.  Real likely
+creeters they are too, some on 'em, and handsome;  some pious,
+sober ones, some sort a gay.  Some not married at all, and some
+married a good deal, and when I say a good deal I meen, they have
+had various companions and lost 'em.
+
+Now there wuz one woman that I liked quite well.
+
+She had had 4 husbands countin' in the present one.  She wuz a
+good lookin' woman and had seen trouble.  It stands to reeson she
+had with 4 husbands.  Good land!
+
+She showed me one day a ring she wore.  She had took the weddin'
+rings of her 4 pardners and had 'em all run together, and the
+initials of their first names carved inside on it.  Her first
+husband's name wuz Franklin, her next two wuz Orville and Obed,
+and her last and livin' one Lyman.  Wall, she meant well, but she
+never see what would be the end on't and how it would read till
+she had got their initials all carved out on it.
+
+She wuz dretfully worked up about it, but I see that it wuz right.
+ For nobody but a fool would want to run all these recollections
+and memories together, all the different essociations and emotions,
+that must cluster round each of them rings.  The idee of runnin'
+'em all together with the livin' one!  It wuz ectin' like a fool
+and it seemed fairly providential that their names run in jest
+that way.
+
+Why, if I had had 2 husbands, or even 4, I should want to keep
+'em apart - settin' up in high chairs on different sides of my
+heart.  Why, if I'd had 4, I'd have 'em to the different pints of
+the compass, east, west, north, south, as far apart from each
+other as my heart would admit of.  Ketch me a lumpin' in all the
+precious memories of my Josiah with them of any other man, bond
+or free, Jew or Genteel; no, and I'd refrain from tellin' to the
+new one about the other ones.
+
+No, when a pardner dies and you set out to take another one, bury
+the one that has gone right under his own high chair in your heart,
+don't keep him up there a rattlin' his bones before the eyes of
+the 2d, and angerin' him, and agonizen' your own heart.  Bury him
+before you bring a new one into the same room.
+
+And never! never! even in moments of the greatest anger, dig him
+up agin or even weep over his grave, before the new pardner.  No;
+under the moonlight, and the stars, before God only, and your own
+soul, you may lay there in spirit on that grave, weep over it,
+keep the turf green.  But not before any one else.  And I wouldn't
+advise you to go there alone any too often.  I would advise you to
+spend your spare time ornementin' the high chair where the new one
+sets, wreathin' it round with whatever blossoms and trailin' vines
+of tenderness and romance you have left over from the first great
+romance of life.
+
+It would be better for you in the end.
+
+I said some few of these little thoughts to the female mentioned;
+and I s'pose I impressed her dretfully, I s'pose I did.  But I
+couldn't stay to see the full effects on't, for another female
+setter came up at that minute to talk with her, and my companion
+came up at that very minute to ask me to go a walkin' with him up
+to the cemetery.
+
+That is a very favorite place for Josiah Allen.  He often used to
+tell the children when they wuz little, that if they wuz real
+good he would take 'em out on a walk to the grave-yard.
+
+And when I first married to him, if I hadn't broke it up, that
+would have been the only place of resort that he would have took
+me to Summers.  But I broke it up after a while.  Good land!
+there is times to go any where and times to stay away.  I didn't
+want to go a trailin' up there every day or two; jest married
+too!
+
+But to-day I felt willin' to go.  I had been a lookin' so long at
+the crowd a fillin' the streets full, and every one on 'em in
+motion, that I thought it would be sort a restful to go out to a
+place where they wuz still.  And so after a short walk we came to
+the village that haint stirred by any commotion or alarm.  Where
+the houses are roofed with green grass and daisies, and the white
+stun doors don't open to let in trouble or joy, and where the
+inhabitants don't ride out in the afternoon.
+
+Wall, if I should tell the truth which I am fur from not wantin'
+to do, I should say that at first sight, it wuz rather of a
+bleak, lonesome lookin' spot, kinder wild and desolate lookin'.
+But as we went further along in it, we came to some little nooks
+and sheltered paths and spots, that seemed more collected
+together and pleasant.  There wuz some big high stuns and
+monuments, and some little ones but not one so low that it hadn't
+cast a high, dark shadow over somebody's life.
+
+There wuz one in the shape of a big see shell.  I s'pose some
+mariner lay under that, who loved the sea.  Or mebby it wuz put
+up by some one who had the odd fancy that put a shell to your ear
+you will hear a whisperin' in it of a land fur away, fur away.
+Not fur from this wuz a stun put up over a young engineer who had
+been killed instantly by his engine.  There wuz a picture of the
+locomotive scraped out on the stun, and in the cab of the engine
+wuz his photograph, and these lines wuz underneath:
+
+           My engine now lies still and cold,
+           No water does her boiler hold;
+           The wood supplies its flames no more,
+           My days of usefulness are o'er.
+
+We wended our way in and out of the silent streets for quite a
+spell, and then we went and sot down on the broad piazza of the
+sort of chapel and green-house that stood not fur from the
+entrance.  And while we sot there we see another inhabitent come
+there to the village to stay.
+
+It wuz a long procession, fur it wuz a good man who had come.
+And many of his friends come with him jest as fur as they could:
+wife, children, and friends, they come with him jest as fur as
+they could, and then he had to leave 'em and go on alone.  How
+weak love is, and how strong.  It wuz too weak to hold him back,
+or go with him, though they would fain have done so.  But it wuz
+strong enough to shadow the hull world with its blackness, blot
+out the sun and the stars, and scale the very mounts of heaven
+with its wild complaints and pleadin's.  A strange thing love is,
+haint it?
+
+Wall, we sot there for quite a spell and my companion wantin', I
+spose, to make me happy, took out a daily paper out of his pocket
+and went to readin' the deaths to me.  He always loves to read
+the deaths and marriages in a paper.  He sez that is the
+literature that interests him.  And then I s'pose he thought at
+such a time, it wuz highly appropriate.  So I didn't break it up
+till he began to read a long obituary piece about a child's
+death; about its being cut down like a flower by a lightin'
+stroke out of a cloudless sky, and about what a mysterious
+dispensation of Providence it wuz, etc., etc.  And then there wuz
+a hull string of poetry dedicated to the heart-broken mother
+bewailin' the mystery on't, and wonderin' why Providence should
+do such strange, onlookedfor things, etc., and etcetery, and so
+4th.
+
+And I spoke right up and sez, "That is a slander onto Providence
+and ort to be took as such by every lover of justice."
+
+Josiah wuz real horrified, he had been almost sheddin' tears he
+wuz so affected by it; to think the little creeter should be torn
+away by a strange chance of Providence from a mother who worshipped
+her, and whose whole life and every thought wuz jest wrapped up in
+the child, and who never had thought nor cared for anything else
+only just the well bein' of the child and wardin' trouble off of
+her, for so the piece stated.  And he sez in wild amaze, "What do
+you mean, Samantha?  What makes you talk so?"
+
+"Because," sez I, "I know it is the truth.  I know the hull
+story;" and then I went on and told it to him, and he agreed with
+me and felt jest as I did.
+
+You see, the mother of the child wuz a perfect high flyer of
+fashion and she always wore dresses so tight, that she couldn't
+get her hands up to her head to save her life, after her corset
+wuz on.  Wall, she wuz out a walkin' with the child one day, or
+rather toddlin' along with it, on her high-heeled sboes.  They
+wuz both dressed up perfectly beautiful, and made a most splendid
+show.  Wall, they went into a store on their way to the park, and
+there wuz a big crowd there, and the mother and the little girl
+got into the very middle of the crowd.  They say there wuz some
+new storks for sale that day, and some cattail flags, and so
+there wuz naturelly a big crowd of wimmen a buyin' 'em, and
+cranes.  And some way, while they stood there a heavy vase that
+stood up over the child's head fell down and fell onto it, and
+hurt the child so, that it died from the effects of it.
+
+The mother see the vase when it flrst begun to move, she could
+have reached up her hands and stiddied it, and kep' it from
+fallin', if she could have got 'em up, but with that corset on,
+the hull American continent might have tumbled onto the child's
+head and she couldn't have moved her arms up to keep it off;
+couldn't have lifted her arms up over the child's head to save
+her life.  No, she couldn't have kep' one of the States off, nor
+nothin'.  And then talk about her wardin' trouble offen the
+child, why she COULDN'T ward trouble off, nor nothin' else with
+that corset on.  She screemed, as she see it a comin' down onto
+the head of her beloved little child, but that wuz all she could
+do.  The child wuz wedged in by the throng of folks and couldn't
+stir, and they wuz all engrossed in their own business which wuz
+pressin', and very important, a buyin' plates, and plaks, with
+bull-rushes, and cranes, and storks on 'em, so naturelly, they
+didn't mind what wuz a goin' on round 'em.  And down it come!
+
+And there it wuz put down in the paper, "A mysterious dispensation
+of Providence."  Providence slandered shamefully and I will say so
+with my last breath.
+
+What are mothers made for if it haint to take care of the little
+ones God gives 'em.  What right have they to contoggle themselves
+up in a way that they can see their children die before 'em, and
+they not able to put out a hand to save 'em.  Why, a savage
+mother is better than this, a heathen one.  And if I had my way,
+there would be a hull shipload of savages and heathens brought
+over here to teach and reform our too civilized wimmen.  I'd
+bring 'em over this very summer.
+
+Wall, we sot there on the stoop for quite a spell and then we
+wended our way down to the highway, and as we arrived there my
+companion proposed that we should take a carriage and go to the
+Toboggen slide.  Sez I, "Not after where we have been today,
+Josiah Allen."
+
+And he sez, "Why not?"
+
+And I sez, "It wouldn't look well, after visitin' the folks we
+have jest now."
+
+"Wall," sez he, "they won't speak on't to anybody, if that is
+what you are afraid on, or sense it themselves."
+
+And I see in a minute, he had some sense on his side, though his
+words shocked me some at first, kinder jarred aginst some
+sensitive spot in my nater, jest as pardners will sometimes,
+however devoted they may be to each other.  Yet I see he wuz in
+the right on't.
+
+They wouldn't sense anything about it.  And as for us, we wuz in
+the world of the livin' still, and I still owed a livin' duty to
+my companion, to make him as happy as possible.  And so I sez,
+mildly, "Wall, I don't know as there is anything wrong in slidin'
+down hill, Josiah.  I s'pose I can go with you."
+
+"No," sez he, "there haint nothin' wrong about slidin' down hill
+unless you strike too hard, or tip over, or sunthin'."  So he
+bagoned to a carriage that wuz passin', and we got into it, and
+sot sail for the Toboggen slide.
+
+We passed through the village.  (Some say it is a city, but if it
+is, it is a modest, retirin' one as I ever see; perfectly
+unassumin', and don't put on a air, not one.)
+
+But howsumever, we passed through it, through the rows and rows
+of summer tarvens and boardin' houses, good-lookin' ones too;
+past some good-lookin' private houses -- a long tarven and a
+pretty red brick studio and rows of summer stores, little nests
+that are filled up summers, and empty winters, then by some more
+of them monster big tarvens where some of the 200,000 summer
+visitors who flock here summers, find a restin' place; and then
+by the large respectable good-lookin' stores and shops of the
+natives, that stand solid, and to be depended on summer and
+winter; by churches and halls, and etc., and good-lookin' houses
+and then some splendid-lookin' houses all standin' back on their
+grassy lawns behind some trees, and fountains, and flower beds,
+etc., etc.
+
+Better-lookin' houses, I don't want to see nor broader, handsomer
+streets.  And pretty soon fur away to the east you could see
+through the trees a glimpse of a glorious landscape, a broad
+lovely view of hill and valley, bounded by blue mountain tops.
+It was a fair seen - a fair seen.  To be perfectly surrounded by
+beauty where you, wuz, and a lookin' off onto more.  There I
+would fain have lingered, but time and wagons roll stidily
+onward, and will not brook delay, nor pause for women to soar
+over seenery.
+
+So we rolled onwards through still more beautiful, and quiet
+pictures.  Pictures of quiet woods and bendin' trees, and a
+country road windin' tranquilly beneath, up and down gentle hills,
+and anon a longer one, and then at our feet stood the white walls
+of a convent, with 2 or 3 brothers, a strollin' along in their
+long black gowns, and crosses, a readin' some books.
+
+I don't know what it wuz, what they wuz a readin' out of their
+books, or a readin' out of their hearts.  Mebby sunthin' kinder
+sad and serene.  Mebby it wuz sunthin' about the gay world of
+human happiness, and human sorrows, they had turned backs to
+forever.  Mebby it wuz about the other world that they had sot
+out for through a lonesome way.  Mebby it wuz "Never" they wuz a
+readin' about, and mebby it wuz "Forever."  I don't know what it
+wuz.  But we went by 'em, and anon, yes it wuz jest anon, for it
+wuz the very minute that I lifted my eyes from the Father's calm
+and rather sad-lookin' face, that I ketched sight on't, that I
+see a comin' down from the high hills to the left on us, an
+immense sort of a trough, or so it looked, a comin' right down
+through the trees, from the top of the mountain to the, bottom.
+And then all acrost the fields as fur, as fur as from our house
+way over to Miss Pixley's wuz a sort of a road, with a row of
+electric lights along the side on't.
+
+We drove up to a buildin' that stood at the foot of that immense
+slide, or so they called it, and a female woman who wuz there
+told us all about it.  And we went out her back door, and see way
+up the slide, or trough.  There wuz a railin' on each side on't,
+and a place in the middle where she said the Toboggen came down.
+
+And sez Josiah, "Who is the Toboggen, anyway?  Is he a native of
+the place or a Injun?  Anyway," sez he, "I'd give a dollar bill
+to see him a comin' down that place."
+
+And the woman said, "A Toboggen wuz a sort of a long sled, that
+two or three folks could ride on, and they come down that slide
+with such force that they went way out acrost the fields as far
+as the row of lights, before it stopped."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, did you ever see the beat on't?"  Sez I,
+"Haint that as far as from our house to Miss Pixley's?"
+
+"Yes," says he, "and further too.  It is as far as Uncle Jim
+Hozzleton's."
+
+"Wall," says I, "I believe you are in the right on't."
+
+And sez Josiah, "How do they get back agin?  Do they come in the
+cars, or in their own conveniences?"
+
+"There is a sleigh to bring 'em back, but sometime they walk
+back," sez the woman.
+
+"Walk back!" sez I, in deep amaze.  "Do they walk from way out
+there, and cleer up that mountain agin?"
+
+"Yes," sez she.  "Don't you see the place at the side for 'em to
+draw the Toboggen up, and the little flights of steps for 'em to
+go up the hill?"
+
+"Wall," sez I, in deep amaze, and auxins as ever to get
+information on deep subjects, "where duz the fun come in, is it
+in walkin' way over the plain and up the hills, or is it in
+comin' down?"
+
+And she said she didn't know exactly where the fun lay, but she
+s'posed it wuz comin' down.  Anyway, they seemed to enjoy it
+first rate.  And she said it wuz a pretty sight to see 'em all on
+a bright clear night, when the sky wuz blue and full of stars,
+and the earth white and glistenin' underneath to see 7 or 800,
+all dressed up in to gayest way, suits of white blankets, gay
+borders and bright tasseled caps of every color, and suits of
+every other pretty color all trimmed with fur and embroideries,
+to see 'em all a laughin' and a talkin', with their cheeks and
+eyes bright and glowin', to see 'em a comin' down the slide like
+flashes of every colored light, and away out over the white
+glistenin' plains; and then to see the long line of happy laughin'
+creeters a walkin' back agin' drawin' the gay Toboggens.  She
+said it wuz a sight worth seein'.
+
+"Do they come down alone?" sez Josiah.
+
+"Oh no!" sez she.  "Boys and their sweethearts, men and wives,
+fathers and mothers and children, sometimes 4 on a Toboggan."
+
+Sez Josiah, lookin' anamated and clever, "I'd love to take you on
+one on 'em, Samantha.'
+
+"Oh no!" sez I, "I wouldn't want to be took."
+
+But a bystander a standin' by said it wuz a sight to behold to
+stand up on top and start off.  He said the swiftness of the
+motion, the brightness of the electric lights ahead, the gleam of
+the snow made it seem like plungin' down a dazzlin' Niagara of
+whiteness and glitterin' light; and some, like bein' shot out of
+a cannon.  Why, he said they went with such lightnin' speed, that
+if you stood clost by the slide a waitin' to see a friend go by,
+you might stand so near as to touch her, but you couldn't no more
+see her to recognize her, than you could recognize one spoke from
+another in the wheel of a runaway carriage.  You would jest see a
+red flash go by, if so be it wuz a red gown she had on.  A red
+flash a dartin' through the air, and a disappearin' down the long
+glitterin' lane of light.
+
+You could see her a goin' back, so they said, a laughin' and a
+jokin' with somebody, if so be she walked back, but there wuz
+long sleighs to carry 'em back, them and their Toboggens, if they
+wanted to ride, at the small expenditure of 10 cents apiece.
+They go, in the fastest time anybody can make till they go on the
+lightnin', a way in which they will go before long, I think, and
+Josiah duz too.
+
+"They said there wuzn't nothin' like it.  And I said, "Like as
+not."  I believed 'em.  And then the woman said, "This long room
+we wuz a standin' in," for we had gone back into the house,
+durin' our interview, this long room wuz all warm and light for
+'em to come into and get warm, and she said as many as 600 in a
+night would come in there and have supper there.
+
+And then she showed us the model of a Toboggen, all sculped out,
+with a man and a woman on it.  The girl wuz ahead sort a drawin'
+the Toboggen, as you may say, and her lover.  (I know he wuz,
+from his looks.)  He wuz behind her, with his face right clost to
+her shoulder.
+
+And I'll bet that when they started down that gleamin' slide,
+they felt as if they 2 wuz alone under the stars and the heavens,
+and wuz a glidin' down into a dazzlin' way of glory.  You could
+see it in their faces.  I liked their faces real well.
+
+But the sight on 'em made Josiah Allen crazier'n ever to go too,
+and he sez, "I feel as if I must Toboggen, Samantha!"
+
+Sez I, "Be calm! Josiah, you can't slide down hill in July."
+
+"How do you know?" sez he, "I'm bound to enquire."  And he asked
+the woman if they ever Toboggened in the summer.
+
+"No, never!" sez she.
+
+And I sez, "You see it can't be done."
+
+"She never see it tried," sez he.  "How can you tell what you can
+do without tryin'?" sez he lookin' shrewdly, and longingly, up
+the slide.  I trembled, for I knew not what the next move of his
+would be.  But I bethought me of a powerful weepon I had by me.
+And I sez, "The driver will ask pay for every minute we are
+here."
+
+And as I sez this, Josiah turned and almost flew down the steps
+and into the buggy.  I had skairt him.  Truly I felt relieved,
+and sez I to myself, "What would wimmen do if it wuzn't for these
+little weepons they hold in their hands, to control their
+pardners with."  I felt happy.
+
+But the next words of Josiah knocked down all that palace of
+Peace, that my soul had betook herself to.  Sez he, "Samantha
+Allen, before I leave Saratoga I shall Toboggen."
+
+Wall, I immegetly turned the subject round and talked wildly and
+almost incoherently on politicks.  I praised the tariff amost
+beyond its deserts.  I brung up our foreign relations, and spoke
+well on 'em.  I tackled revenues and taxation, and hurried him
+from one to the other on 'em, almost wildly, to get the idee out
+of his head.  And I congratulated myself on havin' succeeded.
+Alas! how futile is our hopes, sometimes futiler than we have any
+idee on!
+
+By night all thoughts of danger had left me, and I slept sweetly
+and peacefully.  But early in the mornin' I had a strange dream.
+I dreamed I wuz in the woods with my head a layin' on a log, and
+the ground felt cold that I wuz a layin' on.  And then the log
+gin way with me, and my head came down onto the ground.  And then
+I slept peaceful agin, but chilly, till anon, or about that time,
+I beard a strange sound and I waked up with a start.  It wuz in
+the first faint glow of mornin' twilight.  But as faint as the
+light wuz, for the eye of love is keen, I missed my beloved
+pardner's head from the opposite pillow, and I riz up in wild
+agitation and thinkses I, "Has rapine took place here; has Josiah
+Allen been abducted away from me?  Is he a kidnapped Josiah?"
+
+At that fearful thought my heart begun to beat so voyalently as
+to almost stop my breath, and I felt I wuz growin' pale and wan,
+wanner, fur wanner than I had been sense I came to Saratoga.  I
+love Josiah Allen, he is dear to me.
+
+And I riz up feelin' that I would find that dear man and rescue
+him or perish in the attempt.  Yes, I felt that I must perish if
+I did not find him.  What would life be to me without him?  And
+as I thought that thought the light of the day that wuz a
+breakin', looked sort of a faint to me, and sickish.  And like a
+flash it came to me, the thought that that light seemed like the
+miserable dawns of wretched days without him, a pale light with
+no warmth or brightness in it.
+
+But at that very minute I heard a noise outside the door, and I
+heard that beloved voice a sayin' in low axents the words I had
+so often heard him speak, words I had oft rebuked him for, but
+now, so weak will human love make one, now, I welcome them gladly
+-- they sounded exquisitely sweet to me.  The words wuz, "Dumb
+'em!"
+
+And I joyfully opened the door.  But oh! what a sight met my eye.
+There stood Josiah Allen, arrayed in a blanket he had took from
+our bed (that accounted for my cold feelin' in my dream).  The
+blanket wuz white, with a gay border of red and yellow.  He had
+fixed it onto him in a sort of a dressy way, and strapped it
+round the waist with my shawl strap.  And he had took a bright
+yeller silk handkerchief of hisen, and had wrapped it round his
+head so's it hung down some like a cap, and he wuz a tryin' to
+fasten it round his forward with one of my stockin' supporters.
+He couldn't buckle it, and that is what called forth his
+exclamations.  At his feet, partly upon the stairs, wuz the
+bolster from our bed (that accounted for the log that had gin
+way).  And he had spread a little red shawl of mine over the top
+on't, and as I opened the door he wuz jest ready to embark on the
+bolster, he waz jest a steppin' onto it.  But as he see me he
+paused, and I sez in low axents, "What are you a goin' to do,
+Josiah Allen?"
+
+"I'm a goin' to Toboggen," sez he.
+
+Sez I, "Do you stop at once, and come back into your room."
+
+"No, no!" sez he firmly, and preparin' to embark on the bolster,
+"I am a goin' to Toboggen.  And you come and go to.  It is so
+fashionable," sez he, "such a genteel diversion."
+
+Sez I, "Do you stop it at once, and come back to your room.
+Why," sez I, "the hull house will be routed up, and be up here in
+a minute."
+
+"Wall," sez he, "they'll see fun if they do and fashion.  I am a
+goin', Samantha!" and be stepped forward.
+
+Sez I, "They'll see sunthin' else that begins with a f, but it
+haint fun or fashion.'  And agin I sez, "Do you come back, Josiah
+Allen.  You'll break your neck and rout up the house, and be
+called a fool."
+
+"Oh no, Samantha! I must Toboggen.  I must go down the slide
+once."  And he fixed the bolster more firmly on the top stair.
+
+"Wall," sez I, feelin' that I wuz drove to my last ambush by him,
+sez I, "probably five dollars won't make the expenses good,
+besides your doctor's bill, and my mornin'.  And I shall put on
+the deepest of crape, Josiah Allen," sez I.
+
+I see he wavered and I pressed the charge home.  Sez I, "That
+bolster is thin cloth, Josiah Allen, and you'll probably have to
+pay now for draggin' it all over the floor.  If anybody should
+see you with it there, that bolster would be charged in your
+bill.  And how would it look to the neighbors to have a bolster
+charged in your bill?  And I should treasure it, Josiah Allen, as
+bein' the last bill you made before you broke your neck !"
+
+"Oh, wall," sez he, "I s'pose I can put the bolster back."  But
+he wuz snappish, and he kep' snappish all day.
+
+He wuzn't quelled.  Though he had gin in for the time bein' I see
+he wuzn't quelled down.  He acted dissatisfied and highheaded,
+and I felt worried in my mind, not knowin' what his next move
+would be.
+
+Oh! the tribulations it makes a woman to take care of a man.  But
+then it pays.  After all, in the deepest of my tribulations I
+feel, I do the most of the time feel, that it pays.  When he is
+good he is dretful good.
+
+Wall, I went over to see Polly Pixley the next night, and when I
+got back to my room, there stood Josiah Allen with both of his
+feet sort a bandaged and tied down onto sumthin', which I didn't
+at first recognize.  It waz big and sort a egg shaped, and open
+worked, and both his feet wuz strapped down tight onto it, and he
+wuz a pushin' himself round the room with his umberell.
+
+And I sez, "What is the matter now, Josiah Allen; what are you a
+doin' now?"
+
+"Oh I am a walkin' on snow-shoes, Samantha!  But I don't see,"
+sez he a stoppin' to rest, for he seemed tuckered out, "I don't
+see how the savages got round as they did and performed such
+journeys.  You put 'em on, Samantha," sez he, "and see if you can
+get on any faster in 'em."
+
+Sez I, coldly, "The savages probable did'nt have both feet on one
+shoe, Josiah Allen, as you have.  I shall put on no snowshoes in
+the middle of July; but if I did, I should put 'em on accordin'
+to a little mite of sense.  I should try to use as much sense as
+a savage any way."
+
+"Why, how it would look to have one foot on that great big
+snow-shoe.  I always did like a good close fit in my shoes.  And
+you see I have room enough and to spare for both on 'em on this.
+Why it wouldn't look dressy at all, Samantha, to put 'em on as
+you say."
+
+Sez I very coldly, "I don't see anything over and above dressy in
+your looks now, Josiah Allen, with both of your feet tied down
+onto that one shoe, and you a tryin' to move off when you can't.
+I can't see anything over and above ornamental in it, Josiah
+Allen."
+
+"Oh! you are never willin' to give in that I look dressy,
+Samantha.  But I s'pose I can put my feet where you say.  You are
+so sot, but they are too big for me -- I shall look like a fool."
+
+I looked at him calmly over my specks, and sez I, "I guess I
+sha'n't notice the difference or realize the change.  I wonder,"
+sez I, in middlin' cold axents, "how you think you are a lookin'
+now, Josiah Allen."
+
+"Oh! keep a naggin' at me!" sez he.  But I see he wuz a gittin'
+kinder sick of the idee.
+
+"What you mean by puttin' 'em on at all is more than I can say,"
+sez I, "a tryin to walk on snowshoes right in dog-days."
+
+"I put 'em on," Samantha, sez he, a beginnin' to unstrap 'em, "I
+put 'em on because I wanted to feel like a savage."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "I have seen you at times durin' the last 20 years,
+when I thought you realized how they felt without snow-shoes on,
+either."
+
+(These little interchanges of confidence will take place in
+every-day life.)  But at that very minute Ardelia Tutt rapped at
+the door, and Josiah hustled them snow-shoes into the closet, and
+that wuz the last trial I had with him about 'em.  He had
+borrowed 'em.
+
+Wall, Ardelia wuz dretful pensive, and soft actin' that night,
+she seemed real tickled to see us, and to get where we wuz.  She
+haint over and above suited with the boardin' place where she is,
+I think.  I don't believe they have very good food, though she
+won't complain, bein' as they are relations on her own side.  And
+then she is sech a good little creeter anyway.  But I had my
+suspicions.  She didn't seem very happy.  She said she had been
+down to the park that afternoon, she and the young chap that has
+been a payin' her so much attention lately, Bial Flamburg.  She
+said they had sot down there by the deer park most all the
+afternoon a watchin' the deer.  She spoke dretful well of the
+deer.  And they are likely deer for anything I know.  But she
+seemed sort a pensive and low spirited.  Mebby she is a beginnin'
+to find Bial Flamburg out.  Mebby she is a beginnin' to not like
+his ways.  He drinks and smokes, that I know, and I've mistrusted
+worse things on him.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+LAKE GEORGE AND MOUNT McGREGOR.
+
+
+It wuz on a nice pleasant day that Ardelia Tuit, Josiah Allen,
+and me, met by previous agreement quite early in the mornin', A.
+M., and sot out for Lake George.  It is so nigh, that you can
+step onto the cars, and go out and see George any time of day.
+
+It seemed to me jest as if George wuz glad we had come, for there
+wuz a broad happy smile all over his face, and a sort of a dimplin'
+look, as if he wanted to laugh right out.  All the beckonin' shores
+and islands, with their beautiful houses on 'em, and the distant
+forests, and the trees a bendin' over George, all seemed to sort a
+smile out a welcome to us.  We had a most beautiful day, and got
+back quite late in the afternoon, P. M.
+
+And the next day, a day heavenly calm and fair, Josiah Allen and
+me sot sail for Mount McGregor -- that mountain top that is
+lifted up higher in the hearts of Americans than any other peak
+on the continent -- fur higher.  For it is the place where the
+memory of a Hero lays over all the peaceful landscape like a
+inspiration and a benediction, and will rest there forever.
+
+The railroad winds round and round the mountain sometimes not
+seemin'ly goin' up at all, but gradually a movin' in' on towards
+the top, jest as this brave Hero did in his career.  If some of
+the time he didn't seem to move on, or if some of the time he
+seemed to go back for a little, yet there wuz a deathless fire
+inside on him, a power, a strength that kep' him a goin' up, up,
+up, and drawin' the nation up with him onto the safe level ground
+of Victory.
+
+We got pleasant glimpses of beauty, pretty pictures on't, every
+little while as we wended our way on up the mountains.  Anon we
+would go round a curve, a ledge of rocks mebby, and lo! far off a
+openin' through the woods would show us a lovely picture of hill
+and dell, blue water and blue mountains in the distance.  And
+then a green wood picture, shut in and lonely, with tall ferns,
+and wild flowers, and thick green grasses under the bendin'
+trees.  Then fur down agin' a picture of a farmhouse, sheltered
+and quiet, with fields layin' about it green and golden.
+
+But anon, we reached the pretty little lonesome station, and
+there we wuz on top of Mount McGregor.  We disembarked from the
+cars and wended our way up the hill up the windin' foot path,
+wore down by the feet of pilgrims from every land, quite a tegus
+walk though beautiful, up to the good-lookin', and good appearin'
+tarven.
+
+I would fain have stopped at that minute at the abode the Hero
+had sanctified by his last looks.  But my companion said to me
+that he wuz in nearly a starvin' state.  Now it wuzn't much after
+11 A. M. forenoon, and I felt that he would not die of starvation
+so soon.  But his looks wuz pitiful in the extreme and he reminded
+me in a sort of a weak voice that he didn't eat no breakfast
+hardly.
+
+I sez truthfully, "I didn't notice it, Josiah."  But sez I, "I
+will accompany you where your hunger can be slaked."  So we went
+straight up to the tarven.
+
+But I would stop a minute in front of it, to see the lovely,
+lovely seen that wuz spread out before our eyes.  For fur off
+could we see milds and milds of the beautiful country a layin'
+fur below us.  Beautiful landscape, dotted with crystal lakes,
+laved by the blue Hudson and bordered by the fur-away mountains.
+
+It wuz a fair seen, a fair seen.  Even Josiah wuz rousted up by
+it, and forgot his hunger.  I myself wuz lost in the contemplation
+on it, and entirely by the side of myself.  So much so, that I
+forgot where I wuz, and whether I wuz a wife or a widow, or what
+I wuz.
+
+But anon, as my senses came back from the realm of pure beauty
+they had been a traversin', I recollected that I wuz a wife, that
+Providence and Elder Minkley had placed a man in my hands to take
+care on; and I see he wuz gone from me, and I must look him up.
+
+And I found that man in one of the high tallish lookin' swing
+chairs that wuz a swingin' from high poles all along the brow of
+the hill.  They looked some like a stanchol for a horse, and some
+like a pair of galluses that criminals are hung on.
+
+Josiah wuzn't able to work it right and it did require a deep
+mind to get into one without peril.  And he wuz on the brink of
+a catastrophe.  I got him out by siezin' the chair and holdin'
+it tight, till he dismounted from it -- which he did with words
+unadapted to the serenity of the atmosphere.  And then we went
+out the broad pleasant door-yard up into the tarven, and my
+companion got some coffee, and some refreshments, to refresh
+ourselves with.  And then he, feelin' clever and real
+affectionate to me (owin' partly I s'pose to the good dinner),
+we wended our way down to the cottage where the Hero met his
+last foe and fell victorious.
+
+We went up the broad steps onto the piazza, and I looked off from
+it, and over all the landscape under the soft summer sky, lay
+that same beautiful tender inspired memory.  It lay like the hush
+that follows a prayer at a dyin' bed.  Like the glow that rests
+on the world when the sun has gone down in glory.  Like the
+silence full of voices that follows a oriter's inspired words.
+
+The air, the whole place, thrilled with that memory, that
+presence that wuz with us, though unseen to the eyes of our
+spectacles.  It followed us through the door way, it went ahead
+on us into the room where the pen wuz laid down for the last
+time, where the last words wuz said.  That pen wuz hung up over
+the bed where the tired head had rested last.  By the bedside wuz
+the candle blowed out, when he got to the place where it is so
+light they don't need candles.  The watch stopped at the time
+when he begun to recken time by the deathless ages of immortality.
+And as I stood there, I said to myself, "I wish I could see the
+faces that wuz a bendin' over this bed, August 11th, 1885."
+
+All the ministerin' angels, and heroes, and conquerors, all a
+waitin' for him to join 'em.  All the Grand Army of the Republic,
+them who fell in mountain and valley; the lamented and the
+nameless, all, all a waitin' for the Leader they loved, the
+silent, quiet man, whose soul spoke, who said in deeds what
+weaker spirits waste in language.
+
+I wished I could see the great army that stood around Mount
+McGregor that day.  I wished I could hear the notes of the
+immortal revelee, which wuz a soundin' all along the lines
+callin' him to wake from his earth sleep into life -- callin'
+him from the night here, the night of sorrow and pain, into
+the mornin'.
+
+And as I lifted my eyes, the eyes of the General seemed to look
+cleer down into my soul, full of the secrets that he could tell
+now, if he wanted to, full of the mysteries of life, the mysteries
+of death.  The voiceless presence that filled the hull landscape,
+earth and air, looked at us through them eyes, half mournful,
+prophetic, true and calm, they wuz a lookin' through all the past,
+through all the future.  What did they see there?  I couldn't tell,
+nor Josiah.
+
+In another room wuz the flowers from many climes.  Flowers
+strewed onto the stage from hands all over the world, when the
+foot lights burned low, and the dark curtain went down for the
+last time on the Hero.  Great masses of flowers, every one on
+'em, bearin' the world's love, the world's sorrow over our
+nation's loss.
+
+I had a large quantity of emotions as I stood there, probably as
+many as 48 a minute for quite a spell, and that is a large number
+of emotions to have, when the size of 'em is as large as the
+sizes of 'em wuz.  I thought as I stood there of what I had hearn
+the Hero said once in his last illness, that, liftin' up his
+grand right arm that had saved the Nation, he said, "I am on duty
+from four to six."
+
+Yes, thinkses I, he wuz on duty all through the shadows and the
+darkness of war, all through the peril, and the heartache, and
+the wild alarm of war, calm and dauntless, he wuz on duty till
+the mornin' of peace came, and the light wuz shinin'.
+
+On duty through the darkness.  No one believed, no one dared to
+think that if peril had come again to the country, he would not
+have been ready,-- ready to face danger and death for the people
+he had saved once, the people whom he loved, because he had dared
+death for 'em.
+
+Yes, he wuz on duty.
+
+There wuz a darker shadow come to him than any cloud that ever
+rose over a battle-field when, honest and true himself as the
+light, he still stood under the shadow of blame and impendin'
+want, stood in the blackest shadow that can cover generous,
+faithful hearts, the heart-sickenin' shadow of ingratitude; when
+the people he had saved from ruin hesitated, and refused to give
+him in the time of his need the paltry pension, the few dollars
+out of the millions he had saved for them, preferring to allow
+him, the greatest hero of the world, the man who had represented
+them before the nations, to sell the badges and swords he had
+worn in fightin' their battles, for bread for himself and wife.
+
+But he wuz on duty all through this night.  Patient, uncomplainin'.
+And not one of these warriors fightin' their bloodless battle of
+words aginst him, would dare to say that he would not have been
+ready at any minute, to give his life agin for these very men, had
+danger come to the country and they had needed him.
+
+And when hastened on by the shock, and the suspense, death seemed
+to be near him, so near that it seemed as if the burden must needs
+be light -- the tardy justice that came to him must have seemed
+like an insult, but if he thought so he never said it; no, brave
+and patient, he wuz on duty.
+
+And all through the long, long time that he looked through the
+shadows for a more sure foe than had ever lain in Southern ambush
+for him, he wuz on duty.  Not an impatient word, not an anxious
+word.  Of all the feerin', doubtin', hopin', achin' hearts about
+him, he only wuz calm.
+
+For, not only his own dear ones, but the hull country, friends
+and foes alike, as if learnin' through fear of his loss how grand
+a hero he wuz, and how greatly and entirely he wuz beloved by
+them all, they sent up to Heaven such a great cloud of prayers
+for his safety as never rose for any man.  But he only wuz calm,
+while the hull world wuz excited in his behalf.
+
+For the sight of his patient work, the sight of him who stopped
+dyin' (as it were) to earn by his own brave honest hand the
+future comfort of his family, amazed, and wonderin' at this
+spectacle, one of the greatest it seems to me that ever wuz seen
+on earth, the hull nation turned to him in such a full hearted
+love, and admiration, and worship, that they forgot in their
+quicker adorin' heart-throbs, the slower meaner throbs they had
+gin him, this same brave Hero, jest as brave and true-hearted in
+the past as he wuz on his grand death-bed.
+
+They forgot everything that had gone by in their worship, and I
+don't know but I ort to.  Mebby I had.  I shouldn't wonder a mite
+if I had.  But all the while, all through the agony and the labor,
+and when too wearied he lay down the pen, -- he wuz on duty.
+
+Waitin' patiently, fearlessly, till he should see in the first
+glow of the sunrise the form of the angel comin' to relieve his
+watch, the tall, fair angel of Rest, that the Great Commander
+sent down in the mornin' watches to relieve his weary soldier,
+that divinest angel that ever comes to the abode of men, though
+her beauty shines forever through tears, led by her hand, he has
+left life's battle-field forever; and what is left to this nation
+but memory, love, and mebby remorse.
+
+But little matters it to him, the Nation's love or the Nation's
+blame, restin' there by the calm waters he loved.  The tides come
+in, and the tides go out; jest as they did in his life; the
+fickle tide of public favor that swept by him, movin' him not on
+his heavenly mission of duty and patriotism.
+
+The tides go out, and the tides come in; the wind wails and the
+wind sings its sweet summer songs; but he does not mind the
+melody or the clamor.  He is resting.  Sleep on, Hero beloved,
+while the world wakes to praise thee.
+
+Wall, we sot sail from Mount McGregor about half-past four P. M.,
+afternoon.  And we wound round and round the mountain side jest
+as he did, only goin' down into the valley instid of upwards.
+But the trees that clothed the bare back of the mountain looked
+green and shinin' in the late afternoon sunlight, and the fields
+spread out in the valley looked green and peaceful under the cool
+shadows of approachin' sunset.
+
+And right in the midst of one of these fields, all full of white
+daisies, the cars stopped and the conductor sung out: "Five
+minutes' stop at Daisy station.  Five minutes to get out and pick
+daisies."
+
+And sez Josiah to me in gruff axents, when I asked him if he wuz
+goin' to get out and pick some.  Sez he, "Samantha, no man can go
+ahead of me in hatin' the dumb weeds, and doin' his best towards
+uprootin' 'em in my own land; and I deeply sympathize with any
+man who is over run by 'em.  But why am I beholdin' to the man
+that owns this lot?  Why should I and all the rest of this
+carload of folks, all dressed up in our best too, lay hold and
+weed out these infernal nuisances for nothin'?"
+
+Yes, he said these fearfully profane words to me and I herd him
+in silence, for I did not want to make a seen in public.  Sez I,
+"Josiah, they are pickin' 'em because they love 'em."
+
+"Love 'em!"  Oh, the fearful, scornful unbelievin' look that came
+over my pardner's face, as I said these peaceful words to him.
+And he added a expletive which I am fur from bein' urged to ever
+repeat.  It wuz sinful.
+
+"Love 'em!"  Agin he sez.  And agin follerd a expletive that wuz
+still more forcible, and still more sinful.  And I felt obliged
+to check him which I did.  And after a long parlay, in which I
+used my best endeavors of argument and reason to convince him
+that I wuz in the right on't, I see he wuzn't convinced.  And
+then I spoke about its bein' fashionable to get out and pick 'em,
+and he looked different to once.  I could see a change in him.
+All my arguments of the beauty and sweetness of the posies had no
+effect, but when I said fashionable, he faltered, and he sez, "Is
+it called a genteel diversion?"
+
+And I sez, "Yes."
+
+And finally he sez, "Wall, I s'pose I can go out and pick some
+for you.  Dumb their dumb picters."
+
+Sez I, "Don't go in that spirit, Josiah Allen."
+
+"Wall, I shall go in jest that sprit," he snapped out, "if I go
+at all."  And he went.
+
+But oh! it wuz a sight to set and look on, and see the look onto
+his face, as he picked the innocent blossoms.  It wuz a look of
+such deep loathin', and hatred, combined with a sort of a genteel,
+fashionable air.
+
+Altogether it wuz the most curius, and strange look, that I ever
+see outside of a menagery of wild animals.  And he had that same
+look onto his face as he came in and gin 'em to me.  He had
+yanked'em all up by their roots too, which made the Bokay look
+more strange.  But I accepted of it in silence, for I see by his
+mean that he wuz not in a condition to brook another word.
+
+And I trembled when a bystander a standin' by who wuz arrangin'
+a beautiful bunch of 'em, a handlin' 'em as flowers ort to be
+handled, as if they had a soul, and could feel a rough or tender
+touch, -- this man sez to Josiah, "I see that you too love this
+beautiful blossom."
+
+I wuz glad the man's eyes wuz riveted onto his Bokay, for the
+ferocity of Josiah Allen's look wuz sunthin' fearful.  He looked
+as if he could tear him lim' from lim'.
+
+And I hastily drawed Josiah to a seat at the other end of the
+car, and voyalently, but firmly, I drawed his attention off onto
+Religion.
+
+I sez, "Josiah, do you believe we had better paint the steeple of
+the meetin'-house, white or dark colered?"
+
+This wuz a subject that had rent Jonesville to its very twain.
+And Josiah had been fearfully exercised on it.  And this plan of
+mine succeeded.  He got eloquent on it, and I kinder held off,
+and talked offish, and let him convince me.
+
+I did it from principle.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+ADVENTURES AT VARIOUS SPRINGS.
+
+
+A few days after this, Josiah Allen came in, and sez he, "The
+Everlastin' spring is the one for me, Samantha!  I believe it
+will keep me alive for hundreds and hundreds of years."
+
+Sez I, "I don't believe that, Josiah Allen."
+
+"Wall, it is so, whether you believe it or not.  Why, I see a
+feller just now who sez he don't believe anybody would ever die
+at all, if they kep' themselves' kind a wet through all the time
+with this water."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, you are not talkin' Bible.  The Bible sez,
+'all flesh is as grass.'"
+
+"Wall, that is what he meant; if the grass wuz watered with that
+water all the time, it would never wilt."
+
+"Oh, shaw!" sez I.  (I seldom say shaw, but this seemed to me a
+time for shawin'.)
+
+But Josiah kep' on, for he wuz fearfully excited.  Sez he, "Why,
+the feller said, there wuz a old man who lived right by the side
+of this spring, and felt the effects of it inside and out all the
+time, it wuz so healthy there.  Why the old man kep' on a livin',
+and a livin' till he got to be a hundred.  And he wuz kinder lazy
+naturally and he got tired of livin'.  He said he wuz tired of
+gettin' up mornin's and dressin' of him, tired of pullin' on his
+boots and drawin' on his trowsers, and he told his grandson Sam
+to take him up to Troy and let him die.
+
+"Wall, Sam took him up to Troy, and he died right away, almost.
+And Sam bein' a good-hearted chap, thought it would please the
+old man to he buried down by the spring, that healthy spot.  So
+he took him back there in a wagon he borrowed.  And when he got
+clost to the spring, Sam heard a sithe, and he looked back, and
+there the old gentleman wuz a settin' up a leanin' his head on
+his elbo and he sez, in a sort of a sad way, not mad, but
+melanecolly, `You hadn't ort to don it, Sam.  You hadn't ort to.
+I'm in now for another hundred years.'"
+
+I told Josiah I didn't believe that.  Sez I, "I believe the
+waters are good, very good, and the air is healthy here in the
+extreme, but I don't believe that."
+
+But he said it wuz a fact, and the feller said he could prove it.
+"Why," Josiah sez, "with the minerals there is in that spring, if
+you only take enough of it, I don't see how anybody can die."
+And sez Josiah, "I am a goin' to jest live on that water while I
+am here."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "you must do as you are a mind to, with fear and
+tremblin'."
+
+I thought mebby quotin' Scripture to him would kinder quell him
+down, for he wuz fearfully agitated and wrought up about the
+Everlastin' spring.  And he begun at once to calculate on it, on
+how much he could drink of it, if he begun early in the mornin'
+and drinked late at night.
+
+But I kep' on megum.  I drinked the waters that seemed to help me
+and made me feel better, but wuz megum in it, and didn't get over
+excited about any on 'em.  But oh! oh! the quantities of that
+water that Josiah Allen took!  Why, it seemed as if he would make
+a perfect shipwreck of his own body, and wash himself away, till
+one day he came in fearful excited agin, and sez he, in agitated
+axents, "I made a mistake, Samantha.  The Immortal spring is the
+one for me."
+
+"Why?" sez I.
+
+"Oh, I have jest seen a feller that has been a tellin' me about it."
+
+"What did he say?" sez I, in calm axents.
+
+"Wall, I'll tell you.  It has acted on my feelin's dretful."  Says
+he, "I have shed some tears."  (I see Josiah Allen had been a
+cryin' when he came in.)
+
+And I sez agin, "What is it?"
+
+"Wall," he said, "this man had a dretful sick wife.  And he wuz a
+carryin' her to the Immortal spring jest as fast as he could, for
+he felt it would save her, if he could get her to it.  But she
+died a mile and a half from the spring.  It wuz night, for he had
+traveled night and day to get her there, and the tarvens wuz all
+shut up, and he laid her on the spring-house floor, and laid down
+himself on one of the benches.  He took a drink himself, the last
+thing before he laid down, for he felt that he must have sunthin'
+to sustain him in his affliction.
+
+"Wall, in the night he heard a splashin', and he rousted up, and
+he see that he had left the water kinder careless the night before,
+and it had broke loose and covered the floor and riz up round the
+body, and there she wuz, all bright and hearty, a splashin' and a
+swimmin' round in the water."  He said the man cried like a child
+when he told him of it.
+
+And sez Josiah, "It wuz dretful affectin'.  It brought tears from
+me, to hear on't.  I thought what if it had been you, Samantha!"
+
+"Wall," sez I, "I don't see no occasion for tears, unless you
+would have been sorry to had me brung to."
+
+"Oh!" sez Josiah, "I didn't think!  I guess I have cried in the
+wrong place."
+
+Sez I coldly, "I should think as much."
+
+And Josiah put on his hat and hurried out.  He meant well.  But
+it is quite a nack for pardners to know jest when to cry, and
+when to laff.
+
+Wall, he follered up that spring, and drinked more, fur more than
+wuz good for him of that water.  And then anon, he would hear of
+another one, and some dretful big story about it, and he would
+foller that up, and so it went on, he a follerin' on, and I a
+bein' megum, and drinkin' stiddy, but moderate.  And as it might
+be expected, I gained in health every day, and every hour.  For
+the waters is good, there haint no doubt of it.
+
+But Josiah takin' em as he did, bobbin' round from one to the
+other, drinkin' 'em at all hours of day and night, and floodin'
+himself out with 'em, every one on 'em -- why, he lost strength
+and health every day, till I felt truly, that if it went on much
+longer, I should go home in weeds.  Not mullein, or burdock, or
+anything of that sort, but crape.
+
+But at last a event occurred that sort a sot him to thinkin' and
+quelled him down some.  One day we sot out for a walk, Josiah and
+Ardelia Tutt and me.  And in spite of all my protestations, my
+pardner had drinked 11 glasses full of the spring he wuz a
+follerin' then.  And he looked white round the lips as anything.
+And Ardelia and I wuz a sittin' in a good shady place, and Josiah
+a little distance off, when a man ackosted him, a man with black
+eyes and black whiskers, and sez, "You look pale, Sir.  What
+water are you a drinkin'?"
+
+And Josiah told him that at that time he wuz a drinkin' the water
+from the Immortal spring.
+
+"Drinkin' that water?" sez the man, startin' back horrefied.
+
+"Yes," sez Josiah, turnin' paler than ever, for the man's looks
+wuz skairful in the extreme.
+
+"Oh! oh!" groaned the man.  "And you are a married man?" he groaned
+out mournfully, a lookin' pitifully at him.  "With a family?"
+
+"Yes," sez Josiah, faintly.
+
+"Oh dear," sez the man, "must it be so, to die, so -- so lamented?"
+
+"To die!" sez Josiah, turnin' white jest round the lip.
+
+"Yes, to die!  Did you not say you had been a drinkin' the water
+from the Immortal spring?"
+
+"Yes," sez Josiah.
+
+"Wall, it is a certain, a deadly poison."
+
+"Haint there no help for me?" sez Josiah.
+
+"Yes," sez the man, "You must drink from the Live-forever spring,
+at the other end of the village.  That water has the happy effect
+of neutralizin' the poisons of the Immortal spring.  If anything
+can save you that can.  Why," sez he, "folks that have been
+entirely broke down, and made helpless and hopeless invalids,
+them that have been brung down on their death-beds by the use of
+that vile Immortal water, have been cured by a few glasses of the
+pure healin' waters of the Live-forever spring.  I'd advise you
+for your own sake, and the sake of your family, who would mourn
+your ontimely decese, to drink from that spring at once."
+
+"But," sez Josiah, with a agonized and hopeless look, "I can't
+drink no more now."
+
+"Why?" sez the man.
+
+"Because I don't hold any more.  I don't hold but two quarts, and
+I have drinked 11 tumblers full now."
+
+"Eleven glasses of that poison?" sez the man.
+
+"Wall, if it is too late I am not to blame.  I've warned you.
+Farewell," sez he, a graspin' holt of Josiah's hand.  "Farewell,
+forever.  But if you do live," sez he, "if by a miricle you are
+saved, remember the Live-forever spring.  If there is any help
+for you it is in them waters."
+
+And he dashed away, for another stranger wuz approachin' the
+seen.
+
+I, myself, didn't have no idee that Josiah wuz a goin' to die.
+But Ardelia whispered to me, she must go back to the hotel, so
+she went.  I see she looked kinder strange, and I didn't object
+to it.  And when we got back she handed me some verses entitled:
+
+"Stanzas on the death of Josiah Allen."
+
+She handed 'em to me, and hastened away, quick.  But Josiah Allen
+didn't die.  And this incident made him more megum.  More as I
+wanted him to be.  Why, you have to be megum in everything, no
+matter how good it is.  Milk porridge, or the Bible, or anything.
+You can kill yourself on milk porridge if you drink enough.  And
+you can set down and read the Bible, till you grow to your chair,
+and lose your eyesight.
+
+Now these waters are dretful good, but you have got to use some
+megumness with 'em, it stands to reason you have.  Taint megum to
+drink from 10 to 12 glasses at a time, and mix your drinks goin'
+round from spring to spring like a luny.  No; get a good doctor
+to tell you what minerals you seem to stand in need on the most,
+and then try to get 'em with fear and tremblin'.  You'll get help
+I haint a doubt on't.  For they are dretful good for varius
+things that afflict the human body.  Dretful!
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+AT A LAWN PARTY.
+
+
+Wall, the very next mornin' Miss Flamm sent word for Josiah and me
+to come that night to a lawn party.  And I sez at once, "I must go
+and get some lawn."
+
+Sez Josiah, "What will you do with it?"
+
+And I sez, "Oh, I s'pose I shall wrap it round me, I'll do what
+the rest do."
+
+And sez Josiah, "Hadn't I ort to have some too?  If it is a lawn
+party and everybody else has it, I shall feel like a fool without
+any lawn."
+
+And I looked at him in deep thought, and through him into the
+causes and consequences of things, and sez I, "I s'pose you do ort
+to have a lawn necktie, or handkerchief, or sunthin'."
+
+Sez he, "How would a vest look made out of it, a kinder sprigged
+one, light gay colors on a yaller ground-work?"
+
+But I sez at once, "You never will go out with me, Josiah, with a
+lawn vest on."  And I settled it right there on the spot.
+
+Then he proposed to have some wrapped round his hat, sort a
+festooned.  But I stood like marble aginst that idee.  But I knew
+I had got to have some lawn, and pretty soon we sallied out
+together and wended our way down to where I should be likely to
+find a lawn store.
+
+And who should we meet a comin' out of a store but Ardelia.  Her
+3d cousin had sent her over to get a ingregient for cookin'.
+Good, willin' little creeter!  She walked along with us for a
+spell.  And while she wuz a walkin' along with us, we come onto a
+sight that always looked pitiful to me, the old female that wuz
+always a' sittin' there a singin' and playin' on a accordeun.  And
+it seemed to me that she looked pitifuller and homblier than ever,
+as she sot there amongst the dense crowd that mornin' a singin'
+and a playin'.  Her tone wuz thin, thin as gauze, hombly gause
+too.  But I wondered to myself how she wuz a feelin' inside of her
+own mind, and what voices she heard a speakin' to her own soul,
+through them hombly strains.  And, ontirely unbeknown to myself, I
+fell into a short revery (short but deep) right there in the
+street, as I looked down on her, a settin' there so old, and
+patient and helpless, amongst the gay movin' throng.
+
+And I wondered what did she see, a settin' there with her blind
+eyes, what did she hear through them hombly tones that she wuz a
+singin' day after day to a crowd that wuz indifferent to her, or
+despised her?  Did she hear the song of the mornin', the spring
+time of life?  Did the song of a lark come back to her, a lark
+flyin' up through the sweet mornin' sky over the doorway of a
+home, a lark watched by young eyes, two pairs of 'em, that made
+the seein' a blessedness?  Did a baby's first sweet blunders of
+speech, and happy laughter come back to her, as she sot there a
+drawin' out with her wrinkled hands them miserable sounds from the
+groanin' instrument?  Did home, love, happiness sound out to her,
+out of them hombly strains?  I'd have gin a cent to know.
+
+And I'd have gin a cent quick to know if the tread -- tread --
+tread of the crowd goin' past her day after day, hour after hour,
+seems to her like the trample of Time a marchin' on.  Did she hear
+in 'em the footsteps of child, or lover, or friend, a steppin'
+away from her, and youth and happiness, and hope, a stiddy goin'
+away from her?
+
+Did she ever listen through the constant sound of them steps,
+listen to hear the tread of them feet that she must know wuz a
+comin' nigh to her -- the icy feet that will approach us, if their
+way leads over rocks or roses?
+
+Did she hate to hear them steps a comin' nearer to her, or did she
+strain her ears to hear 'em, to welcome 'em?  I thought like as
+not she did.  For thinkses I to myself, and couldn't help it, if
+she is a Christian she must be glad to change that old accordeun
+for a harp of any size or shape.  For mournfuller and more
+melancholy sounds than her voice and that instrument made I never
+hearn, nor ever expect to hear, and thin.
+
+Poor, old, hombly critter, I gin her quite a lot of change one
+day, and she braced up and sung and drawed out faster than ever,
+and thinner.  Though I'd have gladly hearn her stop.
+
+When I come up out of my revery, I see Ardelia lookin' at her
+stiddy and kind a sot.  And I mistrusted trouble wuz ahead on me,
+and I hurried Josiah down the street.  Ardelia a sayin' she had
+got to turn the corner, to go to another place for her 3d cousin.
+
+Jest as we wuz a crossin' a street my companion drawed my
+attention to a sign that wuz jest overhead, and sez lie, "That
+means me, I'm spoke of right out, and hung up overhead."
+
+And sez I, "What do you mean?"
+
+Sez he, "Read it -- 'The First Man-I-Cure Of The Day.'  That's me,
+Samantha; I haint a doubt of it.  And I s'pose I ort to go in and
+be cured.  I s'pose probably it will be expected of me, that I
+should go in, and let him look at my corns."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen, I've heerd you talk time and agin aginst big
+feelin' folks, and here you be a talkin' it right to yourself, and
+callin' yourself the first man of the day."
+
+"Wall," sez he firmly, "I believe it, and I believe you do, and
+you'd own up to it, if you wuzn't so aggravatin'."
+
+"Wall, sez I mildly, "I do think you are the first in some things,
+though what them things are, I would be fur from wantin' to tell
+you.  But," I continued on, "I don't see you should think that
+means you.  Saratoga is full of men, and most probable every man
+of 'em thinks it means him."
+
+"Wall," sez he, "I don't think it means me, I know it.  And I
+s'pose," he continued dreamily, "they'd cure me, and not charge a
+cent."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "wait till another time, Josiah Allen."  And jest
+at this minute, right down under our feet, we see the word "Pray,"
+in big letters scraped right out in stun.  And Josiah sez, "I
+wonder if the dumb fools think anybody is goin to kneel down right
+here in the street, and be run over.  Why a man would be knocked
+over a dozen times, before he got through one prayer, Now I lay me
+down to sleep, or anything."
+
+"Wall," sez I, mildly, "I don't think that would be a very
+suitable prayer under the circumstances.  It haint expected that
+you'd lay down here for a nap -- howsumever," sez I reesunably
+"their puttin' the word there shows what good streaks the folks
+here have, and I don't want you to make light on't, and if you
+don't want to act like a perfect backslider you'll ceese usin'
+such profane language on sech a solemn subject."
+
+Wall, we went into a good lookin'store and I wuz jest a lookin' at
+some lawn and a wonderin' how many yards I should want, when who
+should come in but Miss Flamm to get a rooch for her neck.
+
+And she told me that I didn't need any lawn, and that it wuz a
+Garden party, and folks dressed in anything they wuz a mind to,
+though sez she, "A good many go in full dress."
+
+"Wall," sez I calmly, "I have got one."  And she told me to come
+in good season.
+
+That afternoon, Josiah a bein' out for a walk, I took out of my
+trunk a dress that Alminy Hagidon had made for me out of a very
+full pattern I had got of a peddler, and wanted it all put in,
+so's it would fade all alike, for I mistrusted it wouldn't wash.
+It wuz gethered-in full round the waist, and the sleeves wuz set
+in full, and the waist wuz kinder full before, and it had a deep
+high ruffle gathered-in full round the neck.  It wuz a very full
+dress, though I haint proud, and never wuz called so.  Yet anybody
+duz take a modest pleasure in bein' equal to any occasion and
+comin' up nobly to a emergency.  And I own that I did say to
+myself, as I pulled out the gethers in front, "Wall, there may be
+full dresses there to-night, but there will be none fuller than
+mine."
+
+And I wuz glad that Alminy had made it jest as she had.  She had
+made it a little fuller than even I had laid out to have it, for
+she mistrusted it would shrink in washin'.  It wuz a very full
+dress.  It wuz cambrick dark chocolate, with a set flower of a
+kind of a cinnamon brown and yellow, it wuz bran new and looked
+well.
+
+Wall, I had got it on, and wuz contemplatin' its fullness with
+complacency and a hand-glass, a seein' how nobly it stood out
+behind, and how full it wuz, when Josiah Allen came in.  I had
+talked it over with him, before he went out -- and he wuz as
+tickled as I wuz, and tickleder, to think I had got jest the right
+dress for the occasion.  But he sez to me the first thing --  "You
+are all wrong, Samantha, full dress means low neck and short
+sleeves."
+
+Sez I, "I know better!"
+
+Sez he, "It duz."
+
+Sez I, "Somebody has been a foolin' you, Josiah Allen!  There
+ain't no sense in it.  Do you s'pose folks would call a dress
+full, when there wuzn't more'n half a waist and sleeves to it.
+I'd try to use a little judgment, Josiah Allen! "
+
+But he contended that he wuz in the right on't.  And he took up
+his best vest that lay on the bed, and sot down, and took out his
+jack knife and went a rippin' open one of the shoulders, and sez
+I, "What are you doin', Josiah Allen?"
+
+"Why, you can do as you are a mind to, Samantha Allen," sez he.
+"But I shall go fashionable, I shall go in full dress."
+
+Sez I, "Josiah Allen  do you look me in the face and say you are a
+goin' in a low neck vest, and everything, to that party to-night?"
+
+"Yes, mom, I be.  I am bound to be fashionable."  And he went to
+rollin' up his shirt sleeves and turnin' in the neck of his shirt,
+in a manner that wuz perfectly immodest.
+
+I turned my head away instinctively, for I felt that my cheek wuz
+a gettin' as red as blood, partly through delicacy and partly
+through righteous anger.  Sez I, "Josiah Allen, be you a
+calculatin' to go there right out in public before men and wimmen,
+a showin' your bare bosom to a crowd?  Where is your modesty,
+Josiah Allen?  Where is your decency?"
+
+Sez he firmly, "I keep 'em where all the rest do, who go in full
+dress."
+
+I sot right down in a chair and sez I, "Wall there is one thing
+certain; if you go in that condition, you will go alone.  Why,"
+sez I, "to home, if Tirzah Ann, your own daughter, had ketched you
+in that perdickerment, a rubbin' on linement or anything, you
+would have jumped and covered yourself up, quicker'n a flash, and
+likeways me, before Thomas Jefferson.  And now you lay out to go
+in that way before young girls, and old ones, and men and wimmen,
+and want me to foller on after your example.  What in the world
+are you a thinkin' on, Josiah Allen?"
+
+"Why I'm a thinkin, on full dress," sez be in a pert tone, a
+kinder turnin' himself before the glass, where he could get a good
+view of his bones.  His thin neck wuzn't much more than bones,
+anyway, and so I told him.  And I asked him if he could see any
+beauty in it, and sez I, "Who wants to look at our old bare necks,
+Josiah Allen?  And if there wuzn't any other powerful reeson of
+modesty and decency in it, you'd ketch your death cold, Josiah
+Allen, and be laid up with the newmoan.  You know you would," sez
+I, "you are actin' like a luny, Josiah Allen."
+
+"It is you that are actin' like a luny," sez he bitterly.  "I
+never propose anything of a high fashionable kind but what you
+want to break it up.  Why, dumb it all, you know as well as I do,
+that men haint called as modest as wimmen anyway.  And if they
+have the name, why shouldn't they have the game?  Why shouldn't
+they go round half dressed as well as wimmen do?  And they are as
+strong agin; if there is any danger to health in it they are
+better able to stand it.  But," sez he, in the same bitter axents,
+"you always try to break up all my efforts at high life and
+fashion.  I presume you won't waltz to-night, nor want me to."
+
+I groaned several times in spite of myself, and sithed, "Waltz!"
+sez I in awful axents.  "A classleader! and a grandfather! and
+talkin' about waltzin'!"
+
+Sez Josiah, "Men older than me waltz, and foller it up.  Put their
+arms right round the prettiest girls in the room, hug 'em, and
+swing 'em right round" -- sez he kinder spoony like.
+
+I said nothin' at them fearful words, only my groans and sithes
+became deeper and more voyalent.  And in a minute I see through
+the fingers with which I had nearly covered my face, that he wuz a
+pullin' down his shirt sleeves and a puttin' his jack knife in his
+pocket.
+
+That man loves me.  And love sways him round often times when
+reesun and sound argument are powerless.  Now, the sound reesun of
+the case didn't move him, such as the indelicacy of makin' a
+exhibition of one's self in a way that would, if displayed in a
+heathen, be a call for missionarys to convert 'em, and that makes
+men blush when they see it in a Christian woman.
+
+The sound reason of its bein' the fruitful cause of disease and
+death, through the senseless exposure.
+
+The sound reason of the worse than folly of old and middle-aged
+folks thinkin' that the exhibition is a pretty one when it haint.
+
+The sound reason of its bein' inconsistent for a woman to allow
+the familiarity of a man and a stranger, a walkin' up and puttin'
+his arm round her, and huggin' her up to him as clost as he can;
+that act, that a woman would resent as a deadly insult and her
+incensed relatives avenge with the sword, if it occurred in any
+other place than the ball-room and at the sound of the fiddle.
+The utter inconsistency of her meetin' it with smiles, and making
+frantic efforts to get more such affronts than any other woman
+present -- her male relatives a lookin' proudly on.
+
+The inconsistency of a man's bein' not only held guiltless but
+applauded for doin' what, if it took place in the street, or
+church, would make him outlawed, for where is there a lot of manly
+men who would look on calmly, and see a sweet young girl insulted
+by a man's ketchin' hold of her and embracin' of her tightly for
+half an hour, -- why, he would be turned out of his club and
+outlawed from Christian homes if it took place in silence, but yet
+the sound of a fiddle makes it all right.
+
+And I sez to myself mildly, as I sot there, "Is it that men and
+wimmen lose their senses, or is there a sacredness in the strains
+of that fiddle, that makes immodesty modest, indecency decent, and
+immorality moral?"  And agin I sithe heavy and gin 3 deep groans.
+And I see Josiah gin in.  All the sound reasons weighed as nothin'
+with him, but 2 or 3 groans, and a few sithes settled the matter.
+Truly Love is a mighty conqueror.
+
+And anon Josiah spoke and sez, "Wall, I s'pose I can gin it all
+up, if you feel so about it, but we shall act like fools,
+Samantha, and look like 'em."
+
+Sez I sternly, "Better be fools than naves, Josiah Allen! if we
+have got to be one or the other, but we haint.  We are a standin'
+on firm ground, Josiah Allen," sez I.  "The platform made of the
+boards of consistency, and common sense, and decency, is one that
+will never break down and let you through it, into gulfs and
+abysses.  And on that platform we will both stand to-night, dear
+Josiah."
+
+I think it is always best when a pardner has gin in and you have
+had a triumph of principle, to be bland; blander than common to
+him.  I always love at such times to round my words to him with a
+sweet affectionateness of mean.  I love to, and he loves it.
+
+We sot out in good season for the Garden party.  And it wuz indeed
+a sight to behold!  But I did not at that first minute have a
+chance to sense it, for Miss Flamm sent her hired girl out to ask
+me to come to her room for a few minutes.  Miss Flamm's house is a
+undergoin' repairs for a few weeks, sunthin' had gin out in the
+water works, so she and her hired girl have been to this tarven
+for the time bein'.  The hired girl got us some good seats and
+tellin' Josiah to keep one on 'em for me, I follered the girl, or
+"maid," as Miss Flamm calls her.  But good land! if she is a old
+maid, I don't see where the young ones be.
+
+Miss Flamm had sent for me, so she said, to see if I wanted to
+ride out the next day, and what time would be the most convenient
+to me, and also, to see how I liked her dress.  She didn't know as
+she should see me down below, in the crowd, and she wanted me to
+see it.  (Miss Flamm uses me dretful well, but I s'pose 2/3ds of
+it, is on Thomas J's account.  Some folks think she is goin' to
+have another lawsuit, and I am glad enough to have him convey her
+lawsuits, for they are good, honerable ones, and she pays him
+splendid for carryin' 'em.)
+
+Wall, she had her skirts all on when I went in, all a foamin' and
+a shinin', down onto the carpet, in a glitterin' pile of pink
+satin and white lace and posys.  Gorgus enough for a princess.
+
+And I didn't mind it much, bein' only females present, if she wuz
+exposin' of herself a good deal.  I kinder blushed a little as I
+looked at her, and kep' my eyes down on her skirts all I could,
+and thinkses I to myself, -- "What if G. Washington should come
+in?  I shouldn't know which way to look."  But then the very next
+minute, I says to myself, "Of course he won't be in till she gets
+her waist on.  I'm a borrowin' trouble for nothin'."
+
+At last Miss Flamm spoke and says she, as she kinder craned
+herself before the glass, a lookin' at her back (most the hull
+length on it bare, as I am a livin' creeter); and says she,," How
+do you like my dress?"
+
+"Oh," says I, wantin' to make myself agreeable (both on account of
+principle, and the lawsuit), "the skirts are beautiful but I can't
+judge how the hull dress looks, you know, till you get your waist
+on."
+
+"My waist?" says she.
+
+"Yes," says I.
+
+"I have got it on," says she.
+
+"Where is it?" says I, a lookin' at her closer through my specks,
+"Where is the waist?"
+
+"Here," says she, a pintin' to a pink belt ribbon, and a string of
+beads over each shoulder.
+
+Says I, "Miss Flamm, do you call that a waist?"
+
+"Yes," says she, and she balanced herself on her little pink
+tottlin' slippers.  She couldn't walk in 'em a good honerable walk
+to save her life.  How could she, with the instep not over two
+inches acrost, and the heels right under the middle of her foot,
+more'n a finger high?  Good land, they wuz enuff to lame a Injun
+savage, and curb him in.  But she sort o' balanced herself unto
+'em, the best she could, and put her hands round her waist -- it
+wuzn't much bigger than a pipe-stem, and sort o' bulgin' out both
+ways, above and below, some like a string tied tight round a
+piller, - and says she complacently, "I don't believe there will
+be a dress shown to-night more stylish and beautiful than mine."
+
+Says I, "Do you tell me, Miss Flamm, that you are a goin' down
+into that crowd of promiscus men and women, with nothin' but them
+strings on to cover you?"  Says I, "Do you tell me that, and you a
+perfesser and a Christian?"
+
+"Yes," says she, "I paid 300 dollars for this dress, and it haint
+likely I am goin' to miss the chance of showin' it off to the
+other wimmen who will envy me the possession of it.  To be sure,"
+says she, "it is a little lower than Americans usually wear.  But
+in fashion, as in anything else, somebody has got to go ahead.
+This is the very heighth of fashion," says she.
+
+Says I in witherin' and burnin' skorn, "It is the heighth of
+immodesty."
+
+And I jest turned my back right ont' her, and sailed out of the
+room.  I wuzn't a a goin' to stand that, lawsuit or no lawsuit.  I
+wuz all worked up in my mind, and by the side of myself, and I
+didn't get over it for some time, neither.
+
+Wall, I found my companion seated in that comfertable place, and a
+keepin' my chair for me, and so I sot down by him, and truly we
+sot still, and see the glory, and the magnificence on every side
+on us.  There wuz 3 piazzas about as long as from our house to
+Jonesville, or from Jonesville to Loontown, all filled with folks
+magnificently dressed, and a big garden layin' between 'em about
+as big as from our house to Miss Gowdey's, and so round crossways
+to Alminy Hagidone's brother's, and back agin'.  It wuz full as
+fur as that, and you know well that that is a great distance.
+
+There wuz some big noble trees, all twinklin' full of lights, of
+every coler, and rows of shinin' lights, criss-crossed every way,
+or that is, every beautiful way, from the high ornimental pillers
+of the immense house, that loomed up in the distance round us on
+every side, same as the mountains loom up round Loontown.
+
+There wuz a big platform built in the middle of the garden, with
+sweet music discoursin' from it the most enchantin' strains.  And
+the fountains wuz sprayin' out the most beautiful colers you ever
+see in your life, and fallin' down in pink, and yellow, and gold,
+and green, and amber, and silver water; sparklin' down onto the
+green beautiful ferns and flowers that loved to grow round the big
+marble basin which shone white, risin' out of the green velvet of
+the grass.
+
+Josiah looked at that water, and sez he, "Samantha, I'd love to
+get some of that water to pass round evenin's when we have
+company."  Sez he, "It would look so dressy and fashionable to
+pass round pink water, or light blue, or light yeller.  How it
+would make Uncle Nate Gowdey open his eyes.  I believe I shall buy
+some bottles of it, Samantha, to take home.  What do you say? I
+don't suppose it would cost such a dretful sight, do you?"
+
+Sez he, "I s'pose all they have to do is to put pumps down into a
+pink spring, or a yeller one, as the case may be, and pump.  And I
+would be willin' to pump it up myself, if it would come cheaper."
+
+But my companion soon forgot to follow up the theme in lookin'
+about him onto the magnificent, seen, and a seein' the throngs of
+men and wimmen growin' more and more denser, and every crowd on
+'em that swept by us, and round us, and before us, a growin' more
+gorgus in dress, or so it seemed to us.  Gemms of every gorgus
+coler under the heavens and some jest the coler of the heavens
+when it is blue and shinin' or when it is purplish dark in the
+night time, or when it is full of white fleecy clouds, or when it
+is a shinin' with stars.
+
+Why, one woman had so many diamonds on that she had a detective
+follerin' her all round wherever she went.  She wuz a blaze of
+splendor and so wuz lots of 'em, though like the stars, they
+differed from each other in glory.
+
+But whatever coler their gowns wuz, in one thing they wuz most all
+alike -- most all of 'em had waists all drawed in tight, but a
+bulgin' out on each side, more or less as the case might be.  Why
+some of them waists wuzn't much bigger than pipe's tails and so I
+told Josiah.
+
+And he whispered back to me, and sez he, "I wonder if them wimmen
+with wasp waists, think that we men like the looks on 'em.  They
+make a dumb mistake if they do.  Why," sez he, "we men know what
+they be; we know they are nothin' but crushed bones and flesh."
+Sez he, "I could make my own waist look jest like 'em, if I should
+take a rope and strap myself down."
+
+"Wall," sez I, in agitated axents, "don't you try to go into no
+such enterprise, Josiah Allen."
+
+I remembered the eppisode of the afternoon, and I sez in anxins
+axents, and affectionate, "Besides not lookin' well, it is
+dangerous, awful dangerous.  And how I should blush," sez I, "if I
+wuz to see you with a leather strap or a rope round your waist
+under your coat, a drawin' you in ; a changin' your good honerable
+shape.  And God made men's and wimmen's waists jest alike in the
+first place, and it is jest as smart for men to deform themselves
+in that way as it is for wimmen.  But oh, the agony of my soul if
+I should see you a tryin' to disfigure yourself in that way."
+
+"You needn't be afraid, Samantha," sez he, "I am dressy, and
+always wuz, but I haint such a fool as that, as to kill myself in
+perfect agony, for fashion."
+
+I didn't say nothin' but instinctively I looked down at his feet,
+"Oh, you needn't look at my feet, Samantha, feet are very
+different from the heart, and lungs, and such.  You can squeeze
+your feet down, and not hurt much moren the flesh and bones.  But
+you are a destroyin' the very seat of life when you draw your
+waist in as them wimmen do."
+
+"I know it," sez I, "but I wouldn't torture myself in any way if I
+wuz in your place."
+
+"I don't lay out to," sez he.  "I haint a goin' to wear corsets,
+it haint at all probable I shall, though I am better able to stand
+it, than wimmen be."
+
+"I know that," sez I.  "I know men are stronger and better able to
+bear the strain of bein' drawed in and tapered."  I am reesonable,
+and will ever speak truthful and honest, and this I couldn't deny
+and didn't try to.
+
+"Wall, dumb it, what makes men stronger?" sez he.
+
+"Why," sez I, "I s'pose one great thing is their dressin'
+comfortable."
+
+"Wall, I am glad you know enough to know it," sez he.  "Why," sez
+he, "jest imagine a man tyin' a rope round his waist, round and
+round; or worse yet, take strong steel, and whalebones, and bind
+and choke himself down with 'em, and tottlin' himself up on high
+heel slippers, the high heels comin' right up in the ball of his
+foot -- and then havin' heavy skirts a holdin' him down, tied back
+tight round his knees and draggin' along on the ground at his feet
+-- imagine me in that perdickerment, Samantha."
+
+I shuddered, and sez I, "Don't bring up no such seen to harrow up
+my nerve."  Sez I, "You know I couldn't stand it, to see you a
+facin' life and its solemn responsibilities in that condition.  It
+would kill me to witness your sufferin'," sez I.  And agin' I
+shuddered, and agin I sithed.
+
+And he sez, "Wall, it is jest as reasonable for a man to do it as
+for a woman; it is far worse and more dangerous for a woman than a
+man."
+
+"I know it," sez I, between my sithes.  "I know it, but I can't, I
+can't stand it, to have you go into it."
+
+"Wall, you needn't worry, Samantha, I haint a fool.  You won't
+ketch men a goin' into any such performances as this, they know
+too much."  And then he resumed on in a lighter agent, to get my
+mind still further off from his danger, for I wuz still a sithin',
+frequent and deep.
+
+Sez he, as he looked down and see some wimmen a passin' below; sez
+hey "I never see such a sight in my life, a man can see more here
+in one evenin' than he can in a life time at Jonesville."
+
+"That is so, Josiah," sez I, "you can."  And I felt every word I
+said, for at that very minute a lady, or rather a female woman,
+passed with a dress on so low in the neck that I instinctively
+turned away my head, and when I looked round agin, a deep blush
+wuz mantlin' the cheeks of Josiah Allen, a flushin' up his face,
+clear up into his bald head.
+
+I don't believe I had ever been prouder of Josiah Allen, than I
+wuz at that minute.  That blush spoke plainer than words could, of
+the purity and soundness of my pardner's morals.  If the whole
+nation had stood up in front of me at that time, and told me his
+morals wuz a tottlin' I would have scorned the suggestion.  No,
+that blush telegraphed to me right from his soul, the sweet
+tidin's of his modesty and worth.
+
+And I couldn't refrain from sayin' in encouragin', happy axents,
+"Haint you glad now, Josiah Allen, that you listened to your
+pardner; haint you glad that you haint a goin' round in a low
+necked coat and vest, a callin' up the blush of skern and outraged
+modesty to the cheeks 'of noble and modest men?"
+
+"Yes," sez he, graspin' holt of my hand in the warmth of his
+gratitude, for he see what I had kep' him from.  "Yes, you wuz in
+the right on't, Samantha.  I see the awfulness of the peril from
+which you rescued of me.  But never," sez he, a lookin' down
+agin over the railin', onto some more wimmen a passin' beneath,
+"never did I see what I have seen here to-night.  Not," sez he
+dreemily, "sense I wuz a baby."
+
+"Wall," sez I, "don't try to look, Josiah; turn your eyes away."
+
+And I believe he did try to -- though such is the fascination of a
+known danger in front of you, that it is hard to keep yourself
+from contemplatin' of it.  But he tried to.  And he tried to not
+look at the waltzin' no more than he could help, and I did too.
+But in spite of himself he had to see how clost the young girls
+wuz held; how warmly the young men embraced 'em.  And as he looked
+on, agin I see the hot blush of shame mantillied Josiah's cheeks,
+and again he sez to me in almost warm axents, "I realize what you
+have rescued me from, Samantha."
+
+And I sez, "You couldn't have looked Elder Minkley in the face,
+could you? if you had gone into that shameful diversion."
+
+"No, I couldn't, nor into yourn nuther.  I couldn't have looked
+nobody in the face, if I had gone on and imposed on any young girl
+as they are a doin', and insulted of her.  Why," sez he, "if it
+wuz my Tirzah Ann that them, men wuz a embracin', and huggin', and
+switchin' her round, as if they didn't have no respect for her at
+all, -- why, if it wuz Tirzah Ann, I would tear 'em 'em from lim."
+
+And he looked capable on't.  He looked almost sublime (though
+small).  And I hurried him away from the seen, for I didn't know
+what would ensue and foller on, if I let him linger there longer.
+He looked as firm and warlike as one of our bantam fowls, a male
+one, when hawks are a hoverin' over the females of the flock.  And
+when I say Bantam I say it with no disrespect to Josiah Allen.
+Bantams are noble, and warlike fowls, though small boneded.
+
+I got one more glimps of Miss Flamm jest as we left the tarven.
+She wuz a standin' up in the parlor, with a tall man a standin' up
+in front of her a talkin'.  He seemed to be biddin' of her
+good-bye, for he had holt of her hand, and be wuz a sayin' as we
+went by 'em, sez he, "I am sorry not to see more of you."
+
+"Good land!" thinkses I, "what can the man be a thinkin' on? the
+mean, miserable creeter!  If there wuz ever a deadly insult gin to
+a woman, then wuz the time it wuz gin.  Good land! good land!"
+
+I don't know whether Miss Flamm resented it, or not, for I hurried
+Josiah along.  I didn't want to expose him to no sich sights,
+good, innocent old creeter.  So I kep' him up on a pretty good jog
+till I got him home.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+A TRIP TO SCHUYLERVILLE.
+
+
+It wuz a lovely mornin' when my companion and me sot out to visit
+Schuylerville to see the monument that is stood up there in honor
+of the Battle of Saratoga, one of 7 great decisive battles of the
+world.
+
+Wall, the cars rolled on peacefully, though screechin' occasionally,
+for, as the poet says, "It is their nater to," and rolled us away
+from Saratoga.  And at first there wuzn't nothin' particularly
+insperin' in the looks of the landscape, or ruther woodscape.  It
+wuz mostly woods and rather hombly woods too, kinder flat lookin'.
+But pretty soon the scenery became beautiful and impressive.  The
+rollin' hills rolled down and up in great billowy masses of green
+and pale blue, accordin' as they wuz fur or near, and we went by
+shinin' water, and a glowin' landscape, and pretty houses, and
+fields of grain and corn, etc., etc.  And anon we reached a place
+where "Victory Mills" wuz printed up high, in big letters.  When
+Josiah see this, he sez, "Haint that neighborly and friendly in
+Victory to come over here and put up a mill?  That shows, Samantha,"
+sez he, "that the old hardness of the Revolution is entirely done
+away with."
+
+He wuz jest full of Revolutionary thoughts that mornin', Josiah
+Allen wuz.  And so wuz I too, but my strength of mind is such,
+that I reined 'em in and didn't let 'em run away with me.  And I
+told him that it didn't mean that.  Sez I, "The Widder Albert
+wouldn't come over here and go to millin', she nor none of her
+family."
+
+"But," sez he, "the name must mean sunthin'.  Do you s'pose it is
+where folks get the victory over things?  If it is, I'd give a
+dollar bill to get a grist ground out here, and," sez he, in a
+sort of a coaxin' tone, "le's stop and get some victory, Samantha."
+
+And I told him, that I guessed when he got a victory over the
+world, the flesh, or the -- David, he would have to work for it,
+he wouldn't get it ground out for him.  But anon, he cast his eyes
+on sunthin' else and so forgot to muse on this any further.  It
+wuz a fair seen.
+
+Anon, a big manufactory, as big as the hull side of Jonesville
+almost, loomed up by the side of us.  And anon, the fair, the
+beautiful country spread itself out before our vision.  While fur,
+fur away the pale blue mountains peeked up over the green ones, to
+see if they too could see the monument riz up to our National
+Liberty.  It belonged to them, jest as much as to the hill it wuz
+a standin' on, it belongs to the hull liberty-lovin' world.
+
+Wall, the cars stopped in a pretty little village, a clean,
+pleasant little place as I ever see, or want to see.  And Josiah
+and me wended our way up the broad roomy street, up to where the
+monument seemed to sort a beegon to us to come.  And when we got
+up to it; we see it wuz a sight, a sight to behold.
+
+The curius thing on't wuz, it kep a growin' bigger and bigger all
+the time we wuz approachin' it, till, as we stood at its base, it
+seemed to tower up into the very skies.
+
+There wuz some flights of stun steps a leadin' up to some doors in
+the side on't.  And we went inside on't after we had gin a good
+look at the outside.  But it took us some time to get through
+gazin' at the outside on't.
+
+Way up over our heads wuz some sort a recesses, some like the
+recess in my spare bed-room, only higher and narrower, and kinder
+nobler lookin'.  And standin' up in the first one, a lookin'
+stiddy through storm and shine at the North star, stood General
+Gates, bigger than life considerable, but none too big; for his
+deeds and the deeds of all of our old 4 fathers stand out now and
+seem a good deal bigger than life.  Yes, take 'em in all their
+consequences, a sight bigger.
+
+Wall, there he stands, a leanin' on his sword.  He'll be ready
+when the enemy comes, no danger but what he will.
+
+On the east side, is General Schuyler a horsback, ready to dash
+forward against the foe, impetuous, ardent, gallant.  But oh! the
+perils and dangers that obstruct his pathway; thick underbrush and
+high, tall trees stand up round him that he seemin'ly can't get
+through.
+
+But his gallant soldiers are a helpin' him onward, they are a
+cuttin' down the trees so's he can get through 'em and dash at the
+enemy.  You see as you look on him that he will get through it
+all.  No envy, nor detraction, nor jealousy, no such low
+underbrush full of crawlin' reptiles, nor no high solid trees, no
+danger of any sort can keep him back.  His big brave, generous
+heart is sot on helpin' his country, he'll do it.
+
+On the south side, is the saddest sight that a patriotic American
+can see.  On a plain slab stun, lookin' a good deal like a
+permanent grave-stun, sot up high there, for Americans to weep
+over forever, bitter tears of shames, is the name, "Arnold."
+
+He wuz a brave soldier; his name ort to be there; it is all right
+to have it there and jest where it is, on a gravestun.  All
+through the centuries it will stand there, a name carved by the
+hand of cupidity, selfishness, and treachery.
+
+On the west side, General Morgan is standin' up with his hands
+over his eyes; lookin' away into the sunset.  He looked jest like
+that when he wuz a lookin' after prowlin' red skins and red coats;
+when the sun wuz under dark clouds, and the day wuz dark 100 years
+ago.
+
+But now, all he has to do is to stand up there and look off into
+the glowin' heavens, a watchin' the golden light of the sun of
+Liberty a rollin' on westward.  He holds his hand over his eyes;
+its rays most blind him, he is most lost a thinkin' how fur, how
+fur them rays are a spreadin', and a glowin',way, way off, Morgan
+is a lookin' onto our future, and it dazzles him.  Its rays
+stretch off into other lands; they strike dark places; they burn!
+they glow! they shine! they light up the world!
+
+Hold up your head, brave old General, and your loyal steadfast
+eyes.  You helped to strike that light.  Its radience half-frights
+you.  It is so heavenly bright, its rays, may well dazzle you.
+Brown old soldiers, I love to think of you always a standin' up
+there, lifted high up by a grateful Nation, a lookin' off over all
+the world, a lookin' off towards the glowin' west, toward our
+glorious future.
+
+On the inside too, it wuz a noble seen.  After you rose up the
+steps and went inside, you found yourself in a middlin' big room
+all surrounded by figures in what they called Alto Relief, or
+sunthin' to that effect.  I don't know what Alto they meant.  I
+don't know nobody by that name, nor I don't know how they relieved
+him.  But I s'pose Alto when he wuz there wuz relieved to think
+that the figures wuz all so noble and impressive.  Mebby he had
+been afraid they wouldn't suit him and the nation.  But they did,
+they must have.  He must have been hard to suit, Alto must, if he
+wuzn't relieved, and pleased with these.
+
+On one side wuz George the 3d of England, in his magnificent
+palace, all dressed up in velvet and lace, surrounded by his slick
+drestup nobles, and all of 'em a sittin' there soft and warm, in
+the lap of Luxury, a makin' laws to bind the strugglin' colonies.
+
+And right acrost from that, wuz a picture of them Colonists, cold
+and hungry, a havin' a Rally for Freedom, and a settin' up a Town
+meetin! right amongst the trees, and under-brush that hedged 'em
+all in and tripped 'em up at every step; and savages a hidin'
+behind the trees, and fears of old England, and dread of a
+hazerdous unknown future, a hantin' and cloudin' every glimpse of
+sky that came down on 'em through the trees.  But they looked
+earnest and good, them old 4 fathers did, and the Town meetin'
+looked determined, and firm principled as ever a Town meetin'
+looked on the face of the earth.
+
+Then there wuz some of the women of the court, fine ladies, all
+silk, and ribbons, and embroideries, and paint, and powder, a
+leanin' back in their cushioned arm-chairs, a wantin' to have the
+colonies taxed still further so's to have more money to buy lace
+with and artificial flowers.  And right acrost from 'em wuz some
+of our old 4 mothers, in a rude, log hut, not strong enough to
+keep out the cold, or the Injuns.
+
+One wuz a cardin' wools, one of 'em wuz a spinnin' 'em, a tryin'
+to make clothes to cover the starved, half-naked old 4 fathers who
+wuz a tramplin' round in the snow with bare feet and shiverin'
+lims.  And one of 'em had a gun in her hand.  She had smuggled the
+children all in behind her and she wuz a lookin' out for the foe.
+These wimmen hadn't no ribbons on, no, fur from it.
+
+And then there wuz General Schuyler a fellin' trees to obstruct
+the march of the British army.  And Miss Schuyler a settin' fire
+to a field of wheat rather than have it help the enemy of her
+country.  Brave old 4 mother, worthy pardner of a grand man, she
+wuz a takin' her life in her hand and a destroyin' her own
+property for the sake of the cause she loved.  A emblem of the way
+men and women sot fire to their own hopes, their own happiness,
+and burnt 'em up on the altar of the land we love.
+
+And there wuz some British wimmen a follerin' their husbands
+through the perils of danger and death, likely old 4 mothers they
+wuz, and thought jest as much of their pardners as I do of my
+Josiah.  I could see that plain.  And could see it a shinin'
+still plainer in another one of the pictures -- Lady Aukland a
+goin' over the Hudson in a little canoe with the waves a dashin'
+up high round her, to get to the sick bed of her companion.  The
+white flag of truce wuz a wavin' over her head and in her heart
+wuz a shinin' the clear white light of a woman's deathless
+devotion.  Oh! there wuz likely wimmen amongst the British, I
+haint a doubt of it, and men too.
+
+And then we clim a long flight of stairs and we see some more
+pictures, all round that room.  Alto relieved agin, or he must
+have been relieved, and happified to see 'em, they wuz so
+impressive.  I myself had from 25 to 30 emotions a minute while I
+stood a lookin' at em -- big lofty emotions too.
+
+There waz Jennie McCrea a bein' dragged offen her horse, and
+killed by savages.  A dreadful sight -- a woman settin' out
+light-hearted toward happiness and goin' to meet a fearful doom.
+Dreadful sight that has come down through the centuries, and
+happens over and over agin amongst female wimmen.  But here it wuz
+fearful impressive for the savages that destroyed her wuz in
+livin' form, they haint always materialized.
+
+Yes, it wuz a awful seen.  And jest beyond it, wuz Burgoyne a
+scoldin' the savages for the cruelty of the deed.  Curius, haint
+it?  How the acts and deeds of a man that he sets to goin', when
+they have come to full fruition skare him most to death, horrify
+him by the sight.  I'll bet Burgoyne felt bad enough, a lookin' on
+her dead body, if it wuz his doin's in the first place, in lettin'
+loose such ignerance and savagery onto a strugglin' people.
+
+Yes, Mr. Burgoyne felt bad and ashamed, I haint a doubt of it.
+His poet soul could suffer as well as enjoy -- and then I didn't
+feel like sayin' too much aginst Mr. Burgoyne, havin' meditated so
+lately in the treachery of Arnold, one of our own men doin' a act
+that ort to keep us sort a humble-minded to this day.
+
+And then there wuz the killin' and buryin' of Frazier both
+impressive.  He wuz a gallant officer and a brave man.  And then
+there wuz General Schuyler (a good creeter) a turnin' over his
+command to Gates.  And I methought to myself as I looked on it,
+that human nater wuz jest about the same then; it capered jest
+about as it duz now in public affairs and offices.  Then there wuz
+the surrender of Burgoyne to Gates.  A sight impressive enough to
+furnish one with stiddy emotions for weeks and weeks.  A thinkin'
+of all he surrendered to him that day, and all that wuz took.
+
+The monument is dretful high.  Up, up, up, it soars as if it wuz
+bound to reach up into the very heavens, and carry up there these
+idees of ourn about Free Rights, and National Liberty.  It don't
+go clear up, though.  I wish it did.  If it had, I should have
+gone up the high ladder clear to the top.  But I desisted from the
+enterprise for 2 reasons, one wuz, that it didn't go, as I say,
+clear up, and the other wuz that the stairs wuzn't finished.
+
+Josiah proposed that he should go up as he clim up our well, with
+one foot on each side on't.  He said he wuz tempted to, for he
+wanted dretfully to look out of them windows on the top.  And he
+said it would probable be expected of him.  And I told him that I
+guessed that the monument wouldn't feel hurt if he didn't go up; I
+guessed it would stand it.  I discouraged the enterprise.
+
+And anon we went down out of the monument, and crossed over to the
+good-lookin' house where the man lives who takes care of the
+monument, and shows off its good traits, a kind of a guardian to
+it.  And we got a first-rate dinner there, though such is not
+their practice.  And then he took us in a likely buggy with 2
+seats, and a horse to draw it, and we sot out to see what the
+march of 100 years has left us of the doin's of them days.
+
+Time has trampled out a good many of 'em, but we found some.  We
+found the old Schuyler mansion, a settin' back amongst the trees,
+with the old knocker on it, that had been pulled by so many a old
+4 father, carryin' tidin's of disappointment, and hope, and
+triumph, and encouragement, and everything.  We went over the
+threshold wore down by the steps that had fell there for a hundred
+years, some light, some heavy steps.
+
+We went into the clean, good-lookin' old kitchen, with the
+platters, and shinin' dressers and trays; the old-fashioned
+settee, half-table and half-seat.  And we see the cup General
+Washington drinked tea out of, good old creeter.  I hope the water
+biled and it wuz good tea, and most probable it wuz.  And we see
+lots of arms that had been carried in the war, and cannon balls,
+and shells, and tommy-hawks, and hatchets, and arrows, and etc.,
+etc.  And down in one room all full of other curiosities and
+relicts, wuz the skull of a traitor.  I should judge from the
+looks on't that besides bein' mean, he wuz a hombly man.  Somebody
+said folks had made efforts to steal it.  But Josiah whispered to
+me, that there wuzn't no danger from him, for he would rather be
+shet right up in the Tombs than to own it, in any way.
+
+And I felt some like him.  Some of his teeth had been stole, so
+they said.  Good land! what did they want with his teeth!  But it
+wuz a dretful interestin' spot.  And I thought as I went through
+the big square, roomy rooms that I wouldn't swap this good old
+house for dozens of Queen Anns, or any other of the fashionable,
+furbelowed houses of to-day.  The orniments of this house wuz more
+on the inside, and I couldn't help thinkin' that this house,
+compared with the modern ornimental cottages, wuz a good deal like
+one of our good old-fashioned foremothers in her plain gown,
+compared with some of the grandma's of to-day, all paint, and
+furbelows, and false hair.
+
+The old 4 mothers orniments wuz on the inside, and the others wuz
+more up on the roof, scalloped off and gingerbreaded, and
+criss-crossed.
+
+The old house wuz full of rooms fixed off beautiful.  It wuz quite
+a treat to walk throngh'em.  But the old fireplaces, and mantle
+tray shelves spoke to our hearts of the generations that had poked
+them fires, and leaned up against them mantle trays.  They went
+ahead on us through the old rooms; I couldn't see 'em, but I felt
+their presence, as I follered 'em over the old thresholts their
+feet had worn down a hundred years ago.  Their feet didn't make no
+sound, their petticoats and short gowns didn't rustle against the
+old door ways and stair cases.
+
+The dear old grandpas in their embroidered coats, didn't cast no
+shadow as they crossed the sunshine that came in through the
+old-fashioned window panes.  No, but with my mind's eye (the best
+eye I have got, and one that don't wear specks) I see 'em, and I
+follerd 'em down the narrow, steep stair case, and out into the
+broad light of 4 P. M., 1886.
+
+Anon, or shortly after, we drove up on a corner of the street jest
+above where the Fish creek empties into the Hudson, and there,
+right on a tall high brick block, wuz a tablet, showin' that a
+tree once stood jest there, under which Burgoyne surrendered.  And
+agin, when I thought of all that he surrendered that day, and all
+that America and the world gained, my emotions riz up so powerful,
+that they wuzn't quelled down a mite, by seein' right on the other
+side of the house wrote down these words, "Drugs, Oils, etc."
+
+No, oil couldn't smooth 'em down, nor drugs drug 'em; they wuz too
+powerful.  And they lasted jest as soarin' and eloquent as ever
+till we turned down a cross street, and arrove at the place, jest
+the identical spot where the British stacked their arms (and
+stacked all their pride, and their ambitious hopes with 'em).  It
+made a high pile.
+
+Wall, from there we went up to a house on a hill, where poor
+Baroness Riedesel hid with her three little children, amongst the
+wounded and dyin' officers of the British army, and stayed there
+three days and three nights, while shots and shells wuz a
+bombardin' the little house -- and not knowin' but some of the
+shots had gone through her lover husband's heart, before they
+struck the low ruff over her head.
+
+What do you s'pose she wuz a thinkin' on as she lay hid in that
+suller all them three days and three nights with her little girls'
+heads in her lap?  Jest the same thoughts that a mother thinks
+to-day, as she cowers down with the children she loves, to hide
+from danger; jest the same thoughts that a wife thinks today when
+her heart is out a facing danger and death, with the man she
+loves.
+
+She faced danger, and died a hundred deaths in the thought of the
+danger to them she loved.  I see the very splinters that the cruel
+shells and cannon balls split and tore right over her head.  Good
+honorable splinters and not skairful to look at today, but hard,
+and piercin', and harrowin' through them days and nights.
+
+Time has trampled over that calash she rode round so much in (I
+wish I could a seen it); but Time has ground it down into dust.
+Time's hand, quiet but heavy, rested down on the shinin' heads of
+the three little girls, and their Pa and Ma, and pushed 'em gently
+but firmly down out of sight; and all of them savages who used to
+follow that calash as it rolled onwards, and all their canoes, and
+war hoops, and snowshoes, etc., etc.
+
+Yes, that calash of Miss Riedesel has rolled away, rolled away
+years ago, carryin' the three little girls, their Pa and Ma and
+all the fears, and hopes, and dreads, and joys, and heartaches of
+that time it has rolled on with 'em all; on, on, down the dusty
+road of Oblivion, -- it has disappeared there round the turn of
+road, and a cloud of dust comes up into our faces, as we try to
+follow it.  And the Injuns that used to howl round it, have all
+follered on the trail of that calash, and gone on, on, out of
+sight.  Their canoes have drifted away down the blue Hudson, away
+off into the mist and the shadows.  Curius, haint it?
+
+And there the same hills and valleys lay, calm and placid, there
+is the same blue sparklin' Hudson.  Dretful curius, and sort a
+heart breakin' to think on't -- haint it?  Only jest a few more
+years and we, too, shall go round the turn of the road, out of
+sight, out of sight, and a cloud of dust will come up and hide us
+from the faces of them that love us, and them, too, from the eyes
+of a newer people.
+
+All our hopes, all our ambitious, all our loves, our joys, our
+sorrows, -- all, all will be rolled away or floated away down the
+river, and the ripples will ripple on jest as happy; the Sunshine
+will kiss the hills jest as warmly, and lovin'ly; but other eyes
+will look on 'em, other hearts will throb and burn within 'em at
+the sight.
+
+Kinder sad to think on, haint it?
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETING.
+
+
+One day Josiah and me went into a meetin' where they wuz kinder
+fixin' over the world, sort a repairin' of it, as you may say.
+Some of the deepest, smartest speeches I ever hearn in my life, I
+hearn there.
+
+You know it is a middlin' deep subject.  But they rose to it.
+They rose nobly to it.  Some wuz for repairin' it one way, and
+some another -- some wanted to kinder tinker it up, and make it
+over like.  Some wanted to tear it to pieces, and build it over
+new.  But they all meant well by the world, and nobody could help
+respectin' 'em.
+
+I enjoyed them hours there with 'em, jest about as well as it is
+in my power to enjoy anything.  They wuz all on 'em civilized
+Christian folks and philanthropists of different shades and
+degrees, all but one.  There wuz one heathen there.  A Hindoo
+right from Hindoostan, and I felt kinder sorry for him.  A
+heathen sot right in the midst of them folks of refinement, and
+culture, who had spent their hull lives a tryin' to fix over the
+world, and make it good.
+
+This poor little heathen, with a white piller case, or sunthin'
+wound round his head (I s'pose he hadn't money to buy a hat), and
+his small black eyes lookin' out kinder side ways from his dark
+hombly little face, rousted up my pity, and my sympathy.  There
+had been quite a firm speech made against allowin' foreigners on
+our shores.  And this little heathen, in his broken speech, said,
+It all seemed so funny to him, when everybody wuz foreigners in
+this country, to think that them that got here first should say
+they owned it, and send everybody else back.  And he said, It
+seemed funny to him, that the missionarys we sent over to his
+land to teach them the truth, told them all about this land of
+Liberty, where everybody wuz free, and everybody could earn a
+home for themselves, and urged 'em all to come over here, and
+then when they broke away from all that held 'em in their own
+land, and came thousands and thousands of milds, to get to this
+land of freedom and religion,then they wuz sent back agin, and
+wuzn't allowed to land.  It seemed so funny.
+
+And so it did to me.  And I said to myself, I wonder if they
+don't lose all faith in the missionarys, and what they tell them.
+I wonder if they don't have doubts about the other free country
+they tell 'em about.  The other home they have urged 'em to prepare
+for, and go to.  I wonder if they haint afraid, that when they
+have left their own country and sailed away for that home of
+Everlastin' freedom, they will be sent back agin, and not allowed
+to land.
+
+But it comferted me quite a good deal to meditate on't, that that
+land didn't have no laws aginst foreign emigration.  That its
+ruler wuz one who held the rights of the lowest, and poorest, and
+most ignerent of His children, of jest as much account as he did
+the rights of a king.  Thinkses I that poor little head with the
+piller case on it will be jest as much looked up to, as if it wuz
+white and had a crown on it.  And I felt real glad to think it
+wuz so.
+
+But I went to every meetin' of 'em, and enjoyed every one of 'em
+with a deep enjoyment.  And I said then, and I say now, for folks
+that had took such a hefty job as they had, they done well, nobody
+could do better, and if the world wuzn't improved by their talk it
+wuz the fault of the world, and not their'n.
+
+And we went to meetin' on Sunday mornin' and night, and hearn
+good sermons.  There's several high big churches at Saratoga, of
+every denomination, and likely folks belong to the hull on 'em:
+There is no danger of folks losin' their way to Heaven unless
+they want to, and they can go on their own favorite paths too, be
+they blue Presbyterian paths, or Methodist pasters, or by the
+Baptist boat, or the Episcopalian high way, or the Catholic
+covered way, or the Unitarian Broadway, or the Shadow road of
+Spiritualism.
+
+No danger of their losin' their way unless they want to.  And I
+thought to myself as I looked pensively at the different steeples,
+"What though there might be a good deal of'wranglin', and screechin',
+and puffin' off steam, at the different stations, as there must
+always be where so many different routes are a layin' side by side,
+each with its own different runners, and conductors, and porters,
+and managers, and blowers, still it must be, that the separate
+high ways would all end at last in a serener road, where the true
+wayfarers and the earnest pilgrims would all walk side by side, and
+forget the very name of the station they sot out from.
+
+I sez as much to my companion, as we wended our way home from one
+of the meetin's, and he sez, "There haint but one right way, and
+it is a pity folks can't see it."  Sez he a sithin' deep, "Why
+can't everybody be Methodists?"
+
+We wuz a goin' by the 'Piscopal church then, and he sez a lookin'
+at it, as if he wuz sorry for it, "What a pity that such likely
+folks as they be, should believe in such eronious doctrines.
+Why," sez he, "I have hearn that they believe that the bread at
+communion is changed into sunthin' else.  What a pity that they
+should believe anything so strange as that is, when there is a
+good, plain, practical, Christian belief that they might believe
+in, when they might be Methodists.  And the Baptists now," sez
+he, a glancin' back at their steeple, "why can't they believe
+that a drop is as good as a fountain?  Why do they want to
+believe in so much water?  There haint no need on't.  They might
+be Methodists jest as well as not, and be somebody."
+
+And he walked along pensively and in deep thought, and I a feelin'
+somewhat tuckered didn't argue with him, and silence rained about
+us till we got in front of the hall where the Spiritualists hold
+their meetin's, and we met a few a comin' out on it and then he
+broke out and acted mad, awful mad and skernful, and sez he
+angrily, "Them dumb fools believe in supernatural things.  They
+don't have a shadow of reason or common sense to stand on.  A man
+is a fool to gin the least attention to them, or their doin's.  Why
+can't they believe sunthin' sensible?  Why can't they jine a church
+that don't have anything curius in it?  Nothin' but plain, common
+sense facts in it: Why can't they be Methodists?"
+
+"The idee!" sez he, a breakin' out fresh.  "The idee of believin'
+that folks that have gone to the other world can come back agin
+and appear.  Shaw!" sez he, dretful loud and bold.  I don't believe
+I ever heard a louder shaw in my life than that wuz, or more kinder
+haughty and highheaded.
+
+And then I spoke up, and sez, "Josiah, it is always well, to shaw
+in the right place, and I am afraid you haint studied on it as
+much as you ort.  I am afraid you haint a shawin' where you ort
+to."
+
+"Where should I shaw?" sez he, kinder snappish.
+
+"Wall," sez I, "when you condemn other folkses beliefs, you ort
+to be careful that you haint a condemin' your own belief at the
+same time.  Now my belief is grounded in the Methodist meetin'
+house like a rock; my faith has cast its ancher there inside of
+her beliefs and can't be washed round by any waves of opposin'
+doctrines.  But I am one who can't now, nor never could, abide
+bigotry and intolerance either in a Pope, or a Josiah Allen.
+
+"And when you condemn a belief simply on the ground of its bein'
+miraculous and beyond your comprehension, Josiah Allen, you had
+better pause and consider on what the Methodist faith is founded.
+
+"All our orthodox meetin' houses, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist,
+Episcopalian, every one on 'em, Josiah Allen, are sot down on a
+belief, a deathless faith in a miraculous birth, a life of
+supernatural events, the resurrection of the dead, His appearance
+after death, a belief in the graves openin' and the dead comin'
+forth, a belief in three persons inhabitin' one soul, the constant
+presence and control of spiritual influences, the Holy Ghost, and
+the spirits of just men.  And while you are a leanin' up against
+that belief, Josiah Allen, and a leanin' heavy, don't shaw at any
+other belief for the qualities you hold sacred in your own."
+
+He quailed a very little, and I went on.
+
+"If you want to shaw at it, shaw for sunthin' else in it, or else
+let it entirely alone.  If you think it lacks active Christian
+force, if you think it is not aggressive in its assaults at Sin,
+if you think it lacks faith in the Divine Head of the church, say
+so, do; but for mercy's sake try to shaw in the right place."
+
+"Wall," sez he, "they are a low set that follers it up mostly,
+and you know it."  And his head was right up in the air, and he
+looked very skernful.
+
+But I sez, "Josiah Allen, you are a shawin' agin in the wrong
+place," sez I.  "If what you say is true, remember that 1800
+years ago, the same cry wuz riz up by Pharisees, `He eats with
+Publicans and sinners.'  They would not have a king who came in
+the guise of the poor, they scerned a spiritual truth that did
+not sparkle with worldly lustre.
+
+"But it shone on; it lights the souls of humanity to-day.  Let us
+not be afraid, Josiah Allen.  Truth is a jewel that cannot be
+harmed by deepest investigation, by roughest handlin'.  It can't
+be buried, it will shine out of the deepest darkness.  What is
+false will be washed away, what is true will remain.  For all
+this frettin', and chafing, all this turbelence of conflectin'
+beliefs, opposin' wills, will only polish this jewel.  Truth,
+calm and serene, will endure, will shine, will light up the
+world."
+
+He begun to look considerable softer in mean, and I continued
+on: "Josiah Allen, you and I know what we believe the beautiful
+religion (Methodist Episcopal) that we both love, makes a light
+in our two souls.  But don't let us stand in that light and yell
+out, that everybody else's light is darkness; that our light is
+the only one.  No, the heavens are over all the earth; the twelve
+gates of heaven are open and a shinin' down on all sides of us.
+
+"Jonesville meetin' house (Methodist Episcopal) haint the only
+medium through which the light streams.  It is dear to us, Josiah
+Allen, but let us not think that we must coller everybody and
+drag 'em into it.  And let us not cry out too much at other
+folkses superstitions, when the rock of our own faith, that
+comforts us in joy and sorrow, is sot in a sea of supernaturalism.
+
+"You know how that faith comforts our two souls, how it is to us,
+like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, but they say,
+their belief is the same to them, let us not judge them too
+hardly.  No, the twelve gates of heaven are open, Josiah Allen,
+and a shinin' down onto the earth.  We know the light that has
+streamed into our own souls, but we do not know exactly what rays
+of radience may have been reflected down into some other lives
+through some one of those many gates.
+
+"The plate below has to be prepared, before it can ketch the
+picture and hold it.  The light does not strike back the same
+reflection from every earthly thing.  The serene lake mirrors
+back the light, in a calm flood of glory, the flashin' waterfall
+breaks it into a thousand dazzlin' sparkles.  The dewy petal of
+the yellow field lily, reflects its own ray of golden light back,
+so does the dark cone of the pine tree, and the diamond, the
+opal, the ruby, each tinges the light with its own coloring, but
+the light is all from above.  And they all reflect the light, in
+their own way for which the Divine skill has prepared them.
+
+"Let us not try to compel the deep blue Ocean waves and the
+shinin' waterfall, and the lily blow, to reflect back the light,
+in the same identical manner.  No, let the light stream down into
+high places, and low ones, let the truth shine into dark hearts,
+and into pure souls.  God is light.  God is Love.  It is His
+light that shines down out of the twelve gates, and though the
+ruby, or the amethyst, may color it by their own medium, the
+light that is reflected, back is the light of Heaven.  And Josiah
+Allen," sez I in a deeper, earnester tone, "let us who know so
+little ourselves, be patient with other ignerent ones.  Let us
+not be too intolerent, for no intolerence, Josiah Allen is so
+cruel as that of ignerence, an' stupidity."
+
+Sez Josiah, "I won't believe in anything I can't see, Samantha
+Allen."
+
+I jest looked round at him witheringly, and sez I, "What have
+you ever seen, Josiah Allen, I mean that is worth sein'?  Haint
+everything that is worth havin' in life, amongst the unseen?  The
+deathless loves, the aspirations, the deep hopes, and faiths,
+that live in us and through us, and animate us and keep us alive,
+-- Whose spectacles has ever seen 'em?  What are we, all of us
+human creeters, any way, but little atoms dropped here, Heaven
+knows why, or how, into the midst of a perfect sea of mystery,
+and unseen influences.  What hand shoved us forwards out of the
+shadows, and what hand will reach out to us from the shadows and
+draw us back agin?  Have you seen it Josiah Allen?  You have felt
+this great onseen force a movin' you along, but you haint sot
+your eyes on it.
+
+"What is there above us, below us, about us, but a waste of
+mystery, a power of onseen influences?.
+
+"You won't believe anything you can't see: -- Did you ever see
+old Gravity, Josiah Allen, or get acquainted with him?  Yet his
+hands hold the worlds together.  Who ever see the mysterious
+sunthin' in the North that draws the ship's compass round?  Who
+ever see that great mysterious hand that is dropped down in the
+water, sweepin' it back and forth, makin' the tides come in, and
+the tides go out?  Who ever has ketched a glimpse of them majestic
+fingers, Josiah Allen?  Or the lips touched with lightnin', whose
+whispers reach round the world, and through the Ocean?  You haint
+see 'em, nor I haint,  No, Josiah Allen, we don't know much of
+anything, and we don't know that for certain.  We are all on us
+only poor pupils down in the Earth's school-room, learnin' with
+ difficulty and heart ache the lessons God sets for us.
+
+Tough old Experience gives us many a hard floggin', before we
+learn the day's lessons.  And we find the benches hard, long
+before sundown.  And it makes our hearts ache to see the mates we
+love droop their too tired heads in sleep, all round us before
+school is out.  But we grind on at our lessons, as best we may.
+Learnin' a little maybe.  Havin' to onlearn a sight, as the
+pinters move on towards four.  Clasping hands with fellow toilers
+and (hard task) onclaspin' 'em, as they go up above us, or down
+nearer the foot.  Havin' little `intermissions' of enjoyment,
+soon over.  But we plod on, on, and bimeby -- and sometimes we
+think we do not care how soon -- the teacher will say to us, that
+we can be 'dismissed.'  And then we shall drop out of the rank of
+learners, and the school will go without us, jest as busily, jest
+as cheerfully, jest as laboriously, jest as sadly.  Poor learners
+at the hard lessons of life.  Learnin' out of a book that is held
+out to us from the shadows by an onseen, inexorable hand.
+Settin' on hard benches that may fall out from under us at any
+time.  Poor ignerent creeters that we are, would it not be a too
+arrant folly for us to judge each other hardly, we, all on us, so
+deplorably ignerent, so weakly helpless?"
+
+Sez Josiah, in earnest axcents, "Le's walk a little faster."
+
+And, in lookin' up, I see that he wuz readin' a advertisement.  I
+ketched sight of a picture ornamentin' of it.  It wuz Lydia
+Pinkham.  And as I see that benine face, I found and recovered
+myself.  Truly, I had been a soarin' up, up, fur above Saratoga,
+Patent Medicines, Josiah Allen, etc., etc.
+
+But when I found myself by the side of Josiah Allen once more, I
+moved onwards in silence, and soon we found ourselves right by
+the haven where I desired to be, -- our own tried and true
+boardin' house.
+
+Truly eloquence is tuckerin', very, especially when you are a
+soarin' and a walkin' at the same time.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+ST. CHRISTINA'S HOME.
+
+
+Wall, it wuz that very afternoon, almost immegetly after dinner,
+that Josiah Allen invited me warmly to go with him to the Roller
+Coaster.  And I compromised the matter by his goin' with us first
+to St. Christina's Home, and then, I told him, I would proceed
+with him to the place where he would be.  They wuz both on one
+road, nigh to each other, and he consented after some words.
+
+I felt dretfully interested in this Home, for it is a place where
+poor little sick children are took to, out of their miserable,
+stiflin', dirty garrets, and cellars, and kep' and made well and
+happy in their pleasant, home-like surroundin's.  And I thought
+to myself, as I looked ont on the big grounds surroundin' it, and
+walked through the clean wide rooms, that the change to these
+children, brought out of their narrow dark homes of want and woe,
+into this great sunshiny Home with its clean fresh rooms, its
+good food, its cheery Christian atmosphere, its broad sunshiny
+playgrounds, must seem like enterin' Paradise to 'em.
+
+And I thought to myself how thankful I wuz that this pleasant
+House Beautiful, wuz prepared for the rest and refreshment of the
+poor little pilgrims, worn out so early in the march of life.
+And I further thinkses I, "Heaven bless the kind heart that first
+thought on't, and carried out the heavenly idee."
+
+The children's faces all looked, so happy, and bright, it wuz a
+treat to see 'em.  And the face of the sister who showed us round
+the rooms looked as calm, and peaceful, and happy, as if her face
+wuz the sun from which their little lights wuz reflected.
+
+Up amongst the rooms overhead, every one on 'em clean as a pin
+and sweet and orderly, wuz one room that specially attracted my
+attention.  It wuz a small chapel where the little ones wuz took
+to learn their prayers and say 'em.  It wuzn't a big, barren barn
+of a room, such as I have often seen in similar places, and which
+I have always thought must impress the children with a awful sense
+of the immensity and lonesomeness of space, and the intangebility,
+and distance of the Great Spirit who inhabiteth Eternity.  No, it
+wuz small, and cozy, and cheerful, like a home.  And the stained
+glass window held a beautiful picture of love and charity, which
+might well touch the children's hearts, sweetly and unconsciously,
+with the divine worth of love, and beauty, and goodness.
+
+And I could fancy the dear, little ones kneelin' here, and
+prayin' "Our Father, who art in Heaven," and feelin' that He wuz
+indeed their Father, and not a stranger, and that Heaven wuz not
+fur off from 'em.
+
+And I thought to myself "Never! never! through all their life
+will they get entirely away from the pure, sweet lessons they
+learn here."
+
+I enjoyed the hour I spent here with a deep, heart enjoyment, and
+so did Josiah.  Or, that is, I guess he did, though he whispered
+to me from time to time, or even oftener, as we went through the
+buildin', that we wuz a devourin' time that we might be spendin'
+at the Roller Coaster.
+
+Wall, at last, greatly to my pardner's satisfaction, we sot out
+for the place where he fain would be.  On our way there we roamed
+through another Indian Encampment, a smaller one than that where
+we had the fearful incident of the Mermaid and Sarah.
+
+No, it wuzn't so big, but it had many innocent diversions and a
+photograph gallery, and other things for its comfert.  And a
+standin' up a leanin' aginst a tree, by one of the little houses
+stood a Injun.  He wuz one of the last left of his tribe.  He
+seemed to be a lookin' pensively on -- and seein' how the land
+that had belonged to 'em, the happy huntin'-grounds, the springs
+they believed the Great Spirit had gin to 'em, had all passed
+away into the bands of another race.
+
+I wuz sorry for that Injun, real sorry.  And thinkses I to
+myself, we feel considerable pert now, and lively, but who knows
+in another three or four hundred years, but what one of the last
+of our race, may be a leanin' up aginst some new tree, right in
+the same spot, a watchin' the old places passed away into other
+hands, mebby black hands, or some other colored ones; mebby
+yellow ones, who knows?  I don't, nor Josiah don't.  But my
+pardner wuz a hurryin' me on, so I dropped my revery and my
+umberell in my haste to foller on after his footsteps.
+
+Josiah picked up my umberell, but he couldn't pick up my soarin'
+emotions for me.  No, he haint never been able, to get holt of
+'em.  But suffice it to say, that soon, preceded by my companion,
+I found myself a mountin' the nearly precipitus stairs, that led
+to the Roller Coaster.
+
+And havin' reached the spot, who should we find there but Ardelia
+Tutt and Bial Flamburg.  They had been on the Roller Coaster
+seven times in succession, and the car.  And they wuz now a
+sittin' down to recooperate their energies, and collect their
+scattered wits together.  The Roller Coaster is very scatterin'
+to wits that are not collected firm and sound, and cemented by
+strong common sense.
+
+The reason why the Roller Coaster don't scatter such folkses wits
+is supposed to be because, they don't go on to it.  Ardelia
+looked as if her idees wuz scattered to the four pints of the
+compass.  As for Bial, it seemed to me, as if he never had none
+to scatter.  But he spoke out to once, and said, he didn't care
+to ride on 'em.  (Bial Flamburg's strong pint, is his
+truthfulness, I can't deny that.)
+
+Ardelia wouldn't own up but what she enjoyed it dretfully.  You
+know folks are most always so.  If they partake of a pleasure and
+recreation that is doubtful in its effects, they will always say,
+what a high extreme of enjoyment they enjoyed a partakin' of it.
+Curius, haint it?  Wall, Josiah had been anticipatin' so much
+enjoyment from the exercise, that I didn't make no move to
+prevent him from embarkin' on it -- though it looked hazardous
+and dangerous in the extreme.
+
+I looked down on the long valleys, and precipitous heights of the
+assents and desents, in which my pardner wuz so soon to be
+assentin' and desentin' and I trembled, and wuz jest about to
+urge him to forego his diversion, for the sake of his pardner's
+happiness, but as I turned to expostulate with him, I see the
+beautiful, joyous, hopeful look on his liniment, and the words
+fell almost dead on my tongue.  I felt that I had ruther suffer
+in silence than to say one word to mar that bliss.
+
+Such is the love of pardners, and such is some of the agonies
+they suffer silently to save from woundin' the more opposite one.
+No, I said not a word; but silently sat, and see him makin' his
+preparations to embark.  He see the expression onto my face, and
+he too wuz touched by it.  He never said one word to me about
+embarkin' too, which I laid to two reasons.  One wuz my immovable
+determination not to embark on the voyage, which I had confided
+to him before.
+
+And the other wuz, the added expenses of the journey if he took
+his companion with him.
+
+No, I felt that he thought it wuz better we should part temporarily
+than that the expenditure should be doubled.  But as the time drew
+near for him to leave me, I see by his meen that he felt bad about
+leavin' me.  He realized what a companion I had been to him.  He
+realized the safety and repose he had always found at my side and
+the unknown dangers he wuz a rushin' into.
+
+And he got up and silently shook hands with me.  He would have
+kissed me, I make no doubt, if folks hadn't been a standin' by.
+He then embarked, and with lightnin' speed wuz bore away from me,
+as he dissapeared down the desent, his few gray hairs waved back,
+and as he went over the last precipitus hill, I heard him cry out
+in agonizin' axents, "Samantha! Samantha!"
+
+And I rushed forwards to his rescue but so lightnin' quick wuz
+their movements that I met my companion a comin' back, and I sez,
+the first thing, "I heard your cry, Josiah!  I rushed to save
+you, my dear pardner."
+
+"Yes," sez he, "I spoke out to you, to call your attention to the
+landscape, over the woods there!"
+
+I looked at him in a curious, still sort of a way, and didn't say
+nothin' only just that look.  Why, that man looked all trembly
+and broke up, but he kep' on.
+
+"Yes, it wuz beautiful and inspirin', and I knew you wuz such a
+case for landscapes, I thought I would call your attention to
+it."
+
+Sez I, coldly, "You wuz skairt, Josiah Allen, and you know it."
+
+"Skairt! the idee of me bein' skairt.  I wuz callin' your
+attention to the beauty of the view, over in the woods."
+
+"What wuz it?" sez I, still more coldly; for I can't bear deceit,
+and coverin' up.
+
+"Oh, it wuz a house, and a tree, and a barn, and things."
+
+"A great seen to scream about," sez I.  "It would probable have
+stood there till you got back, but you couldn't seem to wait."
+
+"No, I have noticed that you always wanted to see things to once.
+I have noticed it in you."
+
+"I could most probable have waited till you got back, to see a
+house and a tree."  And in still more -- frigid axents, I added,
+"Or a barn."  And I sez, kinder sarkastikly, "You enjoyed your
+ride, I s'pose."
+
+"Immensely, it wuz perfectly beautiful!  So sort a free and
+soarin' like.  It is jest what suits a man."
+
+"You'd better go right over it agin," sez I.
+
+"Yes," sez the man who runs the cars.  "You'd better go agin."
+
+"Oh no," sez Josiah.
+
+"Why not?" sez I.
+
+"Why not?" sez the man.
+
+Josiah Allen looked all around the room, and down on the grass,
+as if trying to find a good reasonable excuse a layin' round
+loose somewhere, so's he could get holt of it.
+
+"You'd better go," sez I, "I love to see you happy, Josiah
+Allen."
+
+"Yes, you'd better go," sez the man.
+
+"No!" sez Josiah, still a lookin' round for a excuse, up into the
+heavens and onto the horizon.  And at last his face kinder
+brightenin' up, as if he had found one: "No, it looks so kinder
+cloudy, I guess I won't go.  I think we shall have rain between
+now and night."  And so we said no more on the subject and sot
+out homewards.
+
+Ardelia wrote a poem on the occasion, wrote it right there, with
+rapidity and a lead pencil, and handed it to me, before I left
+the room.  I put it into my pocket and didn't think on it, for
+some days afterwards.
+
+That night after we got home from the Roller Coaster, I felt
+dretful sort a down hearted about Abram Gee, I see in that little
+incident of the day, that Bial, although I couldn't like him, yet
+I see he had his good qualities, I see how truthful he wuz.  And
+although I love truth -- I fairly worship it -- yet I felt that
+if things wuz as he said they wuz, he would more'n probable get
+Ardelia Tutt, for I know the power of Ambition in her, and I felt
+that she would risk the chances of happiness, for the name of
+bein' a Banker's Bride.
+
+So I sat there in deep gloom, and a chocolate colored wrapper,
+till as late as half past nine o'clock P. M.  And I felt that the
+course of Abram's love wuz not runnin' smooth.  No, I felt that
+it wuz runnin' in a dwindlin' torrent over a rocky bed, and a
+precipitus one.  And I felt that if he wuz with me then and
+there, if we didn't mingle our tears together we could our
+sithes, for I sithed, powerful and frequent.
+
+Poor short-sighted creeter that I wuz, a settin' in the shadow,
+when the sun wuz jest a gettin' ready to shine out onto Abram and
+reflect off onto my envious heart.  Even at that very time the
+hand of righteous Retribution had slipped its sure noose over
+Bial Flamburg's neck, and wuz a walkin' him away from Ardelia,
+away from happiness (oritory).
+
+At that very hour, half past nine P. M., Ardelia Tutt and Abram
+Gee had met agin, and rosy love and happiness wuz even then a
+stringin' roses on the chain that wuz to bind 'em together
+forever.
+
+The way on't wuz: It bein' early when Ardelia got here, Bial
+proposed to take her out for a drive and she consented.  He got a
+livery horse, and buggy, and they say that the livery man knew
+jest what sort of a creeter the horse wuz, and knew it wuz liable
+to break the buggy all to pieces and them to, and he let 'em have
+it for goin.'  But howsumever, whether that is so or not, when
+they got about five or six milds from Saratoga the horse skeert
+out of the road, and throwed 'em both out.
+
+It wuz a bank of sand that skeert it, a high bank that wuz piled
+up by a little hovel that stood by the side of the road.  The
+ground all round the hut wuz too poor to raise anything else but
+sand, and had raised sights of that.
+
+A man and woman, dretful shabby lookin', wuz a standin' by the
+door of the hut, and the man had a shovel in his hand, and had
+been a loadin' sand into a awful big wheelbarrow that wuz a
+standin' by -- seemin'ly ready to carry it acrost the fields, to
+where some man wuz a mixin' some motar, to lay the foundations of
+a barn.
+
+Wall, the old man stood a pantin' by the side of the wheelbarrow,
+as if he had indeed got on too heavy a load.  It wuz piled up
+high.  The horse shied, and Ardelia wuz throwed right out onto
+the bank of sand, Bial by the side of her.  And the old man and
+woman came a runnin' up, and callin' out, "Bial, my son, my son,
+are you wounded?"
+
+And there it all wuz.  Ardelia see the hull on it.  The Banker
+wuz before her, and she wuz a layin' on the bank.  And the banker
+wuz a doin' a heavy business, if anybody doubted it, let 'em take
+holt and cart a load on it acrost the fields.
+
+Wall, Ardelia wuz jarred fearful, in her heart, her ambition, her
+pride, and her bones.  And as the horse wuz a fleein' far away,
+and no other conveyance could be found to transport her to the
+next house (Ardelia wouldn't go into his'n), and night wuz
+approachin' with rapid strides, the old Banker jest unloaded the
+load of sand (good old creeter, he would have to load it all over
+agin), and took Ardelia into the wheelbarrow, and wheeled her
+over to the next house and unloaded her.
+
+The old Banker told Ardelia that when his neighbor got home he
+would take her back to Saratoga, which he did.  He had been to
+the village for necessaries, but he turned right round and
+carried her back to Mr. Pixleyses.  And I s'pose Ardelia paid
+him, mebby as high as 75 cents.  As for Bial, he tramped off
+into the house, and she didn't see him agin, nor didn't want to.
+Wall, I s'pose it wuz durin' that ride on the wheelbarrow, that
+Ardelia's ambition quelled to softer emotions.  I s'pose so.  She
+never owned it right up to me, but I s'pose so.
+
+Bial Flamburg hadn't lied a word to her.  In all her agony she
+realized that.  But she had built a high towerin' structure of
+ambition on what he said, and it had tottered.  And as is natural
+in times of danger, the heart turns instinctively to its true
+love, she thought of Abram Gee, she wanted him.  And as if in
+answer to her deep and lovin' thought, who should come out to the
+buggy to help her out at Mr. Pixleyses gate, but Abram Gee?  He
+had come unexpected, and on the eight o'clock train, and wuz
+there waitin' for her.
+
+If Bial Flamburg had been with her, he wouldn't have gone a nigh
+the buggy, but he see it was a old man, and he rushed out.
+Ardelia couldn't walk a step on her feet (owin' to bein shaken
+up, in bones and feelin's), and Abram jest took her in his strong
+lovin' arms and carried her into the house, and she sort a clung
+round his neck, and seemed tickled enough to see him,
+
+But she wuz dretful shook up and agitated, and it wuzn't till way
+along in the night some time, that she wuz able to write a poem
+called, "a lay on a wheelbarrow; or, the fallen one."
+
+Which I thought when I read it, wuz a good name for it, for truly
+she had fell, and truly she had lay on it.  Howsumever, Ardelia
+wrote that jest because it wuz second nater to write poetry on
+every identical thing she ever see or did.
+
+She wuz glad enough to get rid of Bial Flamburg, and glad enough
+to go back to her old love.  Abram wuz too manly and tender to
+say a word to Ardelia that night on the subject nearest to his
+heart.  No, he see she needed rest.  But the next day, when they
+wuz alone together, I s'pose he put the case all before her.  All
+his warm burnin' love for her, all his jealousy, and his
+wretchedness while she wuz a waverin' between Banks and Bread,
+how his heart had been checked by the thought that Bial would
+vault over him, and in the end hold him at a discount.
+
+Why, I s'pose he talked powerful and melted Ardelia's soft little
+heart till it wuz like the softest kind of dough in his hands.
+And then he went on tenderly to say, how he needed her, and how
+she could mould him to her will.  I s'pose he talked well, and
+eloquent, I s'pose so.  Anyhow she accepted him right there in
+full faith and a pink and white cambric dress.
+
+And they came over and told me about it in the afternoon P. M.
+And I felt well and happy in my mind, and wished 'em joy with a
+full heart and a willin' mind.
+
+They are both good creeters.  And she bein' so soft, and he so
+kinder hardy and stout-hearted, I believe they will get along
+firstrate.  And when she once let her mind and heart free to
+think on him, she worships him so openly and unreservedly (though
+soft), that I don't, believe there is a happier man in the hull
+country.
+
+Wall, I lay out to give'em a handsome present when they be
+married, which will be in the fall.  Mother Gee (who has got as
+well as can be expected) is goin' to live with Susan.  And I'm
+glad on't.  Mother Gee is a good old female no doubt, but it is
+resky work to take a new husband to live with, and when you take
+a mother-in-law too it adds to the resk.
+
+But she is goin' to live with Susan; it is her prefference.
+
+And Abram has done so well, that he has bought another five acres
+onto his place, and is a goin' to fix his house all over splendid
+before the weddin' day.  And Ardelia is to go right from the
+altar to her home -- it is her own wishes.
+
+She knows enough in her way, Ardelia duz.  And she has a wisdom
+of the heart which sometimes I think, goes fur ahead of the
+wisdom of the head.  And then agin, I think they go well
+together, wisdom of the head and the heart too.  (The times I
+think this is after readin' her poetry.)
+
+But any way she will make Abram a good soft little wife, lovin'
+and affectionate always.  And good land! he loves her to that
+extent that it wouldn't make no difference to him if she didn't
+know enough to come in when it rained.  He would fetch her in,
+drippin' and worship her, damp or dry.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+AN ACCIDENT WITH RESULTS.
+
+
+Wall, it wuz on the very day before we laid out to leave for
+home.  I wuz a settin' in my room a mendin' up a rip in my
+pardner's best coat, previous to packin' in his trunk, when all
+of a sudden Miss Flamm's hired girl came in a cryin', and sez I,
+"What is the matter?"
+
+And sez she, "Ah!  Miss Flamm has sent for you and Mr. Allen to
+come over there right away.  There has been a axident."
+
+"A axident!" sez I.
+
+"Yes," sez she.  "The little girl has got hurt, and they don't
+think she will live.  Poor little pretty thing," sez the hired
+girl, and busted out a cryin' agin.
+
+"How did she get hurt?" sez I, as I laid down the coat, and went
+to tyin' on my bunnet mekanically.
+
+"Wall, the nurse had her out with the baby and the little boys.
+And we s'pose she had been drinkin' too much.  We all knew she
+drinked, and she wuzn't in a condition to go out with the
+children this mornin', and Miss Flamm would have noticed it and
+kep' 'em in, but the dog wuz sick all night, and Miss Flamm wuz
+up with it most all night, and she felt wore out this mornin'
+with her anxtety for the dog, and her want of sleep, and so they
+went out, and it wuzn' more'n half an hour before it took place.
+She left the baby carriage and the little boys and girl in a
+careless place, not knowin' what she wuz about, and they got run
+over.  The baby and the little boys wuzn't hurt much, but they
+think the little girl will die.  Miss Flamm went right into a
+caniption fit," sez she, "when she wuz brung in."
+
+"It is a pity she hadn't went into one before," sez I very dryly,
+dry as a chip almost.  My axents wuz fairly dusty they wuz so
+dry.  But my feelin's for Miss Flamm moistened up and melted down
+when I see her, when we went into the room.  It didn't take us
+long for they are still to the tarven, and we met Josiah Allen at
+the door, so he went with us.
+
+Yes, Miss Flamm felt bad enough, bad enough.  She has got a
+mother's heart after all, down under all the strings and girtins,
+and laces, and dogs, etc., etc., that have hid it, and surrounded
+it.  Her face wuz jest as white and deathly as the little girl's,
+and that wuz jest the picture of stillness and death.  And I
+remembered then that I had heard that the little girl wuz her
+favorite amongst her children, whenever she had any time to
+notice 'em.  She wuz a only daughter and a beauty, besides bein'
+smart.
+
+The doctor had been there and done what he could, and go gone
+away.  He said there wuz nothin' more to do till she came out of
+that stuper, if she ever did.
+
+But it looked like death, and there Miss Flamm sot alone with her
+child, and her conscience.  She wuzn't a cryin' but there wuz a
+look in her eyes, in her set white face that went beyond tears,
+fur beyond 'em.  She gripped holt of my hand with her icy cold
+ones, and sez she, "Pray for me!"  She wuz brung up a Methodist,
+and knew we wuz the same.  My feelin's overcame me as I looked in
+her face and the child's, both lookin' like dyin' faces, and I
+sez with the tears a jest runnin' down my cleeks and a layin' my
+hand tender on her shoulder, "Is there anything I can do for you,
+you poor little creeter?"
+
+"Pray for me," sez she agin, with her white lips not movin' in a
+smile, nor a groan.
+
+Now my companion, Josiah Allen, is a class-leader, and though I
+say it that mebby shouldn't -- That man is able in prayer.  He
+prays as if he meant what he said.  He don't try to show off in
+oritory as so many do, or give the Lord information.  He never
+sez, "Oh Lord, thou knowest by the mornin' papers, so and so."
+No, he prays in simple words for what he wants.  And he always
+seems to feel that somebody is nigh to him, a hearin' him, and if
+it is best and right, his requests will be granted.
+
+So I motioned for that man to kneel down by the bed and pray,
+which he did.  He wuz to the fore side of the bed, and Miss Flamm
+and I on the other side.  Wall, Josiah commenced his prayer, in a
+low earnest askin' voice, then all of a sudden he begun to
+hesitate, waver, and act dretful agitated.  And his actions and
+agitations seemed to last for some time.  I thought it wuz his
+feelin's overcomin' of him, and of course, my hand bein' over my
+eyes in a respectful, decent way, I didin't see nothin'.
+
+But at last, after what wuz seemingly a great effort, he began to
+go on as usual agin.  About that time I heard sunthin' hit the
+wall hard on the other side of the room, and I heard a yelp.  But
+then everything wuz still and Josiah Allen made a good prayer.
+And before it wuz through Miss Flamm laid her head down onto my
+shoulder, and busted into tears.
+
+And what wuz rooted up and washed away by them tears I don't
+know, and I don't s'pose anybody duz.  Whether vanity, and a
+mistaken ambition, and the poor empty successes of a fashionable
+life wuz uprooted and floated away on the awakened, sweepin' tide
+of a mother's love and remorse; whether the dog floated down that
+stream, and low necked dresses, and high hazardus slippers, and
+strings for waists and corsets, and fashion, and folly, and
+rivalry, and waltzin', and glitter, and buttons, and show; whether
+they all went down that stream, swept along like bubbles on a
+heavin' tumultuous tide, I don't know, nor I don't s'pose anybody
+duz.
+
+But any way, from that day on Miss Flamm has been a different
+woman.  I stayed with her all that night and the next day, she a
+not leavin' the child's bed for a minute, and we a not gettin' of
+her to, much as we tried to; eatin' whatever we could make her
+eat right there by the bedside.  And on the 2d day the doctor see
+a change in the child and she began to roust a little out of that
+stuper, and in a week's time, she wuz a beginnin' to get well.
+
+We stayed on till she wuz out of danger and then we went home.
+But I see that she wuz to be trusted with her children after
+that.  She dismissed that nurse, got a good motherly one, who she
+said would help her take care of the children for the future;
+only help her, for she should have the oversight of 'em herself,
+always.
+
+The hired girl told me (Miss Flamm never mentioned it to me), and
+she wuz glad enough of it, that the dog wuz dead.  It died the
+day the little girl wuz hurt.  The hired girl said the doctor had
+told Miss Flamm, that it couldn't live long.  But it wuzn't till
+we wuz on our way home that I found out one of the last eppisodes
+in that dog's life.  You see, sick as that dog wuz, it wuz bound
+to bark at my pardner as long as it had a breath left in its body.
+And Josiah told me in confidence (and it must be kep', it is right
+that it should be); he said jest after he had knelt down and began
+to pray he felt that dog climb up onto his heels, and pull at his
+coat tails, and growl a low mad growl, and naw at 'em.
+
+He tried to nestle round and get it off quietly but no, there it
+stood right onto Josiah Allen's heels, and hung on, and tugged at
+them coat-tails, and growled at 'em that low deep growl, and shook
+'em, as if determined to worry 'em off.  And there my companion
+wuz.  He couldn't show his feelin's in his face; he had got to
+keep his face all right towards Miss Flamm.  And his feelin's was
+rousted up about her, and he wuz a wantin', and knew he wuz
+expected, to have his words and manner soothin' and comfortin',
+and that dog a standin' on his heels and tearin' off his coat-tails.
+
+What to do he didn't know.  He couldn't stop his prayer on such a
+time as this and kill a dog, though he owned up to me that he
+felt like it, and he couldn't keep still and feel his coat-tails
+tore off of him, and be growled at, and shook, and pawed at all
+day.  So he said after the dog had gin a most powerful tug, almost
+a partin' the skirts asunder from his coat, he drew up one foot
+carefully (still a keepin' his face straight and the prayer agoin')
+and brung it back sudden and voyalent, and he heard the dog strike
+aginst the opposite side of the room with one short, sharp yelp,
+and then silence rained down and he finished the prayer.
+
+But he said, and owned it up to me, that it didn't seem to him so
+much like a religious exercise, as he could wish.  It didn't seem
+to help his spiritual growth much, if any.
+
+And I sez, "I should think as much," and I sez, "You wuz in a
+hard place, Josiah Allen."
+
+And he sez, "It wuz the dumbest hard place any one wuz ever in on
+earth."
+
+And I sez, "I don't know but it wuz."  That man wuz to be pitied,
+and I told him so, and he acted real cheerful and contented at
+hearin' my mind.  He owned up that he had dreaded tellin' me
+about it, for fear I would upbraid him.  But, good land!  I would
+have been a hard hearted creeter if I could upbraid a man for
+goin' through such a time as that.  He said he thought mebby I
+would think it wuz irreverent or sunthin', the dog's actions, at
+such a time.
+
+"Wall," sez I, "you didn't choose the actions, did you?  It
+wuzn't nothin' you wanted."
+
+"No," sez he feelin'ly.  "Heaven knows I didn't.  And I done the
+best I could," sez he sort a pitiful.
+
+Sez I, "I believe you, Josiah Allen," and sez I warmly, "I don't
+believe that Alexander, or Cezar, or Grover Cleveland, could have
+done any better."
+
+He brightened all up at this, he felt dretful well to think I
+felt with him, and my feelin's wuz all rousted up to think of the
+sufferin's he had went through, so we felt real well towards each
+other.  Such is some of the comforts and consolations of pardners.
+Howsumever, the dog died, and I wuz kinder sorry for the dog.  I
+think enough of dogs (as dogs) and always did.  Always use 'em
+dretful well, only it mads me to have 'em put ahead of children,
+and sot up in front of 'em.  I always did and always shall like a
+dog as a dog.
+
+Wall, they say that when that dog died, Miss Flamm hardly
+inquired about it, she wuz so took up in gettin' acquainted with
+her own children.  And I s'pose they improved on acquaintance,
+for they say she is jest devoted to 'em.  And she got acquainted
+with G. Washington too, so they say.  He wuz a stiddy, quiet man,
+and she had got to lookin' on him as her banker and business man.
+But they say she liked him real well, come to get acquainted with
+him.  He always jest worshipped her, so they are real happy.
+There wuz always sunthin' kinder good about Miss Flamm.
+
+Thos. J. is a carryin' on another lawsuit for her (more money
+that descended onto her from her father, or that ort to descend).
+And he is carryin' it stiddy and safe.  It will bring Thomas
+Jefferson over 900 dollars in money besides fame, a hull lot of
+fame.
+
+Wall, we sot sail for home in good spirits, and the noon train.
+And we reached Jonesville with no particular eppisodin' till we
+got to the Jonesville Depot.
+
+I rather think Ardelia Tutt wrote a poem on the cars goin' home,
+though I can't say for certain.
+
+She and Abram sot a few seats in front of us, and I thought I see
+a certain look to the backside of her head that meant poetry.  It
+wuz a kind of a sot look, and riz up like.  But I can't say for
+certain for she didn't have no chance to tell me about it.  Abram
+looked down at her all the time as if he jest worshipped her.
+And she is a good little creeter, and will make him a happy wife;
+I don't make no doubt.  As I said, the old lady is goin' to live
+with Susan.  They went right on in the train, for Ardelia's home
+lays beyond Jonesville, and Abram wuz goin' home with her by
+Deacon Tutt's request.  They are willin'.
+
+Wall, we disembarked from the cars, and we found the old mair and
+the "Democrat" a waitin' for us.  Thomas J. wuz a comin' for us,
+but had spraint his wrist and couldn't drive.  Wall, Josia lifted
+our saddul bags in, and my umbrell, and the band box.  But when
+he went to lift my trunk he faltered.  It wuz heavy.  I had got
+relicts from Mount McGregor, from the Battlefield, from the
+various springs, minerals, stuns, and things, and Josiah couldn't
+lift it.
+
+What added to the hardness of the job, the handles had broken
+offen it, and he had to grip hold on it, by the might of his
+finger nails.  It wuz a hard job, and Josiah's face got red and I
+felt, as well as see, that his temper wuz a risin'.  And I sez,
+instinctively, "Josiah, be calm!"  For I knew not what unguarded
+word he might drop as he vainly tried to grip hold on't, and it
+eluded his efferts and came down on the ground every time, a
+carryin' with it, I s'pose, portions of his fingernails, broke
+off in the fray.
+
+Wall, he wuz a strugglin' with it and with his feelin's, for I
+kep' on a sayin', "Josiah, do be calm!  Do be careful about usin'
+a profane word so nigh home and at this time of day, and you jest
+home from a tower."
+
+And he kep' his feelin's nobly under control, and never said a
+word, only to wonder "what under the High Heavens a woman wanted
+to lug round a ton of stuns in her trunk for."  And anon sayin'
+that he would be dumbed if he didn't leave it right there on the
+platform.
+
+Savin' these few slight remarks that man nobly restrained
+himself, and lugged and lifted till the blood almost gushed
+through his bald head.  And right in the midst of the fray, a
+porter came up and went to liftin' the trunk in the usual
+highheaded, haughty way Railroad officials have.  But anon a
+change came over his linement.  And as it fell back from his
+fingers to the platform for the 3d time, he broke out in a
+torrent of swearin' words dretful to hear.
+
+I felt as if I should sink through the "Democrat".  But Josiah
+listened to the awful words with a warm glow of pleasure and
+satisfaction a beamin' from his face.  I never saw him look more
+complacent.  And as the man moistened his hands and with another
+frightful burst of profanity histed it into the end of the buggy.
+
+Wall, I gin the man a few warnin' words aginst profanity, and
+Josiah gin him a quarter for liftin' in the trunk, he said, and
+we drove off in the meller glow of the summer sunset.
+
+But it wuz duskish before we got to the turn of the road, and
+considerable dark before we got to the Corners.  But we went on
+tbgough the shadows, a feelin' we could bear 'em, for we wuz
+together, and we wuz a goin' home.
+
+And pretty soon we got there!  The door wuz open, the warm light
+wuz a streamin' out from doors and windows, and there stood the
+children!
+
+There they all wuz, all we loved best, a waitin' to welcome us.
+Love, which is the light of Heaven, wuz a shinin' on their faces,
+and we had got home.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Samantha at Saratoga, by Marietta Holley
+
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+Project Gutenberg's A Summer in a Canyon, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+(#15 in our series by Kate Douglas Wiggin)
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+Title: A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story
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+Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+Release Date: March, 2002  [Etext #3147]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Project Gutenberg's A Summer in a Canyon, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+******This file should be named smcan10.txt or smcan10.zip******
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+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.07.00*END*
+
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+
+
+This etext was produced from the 1914 Gay and Hancock, Ltd.
+edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+A SUMMER IN A CANYON: A CALIFORNIA STORY
+
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+
+
+
+SCENE:  A Camping Ground in the Canyon Las Flores.
+
+PEOPLE IN THE TENTS.
+
+DR. PAUL WINSHIP            Mine Host
+MRS. TRUTH WINSHIP          The Guardian Angel
+DICKY WINSHIP               A Small Scamp of Six Years
+BELL WINSHIP                The Camp Poetess
+POLLY OLIVER                A Sweet but Saucy Lass
+MARGERY NOBLE               A Nut-Brown Mayde
+PHILIP NOBLE                The Useful Member
+GEOFFREY STRONG             A Harvard Boy
+JACK HOWARD                 Prince of Mischief
+HOP YET                     A Heathen Chinee.
+PANCHO GUTIERREZ            A Mexican man-of-all-work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I:  PREPARATION AND DEPARTURE
+
+
+
+'One to make ready, and two to prepare.'
+
+
+It was nine o'clock one sunny California morning, and Geoffrey Strong
+stood under the live-oak trees in Las Flores Canyon, with a pot of
+black paint in one hand and a huge brush in the other.  He could have
+handled these implements to better purpose and with better grace had
+not his arms been firmly held by three laughing girls, who pulled not
+wisely, but too well.  He was further incommoded by the presence of a
+small urchin who lay on the dusty ground beneath his feet, fastening
+an upward clutch on the legs of his trousers.
+
+There were three large canvas tents directly in front of them, yet no
+one of these seemed to be the object of dissension, but rather a
+redwood board, some three feet in length, which was nailed on a tree
+near by.
+
+'Camp Frolic!  Please let us name it Camp Frolic!' cried Bell
+Winship, with a persuasive twitch of her cousin's sleeve.
+
+'No, no; not Camp Frolic,' pleaded Polly Oliver.  'Pray, pray let us
+have Camp Ha-Ha; my heart is set upon it.'
+
+'As you are Strong, be merciful,' quoted Margery Noble, coaxingly;
+'take my advice and call it Harmony Camp.'
+
+At this juncture, a lovely woman, whose sweet face and smile made you
+love her at once, came up the hill from the brookside.  'What, what!
+still quarrelling, children?' she asked, laughingly.  'Let me be
+peacemaker.  I've just asked the Doctor for a name, and he suggests
+Camp Chaparral.  What do you say?'
+
+Bell released one coat-tail.  'That isn't wholly bad,' she said,
+critically, while the other girls clapped their hands with approval;
+for anything that Aunt Truth suggested was sure to be quite right.
+
+'Wait a minute, good people,' cried Jack Howard, flinging his
+fishing-tackle under a tree and sauntering toward the scene of
+action.  'Suppose we have a referee, a wise and noble judge.  Call
+Hop Yet, and let him decide this all-important subject.'
+
+His name being sung and shouted in various keys by the assembled
+company, Hop Yet appeared at the door of the brush kitchen, a broad
+grin on his countenance, a plucked fowl in his hand.
+
+Geoffrey took the floor.  'Now, Hop Yet, you know I got name, you got
+name, everybody got name.  We want name this camp:  you sabe?  Miss
+Bell, she say Camp Frolic.  Frolic all same heap good time' (here he
+executed a sort of war-dance which was intended to express wild joy).
+'Miss Pauline, she say Camp Ha-Ha, big laugh:  sabe?  Ha! ha! ha! ha!
+ha! ha!' (chorus joined in by all to fully illustrate the subject).
+'Miss Madge, she say Camp Harmony.  Harmony all same heap quiet time,
+plenty eat, plenty drink, plenty sleep, no fight, no too muchee talk.
+Mrs. Winship, she say Camp Chaparral:  you sabe?  Chaparral, Hop Yet.
+Now what you say?'
+
+Hop Yet seemed to regard the question with mingled embarrassment and
+amusement, but being a sharp and talkative Chinaman gave his answer
+promptly:  'Me say Camp Chap-lal heap good name; plenty chap-lal all
+lound; me hang um dish-cloth, tow'l, little boy's stockin', on chap-
+lal; all same clo'se-line velly good.  Miss Bell she folic, Miss
+Polly she ha! ha! allee same Camp Chap-lal.'
+
+And so Camp Chaparral it was; the redwood board flaunted the
+assertion before the eyes of the public (which was a rather limited
+one, to be sure) in less than half an hour, and the artist, after
+painting the words in rustic letters a foot long, cut branches of the
+stiff, ungracious bushes and nailed them to the tree in confirmation
+and illustration of the fact.  He then carefully deposited the paint-
+pot in a secret place, where it might be out of sight and touch of a
+certain searching eye and mischievous hand well known and feared of
+him; but before the setting sun had dropped below the line of purple
+mountain tops, a small boy, who will be known in these annals as
+Dicky Winship, might have been seen sitting on the empty paint-pot,
+while from a dingy pool upon the ground he was attempting to paint a
+copy of the aforesaid inscription upon the side of a too patient
+goat, who saw no harm in the operation.  He was alone, and very, very
+happy.
+
+And now I must tell you the way in which all this began.  You may not
+realise it, dear young folks, but this method of telling a story is
+very much the fashion with grown-up people, and of course I am not to
+blame, since I didn't begin it.
+
+The plan is this:  You must first write a chapter showing all your
+people, men, women, children, dogs, and cats, in a certain place,
+doing certain things.  Then you must go back a year or two and
+explain how they all happen to be there.  Perhaps you may have to
+drag your readers twenty-five years into the regions of the past, and
+show them the first tooth of your oldest character; but that doesn't
+matter a bit,--the further the better.  Then, when everybody has
+forgotten what came to pass in the first chapter, you are ready to
+take it up again, as if there had never been any parenthesis.
+However, I shall not introduce you to the cradles, cribs, or trundle-
+beds of my merry young campers, but merely ask you to retrace your
+steps one week, and look upon them in their homes.
+
+On one of the pleasantest streets of a certain little California town
+stood, and still stands for aught I know, a pretty brown cottage,
+with its verandahs covered with passion-vine and a brilliant rose-
+garden in front.  It is picturesque enough to attract the attention
+of any passer-by, and if you had chosen to peep through the crevices
+in the thick vines and look in at the open window, you might have
+thought it lovelier within than without.
+
+It was a bright day, and the gracious June sunshine flooded the room
+with yellow light.  Three young girls, perhaps fourteen or fifteen
+years old, were seated in different parts of the large room, plying
+industrious crochet needles and tatting shuttles.  Three pairs of
+bright eyes were dancing with fun and gladness; and another pair, the
+softest and clearest of all, looked out from a broad white bed in the
+corner,--tired eyes, and oh, so patient, for the health-giving
+breezes wafted in from the blue ocean and carried over mountain tops
+and vine-covered slopes had so far failed to bring back Elsie
+Howard's strength and vigour.
+
+The graceful, brown-haired girl with the bright, laughter-loving
+face, was Bell Winship.  She of the dancing blue eyes, pink cheeks,
+and reckless little sun-bonnet was Pauline, otherwise Polly Oliver.
+Did you ever know a Polly without some one of these things?  Well, my
+Polly had them all, and, besides, a saucy freckled nose, a crown of
+fluffy, reddish-yellow hair, and a shower of coaxing little pitfalls
+called dimples round her pretty mouth.  She made you think of a
+sunbeam, a morning songbird, a dancing butterfly, or an impetuous
+little crocus just out after the first spring shower.  Dislike her?
+You couldn't.  Approve of her?  You wouldn't always.  Love her?  Of
+course; you couldn't help yourself,--I defy you.
+
+To be sure, if you prefer a quiet life, and do not want to be led
+into exploits of all kinds, invariably beginning with risk, attended
+with danger, and culminating in despair, you had better not engage in
+an intimate friendship with Miss Pauline Oliver, but fix your
+affections on the quiet, thoughtful, but not less lovable girl who
+sits by the bedside stroking Elsie Howard's thin white hand.
+Nevertheless, I am obliged to state that Margery Noble herself,
+earnest, demure, and given to reflection, was Polly's willing slave
+and victim.  However, I've forgotten to tell you that Polly was as
+open and frank as the daylight, at once torrid and constant in her
+affections, brave, self-forgetting as well as self-willed; and that
+though she did have a tongue just the least bit saucy, she used it
+valiantly in the defence of others.  'She'll come out all right,'
+said a dear old-fashioned grandfather of hers whom she had left way
+back in a Vermont farmhouse.  'She's got to be purged o' considerable
+dross, but she'll come out pure gold, I tell you.'
+
+Pretty, wise, tender Margery Noble, with her sleek brown braids, her
+innocent, questioning eyes, her soft voice, willing hands, and shy,
+quiet manners!  'She will either end as the matron of an orphan
+asylum or as head-nurse in a hospital.'  So Bell Winship often used
+to say; but then she was chiefly celebrated for talking nonsense, and
+nobody ever paid much attention to her.  But if you should crave a
+breath of fresh air, or want to believe that the spring has come,
+just call Bell Winship in, as she walks with her breezy step down the
+street.  Her very hair seems instinct with life, with its flying
+tendrils of bronze brightness and the riotous little curls on her
+brow and temples.  Then, too, she has a particularly jaunty way of
+putting on her jacket, or wearing a flower or a ribbon; and as for
+her ringing peal of laughter, it is like a chime of silver bells.
+
+Elsie Howard, the invalid friend of the girls, was as dear to them as
+they were to each other.  She kept the secrets of the 'firm'; mourned
+over their griefs and smiled over their joys; was proud of their
+talents and tenderly blind to their faults.  The little wicker
+rocking-chair by the bedside was often made a sort of confessional,
+at which she presided, the tenderest and most sympathetic little
+priestess in the universe; and every afternoon the piazza, with its
+lattice of green vines, served as a mimic throne-room, where she was
+wont to hold high court, surrounded by her devoted subjects.  Here
+Geoffrey Strong used often to read to the assembled company David
+Copperfield, Alice in Wonderland, or snatches from the magazines,
+while Jack Howard lazily stretched himself under the orange-trees and
+braided lariats, a favourite occupation with California boys.  About
+four o'clock Philip Noble would ride up from his father's fruit
+ranch, some three miles out on the San Marcos road, and, hitching his
+little sorrel mare Chispa at the gate, stay an hour before going to
+the post-office.
+
+This particular afternoon, however, was not one of Elsie's bright
+ones, and there was no sign of court or invalid queen on the piazza.
+The voices of the girls floated out from Elsie's bedroom, while the
+boys, too, seemed to be somewhere in the vicinity, for there was a
+constant stirring about as of lively preparation, together with noise
+of hammering and sawing.
+
+'If you were only going, Elsie, our cup of happiness would be full,'
+sighed Bell.
+
+'Not only would it be full, Bell, but it would be running over, and
+we should positively stand in the slop,' said Polly.  'No, you
+needn't frown at me, miss; that expression is borrowed from no less a
+person than Sydney Smith.'
+
+'Don't think any more about me,' smiled Elsie.  'Perhaps I can come
+down in the course of the summer.  I know it will be the happiest
+time in the world, but I don't envy you a bit; in fact, I'm very glad
+you're going, because you'll have such a lovely budget of adventures
+to tell me when you come back.'
+
+'When we come back, indeed!' exclaimed Bell.  'Why, we shall write
+long round-robin letters every few days, and send them by the team.
+Papa says Pancho will have to go over to the stage station at least
+once a week for letters and any provisions we may need.'
+
+'Oh, won't that be delightful,--almost as good as being there myself!
+And, Margery dear, you must make them tell me every least little
+thing that happens.  You know they are such fly-aways that they'll
+only write me when they learn to swim, or shoot a wildcat, or get
+lost in the woods.  I want to know all the stupid bits:  what you
+have for dinner, how and where you sleep, how your camp looks, what
+you do from morning till night, and how Dicky behaves.'
+
+'I can tell you that beforehand,' said Bell, dolefully.  'Jack will
+shoot him by mistake on Thursday; he will be kicked by the horses
+Friday, and bitten by tarantulas and rattlesnakes Saturday; he will
+eat poison oak on Sunday, get lost in the canyon Monday, be eaten by
+a bear Tuesday, and drowned in the pool Wednesday.  These incidents
+will complete his first week; and if they produce no effect on his
+naturally strong constitution, he will treat us to another week,
+containing just as many mishaps, but no duplicates.'
+
+By the time this dismal prophecy was ended the other girls were in a
+breathless fit of laughter, though all acknowledged it was likely to
+be fulfilled.
+
+'I went over the camping-ground last summer,' said Margery.  'You
+know it is quite near papa's sheep ranch, and it is certainly the
+most beautiful place in California.  The tents will be pitched at the
+mouth of the canyon, where there is a view of the ocean, and just at
+the back will be a lovely grove of wild oaks and sycamore-trees.'
+
+'Oh, won't it be delicious!' sighed Elsie.  'I feel as if I could
+sniff the air this minute.  But there!  I won't pretend that I'm
+dying for fresh air, with the breath of the sea coming in at my south
+window, and a whiff of jasmine and honeysuckle from the piazza.  That
+would be nonsense.  Are your trunks packed?'
+
+'Trunks!' exclaimed Polly.  'Would you believe it, our clothes are
+packed in gunny-sacks!  We start in our camping-dresses, with ulsters
+for the steamer and dusters for the long drive.  Then we each have--
+let me see what we have:  a short, tough riding-skirt with a jersey,
+a bathing-dress, and some gingham morning-gowns to wear about the
+camp at breakfast-time.'
+
+'And flannel gowns for the night, and two pairs of boots, and a
+riding-cap and one hat apiece,' added Margery.
+
+'But oh, Elsie, my dear, you should see Dicky in his camping-suits,'
+laughed Bell.  'They are a triumph of invention on mamma's part.
+Just imagine! one is of some enamelled cloth that was left over from
+the new carriage cushions; it is very shiny and elegant; and the
+other, truly, is of soft tanned leather, and just as pretty as it can
+be.  Then he has hob-nailed, copper-toed boots, and a hat that ties
+under his chin.  Poor little man, he has lost his curls, too, and
+looks rather like a convict.'
+
+Mrs. Howard came in the door while Bell was speaking, and laughed
+heartily at the description of Dicky's curious outfit.  'What time do
+you start?' she asked, as she laid a bunch of mignonette on Elsie's
+table.
+
+'At eleven to-morrow morning,' Bell answered.  'Everything is packed.
+We are to start in the steamer, and when we come to our old landing,
+about forty miles down the coast, we are to get off and take a three-
+seated thorough-brace wagon, and drive over to Las Flores Canyon.
+Pancho has hired a funny little pack mule; he says we shall need one
+in going up the mountain, and that the boys can take him when they go
+out shooting,--to carry the deer home, you know.'
+
+'If I can bring Elsie down, as I hope, we must come by land,' said
+Mrs. Howard.  'I thought we could take two days for the journey,
+sleeping at the Burtons' ranch on the way.  The doctor says that if
+she can get strength enough to bear the ride, the open-air life will
+do her good, even if she does nothing but lie in the hammock.'
+
+'And be waited upon by six willing slaves,' added Polly.
+
+'And be fed on canned corned beef and tomato stew,' laughed Bell.
+
+'Not a bit of it,' said Margery.  'Hop Yet is a splendid cook, if he
+has anything to cook, and we'll feed her on broiled titbits of baby
+venison, goat's milk, wild bees' honey, and cunning little mourning
+doves, roasted on a spit.'
+
+'Good gracious,' cried Bell, 'what angels' food! only I would as soon
+devour a pet canary as a mourning dove.  But to think that I've been
+trying to diet for a week in order to get intimate with suffering and
+privation!  Polly came to stay with me one night, and we slept on the
+floor, with only a blanket under us, and no pillow; it was perfectly
+horrid.  Polly dreamed that her grandfather ate up her grandmother,
+and I that Dicky stabbed the Jersey calf with a pickle-fork.'
+
+'Horrors!' ejaculated Margery; 'that's a pleasant prospect for your
+future bedfellows.  I hope the gophers won't make you nervous,
+gnawing and scratching in the straw; I got used to them last summer.
+But we really must go, darling,' and she stooped to kiss Elsie good-
+bye.
+
+'Well, I suppose you ought,' she answered.  'But remember you are to
+start from this gate; Aunt Truth has promised me the fun of seeing
+you out of sight.'
+
+The girls went out at a side door, and joined the boys, who were
+busily at work cleaning their guns on the broad western porch.
+
+'How are you coming on?' questioned Polly.
+
+'Oh, finely,' answered Jack, who always constituted himself chief
+spokesman, unless driven from the rostrum by some one possessed of a
+nimbler tongue.  'I only hope your feminine togs are in half as good
+order.'
+
+'We take no baggage to speak of,' said Bell, loftily.  'Papa has cut
+us down to the very last notch, and says the law allows very few
+pounds on this trip.'
+
+'The less the better,' quoth Geoff, cheerily; 'then you'll have to
+polish up your mental jewels.'
+
+'Which you consider imitation, I suppose,' sniffed Polly.
+
+'Perish the thought!' cried Jack.  'But, speaking of mental jewels,
+you should see the arrangements Geoff has made for polishing his.  He
+has actually stuck in six large volumes, any one of which would be a
+remedy for sleeplessness.  What are you going to study, Miss Pol-y-
+on-o-mous Oliver?'
+
+'Now, Jack, let us decide at once whether you intend to be respectful
+or not.  I don't propose to expose myself to your nonsense for two
+months unless you make me good promises.'
+
+'Why, that wasn't disrespectful.  It is my newest word, and it simply
+means having many titles.  I'm sure you have more than most people.'
+
+'Very well, then!  I'll overlook the irreverence this time, and
+announce that I shall not take anything whatever to read, but simply
+reflect upon what I know already.'
+
+'That may last for the first week,' said Bell, slyly, 'but what will
+you do afterward?'
+
+'I'll reflect upon what you don't know,' retorted Polly.  'That will
+easily occupy me two months.'
+
+Fortunately, at the very moment this stinging remark was made, Phil
+Noble dashed up to the front gate, flung his bridle over the
+hitching-post, and lifted his hat from a very warm brow.
+
+'Hail, chief of the commissary department!' cried Geoffrey, with mock
+salute.  'Have you despatched the team?'
+
+'Yes; everything is all right,' said Phil, breathlessly, delivering
+himself of his information in spasmodic bursts of words.  'Such a lot
+of work it was! here's the list.  Pancho will dump them on the ground
+and let us settle them when we get there.  Such a load!  You should
+have seen it!  Hardly room for him to sit up in front with the
+Chinaman.  Just hear this,' and he drew a large document from what
+Polly called 'a back-stairs pocket.'
+
+'Forty cans corned beef, four guns, three Dutch cheeses, pickles,
+fishing-tackle, flour, bacon, three bushels onions, crate of dishes,
+Jack's banjo, potatoes, Short History of the English People, cooking
+utensils, three hair pillows, box of ginger-snaps, four hammocks,
+coffee, cartridges, sugar, Macaulay's Essays, Pond's extract, sixteen
+hams, Bell's guitar, pop-corn, molasses, salt, St. Jacob's Oil,
+Conquest of Mexico, sack of almonds, flea-powder, and smoked herring.
+Whew!  I packed them all myself.'
+
+'In precisely that order?' questioned Polly.
+
+'In precisely that order, Miss Oliver,' returned Phil, urbanely.
+'Any one who feels that said packing might be improved upon has only
+to mount the fleet Arabian yonder' (the animal alluded to seized this
+moment to stand on three legs, hang his head, and look dejected),
+'and, giving him the rein, speed o'er the trackless plain which leads
+to San Miguel, o'ertake the team, and re-pack the contents according
+to her own satisfaction.'
+
+'No butter, nor eggs, nor fresh vegetables?' asked Margery.  'We
+shall starve!'
+
+'Not at all,' quoth Jack.  'Polly will gracefully dispose a horse-
+blanket about her shoulders, to shield her from the chill dews of the
+early morn, mount the pack mule exactly at cock-crow everyday, and
+ride to a neighbouring ranch where there are tons of the aforesaid
+articles awaiting our consumption.'
+
+'Can you see me doing it, girls?  Does it seem entirely natural?'
+asked Polly, with great gravity.
+
+'Now hear my report as chairman of the committee of arrangements,'
+said Geoffrey Strong, seating himself with dignity on a barrel of
+nails.  'The tents, ropes, tool-boxes, bed-sacks, blankets,
+furniture, etc., all went down on Monday's steamer, and I have a
+telegram from Larry's Landing saying that they arrived in good order,
+and that a Mexican gentleman who owns a mammoth wood-cart will take
+them up to-morrow when we go ourselves.  The procession will move at
+one P.M., wind and weather permitting, in the following order:-
+
+'1.  Chief Noble on his gallant broncho.
+
+'2.  Commander Strong on his ditto, ditto.
+
+'3.  Main conveyance or triumphal chariot, driven by Aide-de-Camp
+John Howard, and carrying Dr. and Mrs. Winship, our most worshipful
+and benignant host and hostess; Master Dick Winship, the heir-
+apparent; three other young persons not worth mentioning; and four
+cans of best leaf lard, which I omitted to put with the other
+provisions.
+
+'4.  Wood-cart containing baggage, driven by Senor Don Manuel Felipe
+Hilario Noriega from Dead Wood Gulch.
+
+'5.  One small tan terrier.'
+
+'Oh, Geoff, Geoff, pray do stop! it's too much!' cried the girls in a
+fit of laughter.
+
+'Hurrah!' shouted Jack, tossing his hat into a tall eucalyptus-tree
+in his excitement, 'Tent life for ever!'
+
+'Good-bye, ye pomps and vanities!' chanted Bell, kissing her hand in
+imaginary farewell.  'Verily the noisy city shall know us no more,
+for we depart for the green forests.'
+
+'And the city will not be as noisy WHEN you depart,' murmured Jack,
+with an impudence that luckily passed unnoticed.
+
+'If Elsie could only come too!' sighed Polly.
+
+
+Wednesday morning dawned as bright and beautiful as all mornings are
+wont to dawn in Southern California.  A light mist hung over the old
+adobe mission church, through which, with its snow-white towers and
+cold, clear-cut lines, it rose like a frozen fairy castle.  Bell
+opened her sleepy eyes with the very earliest birds, and running to
+the little oval window, framed with white-rose vines, looked out at
+the new day just creeping up into the world.
+
+'Oh dear and beautiful home of mine, how charming, how charming you
+are!  I wonder if you are not really Paradise!' she said, dreamily;
+and the marvel is that the rising sun did not stop a moment in sheer
+surprise at the sight of this radiant morning vision; for the oval
+window opening to the east was a pretty frame, with its outline
+marked by the dewy rose-vine covered with hundreds of pure, half-
+opened buds and swaying tendrils, and she stood there in it, a fair
+image of the morning in her innocent white gown.  Her luminous eyes
+still mirrored the shadowy visions of dreamland, mingled with dancing
+lights of hope and joyful anticipation; while on her fresh cheeks,
+which had not yet lost the roundness of childhood, there glowed, as
+in the eastern skies, the faint pink blush of the morning.
+
+The town is yet asleep, and in truth it is never apt to be fairly
+wide awake.  The air is soft and balmy; the lovely Pacific, a
+quivering, sparkling sheet of blue and grey and green flecked with
+white foam, stretches far out until it is lost in the rosy sky; and
+the mountains, all purple and pink and faint crimson and grey, stand
+like sentinels along the shore.  The scent of the roses, violets, and
+mignonette mingled with the cloying fragrance of the datura is heavy
+in the still air.  The bending, willowy pepper-trees show myriad
+bunches of yellow blossoms, crimson seed-berries, and fresh green
+leaves, whose surface, not rain-washed for months, is as full of
+colour as ever.  The palm-trees rise without a branch, tall, slender,
+and graceful, from the warmly generous earth, and spread at last, as
+if tired of their straightness, into beautiful crowns of fans, which
+sway toward each other with every breath of air.  Innumerable
+butterflies and humming-birds, in the hot, dazzling sunshine of
+noonday, will be hovering over the beds of sweet purple heliotrope
+and finding their way into the hearts of the passion-flowers, but as
+yet not the faintest whirr of wings can be heard.  Looking eastward
+or westward, you see either brown foot-hills, or, a little later on,
+emerald slopes whose vines hang heavy with the half-ripened grapes.
+
+And hark!  A silvery note strikes on the dewy stillness.  It is the
+mission bell ringing for morning mass; and if you look yonder you may
+see the Franciscan friars going to prayers, with their loose grey
+gowns, their girdle of rope, their sandaled feet, and their jingling
+rosaries; and perhaps a Spanish senorita, with her trailing dress,
+and black shawl loosely thrown over her head, from out the folds of
+which her two dark eyes burn like gleaming fires.  A solitary Mexican
+gallops by, with gayly decorated saddle and heavily laden saddle-bags
+hanging from it; perhaps he is taking home provisions to his wife and
+dark-eyed babies who live up in a little dimple of the mountain side,
+almost hidden from sight by the olive-trees.  And then a patient,
+hardy little mustang lopes along the street, bearing on his back
+three laughing boys, one behind the other, on a morning ride into
+town from the mesa.
+
+The mist had floated away from the old mission now, the sun has
+climbed a little higher, and Bell has come away from the window in a
+gentle mood.
+
+'Oh, Polly, I don't see how anybody can be wicked in such a
+beautiful, beautiful world.'
+
+'Humph!' said Polly, dipping her curly head deep into the water-bowl,
+and coming up looking like a little drowned kitten.  'When you want
+to be hateful, you don't stop to think whether you're looking at a
+cactus or a rosebush, do you?'
+
+'Very true,' sighed Bell, quite silenced by this practical
+illustration.  'Now I'll try the effect of the landscape on my temper
+by dressing Dicky, while he dances about the room and plays with his
+tan terrier.'
+
+But it happened that Dicky was on his very best behaviour, and stood
+as still as a signpost while being dressed.  It is true he ate a
+couple of matches and tumbled down-stairs twice before breakfast, so
+that after that hurried meal Bell tied him to one of the verandah
+posts, that he might not commit any act vicious enough to keep them
+at home.  As he had a huge pocket full of apricots he was in perfect
+good-humour, not taking his confinement at all to heart, inasmuch as
+it commanded a full view of the scene of action.  His amiability was
+further increased, moreover, by the possession of a bright new
+policeman's whistle, which was carefully tied to his button-hole by a
+neat little silk cord, and which his fond parents intended that he
+should blow if he chanced to fall into danger during his rambles
+about the camp.  We might as well state here, however, that this
+precaution proved fruitless, for he blew it at all times and seasons;
+and everybody became so hardened to its melodious shriek that they
+paid no attention to it whatever,--history, or fable, thus again
+repeating itself.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Noble had driven Margery and Phil into town from the
+fruit ranch, and were waiting to see the party off.
+
+Mrs. Oliver was to live in the Winship house during the absence of
+the family, and was aiding them to do those numberless little things
+that are always found undone at the last moment.  She had given her
+impetuous daughter a dozen fond embraces, smothering in each a gentle
+warning, and stood now with Mrs. Winship at the gate, watching the
+three girls, who had gone on to bid Elsie good-bye.
+
+'I hope Pauline won't give you any trouble,' she said.  'She is so
+apt to be too impulsive and thoughtless.'
+
+'I shall enjoy her,' said sweet Aunt Truth, with that bright, cordial
+smile of hers that was like a blessing.  'She has a very loving
+heart, and is easily led.  How pretty the girls look, and how
+different they are!  Polly is like a thistledown or a firefly,
+Margery like one of our home Mayflowers, and I can't help thinking my
+Bell like a sunbeam.'
+
+The girls did look very pretty; for their mothers had fashioned their
+camping-dresses with much care and taste, taking great pains to make
+them picturesque and appropriate to their summer life 'under the
+greenwood tree.'
+
+Over a plain full skirt of heavy crimson serge Bell wore a hunting
+jacket and drapery of dark leaf-green, like a bit of forest against a
+sunset.  Her hair, which fell in a waving mass of burnished
+brightness to her waist, was caught by a silver arrow, and crowned by
+a wide soft hat of crimson felt encircled with a bird's breast.
+
+Margery wore a soft grey flannel, the colour of a dove's throat,
+adorned with rows upon rows of silver braid and sparkling silver
+buttons; while her big grey hat had nothing but a silver cord and
+tassel tied round it in Spanish fashion.
+
+Polly was all in sailor blue, with a distractingly natty little
+double-breasted coat and great white rolling collar.  Her hat swung
+in her hand, as usual, showing her boyish head of sunny auburn curls,
+and she carried on a neat chatelaine a silver cup and little clasp-
+knife, as was the custom in the party.
+
+'It's very difficult,' Polly often exclaimed, 'to get a dress that
+will tone down your hair and a hat that will tone up your nose, when
+the first is red and the last a snub!  My nose is the root of all
+evil; it makes people think I'm saucy before I say a word; and as for
+my hair, they think I must be peppery, no matter if I were really as
+meek as Moses.  Now there's Margery, the dear, darling mouse!  People
+look at her two sleek braids, every hair doing just what it ought to
+do and lying straight and smooth, and ask, "Who is that sweet girl?"
+There's something wrong somewhere.  I ought not to suffer because of
+one small, simple, turned-up nose and a head of hair which reveals
+the glowing tints of autumn, as Jack gracefully says.'
+
+'Here they come!' shouted Jack from the group on the Howards' piazza.
+'Christopher Columbus, what gorgeousness!  The Flamingo, the Dove,
+and the Blue-jay!  Good-morning, young ladies; may we be allowed to
+travel in the same steamer with your highnesses?'
+
+'You needn't be troubled,' laughed Bell.  'We shall not disclose
+these glories until we reach the camp.  But you are dressed as usual.
+What's the matter?'
+
+'Why, the fact is,' answered Geoffrey, 'our courage failed us at the
+last moment.  We donned our uniforms, and looked like brigands,
+highway robbers, cowboys, firemen,--anything but modest young men;
+and as it was too warm for ulsters, we took refuge in civilised
+raiment for to-day.  When we arrive, you shall behold our dashing
+sombreros fixed up with peacock feathers, and our refulgent shirts,
+which are of the most original style and decoration.'
+
+'Aboriginal, in fact,' said Jack.  'We have broad belts of alligator
+skin, pouches, pistols, bowie-knives, and tan-coloured shoes; but we
+dislike to flaunt them before the eyes of a city public.'
+
+'Here they are!' cried Geoffrey, from the gate.  'Uncle, and aunt,
+and Dicky, and--good gracious!  Is he really going to take that
+wretched tan terrier?'
+
+'Won't go without him,' said Bell, briefly.  'There are cases where
+it is better to submit than to fight.'
+
+So the last good-byes were said, and Elsie bore up bravely; better,
+indeed, than the others, who shed many a furtive tear at leaving her.
+'Make haste and get well, darling,' whispered the girls, lovingly.
+
+'Pray, pray, dear Mrs. Howard, bring her down to us as soon as
+possible.  We'll take such good care of her,' teased Bell, with one
+last squeeze, and strong signs of a shower in both eyes.
+
+'Come, girls and boys,' said kind Dr. Paul, 'the steamer has blown
+her first whistle, and we must be off.'
+
+Oh, how clear and beautiful a day it was, and how charmingly gracious
+Dame Ocean looked in her white caps and blue ruffles!  Even the
+combination steamboat smell of dinner, oil, and close air was
+obliterated by the keen sea-breeze.
+
+The good ship Orizaba ploughed her way through the sparkling, sun-lit
+waves, traversing quickly the distance which lay between the young
+people and their destination.  They watched the long white furrow
+that stretched in her wake, the cloud of black smoke which floated
+like a dark shadow above the laughing crests of the waves, and the
+flocks of sea-gulls sailing overhead, with wild shrill screams ever
+and anon swooping down for some bit of food flung from the ship, and
+then floating for miles on the waves.
+
+How they sung 'Life on the Ocean Wave,' 'Bounding Billow,' and
+'Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep!'  How Jack chanted, -
+
+
+   'I wish I were a fish,
+      With a great long tail;
+   A tiny little tittlebat,
+      A wiggle or a whale,
+In the middle of the great blue sea.  Oh, my!'
+
+
+'Oh, how I long to be there!' exclaimed Philip, 'to throw aside all
+the formal customs of a wicked world I abhor, and live a free life
+under the blue sky!'
+
+'Why, Philip Noble!  I never saw you inside of a house in my life,'
+cried Polly.
+
+'Oh, yes; you're mistaken.  I've been obliged to eat most of my meals
+in the house, and sleep there; but I don't approve of it, and it's a
+trial to be borne with meekness only when there's no remedy for it.'
+
+'Besides,' said Jack, 'even when we are out-of-doors we are shelling
+the reluctant almond, poisoning the voracious gopher, pruning grape-
+vines, and "sich."  Now I am only going to shoot to eat, and eat to
+shoot!'
+
+'Hope you've improved since last year, or you'll have a low diet,'
+murmured Phil, in an undertone.
+
+'The man of genius must expect to be the butt of ridicule,' sighed
+Jack, meekly.
+
+'But you'll not repine, although your heartstrings break, will you?'
+said Polly, sympathisingly; 'especially in the presence of several
+witnesses who have seen you handle a gun.'
+
+'How glad I am that I'm too near-sighted to shoot,' said Geoffrey,
+taking off the eye-glasses that made him look so wise and dignified.
+'I shall lounge under the trees, read Macaulay, and order the meals.'
+
+'I shall need an assistant about the camp,' said Aunt Truth,
+smilingly; 'but I hardly think he'll have much time to lounge; when
+everything else fails, there's always Dicky, you know.'
+
+Geoffrey looked discouraged.
+
+'And, furthermore, I declare by the nose of the great Tam o' Shanter
+that I will cut down every tree in the vicinity ere you shall lounge
+under it,' said Jack.
+
+'Softly, my boy.  Hill's blue-gum forest is not so very far away.
+You'll have your hands full,' laughed Dr. Paul.
+
+Here Margery and Bell joined the group after a quick walk up and down
+the deck.
+
+'Papa,' said Bell, excitedly, 'we certainly are nearing the place.
+Do you see that bend in the shore, and don't you remember that the
+landing isn't far below?'
+
+'Bell's bump of locality is immense.  There are nineteen bends in the
+shore exactly like that one before we reach the landing.  How many
+knots an hour do you suppose this ship travels, my fair cousin?'
+asked Geoffrey.
+
+'I could tell better,' replied Bell calmly, 'if I could ever remember
+how many knots made a mile, or how many miles made a knot; but I
+always forget.'
+
+'Oh, see!  There's a porpoise!' cried Jack.  'Polly, why is a
+porpoise like a water-lily?'
+
+But before he could say 'Guess,' Phil, Geoff, and the girls had drawn
+themselves into a line, and, with a whispered 'One, two, three,' to
+secure a good start, replied in concert, 'We-give-it-up!'
+
+'What a deafening shout!' cried Aunt Truth, coming out of the cabin.
+'What's the matter, pray?'
+
+'Nothing, aunty,' laughed Polly.  'But we have formed a society for
+suppressing Jack's conundrums, and this is our first public meeting.
+How do you like the watchword?'
+
+Aunt Truth smiled.  'It was very audible,' she said.  'Yours is
+evidently not a secret society.'
+
+'I wish I could find out who originated this plan,' quoth Jack,
+murderously.  'But I suppose it's one of you girls, and I can't
+revenge myself.  Oh, when will this barrier between the sexes be
+removed!'
+
+'I trust not in your lifetime,' shuddered Polly, 'or we might as well
+begin to "stand round our dying beds" at once.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II:  THE JOURNEY
+
+
+
+'Away, away, from men and towns,
+To the wild wood and the downs,
+To the silent wilderness.'
+
+
+Whatever the distance was in reality, the steamer had consumed more
+time than usual, and it was quite two o'clock, instead of half-past
+twelve, as they had expected, before they were landed on the old and
+almost forgotten pier, and saw the smoke of the Orizaba as she
+steamed away.
+
+After counting over their bags and packages to see if anything had
+been forgotten, they looked about them.
+
+There was a dirty little settlement, a mile or two to the south,
+consisting of a collection of tumble-down adobe houses which looked
+like a blotch on the brown hillside; a few cattle were browsing near
+by, and the locality seemed to be well supplied with lizards, which
+darted over the dusty ground in all directions.  But the startling
+point of the landscape was that it showed no sign of human life, and
+Pancho's orders had been to have Senor Don Manuel Felipe Hilario
+Noriega and his wood-cart on hand promptly at half-past twelve.
+
+'Can Pancho have forgotten?'
+
+'Can he have lost his way and never arrived here at all?'
+
+'Can Senor Don Manuel Felipe Hilario Noriega have grown tired of
+waiting and gone off?'
+
+'Has Senor Don Manuel Felipe Hilario Noriega been drinking too much
+aguardiente and so forgotten to come?'
+
+'Has Pancho been murdered by highway robbers, and served up into stew
+for their evening meal?'
+
+'With Hop Yet for dessert!  Oh, horrible!'  These were some of the
+questions and exclamations that greeted the ears of the lizards, and
+caused them to fly over the ground in a more excited fashion than
+ever.
+
+'One thing is certain.  If Pancho has been stupid enough to lose his
+way coming fifty miles down the coast, I'll discharge him,' said Dr.
+Winship, with decision.
+
+'When you find him,' added Aunt Truth, prudently.
+
+'Of course.  But really, mamma, this looks discouraging; I am afraid
+we can't get into camp this evening.  Shall we go up to the nearest
+ranch house for the night, and see what can be done to-morrow?'
+
+'Never!' exclaimed the young people, with one deafening shout.
+
+'Never,' echoed Philip separately.  'I have vowed that a bed shall
+not know me for three months, and I'll keep my vow.'
+
+'What do you say to this, Uncle Doc?' said Geoffrey.  'Suppose you go
+up to the storehouse and office,--it's about a mile,--and see if the
+goods are there all right, and whether the men saw Pancho on his way
+up to the canyon.  Meanwhile, Phil and I will ride over here
+somewhere to get a team, or look up Senor Don Manuel Felipe Hilario
+Noriega.  Jack can stay with Aunt Truth and the girls, to watch
+developments.'
+
+'But, papa, can't we pitch the camp to-night, somehow?' asked Bell,
+piteously.
+
+'I don't see how.  We are behindhand already; and if we get started
+within an hour we can't reach the ground I selected before dark and
+we can't choose any nearer one, because if Pancho is anywhere in
+creation he is on the identical spot I sent him to.'
+
+'But, Dr. Paul, I'll tell you what we could do,' suggested Jack.  'If
+we get any kind of a start, we can't fail to reach camp by seven or
+eight o'clock at latest.  Now it's bright moonlight, and if we find
+Pancho, he'll have the baggage unloaded, and Hop Yet will have a fire
+lighted.  What's to prevent our swinging the hammocks for the ladies?
+And we'll just roll up in our blankets by the fire, for to-night.
+Then we'll get to housekeeping in the morning.'
+
+This plan received a most enthusiastic reception.
+
+'Very well,' replied the Doctor.  'If you are all agreed, I suppose
+we may as well begin roughing it now as at any time.'
+
+You may have noticed sometimes, after having fortified yourself
+against a terrible misfortune which seemed in store for you, that it
+didn't come, after all.  Well, it was so in this case; for just as
+Dr. Winship and the boys started out over the hillside at a brisk
+pace, an immense cloud of dust, some distance up the road, attracted
+their attention, and they came to a sudden standstill.
+
+The girls held their breath in anxious expectation, and at length
+gave an irrepressible shout of joy and relief when there issued from
+the dense grey cloud the familiar four-horse team, with Daisy, Tule
+Molly, Villikins, and Dinah, looking as fresh as if they had not been
+driven a mile, tough little mustangs that they were.
+
+A long conversation in Spanish ensued, which, being translated by Dr.
+Winship, furnished all necessary information concerning the delay.
+
+S. D. M. F. H. N. stated that Pancho was neither faithless nor
+stupid, but was waiting for them on the camping-ground, and that as
+the goods were already packed in his wood-cart he would follow them
+immediately.  So the whole party started without more delay; Dr. and
+Mrs. Winship, Master Paul, Jack Howard, and the three girls riding in
+the wagon, while Geoffrey and Philip galloped ahead on horseback.
+
+It was a long, dusty, tiresome ride; and Dicky, who had been as good
+all day as any saint ever carved in marble and set in a niche, grew
+rather warm, cross, and hungry, although he had been consuming
+ginger-snaps and apricots since early morning.  After asking
+plaintively for the fiftieth time how long it would be before dinner,
+he finally succumbed to his weariness, and dropping his yellow head,
+that was like a cowslip ball, in his mother's lap, he fell asleep.
+
+But the young people, whose eyes were not blinded by hunger and
+sleep, found more than enough to interest them on this dusty
+California road, winding as it did through grand old growths of
+trees, acres and acres of waving grain, and endless stretches of
+gorgeous yellow mustard, the stalks of which were five or six feet
+high, almost hiding from view the boys who dashed into the golden
+forest from time to time.
+
+At the foot of the hill they passed an old adobe hut, with a crowd of
+pretty, swarthy, frowzy Mexican children playing in the sunshine,
+while their mother, black-haired and ample of figure, occupied
+herself in hanging great quantities of jerked beef on a sort of
+clothes-line running between the eucalyptus-trees.
+
+The father, a wild-looking individual in a red shirt and enormous
+hat, came from behind the hut, unhitched the stout little broncho
+tied to the fence, gave the poor animal a desperately tight 'cinch,'
+threw himself into the saddle without touching his foot to the
+lumbering wooden stirrups, and, digging his spurs well into the
+horse's sides, was out of sight in an instant, leaving only a huge
+cloud of dust to cover his disappearance.
+
+'How those fellows do ride!' exclaimed Dr. Winship, savagely.  'I
+wish they were all obliged to walk until they knew how to treat a
+horse.'
+
+'Then they'd walk straight into the millennium,' said Jack, sagely,
+'for their cruelty seems to be an instinct.'
+
+'But how beautifully they ride, too!' said Polly.  'Mamma and I were
+sitting on the hotel piazza the other day, watching two young
+Spaniards who were performing feats of horsemanship.  They dropped
+four-bit pieces on the dusty road, and riding up to them at full
+speed clutched them from the ground in some mysterious way that was
+perfectly wonderful.  Then Nick Gutierrez mounted a bucking horse,
+and actually rolled and lighted a cigarette while the animal bucked
+with all his might.'
+
+'See that cunning, cunning muchachita, mamma!' cried Bell; for, as
+they stopped at the top of the hill to let the horses breathe, one of
+the little Mexican children ran after them, holding out a handful of
+glowing yellow poppies.
+
+She was distractingly pretty, with a beauty that is short-lived with
+the people of her race.  The afternoon sun shone down fiercely on her
+waving coal-black locks, and brought a rich colour to her nut-brown
+cheek; she had one little flimsy, ragged garment, neither long,
+broad, nor thick, which hung about her picturesquely; and, with her
+soft, dark, sleepy eyes, the rows of little white teeth behind her
+laughing red mouth, and the vivid yellow blossoms in her tiny
+outstretched hand, she was a very charming vision.
+
+'Como te llamas, muchachita?'  (What is your name, little one?) asked
+Bell, airing her Spanish, which was rather good.
+
+'Teresita,' she answered, with a pretty accent, as she scratched a
+set of five grimy little toes to and fro in the dusty ground.
+
+'Throw her a bit, papa,' whispered Bell; and, as he did so, Teresita
+caught the piece of silver very deftly, and ran excitedly back to the
+centre of the chattering group in front of the house.
+
+'How intense everything is in California!  Do you know what I mean,
+mamma?' said Bell.  'The fruit is so immense, the canyons so deep,
+the trees so big, the hills so high, the rain so wet, and the drought
+so dry.'
+
+'The fleas so many, the fleas so spry,' chanted Jack, who had
+perceived that Bell was talking in rhyme without knowing it.
+'California is just the place for you, Bell; it gives you a chance
+for innumerable adjectives heaped one on the other.'
+
+'I don't always heap up adjectives,' replied Bell, with dignity.
+'When I wish to describe you, for instance, I simply say "that
+hateful boy," and let it go at that.'
+
+Jack retired to private life for a season.
+
+'I'd like to paint a picture of Teresita,' said Margery, who had a
+pretty talent for sketching, 'and call it The Summer Child, or some
+such thing.  I should think the famous old colour artists might have
+loved to paint this gorgeous flame-tinted poppy.'
+
+'Not poppy,--eschscholtzia,' corrected Jack, coming rapidly to the
+surface again, after Bell's rebuke, and delivering himself of the
+tongue-confusing word with a terrible grimace.
+
+'I'm not writing a botany,' retorted Margery; 'and I can never
+remember that word, much less spell it.  I don't see how it grows
+under such an abominable Russian name.  It's worse than
+ichthyosaurus.  Do you remember that funny nonsense verse? -
+
+
+"I is for ichthyosaurus,
+Who lived when the world was all porous;
+   But he fainted with shame
+   When he first heard his name,
+And departed a long while before us."'
+
+
+'The Spaniards are more poetic,' said Aunt Truth, 'for they call it
+la copa de oro, the golden cup.  Oh, see them yonder!  It is like the
+Field of the Cloth of Gold.'
+
+The sight would have driven a royal florist mad with joy:  a hillside
+that was a swaying mass of radiant bloom, a joyous carnival of vivid
+colour, in which the thousand golden goblets, turned upward to the
+sun, were dancing, and glowing, and shaming out of countenance the
+purple and blue and pink masses which surrounded them on every side.
+
+'You know Professor Pinnie told us that every well-informed young
+girl should know at least the flora of her own State,' said Jack,
+after the excitement had subsided.
+
+'Well, one thing is certain:  Professor Pinnie never knew the STATE
+of his own flora, or at least he kept his wife sorting and arranging
+his specimens all the time; and I think he's a regular old frump,'
+said Polly, irreverently, but meeting Aunt Truth's reproving glance,
+which brought a blush and a whispered 'Excuse me,' she went on,
+'Well, what I mean is, he doesn't know any more than other people,
+after all; for he cares for nothing but bushes and herbs and seeds
+and shrubs and roots and stamens and pistils; and he can't tell
+whether a flower is lovely or not, he is so crazy to find out where
+it belongs and tie a tag round it.'
+
+'I must agree with Polly,' laughed Jack.  'Why, I went to ride with
+him one day in the Cathedral Oaks, and he made me get off my horse
+every five minutes to dig up roots and tie them to the pommel of his
+old saddle, so that we came into town looking like moving herbariums.
+The stable-man lifted him on to his horse when he started, I suppose,
+and he would have been there yet if he hadn't been helped off.  Bah!'
+For Jack had a supreme contempt for any man who was less than a
+centaur.
+
+By this time they had turned off the main thoroughfare, and were
+travelling over a bit of old stage road which was anything but easy
+riding.  There they met some men who were driving an enormous band of
+sheep to a distant ranch for pasture, which gave saucy Polly the
+chance to ask Dr. Winship, innocently, why white sheep ate so much
+more than black ones.
+
+He fell into the trap at once, and answered unsuspectingly, in a
+surprised tone, 'Why, do they?' giving her the longed-for opportunity
+to respond, 'Yes, of course, because there are so many more of 'em;
+don't you see?'
+
+'You are behind the times, Dr. Paul,' said Jack.  'That's an ancient
+joke.  Just look at those sheep, sir.  How many are there?  Eight
+hundred, say?'
+
+'Even more, I should think,--a thousand, certainly; and rather thin
+they look, too.'
+
+'I should imagine they might,' said Bell, sympathetically.  'When I
+first came to California I never could see how the poor creatures
+found anything to eat on these bare, brown hillsides, until the
+farmers showed me the prickly little burr clover balls that cover the
+ground.  But see, mamma! there are some tiny lambs, poor, tired,
+weak-legged little things; I wonder if they will live through the
+journey.'
+
+'Which reminds me,' said Jack, giving Villikins a touch of the whip,
+'that nothing is so calculated to disturb your faith in and love for
+lambs as life on a sheep ranch.  Innocent!  Good gracious!  I never
+saw such--such--'
+
+'Gasping, staggering, stuttering, stammering tom-fools,' interposed
+Bell.  'That's what Carlyle called ONE Lamb,--dear Mr. "Roast Pig"
+Charles; and a mean old thing he was, too, for doing it.'
+
+'Well, it is just strong enough to apply to the actual lamb; not the
+lamb of romance, but the lamb of reality.  You can't get him
+anywhere; he doesn't know enough.  He won't drive, he can't follow;
+he's too stupid.  Why, I went out for a couple of 'em once, that were
+lost in the canyon.  I found them,--that was comparatively easy; but
+when I tried to get them home, I couldn't.  At last, after infinite
+trouble, I managed to drive them up on to the trail, which was so
+narrow there was but one thing for a rational creature to do, and
+that was to go ahead.  Then, if you'll believe me, those idiots kept
+bleating and getting under the horse's fore-feet; finally, one of
+them, the champion simpleton, tumbled over into the canyon, and I
+tied the legs of the other one together, and carried him home on the
+front of my saddle.'
+
+'They are innocent, any way,' insisted Margery.  'I won't believe
+they're not.  I can't bear these people who interfere with all your
+cherished ideas, and say that Columbus didn't discover America, and
+Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare, and William Tell didn't shoot the
+apple.'
+
+'Nevertheless, I claim that the lamb is not half so much an emblem of
+innocence as he is of utter and profound stupidity.  There is that
+charming old lyric about Mary's little lamb; I can explain that.
+After he came to school (which was an error of judgment at the very
+beginning), he made the rumpus, you know -
+
+
+"And then the teacher turned him out,
+   But still he lingered nee-ar,
+And waited patiently about
+   Till Mary did appee-ar."
+
+
+Of course he did.  He didn't know enough to go home alone.
+
+
+"And then he ran to her and laid
+   His head upon her arr-um,
+As if to say, 'I'm not afraid;
+   You'll keep me from all harr-um.'"
+
+
+As if a lamb could be capable of that amount of reasoning!  And then
+
+
+"'What makes the lamb love Mary so?
+   The eager children cry;
+'Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,'
+   The teacher did reply."
+
+
+And might have added that as Mary fed the lamb three times a day and
+twice on Sundays, he probably not only knew on which side his daily
+bread was buttered, but also who buttered it.'
+
+'Dreadful boy!' laughed Bell.  'Polly, pray lower the umbrella; we
+are going to meet some respectable people, and we actually are too
+dirty to be seen.  I have really been eating dust.'
+
+'They must be equally dusty,' said Polly, sagely.  'Why, it is the
+Burtons, from Tacitas ranch!'
+
+The Burton ranch wagon was drawn up, as its driver recognised Dr.
+Winship, and he proceeded to cheer the spirits of the party by
+telling them that he had passed Pancho two hours before, and that he
+was busily clearing rubbish from the camping-ground.  This was six
+o'clock, and by a little after eight the weary, happy party were
+seated on saddle-blankets and carriage-cushions round a cheery camp-
+fire, eating a frugal meal, which tasted sweeter than nectar and
+ambrosia to their keen appetites.
+
+The boys expressed their intention of spending the night in unpacking
+their baggage and getting to rights generally, but Dr. Winship placed
+a prompt and decisive veto on this proposition, and they submitted
+cheerfully to his better judgment.
+
+Getting to bed was an exciting occupation for everybody.  Dicky was
+first tucked up in a warm nest of rugs and blankets, under a tree,
+and sank into a profound slumber at once, with the happy
+unconsciousness of childhood.  His father completed the preparations
+for his comfort by opening a huge umbrella and arranging it firmly
+over his head, so that no falling leaf might frighten him and no
+sudden gust of air blow upon his face.
+
+Bell stood before her hammock, and meditated.  'Well,' she said,
+'going to bed is a simple matter after all, when you have shorn it of
+all useless formalities.  Let me see:  I generally walk to and fro in
+the room, eating a bunch of grapes or an orange, look out of the
+window five or ten minutes, brush my hair, read my chapter in the
+Bible, take my book and study Spanish five minutes, on the principle
+of that abnormal woman who learned ninety-six languages while she was
+waiting for the kettle to boil in the morning--'
+
+'Must have been a slow boiler,' interrupted Polly, wickedly.  'Seems
+to me it would have been economy to sell it and buy a new one.'
+
+'Oh, Polly! you are so wilfully stupid!  The kettle isn't the point--
+but the languages.  Besides, she didn't learn all the ninety-six
+while the kettle was boiling once, you know.
+
+'Oh, didn't she?  That alters the case.  Thank you,' said Polly,
+sarcastically.
+
+'Now observe me,' said Bell.  'I have made the getting into a hammock
+a study.  I first open it very wide at the top with both hands; then,
+holding it in that position, I gracefully revolve my body from left
+to right as upon an imaginary swivel; meantime I raise my right foot
+considerably from mother earth, with a view to passing it over the
+hammock's edge.  Every move is calculated, you perceive, and produces
+its own share of the perfect result; the method is the same that
+Rachel used in rehearsing her wonderful tragic poses.  I am now
+seated in the hammock, you observe, with both hands extending the net
+from side to side and the right foot well in position; I now raise
+the left foot with a swift but admirably steady movement, and I am--
+Help!  Help!!  Murder!!!'
+
+'In short, you are not in, but out,' cried Polly, in a burst of
+laughter; for Bell had leaned too far to the right, and on bringing
+the other foot in, with its 'swift but admirably steady' motion, she
+gave a sudden lurch, pulled the hammock entirely over herself and
+fell out head first on the other side, leaving her feet tangled in
+its meshes.  'Shall we help her out, Meg?  She doesn't deserve it,
+after that pompous oration and attempt to show off her superior
+abilities.  Nevertheless, she always accepts mercy more gracefully
+than justice.  Heave ahoy, my hearties!'
+
+Bell was extricated, and looked sufficiently ashamed.
+
+'We are much obliged for the lesson,' said Margery, 'but the method
+is open to criticism; so I think we'll manage in our ordinary savage
+way.  We may not be graceful or scientific, but we get in, which is
+the main point.'
+
+The hammocks did not prove the easiest of nests, as the girls had
+imagined.  In fact, to be perfectly candid about the matter, the
+wicked flea of California, which man pursueth but seldom catcheth, is
+apt, on many a summer night, to interfere shamelessly with slumber.
+On this particular night he was fairly rampant, perhaps because sweet
+humanity on which to feed was very scarce in that canyon.
+
+'Good-night, girls!' called Jack, when matters seemed to be finally
+settled for sleep.  'Bell, you must keep one eye open, for the
+coyotes will be stealing down the mountain in a jiffy, and yours is
+the first hammock in the path.'
+
+'Of course,' moaned Bell,--'that's why the girls gave me this one;
+they knew very well that one victim always slakes the animals' thirst
+for blood.  Well, let them come on.  I shiver with terror, but my
+only hope is that I may be eaten in my sleep, if at all.'
+
+
+'There was a young party named Bell,
+Who slept out of doors for a spell;
+   When asked how she fared,
+   She said she was scared,
+But otherwise doing quite well.
+
+
+'How's that?' asked Jack.  'I shall be able to drive Bell off her own
+field, with a little practice.'
+
+'Go to sleep!' roared Dr. Paul.  'In your present condition of mind
+and body you are not fit for poetry!'
+
+'That's just the point, sir,' retorted Jack, slyly, 'for, you
+remember, poets are not FIT, but nascitur,--don't you know?' and he
+retired under his blanket for protection.
+
+But quiet seemed to be impossible:  there were all sorts of strange
+sounds; and the moon, too, was so splendid that they almost felt as
+if they were lying beneath the radiance of a calcium light; while in
+the dark places, midst the branches of thick foliage, the owls hooted
+gloomily.  If you had happened to be an owl in that vicinity, you
+might have heard not only the feverish tossing to and fro of the
+girls in the hammocks, but many dismal sighs and groans from Dr.
+Winship and the boys; for the bare ground is, after all, more
+rheumatic than romantic, and they too tumbled from side to side,
+seeking comfort.
+
+But at midnight quiet slumber had descended upon them, and they
+presented a funny spectacle enough to one open-eyed watcher.  A long
+slender sycamore log was extended before the fire, and constituted
+their pillow; on this their heads reposed, each decorated with a
+tightly fitting silk handkerchief; then came a compact, papoose-like
+roll of grey blanket, terminated by a pair of erect feet, whose
+generous proportions soared to different heights.  There was a little
+snoring, too; perhaps the log was hollow.
+
+At midnight you might have seen a quaintly despondent little figure,
+whose curly head issued from a hooded cloak, staggering hopelessly
+from a hammock, and seating herself on a mossy stump.  From the
+limpness of her attitude and the pathetic expression of her eyes, I
+fear Polly was reviewing former happy nights spent on spring-beds;
+and at this particular moment the realities of camping-out hardly
+equalled her anticipations.  Whatever may have been her feelings,
+however, they were promptly stifled when a certain insolent head
+reared itself from its blanket-roll, and a hoarse voice cackled,
+'Pretty Polly!  Polly want a canyon?'  At this insult Miss Oliver
+wrapped her drapery about her and strode to her hammock with the air
+of a tragedy queen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III:  LIFE IN THE CANYON--THE HEIR APPARENT LOSES HIMSELF
+
+
+
+'Know'st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom,
+Where the gold orange glows in the green thicket's gloom;
+Where the wind, ever soft, from the blue heaven blows,
+And groves are of myrtle, and olive, and rose?'
+
+
+On the next morning, as we have seen, they named their summer home
+Camp Chaparral, and for a week or more they were the very busiest
+colony of people under the sun; for it takes a deal of hard work and
+ingenuity to make a comfortable and beautiful dwelling-place in the
+forest.
+
+The best way of showing you how they accomplished this is to describe
+the camp after it was nearly finished.
+
+The two largest bedroom tents were made of bright awning cloth, one
+of red and white, the other of blue and white, both gaily decorated
+with braid.  They were pitched under the same giant oak, and yet were
+nearly forty feet apart; that of the girls having a canvas floor.
+They were not quite willing to sleep on the ground, so they had
+brought empty bed-sacks with them, and Pancho's first duty after his
+arrival had been to drive to a neighbouring ranch for a great load of
+straw.
+
+In a glorious tree near by was a 'sky parlour,' arranged by a few
+boards nailed high up in the leafy branches, and reached from below
+by a primitive ladder.  This was the favourite sitting-room of the
+girls by day, and served for Pancho's bedroom at night.  It was
+beautiful enough to be fit shelter for all the woodland nymphs, with
+its festoons of mistletoe and wild grape-vines; but Pancho was rather
+an unappreciative tenant, even going so far as to snore in the sacred
+place!
+
+Just beyond was a card-room,--imagine it--in which a square board,
+nailed on a low stump, served for a table, where Dr. Paul and the
+boys played many a game of crib, backgammon, and checkers.  Here,
+too, all Elsie's letters were written and Bell's nonsense verses, and
+here was the identical spot where Jack Howard, that mischievous
+knight of the brush, perpetrated those modern travesties on the
+'William Henry pictures,' for Elsie's delectation.
+
+The dressing-room was reached by a path cut through bushes to a
+charming little pool.  Here were unmistakable evidences of feminine
+art:  looking-glasses hanging to trees, snowy wash-cloths, each
+bearing its owner's initials, adorning the shrubs, while numerous
+towels waved in the breeze.  Between two trees a thin board was
+nailed, which appeared to be used, as nearly as the woodpeckers could
+make out, as a toothbrush rack.  In this, Philip, the skilful
+carpenter, had bored the necessary number of holes, and each one
+contained a toothbrush tied with a gorgeous ribbon.
+
+In this secluded spot Bell was wont to marshal every morning the
+entire force of 'the toothbrush brigade'; and, conducting the drill
+with much ingenuity, she would take her victims through a long series
+of military manoeuvres arranged for the toothbrush.  Oh, the
+gaspings, the chokings and stranglings, which occurred when she
+mounted a rock by the edge of the pool, and after calling in tones of
+thunder,
+
+
+'Brush, brothers, brush with care!
+Brush in the presence of the commandaire!'
+
+
+ordered her unwilling privates to polish their innocent molars to the
+tune of 'Hail, Columbia,' or 'Auld Lang Syne'!  And if they became
+mutinous, it was Geoffrey who reduced them to submission, and ordered
+them to brush for three mornings to the tune of 'Bluebells of
+Scotland' as a sign of loyalty to their commander.
+
+As for the furnishing of the camp, there were impromptu stools and
+tables made of packing-boxes and trunks, all covered with bright
+Turkey-red cotton; there were no less than three rustic lounges and
+two arm-chairs made from manzanita branches, and a Queen Anne
+bedstead was being slowly constructed, day by day, by the ambitious
+boys for their beloved Elsie.
+
+One corner of each tent was curtained off for a bath-room, another
+for a clothes-press, and there were a dozen devices for comfort, as
+Dr. Winship was opposed to any more inconvenience than was strictly
+necessary.  Dr. and Mrs. Winship and little Dicky occupied one tent,
+the boys another, and the girls a third.
+
+When Bell, Polly, and Margery emerged from their tent on the second
+morning, they were disagreeably surprised to see a large placard over
+the front entrance, bearing the insolent inscription, 'Tent Chatter.'
+They said nothing; but on the night after, a committee of two stole
+out and glued a companion placard, 'Tent Clatter,' over the door of
+their masculine neighbours.  And to tell the truth, one was as well
+deserved as the other; for if there was generally a subdued hum of
+conversation in the one, there never failed to be a perfect din and
+uproar in the other.
+
+Under a great sycamore-tree stood the dining-table, which consisted
+of two long, wide boards placed together upon a couple of barrels;
+and not far away was the brush kitchen, which should have been a work
+of art, for it represented the combined genius of American, Mexican,
+and Chinese carpenters, Dr. Winship, Pancho, and Hop Yet having
+laboured in its erection.  It really answered the purpose admirably,
+and looked quite like a conventional California kitchen; that is, it
+was ten feet square, and contained a table, a stove, and a Chinaman.
+
+The young people, by the way, had fought bitterly against the stove,
+protesting with all their might against taking it.  Polly and Jack
+declared that they would starve sooner than eat anything that hadn't
+been cooked over a camp-fire.  Bell and Philip said that they should
+stand in front of it all the time, for fear somebody would ride
+through the canyon and catch them camping out with a stove.  Imagine
+such a situation; it made them blush.  Margery said she wished people
+weren't quite so practical, and wouldn't ruin nature by introducing
+such ugly and unnecessary things.  She intended to point the moral by
+drawing a picture of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden,--Eve bending
+over a cook-stove and Adam peeling apples with a machine.  Geoffrey
+scoffed at Margery's sentimentalism, put on his most trying air, and
+declared that if he had his pork and onions served up 'hot and
+reg'lar,' he didn't care how she had her victuals cooked.
+
+They were all somewhat appeased, however, when they found that Dr.
+Winship was as anxious as they for an evening camp-fire, and merely
+insisted upon the stove because it simplified the cookery.
+Furthermore, being an eminently just man, he yielded so far as to
+give them permission to prepare their own meals on a private camp-
+fire whenever they desired; and this effectually stopped the
+argument, for no one was willing to pay so heavy a price for effect.
+
+The hammocks, made of gaily-coloured cords, were slung in various
+directions a short distance from the square tent, which, being the
+family sitting-room, was the centre of attraction.  It was arranged
+with a gay canopy, twenty feet square.  Three sides were made by
+hanging full curtains of awning cloth from redwood rods by means of
+huge brass rings.  These curtains were looped back during the day and
+dropped after dark, making a cosy and warm interior from which to
+watch the camp-fire on cool evenings.
+
+As for the Canyon de Las Flores itself, this little valley of the
+flowers, it was beautiful enough in every part to inspire an artist's
+pencil or a poet's pen; so quiet and romantic it was, too, it might
+almost have been under a spell,--the home of some sleepy, enchanted
+princess waiting the magic kiss of a princely lover.  It reached from
+the ocean to the mountains, and held a thousand different pictures on
+which to feast the eye; for Dame Nature deals out beauty with a
+lavish hand in this land of perpetual summer, song, and sunshine.
+There were many noble oak-trees, some hung profusely with mistletoe,
+and others with the long, Spanish greybeard moss, that droops from
+the branches in silvery lines, like water spray.  Sometimes, in the
+moonlight, it winds about the oak like a shroud, and then again like
+a filmy bridal veil, or drippings of mist from a frozen tree.
+
+Here and there were open tracts of ground between the clumps of
+trees, like that in which the tents were pitched,--sunny places,
+where the earth was warm and dry, and the lizards blinked sleepily
+under the stones.
+
+Farther up the canyon were superb bay-trees, with their glossy leaves
+and aromatic odour, and the madrono, which, with its blood-red skin,
+is one of the most beautiful of California trees, having an open
+growth, like a maple, bright green lustrous leaves, and a brilliant
+red bark, which peels off at regular seasons, giving place to a new
+one of delicate pea-green.
+
+There were no birches with pure white skin, or graceful elms, or
+fluffy pussy willows, but so many beautiful foreign things that it
+would seem ungrateful to mourn those left behind in the dear New
+England woods; and as for flowers, there are no yellow and purple
+violets, fragile anemones, or blushing Mayflowers, but in March the
+hillsides are covered with red, in April flushed with pink and blue,
+in May brilliant with yellow blossoms; and in the canyons, where the
+earth is moist, there are flowers all the year.
+
+And then the girls would never forgive me if I should forget the
+superb yucca, or Spanish bayonet, which is as beautiful as a tropical
+queen.  Its tall, slender stalk has no twigs or branches, but its
+leaves hang down from the top like bayonet-blades; and oh, there
+rises from the centre of them such a stately princess of a flower,
+like a tree in itself, laden with cream-white, velvety, fragrant
+blossoms.
+
+The boys often climbed the hillsides and brought home these splendid
+treasures, which were placed in pails of water at the tent doors, to
+shed their luxuriant beauty and sweetness in the air for days
+together.  They brought home quantities of Spanish moss, and wild
+clematis, and manzanita berries too, with which to decorate the
+beloved camp; and even Dicky trotted back with his arms full of
+gorgeous blossoms and grasses, which he arranged with great taste and
+skill in mugs, bottles, and cans on the dining-table.
+
+Can't you see what a charming place it was?  And I have not begun to
+tell you the half yet; for there was always a soft wind stirring the
+leaves in dreamy music, and above and through this whispered sound
+you heard the brook splashing over its pebbly bed,--splashing and
+splashing and laughing all it possibly could, knowing it would
+speedily be dried up by the thirsty August sun.  Every few yards part
+of the stream settled down contentedly into a placid little pool,
+while the most inquisitive and restless little drops flowed noisily
+down to see what was going on below.  The banks were fringed with
+graceful alders and poison-oak bushes, vivid in crimson and yellow
+leaves, while delicate maiden-hair ferns grew in miniature forests
+between the crevices of the rocks; yet, with the practicality of
+Chinese human nature, Hop Yet used all this beauty for a dish-pan and
+refrigerator!
+
+Now, confess that, after having seen exactly how it looks, you would
+like to rub a magic lamp, like Aladdin, and wish yourself there with
+our merry young sextette.  For California is a lovely land and a
+strange one, even at this late day, when her character has been
+nearly ruined by dreadful stories, or made ridiculous by foolish
+ones.
+
+When you were all babies in long clothes, some people used to believe
+that there were nuggets of gold to be picked up in the streets, and
+that in the flowery valleys, flowing with milk and honey, there grew
+groves of beet-trees, and forests of cabbages, and shady bowers of
+squash-vines; and they thought that through these fertile valleys
+strode men of curious mien, wild bandits and highway robbers, with
+red flannel shirts and many pockets filled with playing-cards and
+revolvers and bowie-knives; and that when you met these frightful
+persons and courteously asked the time of day, they were apt to turn
+and stab you to the heart by way of response.
+
+Now, some of these things were true, and some were not, and some will
+never happen again; for the towns and cities no longer conduct
+themselves like headstrong young tomboys out on a lark, but have
+grown into ancient and decorous settlements some twenty-five or
+thirty years old.
+
+Perhaps California isn't really so interesting since she began to
+learn manners; but she is a land of wonders still, with her sublime
+mountains and valleys; her precious metals; her vineyards and
+orchards of lemons and oranges, figs, limes, and nuts; her mammoth
+vegetables, each big enough for a newspaper story; her celebrated
+trees, on the stumps of which dancing-parties are given; her
+vultures; her grizzly bears; and her people, drawn from every nook
+and corner of the map--pink, yellow, blue, red, and green countries.
+And though the story of California is not written, in all its
+romantic details, in the school-books of to-day, it is a part of the
+poetry of our late American history, full of strange and thrilling
+scenes, glowing with interest and dramatic fire.
+
+I know a little girl who crossed the plains in that great ungeneraled
+army of fifteen or twenty thousand people that made the long and
+weary journey to the land of gold in 1849.  She tells her children
+now of the strange, long days and months in the ox-team, passing
+through the heat and dust of alkali deserts, fording rivers, and
+toiling over steep mountains.  She tells them how at night she often
+used to lie awake, curled up in her grey blanket, and hear the men
+talking together of the gold treasures they were to dig from the
+ground--treasures, it seemed to her childish mind, more precious than
+those of which she read in The Arabian Nights.  And from a little
+hole in the canvas cover of the old emigrant wagon she used to see
+the tired fathers and brothers, worn and footsore from their hard
+day's tramp, some sleeping restlessly, and others guarding the cattle
+or watching for Indians, who were always expected, and often came;
+and the last thing at night, when her eyes were heavy with sleep, she
+peered dreamily out into the darkness to see the hundreds of gleaming
+camp-fires, which dotted the plain as far as the eye could reach.
+
+
+You will have noticed that this first week of camp-life was a quiet
+one, spent mostly by the young people in getting their open-air home
+comfortably arranged, making conveniences of all kinds, becoming
+acquainted with the canyon so far as they could, and riding once or
+twice to neighbouring ranches for hay or provisions.
+
+Dr. Winship believed in a good beginning; and, as this was not a
+week's holiday, but a summer campaign, he wanted his young people to
+get fully used to the situation before undertaking any of the
+exciting excursions in prospect.  So, before the week was over, they
+began to enjoy sound, dreamless sleep on their hard straw beds, to
+eat the plain fare with decided relish, to grow a little hardy and
+brown, and quite strong and tough enough for a long tramp or
+horseback ride.
+
+After a religious devotion to cold cream for a few nights, Polly had
+signified her terrible intention of 'letting her nose go.'  'I disown
+it!' she cried, peeping in her tiny mirror, and lighting up her too
+rosy tints with a tallow candle.  'Hideous objick, I defy thee!  Spot
+and speckle, yea, burn to a crisp, and shed thy skin afterwards!  I
+care not.  Indeed, I shall be well rid of thee, thou--h'm--thou--
+well, leopard, for instance.'
+
+One beautiful day followed another, each the exact counterpart of the
+one that had preceded it; for California boys and girls never have to
+say 'wind and weather permitting' from March or April until November.
+They always know what the weather is going to do; and whether this is
+an advantage or not is a difficult matter to settle conclusively.
+
+New England boys affirm that they wouldn't live in a country where it
+couldn't rain any day it felt like it, and California lads retort
+that they are glad their dispositions are not ruined by the freaks of
+New England weather.  At all events, it is a paradise for would-be
+campers, and any one who should assert the contrary would meet with
+energetic opposition from the loyal dwellers in Camp Chaparral.
+
+Bell returned one day from a walk which she had taken by herself,
+while the other girls were off on some errand with the Doctor.  After
+luncheon she drew them mysteriously into the square tent, and lowered
+the curtains.
+
+'What is it?' Polly whispered, with an anxious expression of
+countenance.  'Have you lost your gold thimble again, or your temper,
+or have you discovered a silver mine?'
+
+'I have found,' she answered mysteriously, 'the most beautifully
+secret place you ever beheld.  It will be just the spot for us to
+write and study in when we want to be alone; or it will even do for a
+theatre; and it is scarcely more than half a mile up the canyon.'
+
+'How did you find it?' asked Margery.
+
+'As I was walking along by the brookside, I saw a snake making its
+way through the bushes, and--'
+
+'Goodness!' shrieked Polly, 'I shall not write there, thank you.'
+
+'Goose!  Just wait a minute.  I looked at it, and followed at a
+distance; it was a harmless little thing; and I thought, for the fun
+of it, I would just push blindly on and see what I should find,
+because we are for ever walking in the beaten path, and I long for
+something new.'
+
+'A bad instinct,' remarked Madge, 'and one which will get you into
+trouble, so you should crush it in its infancy.'
+
+'Well, I took up my dress and ploughed through the chaparral, until I
+came, in about three minutes of scratching and fighting, to an open
+circular place about as large as this tent.  It was exactly round,
+which is the curious part of it; and in the centre was one stump,
+covered with moss and surrounded by great white toadstools.  How any
+one happened to go in there and cut down a single tree I can't
+understand, nor yet how they managed to bring out the tree through
+the tangled brush.  It is so strange that it seems as if there must
+be a mystery about it.'
+
+'Certainly,' said Margery promptly.  'A tragedy of the darkest kind!
+Some cruel wretch has cut down, in the pride and pomp of it beauty,
+one sycamore-tree; its innocent life-blood has stained the ground,
+and given birth to the white toadstools which mark the spot and
+testify to the purity of the victim.'
+
+'Well,' continued Bell, impressively, 'I knew I could never find it
+again; and I wanted so much you should see it that I took the ball of
+twine we always carry, unrolled it, and dropped the thread all the
+way along to the brookside, like Phrygia, or Melpomene, or Anemone,
+or whatever her name was.'
+
+'Or Artesia, or Polynesia, or Euthanasia,' interrupted Polly.  'I
+think the lady you mean is Ariadne.'
+
+'Exactly.  Now we'll take papa to see it, and then we'll fit it up as
+a retreat.  Won't it be charming?  We'll call it the Lone Stump.'
+
+'Oh, I like that; it makes me shiver!' cried Polly.  'I'm going to
+write an ode to it at once.  Ahem!  It shall begin--let me see -
+
+
+'O lonely tree,
+What cruel "he"
+Did lay thee low?
+Tell us the facts;
+Did cruel axe
+Abuse thee so?'
+
+
+'Sublime!  Second verse,' said Bell slowly, with pauses between the
+lines:-
+
+
+'Or did a gopher,
+The wicked loafer,
+Gnaw at thy base,
+And, doing so,
+Contrive to go,
+And leave no trace?'
+
+
+'Oh dear!' sighed Margery; 'if you will do it, wait a minute.
+
+
+'O toadstools white,
+Pray give us light
+Upon the question.
+Did gopher gnaw,
+And live in awe
+Of indigestion?'
+
+
+'Good!' continued Bell:-
+
+
+'Or did a man
+Malicious plan
+The good tree's ruin,
+And leave it so
+Convenient low,
+A seat for Bruin?
+
+
+For travelling grizzlies, you know.  We may go there and see a hungry
+creature making a stump-speech, while an admiring audience of
+grasshoppers and tarantulas seat themselves in a circle on the
+toadstools.'
+
+'Charming prospect!' said Madge.  'I don't think I care to visit the
+Lone Stump or pass my mornings there.'
+
+'Nonsense, dear child; it is just like every other part of the
+canyon, only a little more lonely.  It is not half a mile from camp,
+and hardly a dozen steps from the place where the boys go so often to
+shoot quail.'
+
+'Very well,' said the girls.  'We must go there to-morrow morning;
+and perhaps we'd better not tell the boys,--they are so peculiar.
+Jack will certainly interfere with us in some way, if he hears about
+it.'
+
+'Now let us take our books and run down by the pool for an hour or
+two,' said Bell.  'Papa and the boys are all off shooting, and mamma
+is lying down.  We can have a cool, quiet time; the sunshine is so
+hot here by the tents.'
+
+Accordingly, they departed, as they often did, for one of the
+prolonged chats in which school-girls are wont to indulge, and which
+so often, too, are but idle, senseless chatter.
+
+These young people, however, had been fortunate in having the wisest
+and most loving guardianship, so that all their happy young lives had
+been spent to good purpose.  They had not shirked study, and so their
+minds were stocked with useful information; they had read carefully
+and digested thoroughly whatever they had read, so that they
+possessed a good deal of general knowledge.  The girls were bright,
+sensible, industrious little women, who tried to be good, too, in the
+old-fashioned sense of the word; and full of fun, nonsense, and
+chatter as they were among themselves, they never forgot to be modest
+and unassuming.
+
+The boys were pretty well in earnest about life, too, with good
+ambitions and generous aspirations.  They had all been studying with
+Dr. Winship for nearly two years; and that means a great deal, for he
+was a real teacher, entering into the lives of his pupils,
+sympathising with them in every way, and leading them, through the
+study of nature, of human beings, and of God, to see the beauty and
+meaning of life.
+
+Geoffrey Strong, of course, was older than the rest, having completed
+his junior year at college; but Dr. Winship, who was his guardian,
+thought it wiser for him to rest a year and come to him in
+California, as his ambition and energy had already led him into
+greater exertions than his age or strength warranted.  He was now
+studying medicine with the good Doctor, but would go back to the
+'land of perpetual pie' in the fall and complete his college course.
+
+A splendid fellow he was,--so earnest, thoughtful, and wise; so
+gravely tender in all his ways to Aunt Truth, who was the only mother
+he had ever known; so devoted to Dr. Winship, who loved him as his
+own elder son.
+
+What will Geoffrey Strong be as a man?  The twig is bent, and it is
+safe to predict how the tree will incline.  His word will be as good
+as his bond; he will be a good physician, for his eye is quick to see
+suffering, and his hand ready to relieve it; little children with
+feverish cheeks and tired eyes will love to clasp his cool, strong
+sand; he will be gentle as a woman, yet thoroughly manly, as he is
+now, for he has made the most of his golden youth, and every lad who
+does that will have a golden manhood and a glorious old age.
+
+As for Philip Noble, he was a dear, good, trustworthy lad too;
+kindly, generous, practical, and industrious; a trifle slow and
+reserved, perhaps, but full of common sense,--the kind of sense
+which, after all, is most uncommon.
+
+Bell once said:  'This is the difference between Philip and
+Geoffrey,--one does, and the other is.  Geoff is the real Simon-pure
+ideal which we praise Philip for trying to be,'--a very good
+description for a little maiden whose bright eyes had only looked
+into life for sixteen summers.
+
+And now we come to Jack Howard, who never kept still long enough for
+any one to write a description of him.  To explain how he differed
+from Philip or Geoffrey would be like bringing the Equator and the
+Tropic of Cancer together for purposes of comparison.
+
+If there were a horseback ride, Jack rode the wildest colt, was
+oftenest thrown and least often hurt; if a fishing-party, Jack it was
+who caught all the fish, though he made more noise than any one else,
+and followed no rules laid down in The Complete Angler.
+
+He was very often in trouble; but his misdemeanours were those of
+pure mischief, and were generally atoned for when it was possible.
+He excelled in all out-of-door sports.  And indeed, if his prudence
+had at all kept pace with his ability, he might have done remarkable
+things in almost any direction; but he constantly overshot the mark,
+and people looked to him for the dazzling brilliancy and uncertainty
+of a meteor, but never for the steady glow of a fixed star.
+
+Just now, Jack was a good deal sobered, and appeared at his very
+best.  The teaching of Dr. Paul and the companionship of Geoffrey had
+done much for him, while the illness of his sister Elsie, who was the
+darling of his heart, acted constantly as a sort of curb upon him;
+for he loved her with all the ardour and passion which he gave to
+everything else.  You might be fearful of Jack's high spirits and
+riotous mirth, of his reckless actions and heedless jokes, but you
+could scarcely keep from admiring the boy; for he was brave and
+handsome and winsome enough to charm the very birds off the bush, as
+Aunt Truth acknowledged, after giving him a lecture for some
+misdemeanour.
+
+The three girls made their way a short distance up the canyon to a
+place which they called Prospect Pool, because it was so entirely
+shut in from observation.
+
+'Dear old Geoff!' said Bell, throwing her shawl over a rock and
+opening her volume of Carlyle.  'He has gone all through this for me,
+and written nice little remarks on the margin,--explanations and
+things, and interrogations where he thinks I won't know what is meant
+and had better find out,--bless his heart!  What have you brought,
+Margery?  By the way, you must move your seat away from that clump of
+poison-oak bushes; we can't afford to have any accidents which will
+interfere with our fun.  We have all sorts of new remedies, but I
+prefer that the boys should experiment with them.'
+
+'It's the softest seat here, too,' grumbled Margery.  'We must get
+the boys to cut these bushes down.  Why, you haven't any book, you
+lazy Polly.  Are you going to sleep, or shall you chatter and prevent
+our reading?'
+
+'Neither,' she answered.  'Here is a doughnut which I propose to send
+down the red pathway of fate; and here a pencil and paper with which
+I am going to begin our round-robin letter to Elsie.'
+
+'That's good!  She has only had notes from Jack and one letter from
+us, which, if I remember right, had nothing in it.'
+
+'Thanks!  I wrote it,' sniffed Bell.
+
+'Well, I meant it had no news--no account of things, you know.'
+
+'No, I wouldn't descend to writing news, and I leave accounts to the
+butcher.'
+
+'Stop quarrelling, girls!  This is my plan:  I will begin in my usual
+rockety style, sometimes maliciously called the Pollyoliver method;
+Margery will take up the thread sedately; Bell will plunge in with a
+burst of enthusiasm and seventeen adjectives, followed by a verse of
+poor poetry; Geoff will do the sportive or instructive, just as he
+happens to feel; and Phil will wind up the letter by some practical
+details which will serve as a key to all the rest.  Won't it be a box
+of literary bonbons for her to read in bed, poor darling!  Let me
+see!  I represent the cayenne lozenges, sharp but impressive; Margery
+will do for jujube paste, which I adore,--mild, pleasant, yielding,
+delicious.'
+
+'Sticky and insipid!' murmured Madge, plaintively.
+
+'Not at all, my dear.  Bell stands for the peppermints; Jack for
+chocolates, "the ladies' delight"; Geoffrey for a wine-drop,
+altogether good, but sweetest in its heart; Phil--let me see!  Phil
+is like--what is he like?'
+
+'No more like candy than a cold boiled potato,' said his sister.
+
+'He is candid,' suggested Bell.  'Let us call him rock-candy, pure,
+healthful, and far from soft.'
+
+'Or marshmallow,' said Margery, 'good, but tough.'
+
+'Or caramel,' laughed Polly; 'it always sticks to a point.'
+
+'Thanks, gentle creatures,' said a voice from the bushes on the other
+side of the pool, and Phil stalked out from his covert, like a
+wounded deer.
+
+'How long have you been in there, villain?' cried Bell.
+
+'Ever since lunch; but I only waked from a sound sleep some twenty
+minutes ago.  I've heard a most instructive conversation--never been
+more amused in my life; don't know whether I prefer being a cold
+boiled potato or a ladies'-delight!'
+
+'You haven't any choice,' snapped Polly, a trifle embarrassed at
+having been overheard.
+
+'I'm glad it was my own sister who called me a c. b. p. (the most
+loathsome thing in existence, by the way), because sisters never
+appreciate their brothers.'
+
+'I didn't call you a c. b. p.,' remonstrated Margery.  'I said you
+were no more like candy than a c. b. p.  There is a difference.'
+
+'Is there?  My poor brain fails to grasp it.  But never mind; I'll
+forgive you.'
+
+'Listeners never hear good of themselves,' sighed Polly.
+
+'Are you writing a copy-book, Miss Oliver?  I didn't want to listen;
+it was very painful to my feelings, but I was too sleepy to move.'
+
+'And now our afternoon is gone, and we have not read a word,' sighed
+little Margery.  'I never met two such chatterboxes as you and
+Polly.'
+
+'And to hear us talk is a liberal education,' retorted Polly.
+
+'Exactly,' said Philip, dryly, 'Come, I'll take the books and shawls.
+It's nearly five o'clock, and we shall hear Hop Yet blowing his lusty
+dinner-horn presently.'
+
+'Why didn't you go off shooting with the others?' asked Margery.
+
+'Stayed at home so they'd get a chance to shoot.'
+
+'Why, do you mean you always scare the game away?' inquired Polly,
+artlessly.
+
+'No; I mean that I always do all the shooting, and the others get
+discouraged.'
+
+'Clasp hands over the bloody chasm,' said Bell, 'and let us smoke the
+pipe of peace at dinner.'
+
+Philip and Bell came through the trees, and, as they neared the camp,
+saw Aunt Truth sitting at the door of Tent Chatter, looking the very
+picture of comfort, as she drew her darning-needle in and out of an
+unseemly rent in one of Dicky's stockings.  Margery and Polly came up
+just behind, and dropped into her lap some beautiful branches of wild
+azalea.
+
+'Did you have a pleasant walk, dears?' she asked.
+
+'Yes, indeed, dear auntie.  Now, just hold your head perfectly still,
+while we decorate you for dinner.  We will make Uncle Doc's eyes
+fairly pop with admiration.  Have you been lonely without us?'
+
+'Oh, not a bit.  You see there has been a good deal of noise about
+here, and I felt as if I were not alone.  Hop Yet has been pounding
+soap-root in the kitchen, and I hear the sound of Pancho's axe in the
+distance,--the Doctor asked him to chop wood for the camp-fire.  Was
+Dicky any trouble?  Where is he?'
+
+'Why, darling mother, are you crazy?' asked Bell.  'If you think a
+moment, he was in the hammock and you were lying down in the tent
+when we started.'
+
+'Why, I certainly thought I heard him ask to go with you,' said Mrs.
+Winship, in rather an alarmed tone.
+
+'So he did; but I told him it was too far.'
+
+'I didn't hear that; in fact, I was half asleep; I was not feeling
+well.  Ask Hop Yet; he has been in the kitchen all the afternoon.'
+
+Hop Yet replied, with discouraging tranquillity, 'Oh, I no know.  I
+no sabe Dicky; he allee time lun loun camp; I no look; too muchee
+work.  I chop hash--Dicky come in kitch'--make heap work--no good.  I
+tell him go long--he go; bime-by you catchum; you see.'  Whereupon he
+gracefully skinned an onion, and burst into a Chinese song, with
+complete indifference as to whether Dicky lived or died.
+
+'Perhaps he is with Pancho; I'll run and see!' cried Polly, dashing
+swiftly in the direction of the sky-parlour.  But after a few minutes
+she ran back, with a serious face.  'He's not there; Pancho has not
+seen him since lunch.'
+
+'Well, I've just happened to think,' said pale Aunt Truth, 'that papa
+came into the tent for some cartridges, after you left, and of course
+he took Dick with him.  I don't suppose it is any use to worry.  He
+always does come out right; and I have told him so many times never
+on any account to go away from the camp alone that he surely would
+not do it.  Papa and the boys will be home soon, now.  It is nearly
+six o'clock, and I told them that I would blow the horn at six, as
+usual.  If they are too far away to hear it, they will know the time
+by the sun.'
+
+'Well,' said Bell, anxiously, 'I hope it is all right.  Papa is so
+strict that he won't be late himself.  Did all the boys go with him,
+mamma?'
+
+'Yes, all but Philip.'
+
+'Oh, then Dicky must be with them,' said Margery, consolingly.
+'Geoffrey always takes him wherever he can.'
+
+So the girls went into the tent to begin their dinner toilet, which
+consisted in carefully brushing burrs and dust from their pretty
+dresses, and donning fresh collars and stockings, with low ties of
+russet leather, which Polly declared belonged only to the stage
+conception of a camping costume; then, with smoothly brushed hair and
+bright flower-knots at collar and belt, they looked charming enough
+to grace any drawing-room in the land.
+
+The horn was blown again at six o'clock, Aunt Truth standing at the
+entrance of the path which led up the canyon, shading her anxious
+eyes from the light of the setting sun. -
+
+'Here they come!' she cried, joyously, as the welcome party appeared
+in sight, guns over shoulder, full game-bags, and Jack and Geoff with
+a few rabbits and quail hanging over their arms.
+
+The girls rushed out of the tent.  Bell took in the whole group with
+one swift glance, and then turned to her mother, who, like most
+mothers, believed the worst at once, and grew paler as she asked:
+
+'Papa, where is little Dick?'
+
+'Dick!  Why, my dear, he has not been out with us.  What do you
+mean?'
+
+'Are you sure you didn't take him?' faltered Aunt Truth.
+
+'Of course I am.  Good heavens!  Doesn't any one know where the child
+is?' looking at the frightened group.
+
+'You know, uncle,' said Geoffrey, 'we started out at three o'clock.
+I noticed Dicky playing with his blocks in our tent, and said good-
+bye to him.  Did you see him when you came back for the cartridges?'
+
+'Certainly I did; he called me to look at his dog making believe go
+to sleep in the hammock.'
+
+'We girls went down to the pool soon after that,' said Bell,
+tearfully.  'He asked to go with us, and I told him it was too far,
+and that he'd better stay with mamma, who would be all alone.  He
+said "Yes" so sweetly I couldn't mistrust him.  Oh, was it my fault,
+papa?  Please don't say it was!' and she burst into a passion of
+sobs.
+
+'No, no, my child, of course it was not.  Don't cry; we shall find
+him.  Go and look about the camp, Geoff, while we consider for a
+minute what to do?'
+
+'If there is any fault, it is mine, for going to sleep,' said poor
+Aunt Truth; 'but I never dreamed he would dare to wander off alone,
+my poor little disobedient darling!  What shall we do?'
+
+'Have you spoken to Pancho and Hop Yet?' asked Phil.
+
+'Yes; they have seen nothing.'
+
+Hop Yet just at this moment issued from his kitchen with an immense
+platter of mutton-stew and dumplings, which he deposited on the
+table.  On being questioned again, he answered as before, with the
+greatest serenity, intimating that Dicky would come home 'heap bime-
+by' when he got 'plenty hungly.'  He seemed to think a lost boy or
+two in a family rather a trifle than otherwise, and wound up his
+unfeeling remarks with the practical one, 'Dinner all leady; you no
+eat mutton, he get cold!  Misser Wins', I no find pickle; you
+catchum!'
+
+'I don't believe he would care if we all died right before his eyes,'
+muttered Polly, angrily.  'I should just like to see a Chinaman's
+heart once, and find out whether it was made of resin, or cuttle-
+fish, or what.'
+
+'Well,' said Phil, as Dr. Winship came through the trees from the
+card-room, 'we must start out this instant, and of course we can find
+him somehow, somewhere; he hasn't been gone over two hours, and he
+couldn't walk far, that's certain.  Now, Uncle Doc, shall we all go
+different ways, and leave the girls here to see if he doesn't turn
+up?'
+
+'Oh, papa,' cried Bell, do not leave us at home!  We can hunt as well
+as any one; we know every foot of the canyon.  Let me go with Geoff,
+and we'll follow the brook trail.'
+
+'Very well.  Now, mamma, Pancho and I will go down to the main road,
+and you wait patiently here.  Make all the noise you can, children;
+and the one who finds him must come back to the camp and blow the
+horn.  Hop Yet, we go now; if Dicky comes back, you blow the horn
+yourself, will you?'
+
+'All light, boss.  You eat um dinner now; then go bime-by; mutton
+heap cold; you--'
+
+'Dinner!' shouted Jack.  'Confound your impudence!  If you say dinner
+again, I'll cut the queue off your stupid head.'
+
+'Good!' murmured Polly, giving a savage punch to her blue Tam o'
+Shanter cap.
+
+'Jack, Jack!' remonstrated Aunt Truth.
+
+'I know, dear auntie; but the callous old heathen makes me so mad I
+can't contain myself.  Come, Margery, let's be off.  Get your shawl;
+and hurrah for the one who comes back to blow the horn first!  I'll
+wager you ten to one I'll have Dick in auntie's lap inside the
+hour!'--at which Aunt Truth's eyes brightened, and she began to take
+heart again.  But as he tore past the brush kitchen and out into the
+woods, dragging Madge after him at a breathless pace, he shut his
+lips together rather grimly, saying, 'I'd give five hundred dollars
+(s'posin' I had a cent) to see that youngster safe again.'
+
+'Tell me one thing, Jack,' said Margery, her teeth chattering with
+nervousness; 'are there any animals in this canyon that would attack
+him?'
+
+'Oh, of course it is possible that a California lion or a wild-cat
+might come down to the brook to drink--they have been killed
+hereabouts--but I hardly believe it is likely; and neither do I
+believe they would be apt to hurt him, any way, for he would never
+attack them, you know.  What I am afraid of is that he has tumbled
+over the rocks somewhere in climbing, or tangled himself up in the
+chaparral.  He couldn't have made off with a pistol, could he?  He is
+up to all such tricks.'
+
+Presently the canyon began to echo with strange sounds, which I have
+no doubt sent the owls, birds, and rabbits into fits of terror; for
+the boys had whistles and pistols, while Polly had taken a tin pan
+and a hammer.  She had gone with Phil out behind the thicket of
+manzanita bushes, and they both stood motionless, undecided where to
+go.
+
+'Oh, Phil, I can't help it; I must cry, I am so frightened.  Let me
+sit down a second.  Yes, I know it's an ant-hill, and I shouldn't
+care if it were a hornets' nest--I deserve to be stung.  What do you
+think I said to Margery this morning?  That Dicky was a perfect
+little marplot, and spoiled all our fun, and I wished he were in the
+bottom of the Red Sea; and then I called him a k-k-k-ill-joy!' and
+Polly buried her head in her blue Tam, and cried a good, honest, old-
+fashioned cry.
+
+'There, chirk up, poor little soul, and don't you fret over a
+careless speech, that meant nothing at all.  I've wished him in the
+Red Sea more than once, but I'm blessed if I ever do it again.  Come,
+let's go over yonder, where we caught the young owl; Dicky may have
+wanted to try that little game again.'
+
+So they went on, calling, listening, then struggling on again, more
+anxious every moment, but not so thoroughly dazed as Bell, who had
+rocked her baby-brother in his cradle, and to whom he was the
+embodiment of every earthly grace, if not of every heavenly virtue.
+
+'I might have known this would happen,' she said, miserably.  'He is
+so careless that, if we ever find him again, we must keep him tied to
+something.'
+
+'Take care of your steps, dear,' said Geoff, 'and munch this cracker,
+or you won't have strength enough to go on with me.  I wish it were
+not getting so dark; the moment the sun gets behind these mountain-
+tops the light seems to vanish in an instant.--Dick-y!'
+
+'Think of the poor darling out in this darkness--hungry, frightened,
+and alone,' sighed Bell.  'It's past his bed-time now.  Oh, why did
+we ever come to stay in this horrible place!'
+
+'You must not blame the place, dear; we thought it the happiest in
+the world this morning.  Here we are by the upper pool, and the path
+stops.  Which way had we better go?'
+
+'I've been here before to-day,' said Bell; 'we might follow the trail
+I made.  But where is my string?  Light a match, Geoff, please.'
+
+'What string?  What do you mean?'
+
+'Why, I found a beautiful spot this morning, and, fearing I shouldn't
+remember the way again, I took out my ball of twine and dropped a
+white line all the way back, like Ariadne; but I don't see it.  Where
+can it have disappeared--unless Jack or Phil took it to tease me?'
+
+'Oh no; I've been with them all day.  Perhaps a snake has swallowed
+it.  Come.'
+
+But a bright idea had popped into Bell's head.  'I want to go that
+way, Geoff, dear; it's as good as any other, and there are flowers
+just the other side, in an open, sunny place; perhaps he found them.'
+
+'All right; let's go ahead.'
+
+'The trouble is, I don't know which way to go.  Here is the rock; I
+remember it was a spotted one, with tall ferns growing beside it.
+Now I went--let me see--this way,' and they both plunged into the
+thick brush.
+
+'Bell, Bell, this is utter nonsense!' cried Geoff.  'No child could
+crawl through this tangle.'
+
+'Dicky could crawl through anything in this universe, if it was the
+wrong thing; he isn't afraid of beast, bird, or fish, and he
+positively enjoys getting scratched,' said Bell.
+
+Meanwhile, what had become of this small hero, and what was he doing?
+He was last seen in the hammock, playing with the long-suffering
+terrier, Lubin, who was making believe go to sleep.  It proved to be
+entirely a make-believe; for, at the first loosening of Dicky's
+strangling hold upon his throat, he tumbled out of the hammock and
+darted into the woods.  Dicky followed, but Lubin was fleet of foot,
+and it was a desperate and exciting race for full ten minutes.
+
+At length, as Lubin heard his little master's gleeful laugh, he
+realised that his anger was a thing of the past; consequently, he
+wheeled about and ran into Dicky's outstretched arms, licking his
+face and hands exuberantly in the joy of complete forgiveness.
+
+By this time the voice of conscience in Dicky's soul--and it was a
+very, very still, small one on all occasions--was entirely silenced.
+He strayed into a sunny spot, and picked flowers enough to trim his
+little sailor hat, probably divining that this was what lost children
+in Sunday-school books always did, and it would be dishonourable not
+to keep up the superstition.  Then he built a fine, strong dam of
+stones across the brook, wading to and fro without the bother of
+taking off his shoes and stockings, and filled his hat with rocks and
+sunk it to the bottom for a wharf, keeping his hat-band to tie an
+unhappy frog to a bit of bark, and setting him afloat as the captain
+of a slave-ship.  When, at length, the struggling creature freed
+himself from his bonds and leaped into the pool, Dicky played that he
+was a drowning child, and threw Lubin into the water to rescue him.
+
+In these merry antics the hours flew by unnoticed; he had never been
+happier in his life, and it flashed through his mind that if he were
+left entirely to himself he should always be good.
+
+'Here I've been a whole day offul good by my lone self; haven't said
+one notty word or did one notty fing, nor gotted scolded a singul
+wunst, did I, Lubin?  I guess we better live here; bettent we, Lubin?
+And ven we wunt git stuck inter bed fur wettin' our feets little
+teenty mites of wet ev'ry singul night all the livelong days, will
+we, Lubin?'
+
+But this was a long period of reflection for Master Dicky, and he
+capered on, farther and farther, the water sozzling frightfully in
+his little copper-toed boots.  At length he sat down on a stone to
+rest himself, and, glancing aimlessly about, his eyes fell on a white
+string, which he grasped with alacrity, pulling its end from beneath
+the stone on which he sat.
+
+'Luby Winship, the anjulls gaved me this string fur ter make an offul
+splendid tight harness for you, little Luby; and you can drag big
+heavy stones.  Won't that be nice?'
+
+Lubin looked doubtful, and wagged his tail dissentingly, as much as
+to say that his ideas of angel ministrations were a trifle different.
+
+But there was no end to the string!  How very, very curious!  Dicky
+wound and wound and crept and crept along, until he was thoroughly
+tired but thoroughly determined to see it through; and Lubin,
+meanwhile, had seized the first convenient moment, after the mention
+of the harness, to retire to the camp.
+
+At length, oh joy! the tired and torn little man, following carefully
+the leading-string, issued from the scratching bushes into a clean,
+beautiful, round place, with a great restful-looking stump in the
+centre, and round its base a small forest of snowy toadstools.  What
+could be a lovelier surprise!  Dicky clapped his hands in glee as he
+looked at them, and thought of a little verse of poetry which Bell
+had taught him:
+
+
+'Some fairy umbrellas came up to-day
+Under the elm-tree, just over the way,
+And as we have had a shower of rain,
+The reason they came is made very plain:
+To-night is the woodland fairies' ball,
+And drops from the elm-tree might on them fall,
+So little umbrellas wait for them here,
+And under their shelter they'll dance without fear.
+Take care where you step, nor crush them, I pray,
+For fear you will frighten the fairies away.'
+
+
+'Oh!' thought Dicky, in a trance of delight, 'now I shall go to the
+fairies' ball, and see 'em dance under the cunning little teenty
+umberells; and wunt they be mad at home when nobuddy can't see 'em
+but just only me!  And then if that potry is a big whopper, like that
+there uvver one--'laddin-lamp story of Bell's--I'll just pick evry
+white toadstool for my papa's Sunday dinner, and she sha'n't never
+see a singul fairy dance.'
+
+But he waited very patiently for a long, long time that seemed like
+years, for Lubin had disappeared; and all at once it grew so dark in
+this thickly-wooded place that Dicky's courage oozed out in a single
+moment, without any previous warnings as to its intention.  The
+toadstools looked like the ghosts of little past-and-gone fairy
+umbrellas in the darkness, and not a single fairy couple came to
+waltz under their snowy canopies, or exchange a furtive kiss beneath
+their friendly shadows.
+
+Dicky thought the situation exceedingly gloomy, and, without knowing
+it, followed the example of many older people, who, on being deserted
+by man, experienced their first desire to find favour with God.  He
+was not in the least degree a saintly child, but he felt
+instinctively that this was the proper time for prayer; and not
+knowing anything appropriate to the occasion, he repeated over and
+over again the time-worn plaint of childhood:-
+
+
+'Now I lay me down to sleep,
+I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
+If I should die before I wake,
+I pray the Lord my soul to take.  Amen.'
+
+
+Like older mortals of feeble faith, he looked for an immediate and
+practical answer, in the shape, perhaps, of his mother, with his
+little night-gown and bowl of bread and milk.
+
+'My sakes alive!' he grumbled between his sobs, 'they're the meanest
+fings I ever saw.  How long do they s'pose I'm goin' to wait for 'em
+in this dark?  When the bears have et me up in teenty snips, then
+they'll be saterfied, I guess, and wisht they'd tookened gooder care
+of me--a little speck of a boy, lefted out in this dark, bear-y
+place, all by his lone self.  O--oo--oo--oh!' and he wound up with a
+murderous yell, which had never failed before to bring the whole
+family to his side.
+
+His former prayer seeming to be in vain, he found a soft place,
+brushed it as clean as possible, and with difficulty bending his
+little stiff, scratched body into a kneeling position, he prayed his
+nightly postscript to 'Now I lay me':  'God bless papa, 'n' mamma,
+'n' Bell, 'n' Jack, 'n' Madge, 'n' Polly, 'n' Phil, 'n' Geoff, 'n'
+Elsie.'  Then, realizing that he was in a perilous position, and it
+behoved him to be as pious as possible, he added:  'And please bless
+Pancho, 'n' Hop Yet, 'n' Lubin, 'n' the goat--not the wild goat up on
+the hill, but my goat, what got sick to his stummick when I painted
+him with black letters.'
+
+What a dreadful calamity, to be sure, if the wrong goat had been
+blessed by mistake!  His whole duty performed, he picked the
+toadstools for his papa's Sunday dinner, and, leaning his head
+against the lone stump, cried himself to sleep.
+
+But relief was near, though he little suspected it as he lay in the
+sound, dreamless sleep which comes only to the truly good.  There was
+a crashing sound in the still darkness, and Bell plunged through the
+thick underbrush with a cry of delight.
+
+'He is here!  Dear, dear Geoff, he is all here!  I knew it, I knew
+it!  Hurrah!--no, I mean--thank God!' she said softly as she stooped
+down to kiss her mischievous little brother.
+
+'But what a looking creature!' exclaimed Geoff, as he stooped over
+the recovered treasure.  'See, Bell, his curls are glistening with
+pitch, his dress is torn into ribbons, and his hands--ugh, how
+dirty!'
+
+'Poor little darling, he is thoroughly used up,' whispered Bell,
+wiping tears of joy from her brown eyes.  'Now, I'll run home like
+lightning to blow the horn; and you carry Dicky, for he is too sleepy
+and stiff to walk; and, Geoff'--(here she laid an embarrassed hand on
+his shoulder)--'I'm afraid he'll be awfully cross, but you'll not
+mind it, will you?  He's so worn-out.'
+
+'Not I,' laughed Geoff, as he dropped a brotherly kiss on Bell's pale
+cheek.  'But I've no idea of letting you go alone; you're tired to
+death, and you'll miss the path.  I wish I could carry you both.'
+
+'Tired--afraid!' cried Bell, with a ringing laugh, while Dicky woke
+with a stare, and nestled on Geoffrey's shoulder as if nothing had
+happened.  'Why, now that this weight is lifted off my heart, I could
+see a path in an untravelled forest!  Good-bye, you dear, darling,
+cruel boy!  I must run, for every moment is precious to mamma.'  And
+with one strangling hug, which made Dicky's ribs crack, she dashed
+off.
+
+Oh how joyously, how sweetly and tunefully, the furious blast of the
+old cracked dinner-horn fell on the anxious ears in that canyon.  It
+seemed clearer and more musical than a chime of silver bells.
+
+In a trice the wandering couples had gathered jubilantly round the
+camp-fire, all embracing Bell, who was the heroine of the hour--
+entirely by chance, and not though superior vision or courage, as she
+confessed.
+
+It was hardly fifteen minutes when Geoff strode into the ring with
+his sorry-looking burden, which he laid immediately in Aunt Truth's
+lap.
+
+'Oh my darling!' she cried, embracing him fondly.  'To think you are
+really not dead, after all!'
+
+'No, he is about as alive as any chap I ever saw.'  And while the
+happy parents caressed their restored darling, Geoff gathered the
+girls and boys around the dinner-table, and repeated some of Dicky's
+remarks on the homeward trip.
+
+It seems that he considered himself the injured party, and with great
+ingenuity laid all the blame of the mishap on his elders.
+
+'Nobuddy takes care of me, anyhow,' he grumbled.  'If my papa wasn't
+a mean fing I'd orter to have a black nurse with a white cap and
+apurn, like Billy Thomas, 'n' then I couldn't git losted so offul
+easy.  An' you all never cared a cent about it either, or you'd a
+founded me quicker 'n this--'n' I've been hungry fur nineteen hours,
+'n' I guess I've been gone till December, by the feelin', but you was
+too lazy to found me 'f I freezed to def--'n' there ain't but one
+singul boy of me round the whole camp, 'n' 't would serveded you
+right if I had got losted for ever; then I bet you wouldn't had much
+fun Fourth of July 'thout my two bits 'n' my fire-crackers!'
+
+It was an hour or two before peace and quiet were restored to the
+camp.  The long-delayed dinner had to be eaten; and to Hop Yet's calm
+delight, it was a very bad one.  Dicky's small wounds were dressed
+with sweet oil, and after being fed and bathed he was tucked lovingly
+into bed, with a hundred kisses or more from the whole party.
+
+A little rest and attention had entirely restored his good-humour;
+and when Dr. Paul went into the tent to see that all was safe for the
+night, he found him sitting up in bed with a gleeful countenance,
+prattling like a little angel.
+
+'We had an offul funny time 'bout my gittin' losted, didn't we,
+mamma?' chuckled he, with his gurgling little laugh.  'Next time I'm
+goin' to get losted in annover bran'-new place where no-bud-dy can
+find me!  I fink it was the nicest time 'cept Fourth of July, don't
+you, mamma?'  And he patted his mother's cheek and imprinted an oily
+kiss thereon.
+
+'Truth,' said the Doctor, with mild severity, 'I know you don't
+believe in applying the slipper, but I do think we should arrange
+some plan for giving that child an idea of the solemnity of life.  So
+far as I can judge, he looks at it as one prolonged picnic.'
+
+'My sentiments exactly!' cried Bell, energetically.  'I can't stand
+many more of these trying scenes; I am worn to a "shadder."'
+
+Dicky tucked his head under his mother's arm, with a sigh of relief
+that there was one person, at least, whose sentiments were always
+favourable and always to be relied upon.
+
+'I love you the best of anybuddy, mamma,' whispered he, and fell
+asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV:  RHYME AND REASON
+
+
+
+A BUDGET OF LETTERS FROM THE CAMP MAIL-BAG
+
+'The letter of a friend is a likeness passing true.'
+
+
+Our friend Polly was seated in a secluded spot whence all but her had
+fled; her grave demeanour, her discarded sun-bonnet, her corrugated
+brow, all bespoke more than common fixedness of purpose, the cause of
+which will be discovered in what follows.
+
+I.  FROM THE COUNTESS PAULINA OLIVERA TO HER FRIEND AND CONFIDANTE,
+THE LADY ELSIE HOWARD. {1}
+
+Scene:  A sequestered nook in the Valley of the Flowers.
+
+CAMP CHAPARRAL, July 6, 188-.
+
+The countess is discovered at her ommerlu {1a} writing-table.  A
+light zephyr {1b} plays with her golden locks {1c} and caresses her
+Grecian {1d} nose--a nose that carries on its surface a few trifling
+freckles, which serve but to call attention to its exquisite purity
+of outline and the height of its ambition.  Her eyes reflect the
+changing shadows of moonlight, and her mouth is one fit for sweet
+sounds; {1e} yet this only gives you a faint idea of the beauteous
+creature whose fortunes we shall follow in our next number. {1f}
+
+I have given that style a fair trial, my dear darling, but I cannot
+stand it another minute, not being familiar with the language of what
+our cook used to call the 'fuddal aristocracy' (feudal, you know).
+
+I, your faithful Polly, am seated in the card-room, writing with a
+dreadful pen which Phil gave me yesterday.  Its internal organs are
+filled with ink, which it disgorges when PRESSED to do so, but just
+now it is 'too full for utterance,' as you will see by the blots.
+
+We have decided not to make this a real round-robin letter, like the
+last, because we want to write what we like, and not have it read by
+the person who comes next.
+
+I have been badgered to death over my part of the communication sent
+to you last week, for the young persons connected with this camp have
+a faculty of making mountains out of mole-hills, as you know, and I
+have to suffer for every careless little speech.  However, as we
+didn't wish to bore you with six duplicate letters, we invented a
+plan for keeping off each other's ground, and appointed Geoff a
+committee of one to settle our line of march.  It is to be a
+collective letter, made up of individual notes; and these are Geoff's
+sealed orders, which must be obeyed, on pain of dismissal from the
+camp:
+
+No. 1 (Polly) is to amuse!
+No. 2 (Phil)  ... inform!
+No. 3 (Geoff) ... edify!!
+No. 4 (Madge) ... gossip.
+No. 5 (Bell)  ... versify.
+No. 6 (Jack)  ... illustrate
+
+So, my dear, if you get any 'information' or happen to be 'edified'
+by what I write, don't mention it for worlds!  (I just screamed my
+fears about this matter to Jack, and he says 'I needn't fret.'  I
+shall certainly slap that boy before the summer is over.)
+
+I could just tell you a lovely story about Dicky's getting lost in
+the woods the day before yesterday, and our terrible fright about
+him, and how we all joined in the boy-hunt, until Geoff and Bell
+found him at the Lone Stump; but I suppose the chronicle belongs to
+Phil's province, so I desist.  But what can I say?  Suppose I tell
+you that Uncle Doc and the boys have been shooting innocent, TAME
+sheep, skinning and cutting them up on the way home, and making us
+believe for two days that we were eating venison; and we never should
+have discovered the imposition had not Dicky dragged home four sheep-
+skins from the upper pool, and told us that he saw the boys 'PEELING
+THEM OFF A VENISON.'  Perhaps Phil may call this information, and
+Margery will vow that it is gossip and belongs to her; any way, they
+consider it a splendid joke, and chuckle themselves to sleep over it
+every night; but I think the whole affair is perfectly maddening, and
+it makes me boil with rage to be taken in so easily.  Such a to-do as
+they make over the matter you never saw; you would think it was the
+first successful joke since the Deluge.  (That wasn't a DRY joke, was
+it?  Ha, ha!)
+
+This is the way they twang on their harp of a thousand strings.  At
+breakfast, this morning, when Jack passed me the corn-bread, I said
+innocently, 'Why, what have we here?'  'It is manna that fell in the
+night,' answered Jack, with an exasperating snicker.  'You didn't
+know mutton, but I thought, being a Sunday-school teacher, you would
+know something about manna.'  (N.B.--He alludes to that time I took
+the infant class for Miss Jones, and they all ran out to see a
+military funeral procession.)  'I wish you knew something about
+manners,' snapped I; and then Aunt Truth had to warn us both, as
+usual.  Oh dear! it's a weary world.  I'd just like to get Jack at a
+disadvantage once!
+
+[Next paragraph crossed out]
+We climbed Pico Negro yesterday.  Bell, Geoff, Phil, and I had quite
+an experience in losing the trail.  I will tell you about it.  Just
+as -
+
+(Goodness me! what have I written?  Oh, Elsie, pray excuse those
+HORIZONTAL EVIDENCES of my forgetfulness and disobedience.  I have
+bumped my head against the table three times, as penance, and will
+now try to turn my thoughts into right channels.  This letter is a
+black-and-white evidence that _I_ have not a frivolous order of mind,
+and have always been misunderstood from my birth up to this date.)
+
+We have had beautiful weather since--but no, of course Phil will tell
+you about the weather, for that is scarcely an amusing topic.  I do
+want to be as prudent as possible, for Uncle Doc is going to read all
+the letters (not, of course, aloud) and see whether we have fulfilled
+our specific obligations.
+
+(I just asked Bell whether 'specific' had a 'c' or an's in the
+middle, and she answered '"c," of course,' with such an air, you
+should have heard her!  I had to remind her of the time she spelled
+'Tophet' with an 'f' in the middle; then she subsided.)
+
+(I just read this last paragraph to Madge, to see if she called it
+gossip, as I was going to take it out if it belonged to her topic,
+but she said No, she didn't call it gossip at all--that she should
+call it slander!)
+
+You don't know how we all long to see you, dear darling that you are.
+We live in the hope of having you with us very soon, and meanwhile
+the beautiful bedstead is almost finished, and a perfect success.  (I
+wish to withdraw the last three quarters of that sentence, for
+obvious reasons!!)
+
+Dear, dear!  Geoffrey calls 'Time up,' and I've scarcely said
+anything I should.  Never, never again will I submit to this method
+of correspondence; it is absolutely petrifying to one's genius.  When
+I am once forced to walk in a path, nothing but the whole out-of-
+doors will satisfy me.
+
+I'm very much afraid I haven't amused you, dear, -
+
+
+But when I lie in the green kirkyard,
+With the mould upon my breast,
+Say not that 'She did well or ill,'
+Only, 'She did her best.'
+
+
+Now, do you think that will interfere with Bell, when it's only a
+quotation?  Any way, it's so appropriate that Uncle Doc will never
+have the heart to strike it out.  The trouble is that Geoff thinks
+all the poetry in the universe is locked up in Bell's head, and if
+she once allows it to escape, Felicia Hemans and the rest will be too
+discouraged ever to try again!  (I can't remember whether F. H. is
+alive or not, and am afraid to ask, but you will know that I don't
+mean to be disrespectful.)
+
+Laura, Anne, and Scott Burton were here for the play, and Laura is
+coming down again to spend the week.  I can't abide her, and there
+will probably be trouble in the camp.
+
+The flame of my genius blazes high just now, but Geoff has spoken,
+and it must be snuffed.  So good-bye!
+
+Sizz-z-z!! and I'm OUT!
+
+POLLIOLIVER.
+
+
+II.  FROM PHILIP TO ELSIE.
+
+
+CAMP CHAPARRAL, July 8, 188-.
+
+My dear Elsie,--I believe I am to inform you concerning the daily
+doings of our party, not on any account, however, permitting myself
+to degenerate into 'gossip' or 'frivolous amusement.'
+
+They evidently consider me a quiet, stupid fellow, who will fulfil
+such a task with no special feeling of repression, and I dare say
+they are quite right.
+
+They call me the 'solid man' of the camp, which may not be very high
+praise, to be sure, as Geoffrey carries his head in the clouds, and
+Jack is--well, Jack is Jack!  So, as the light of a tallow dip is
+valuable in the absence of sun and moon, I am raised to a fictitious
+reputation.
+
+We fellows have had very little play so far, for the furnishing of
+the camp has proved an immense undertaking, although we have plenty
+of the right sort of wood and excellent tools.
+
+We think the work will pay, however, as Dr. Paul has about decided to
+stay until October, or until the first rain.  He writes two or three
+hours a day, and thinks that he gets on with his book better here
+than at home.  As for the rest of us, when we get fairly to rights we
+shall have regular study hours and lose no time in preparing for the
+examinations.
+
+I suppose you know that you have a full bedroom set in process of
+construction.  I say 'suppose you know,' because it is a profound
+secret, and the girls could never have kept it to themselves as long
+as this.
+
+The lounging-chair is my allotted portion, and although it is a
+complicated bit of work, I accepted it gladly, feeling sure that you
+would use it oftener than any of the other pieces of furniture.  I
+shall make it so deliciously easy that you will make me 'Knight of
+the Chair,' and perhaps permit me to play a sort of devoted John
+Brown to your Victoria.  You will need one dull and prosy squire to
+arrange your pillows, so that you can laugh at Jack's jokes without
+weariness, and doze quietly while Geoff and Uncle Doc are talking
+medicine.
+
+Of course the most exciting event of the week was the mysterious
+disappearance and subsequent restoration of the Heir-Apparent; but I
+feel sure somebody else will describe the event, because it is
+uppermost in all our minds.
+
+Bell, for instance, would dress it up in fine style.  She is no
+historian, but in poetry and fiction none of us can touch her;
+though, by the way, Polly's abilities in that direction are a good
+deal underrated.  It's as good as a play to get her after Jack when
+he is in one of his teasing moods.  They are like flint and steel,
+and if Aunt Truth didn't separate them the sparks would fly.  With a
+girl like Polly, you have either to lie awake nights, thinking how
+you'll get the better of her, or else put on a demeanour of
+gentleness and patience, which serves as a sort of lightning-rod
+round which the fire of her fun will play all day and never strike.
+Polly is a good deal of a girl.  She seems at first to have a pretty
+sharp tongue, but I tell you she has a heart in which there is
+swimming-room for everybody.  This may not be 'information' to you,
+whom we look upon as our clairvoyant, but it would be news to most
+people.
+
+Uncle Doc, Bell, Geoff, Polly, Meg, and I started for the top of Pico
+Negro the other morning.  Bell rode Villikins, and Polly took a mule,
+because she thought the animal would be especially sure-footed.  He
+was; in fact, he was so sure-footed that he didn't care to move at
+all, and we had to take turns in beating him up to the top.  We boys
+walked for exercise, which we got to our hearts' content.
+
+It is only five or six miles from the old Mountain Mill (a picture of
+which Jack will send you), and the ascent is pretty stiff climbing,
+though nothing terrific.  We lost the trail once, and floundered
+about in the chaparral for half an hour, till Bell began to make a
+poem on the occasion, when we became desperate, and dashed through a
+thicket of brush, tearing ourselves to bits, but stumbling on the
+trail at last.  The view from the top is simply superb.  The valleys
+below are all yellow with grain-fields and green with vineyards, with
+here and there the roofs of a straggling little settlement.  The
+depression in the side of the mountain (you will observe it in the
+picture) Polly says has evidently been 'bitten out' by a prehistoric
+animal, and it turns out to be the loveliest little canyon
+imaginable.
+
+We have had one novel experience--that of seeing a tarantula fight;
+and not between two, but five, tarantulas.  We were about twenty
+miles from camp, loping along a stretch of hot, dusty road.  Jack got
+off to cinch his saddle, and so we all stopped a moment to let our
+horses breathe.  As I was looking about, at nothing in particular, I
+noticed a black ball in the deep dust at the side of the road.  It
+suddenly rolled over on itself and I called to the boys to watch the
+fun.  We got off, hitched our horses, and approached cautiously, for
+I had seen a battle of the same kind before.  There they were--five
+huge, hairy, dirty, black creatures, as large as the palm of Dicky's
+hand, all locked in deadly combat.  They writhed and struggled and
+embraced, their long, curling legs fastening on each other with a
+sound that was actually like the cracking of bones.  It takes a
+little courage to stand and watch such a proceeding, for you feel as
+if the hideous fellows might turn and jump for you; but they were
+doubtless absorbed in their own battle, and we wanted to see the
+affair to the end, so we took the risk, if there was any.  At last
+they showed signs of weariness, but we prodded them up with our
+riding-whips, preferring that they should kill each other, rather
+than do the thing ourselves.  Finally, four of them lay in the dust,
+doubled up and harmless, slain, I suppose, by their own poison.  One,
+the conquering hero, remained, and we dexterously scooped him into a
+tomato-can that Jack had tied to his saddle for a drinking-cup,
+covered him up with a handkerchief, and drew lots as to who should
+carry him home to Dr. Paul.
+
+Knowing that the little beasts were gregarious, we hunted about for a
+nest, which we might send to you after ousting its disagreeable
+occupant.  After much searching, we found a group of them--quite a
+tarantula village, in fact.  Their wonderful little houses are closed
+on the outside by a circular, many-webbed mesh, two or three inches
+across, and this web betrays the spider's den to the person who knows
+the tricks of the trade.  Directly underneath it you come upon the
+tiny circular trap-door, which you will notice in the nest we send
+with these letters.  You will see how wonderfully it is made, with
+its silken weaving inside, and its bits of bark and leaves outside;
+and I know you will admire the hinge, which the tarantula must have
+invented, and which is as pretty a bit of workmanship as the most
+accomplished mechanic could turn out.  We tore away the web and the
+door from one of the nests, and then poured water down the hole.  The
+spider was at home, came out as fact as his clumsy legs would carry
+him, and clutched the end of the stick Jack held out to him.  Then we
+tumbled him into the tomato-can just as he appeared to be making for
+us.  The two didn't agree at all.  One of them despatched the other
+on the way home--the same hero who had killed the other four; but, on
+hearing his bloody record, Aunt Truth refused to have him about the
+camp; so we gave him an alcohol bath, and you shall see his lordship
+when you come.  As Dr. Paul says, they have been known to clear
+fourteen feet at a jump, perhaps you will feel happier to know that
+he is in alcohol, though their bite is not necessarily fatal if it is
+rightly cared for.
+
+The girls have been patronising the landscape by naming every peak,
+valley, grove, and stream in the vicinity; and as there is nobody to
+object, the names may hold.
+
+We carry about with us a collection of strong, flat stakes, which
+have various names painted on them in neat black letters.  Jack likes
+that kind of work, and spends most of his time at it; for now that
+Dr. Paul has bought a hundred acres up here, we are all greatly
+interested in its improvement.
+
+Geoff has named the mountain Pico Negro, as I told you, and the
+little canyon on its side is called the Giant's Yawn.  Then we have -
+
+Mirror Pool,
+The Lone Stump,
+Field of the Cloth-of-Gold,
+Cosy Nook,
+The Imp's Wash-Bowl,
+Dunce-Cap Hill,
+The Saint's Rest, and
+Il Penseroso Fall (in honour of Dicky, who was nearly drowned there).
+
+If anybody fails to call these localities by their proper names he
+has to pay a fine of five cents, which goes towards beautifying the
+place.  Dr. Paul has had to pay two fines for Bell, three for Aunt
+Truth, and seven for Dicky; so he considers it an ill-judged
+arrangement.
+
+Our encampment is supposed to be in the Forest of Arden, and Jack has
+begun nailing verses of poetry on the trees, like a second Orlando,
+save that they are not love-poems at all, but appropriate quotations
+from Wordsworth or Bryant.  And this brings me to our thrilling
+rendition of the play 'As You Like It,' last evening; but it is
+deserving of more than the passing notice which I can give it here.
+
+One thing, however, I must tell you, as the girls will not write it
+of themselves--that, although Bell carried off first honours and
+fairly captivated the actors as well as the audience, all three of
+them looked bewitching and acted with the greatest spirit, much
+better than we fellows did.
+
+Of course we didn't give the entire play, and we had to 'double up'
+on some of the characters in the most ridiculous fashion; but the
+Burtons helped out wonderfully, Scott playing Oliver, and Laura doing
+Audrey.  They were so delighted with the camp that Aunt Truth has
+invited them to come again on Saturday and stay a week.
+
+At the risk of being called conceited I will also state that we boys
+consider that the stage management was a triumph of inventive art; we
+worked like beavers for two days, and the results were marvellous,
+'if I do say so as shouldn't.'
+
+Just consider we were 'six miles from a lemon,' as Sydney Smith would
+say, and yet we transformed all out of doors, first into an elegant
+interior, and then into a conventional stage forest.
+
+A great deal of work is available for other performances, and so we
+do not regret it a bit; we propose doing 'As You Like It' again when
+you are down here, and meanwhile we give diversified entertainments
+which Jack calls variety shows, but which in reality are very chaste
+and elegant occasions.
+
+The other night we had a minstrel show, wearing masks of black
+cambric, with red mouths painted on them; you should have seen us,
+all in a dusky semicircle, seated on boards supported by nail-kegs:
+it was a scene better imagined than described.  This is certainly the
+ideal way to live in summer-time, and we should be perfectly happy
+and content if you could only shake off your troublesome cough and
+come to share our pleasure.  We feel incomplete without you; and no
+matter how large our party may grow as the summer progresses, there
+will always be a vacant niche that none can fill save the dear little
+Saint who is always enshrined therein by all her loyal worshippers,
+and by none more reverently than her friend,
+
+PHILIP S. NOBLE.
+
+
+III.  THE KNIGHT OF THE SPECTACLES TAKES THE QUILL.
+
+
+This paper is writ unto her most Royal Highness, our beloved Gold
+Elsie, Queen of our thoughts and Empress of all hearts.
+
+You must know, most noble Lady, that one who is your next of kin and
+high in the royal favour has laid upon us a most difficult and
+embarrassing task.
+
+In our capacity as Director of the Court Games, we humbly suggested
+the subjects for the weekly bulletin which your Highness commanded to
+be written; but, alas, with indifferent success; for the Courtiers
+growled and the Ladies-in-waiting howled at the topics given them for
+consideration.
+
+On soliciting our own subjects from the Privy Councillor and Knight
+of the Brush, Lord John Howard, he revengefully ordered me to 'edify'
+your Majesty with wise utterances; as if such poor, rude words as
+mine could please the ear that should only listen to the singing of
+birds, the babbling of brooks, or the silvery tongue of genius!
+
+When may your devoted subjects hope to see their gracious Sovereign
+again in their midst?
+
+The court is fast drifting into dangerous informalities of conduct.
+The Princess Bell-Pepper partakes of the odoriferous onion at each
+noon-day meal, so that a royal salute would be impossible; the hands
+of the Countess Paulina look as if you might have chosen one of your
+attendants from 'Afric's sunny fountains, or India's coral strand';
+and as for the Court Chaplain, Rev. Jack-in-the-Pulpit, he has
+woefully forsaken the manners of the 'cloth,' and insists upon
+retaining his ancient title of Knight of the Brush; the Duchess of
+Sweet Marjoram alone continues circumspect in walk and mien, for
+blood will tell, and she is more Noble than the others.
+
+In our capacity of Court Physician we have thrice relieved your
+youthful page, Sir Dicky Winship, of indigestion, caused by too
+generous indulgence in the flowing bowl--of milk and cherries; we
+have also prescribed for his grace the Duke of Noble, whose ducal ear
+was poisoned by the insidious oak leaf.
+
+Your private box awaits you in the Princess' Theatre, and your
+Majesty's special interpreters of the drama will celebrate your
+arrival as gorgeously as it deserves.
+
+The health of our dearly beloved Sovereign engages the constant
+thought of all her loyal and adoring subjects; they hope ere long to
+cull a wreath of laurel with their own hands and place it on a brow
+which needs naught but its golden crown of hair to affirm its queenly
+dignity.  And as for crown jewels, has not our Empress of Hearts a
+full store?--two dazzling sapphires, her eyes; a string of pearls,
+her teeth; her lips two rubies; and when she opens them, diamonds of
+wisdom issue therefrom!
+
+Come! and let the sight of thy royal charms gladden the eyes of thy
+waiting people!  Issued under the hand of
+
+SIR GEOFFREY STRONG, Bart.,
+Court Physician and Knight of the Spectacles.
+
+
+IV.  MARGERY'S CONTRIBUTION.
+
+
+COSY NOOK, July 11, 188- .
+
+My own dear Elsie,--Your weekly chronicle is almost ready for
+Monday's stage, and I am allowed to come in at the close with as many
+pages of 'gossip' as I choose; which means that I may run on to my
+heart's content and tell you all the little things that happen in the
+chinks between the great ones, for Uncle Doc has refused to read this
+part of the letter.
+
+First for some commissions:  Aunt Truth asks if your mother will
+kindly select goods and engage Mrs. Perkins to make us each a couple
+of Scotch gingham dresses.  She has our measures, and we wish them
+simple, full-skirted gowns, like the last; everybody thinks them so
+pretty and becoming.  Bell's two must be buff and pink, Polly's grey
+and green, and mine blue and brown.  We find that we haven't clothes
+enough for a three months' stay; and the out-of-door life is so hard
+upon our 'forest suits' that we have asked Mrs. Perkins to send us
+new ones as soon as possible.
+
+We have had a very busy and exciting week since Polly began this
+letter, for there have been various interruptions and an unusual
+number of visitors.
+
+First, there was our mountain climb to the top of Pico Negro; Phil
+says he has written you about that, but I hardly believe he mentioned
+that he and the other boys worried us sadly by hanging on to the
+tails of our horses as they climbed up the steepest places.  To be
+sure they were so awfully tired that I couldn't help pitying them;
+but Uncle Doc had tried to persuade them not to walk, so that it was
+their own fault after all.  You cannot imagine what a dreadful
+feeling it gives one to be climbing a slippery, rocky path, and know
+that a great heavy boy is pulling your horse backwards by the tail.
+Polly insisted that she heard her mule's tail break loose from its
+moorings, and on measuring it when she got back to camp she found it
+three inches longer than usual.
+
+The mule acted like original sin all day, and Polly was so completely
+worn-out that she went to bed at five o'clock; Jack was a good deal
+the worse for wear too, so that they got on beautifully all day.  It
+is queer that they irritate each other so, for I am sure that there
+is no lack of real friendship between them; but Jack is a confirmed
+tease, and he seems to keep all his mischief bottled up for especial
+use with Polly.  I have tried to keep him out of trouble, as you
+asked me; and although it gives me plenty to do, I am succeeding
+tolerably well, except in his dealings with Polly.  I lecture him
+continually, but 'every time he opens his mouth he puts his foot in
+it.'
+
+Polly was under a cloud the first of the week.  Villikins was sick,
+and Dr. Winship sent her to Aunt Truth for a bottle of sweet oil.
+Aunt Truth was not in sight, so Polly went to the box of stores and
+emptied a whole quart bottle of salad oil into a pail, and Villikins
+had to take it, WHEEL OR WHOA (Jack's joke!).  Auntie went to make
+the salad dressing at dinner-time, and discovered her loss and
+Polly's mistake.  It was the last bottle; and as we can't get any
+more for a week, the situation was serious, and she was very much
+tried.  Poor Polly had a good cry over her carelessness, and came to
+the dinner-table in a very sensitive frame of mind.  Then what should
+Jack do but tell Dicky to take Villikins a head of lettuce for his
+supper, and ask Polly why she didn't change his name from Villikins
+to Salad-in!  Polly burst into tears, and left the table, while Dr.
+Paul gave Jack a scolding, which I really think he deserved, though
+it was a good joke.  The next morning, the young gentleman put on a
+pair of old white cotton gloves and his best hat, gathered her a
+bouquet of wild flowers, and made her a handsome apology before the
+whole party; so she forgave him, and they are friends--until the next
+quarrel.
+
+On the night before the play, Laura and Scott Burton arrived on
+horseback, and the next morning the rest of the family appeared on
+the scene.  We had sent over to see if Laura would play Audrey on so
+short notice, and bring over some odds and ends for costumes.  We
+actually had an audience of sixteen persons, and we had no idea of
+playing before anybody but Aunt Truth and Dicky.
+
+There were three of the Burtons, Pancho, Hop Yet, the people from the
+dairy farm, and a university professor from Berkeley, with eight
+students.  They were on a walking tour, and were just camping for the
+night when Scott and Jack met them, and invited them over to the
+performance.  Geoffrey and Phil were acquainted with three of them,
+and Uncle Paul knew the professor.
+
+Laura, Anne, and Scott went home the next morning, but came back in
+two days for their week's visit.  The boys like Scott very much; he
+falls right into the camp ways, and doesn't disturb the even current
+of our life; and Anne, who is a sweet little girl of twelve, has
+quite taken Dicky under her wing, much to our relief.
+
+With Laura's advent, however, a change came over the spirit of our
+dreams, and, to tell the truth, we are not over and above pleased
+with it.  By the way, she spent last summer at the hotel, and you
+must have seen her, did you not?  Anyway, Mrs. Burton and Aunt Truth
+were old school friends, and Bell has known Laura for two years, but
+they will never follow in their mothers' footsteps.  Laura is so
+different from her mother that I should never think they were
+relations; and she has managed to change all our arrangements in some
+mysterious way which we can't understand.  I get on very well with
+her; she positively showers favours upon me, and I more than half
+suspect it is because she thinks I don't amount to much.  As for the
+others, she rubs Polly the wrong way, and I believe she is a little
+bit jealous of Bell.
+
+You see, she is several months older than the rest of us, and has
+spent two winters in San Francisco, where she went out a great deal
+to parties and theatres, so that her ideas are entirely different
+from ours.
+
+She wants every single bit of attention--one boy to help her over the
+brooks, one to cut walking-sticks for her, another to peel her
+oranges, and another to read Spanish with her, and so on.  Now, you
+know very well that she will never get all this so long as Bell
+Winship is in camp, for the boys think that Bell drags up the sun
+when she's ready for him in the morning, and pushes him down at night
+when she happens to feel sleepy.
+
+We, who have known Bell always, cannot realise that any one can help
+loving her, but there is something in Laura which makes it impossible
+for her to see the right side of people.  She told me this morning
+that she thought Bell had grown so vain and airy and self-conscious
+that it was painful to see her.  I could not help being hurt; for you
+know what Bell is--brimful of nonsense and sparkle and bright
+speeches, but just as open as the day and as warm as the sunshine.
+If she could have been spoiled, we should have turned her head long
+ago; but she hasn't a bit of silly vanity, and I never met any one
+before who didn't see the pretty charm of her brightness and
+goodness--did you?
+
+And yet, somehow, Laura sticks needles into her every time she
+speaks.  She feels them, too, but it only makes her quiet, for she is
+too proud and sensitive to resent it.  I can see that she is
+different in her ways, as if she felt she was being criticised.
+Polly is quite the reverse.  If anybody hurts her feelings she makes
+creation scream, and I admire her courage.
+
+Aunt Truth doesn't know anything about all this, for Laura is a
+different girl when she is with her or Dr. Paul; not that she is
+deceitful, but that she is honestly anxious for their good opinion.
+You remember Aunt Truth's hobby that we should never defend ourselves
+by attacking any one else, and none of us would ever complain, if we
+were hung, drawn, and quartered.
+
+Laura was miffed at having to play Audrey, but we didn't know that
+she could come until the last moment, and we were going to leave that
+part out.
+
+'I don't believe you appreciate my generosity in taking this
+thankless part,' she said to Bell, when we were rehearsing.  'Nobody
+would ever catch you playing second fiddle, my dear.  All leading
+parts reserved for Miss Winship, by order of the authors, I suppose.'
+
+'Indeed, Laura,' Bell said, 'if we had known you were coming we would
+have offered you the best part, but I only took Rosalind because I
+knew the lines, and the girls insisted.'
+
+'You've trained the girls well--hasn't she, Geoffrey?' asked Laura,
+with a queer kind of laugh.
+
+But I will leave the unpleasant subject.  I should not have spoken of
+it at all except that she has made me so uncomfortable to-day that it
+is fresh in my mind.  Bell and Polly and I have talked the matter all
+over, and are going to try and make her like us, whether she wants to
+or not.  We have agreed to be just as polite and generous as we
+possibly can, and see if she won't 'come round,' for she is perfectly
+delighted with the camp, and wants to stay a month.
+
+Polly says she is going to sing 'Home Sweet Home' to her every night,
+and drop double doses of the homoeopathic cure for home-sickness into
+her tea, with a view of creating the disease.
+
+Good-bye, and a hundred kisses from your loving
+
+MARGERY DAW.
+
+
+V.  THE CAMP POETESS ADDS HER STORE OF MENTAL RICHES TO THE GENERAL
+FUND.
+
+
+My darling,--I have a thousand things to tell you, but I cannot
+possibly say them in rhyme, merely because the committee insists upon
+it.  I send you herewith all the poetry which has been written in
+camp since last Monday, and it has been a very prosy week.
+
+I have given them to papa, and he says that the best of my own, which
+are all bad enough, is the following hammock-song.
+
+I thought it out while I was swinging Margery, and here it is! -
+
+
+To--fro,
+Dreamily, slow,
+Under the trees;
+Swing--swing,
+Drowsily sing
+The birds and the bees;
+Sleep--rest,
+Slumber is best,
+Wakefulness sad;
+Rest--sleep,
+Forget how to weep,
+Dream and be glad!
+
+
+Papa says it is all nonsense to say that slumber is best and
+wakefulness sad; and that it is possible to tell the truth in poetry.
+Perhaps it is, but why don't they do it oftener, then?  And how was
+he to know that Polly and Jack had just gone through a terrible
+battle of words in which I was peacemaker, and that Dicky had been as
+naughty as--Nero--all day?  These two circumstances made me look at
+the world through blue glasses, and that is always the time one longs
+to write poetry.
+
+I send you also Geoff's verses, written to mamma, and slipped into
+the box when we were playing Machine Poetry:-
+
+
+I know a woman fair and calm,
+   Whose shining tender eyes
+Make, when I meet their earnest gaze,
+   Sweet thoughts within me rise.
+
+And if all silver were her hair,
+   Or faded were her face,
+She would not look to me less fair,
+   Nor lack a single grace.
+
+And if I were a little child,
+   With childhood's timid trust,
+I think my heart would fly to her,
+   And love--because it must!
+
+And if I were an earnest man,
+   With empty heart and life,
+I think--(but I might change my mind) -
+   She'd be my chosen wife!
+
+
+Isn't that pretty?  Oh, Elsie!  I hope I shall grow old as
+beautifully as mamma does, so that people can write poetry to me if
+they feel like it!  Here is Jack's, for Polly's birthday; he says he
+got the idea from a real poem which is just as silly as his:-
+
+
+A pollywog from a wayside brook
+   Is a goodly gift for thee;
+But a milk-white steed, or a venison sheep,
+   Will do very well for me.
+
+For you a quivering asphodel
+   (Two ducks and a good fat hen),
+For me a withering hollyhock
+   (For seven and three are ten!).
+
+Rose-red locks and a pug for thee
+   (The falling dew is chill),
+A dove, a rope, and a rose for me
+   (Oh, passionate, pale-blue pill!).
+
+For you a greenery, yallery gown
+   (Hath one tomb room for four?),
+Dig me a narrow gravelet here
+   (Oh, red is the stain of gore!!).
+
+
+I told Jack I thought it extremely unhitched, but he says that's the
+chief beauty of the imitation.
+
+I give you also some verses intended for Polly's birthday, which we
+shall celebrate, when the day arrives, by a grand dinner.
+
+You remember how we tease her about her love for tea, which she
+cannot conceal, but which she is ashamed of all the same.
+
+Well!  I have printed the poem on a card, and on the other side
+Margery has drawn the picture of a cross old maid, surrounded by
+seven cats, all frying to get a drink out of her tea-cup.  Then Geoff
+is going to get a live cat from the milk ranch near here, and box it
+up for me to give to her when she receives her presents at the
+dinner-table.  Won't it be fun?
+
+
+OWED TO POLLY
+BECAUSE OF HER BIRTHDAY.
+
+
+She camps among the untrodden ways
+   Forninst the 'Mountain Mill';
+A maid whom there are few to praise
+   And few to wish her ill.
+
+She lives unknown, and few could know
+   What Pauline is to me;
+As dear a joy as are to her
+   Her frequent cups of tea.
+
+A birthday this dear creature had,
+   Full many a year ago;
+She says she is but just fifteen,
+   Of course she ought to know.
+
+But still this gift I bring to her,
+   Appropriate to her age,
+Regardless of her stifled scorn,
+   Or well conceal-ed rage!
+
+She smiles upon these tender lines,
+   As you all plainly see,
+But when she meets me all alone,
+   How different it will be!
+
+
+Now comes Geoff's, to be given with a pretty little inkstand:-
+
+
+There was a young maiden whose thought
+Was so airy it couldn't be caught;
+   So what do you think?
+   We gave her some ink,
+And captured her light-winged thought.
+
+
+Here is Jack's last on Polly:-
+
+
+There's a pert little poppet called Polly,
+Who frequently falls into folly!
+   She's a terrible tongue
+   For a 'creetur' so young,
+But if she were dumb she'd be jolly!
+
+
+I helped Polly with a reply, and we delivered it five minutes later:-
+
+
+I'd rather be deaf, Master Jack,
+For if only one sense I must lack,
+   To be rid of your voice
+   I should always rejoice,
+Nor mourn if it never came back!
+
+
+And now good-night and good-bye until I am allowed to write you my
+own particular kind of letter.
+
+The girls and boys are singing round the camp-fire, and I must go out
+and join them in one song before we go to bed.
+
+Yours with love, now and always,
+BELL.
+
+P. S--Our 'Happy Hexagon' has become a sort of 'Obstreperous
+Octagon.'  Laura and Scott Burton are staying with us.  Scott is a
+good deal of a bookworm, and uses very long words; his favourite name
+for me at present is Calliope; I thought it was a sort of steam-
+whistle, but Margery thinks it was some one who was connected with
+poetry.  We don't dare ask the boys; will you find out?
+
+
+VI.
+
+CAMP CHAPARRAL, July 13, 188-.
+STUDIO RAPHAEL.
+
+Dear Little Sis,--The enclosed sketches speak for themselves, or at
+least I hope they do.  Keep them in your private portfolio, and when
+I am famous you can produce them to show the public at what an early
+age my genius began to sprout.
+
+At first I thought I'd make them real 'William Henry' pictures, but
+concluded to give you a variety.
+
+Can't stop to write another line; and if you missed your regular
+letter this week you must not growl, for the sketches took an awful
+lot of time, and I'm just rushed to death here anyway.
+
+Love to mother and father.
+Your loving brother.  JACK
+
+P.S.--Polly says you need not expect to recognise that deer by his
+portrait, should you ever meet him, as no one could expect to get a
+STRIKING likeness at a distance of a half-mile.  But, honestly, we
+have been closer than that to several deer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V:  THE FOREST OF ARDEN--GOOD NEWS
+
+
+
+'From the East to western Ind,
+No jewel is like Rosalind;
+Her worth, being mounted on the wind,
+Through all the world bears Rosalind;
+All the pictures, fairest lined,
+Are but black to Rosalind;
+Let no face be kept in mind,
+But the fair of Rosalind.'
+
+
+The grand performance of 'As You Like It' must have a more extended
+notice than it has yet received, inasmuch as its double was never
+seen on any stage.
+
+The reason of this somewhat ambitious selection lay in the fact that
+our young people had studied it in Dr. Winship's Shakespeare class
+the preceding winter, but they were actually dumb with astonishment
+when Bell proposed it for the opening performance in the new theatre.
+
+'I tell you,' she argued, 'there are not many pieces which would be
+effective when played out of doors by dim candle-light, but this will
+be just as romantic and lovely as can be.  You see it can be played
+just "as you like it."'
+
+Philip and Aunt Truth wanted a matinee performance, but the girls
+resisted this plan very strongly, feeling that the garish light of
+day would be bad for the makeshift costumes, and would be likely to
+rob them of what little courage they possessed.
+
+'We give the decoration of the theatre entirely into your hands,
+boys,' Polly had said on the day before the performance.  'You have
+some of the hardest work done already, and can just devote yourselves
+to the ornamental part; but don't expect any more ideas from us, for
+you will certainly be disappointed.'
+
+'I should think not, indeed!' cried Bell, energetically.  'Here we
+have the wall decorations for the first scene, and all the costumes
+besides; and the trouble is, that three or four of them will have to
+be made to-morrow, after Laura comes with the trappings of war.  I
+hope she will get here for dinner to-night; then we can decide on our
+finery, and have a rough rehearsal.'
+
+'Well, girls!' shouted Jack, from the theatre, 'come and have one
+consultation, and then we'll let you off.  Phil wants to change the
+location altogether.'
+
+'Oh, nonsense!' cried Madge, as the three girls ran towards the scene
+of action.  'It's the only suitable place within a mile of the camp.'
+
+'I think it will be simply perfect, when you have done a little more
+cutting,' said Bell.  'Just see our advantages:  First, we have that
+rising knoll opposite the stage, which is exactly the thing for
+audience seats; then we have a semicircular background of trees and a
+flat place for the stage, which is perfectly invaluable; last of all,
+just gaze upon that madrono-tree in the centre, and the oak on the
+left; why, they are worth a thousand dollars for scenery.'
+
+'Especially in the first scene--ducal interior, or whatever it is,'
+said Phil, disconsolately.
+
+'Jingo! that is a little embarrassing,' groaned Jack.
+
+'Not at all,' said Polly, briskly.  'There is plenty of room to set
+the interior in front of those trees.  It can be all fixed
+beforehand, and just whisked away for good at the end of the first
+act.'
+
+'That's true,' said Geoff, thoughtfully.  'But we can't have any
+Adam's cottage.  We talked it over last night, and decided it
+"couldn't be did."'
+
+'Did you indeed!' exclaimed Bell, sarcastically.  'Then allow me to
+remark that you three boys represent a very obtuse triangle.'
+
+'Thanks, most acid Rosalind!' murmured Geoff, meekly.  'Could you
+deign, as spokesman of the very acute triangle, to suggest
+something?'
+
+'Certainly.  There is the rear of the brush kitchen in plain sight,
+to convey the idea of a rustic hut.  To be sure, it's a good distance
+to the left, but let the audience screw round in their seats when
+they hear the voices, and Adam, Oliver, and Orlando can walk out
+carelessly, and go through their scene right there.'
+
+'Admirable!' quoth Geoff.  'We bow to your superior judgment.'
+
+'What an inspiration that was to bring those Chinese lanterns for the
+Fourth of July; they have just saved us from utter ruin,' said
+Margery, who was quietly making leaf-trimming.
+
+'Yes, the effect is going to be perfectly gorgeous!' exclaimed Polly,
+clasping her hands in anticipation.  'How many have we?  Ten?  Oh,
+that's splendid; and how many candles?'
+
+'As many as we care to use,' Phil answered, from the top of the
+ladder where he was at work.  'And look at my arrangement for holding
+them to these trees.  Aren't they immense?'
+
+'By the way,' said Bell, 'don't forget the mossy banks under those
+trees, for stage seats; and make me some kind of a thing on the left
+side, to swoon on when I sniff Orlando's gory handkerchief.'
+
+'A couple of rocks,' suggested Jack.
+
+'Not exactly,' replied the critical Rosalind, with great dignity.  'I
+am black and blue already from practising my faint, and I expect to
+shriek with pain when I fall to-morrow night.'
+
+'St. Jacob's Oil relieves stiffened joints, smooths the wrinkles from
+the brow of care, soothes lacerated feelings, and 'ushes the 'owl of
+hinfancy,' remarked Geoffrey serenely, as he prepared to build the
+required mossy banks.
+
+'My dear cousin (there are times when I am glad it is only second
+cousin), have you a secret contract to advertise a vulgar patent
+medicine? or why this eloquence?' laughed Bell.
+
+'And, Jack,' suggested Polly, 'you don't seem to be doing anything;
+fix a stump for me to sit on while Orlando and Rosalind are making
+love.'
+
+'All right, countess.  I'd like to see you stumped once in my life.
+Shall we have the canvases brought for stage carpets?'
+
+'We say no,' cried Rosalind, firmly.  'We shall be a thousand times
+more awkward stumbling over stiff billows of carpet.  Let's sweep the
+ground as clean and smooth as possible, and let it go for all the
+scenes.'
+
+'Yes, we shall then be well GROUNDED in our parts,' remarked Phil,
+hiding his head behind a bunch of candles.
+
+'Take care, young man,' laughed Polly, 'or you may be "run to earth"
+instead.'
+
+'Or be requested by the audience to get up and dust,' cried the
+irrepressible Jack, whose wit was very apt to be of a slangy
+character.  'Now let us settle the interior, or I shall go mad.'
+
+'Bell and I have it all settled,' said Geoffrey, promptly.  'The
+background is to be made of three sheets hung over a line, and the
+two sides will be formed of canvas carpets; the walls will have
+Japanese fans, parasols, and--'
+
+'Jupiter!' exclaimed Jack, who, as knight of the brush, felt
+compelled to be artistic.  'Imagine a ducal palace, in the year so
+many hundred and something, decorated with Japanese bric-a-brac!  I
+blush for you.'
+
+'Now, Jack, we might as well drop the whole play as begin to think of
+the 'nakkeronisms,' or whatever the word is.  I have got to wear an
+old white wrapper to the wrestling-match, but I don't complain,' said
+Polly.
+
+Just here Bell ran back from the kitchen, exclaiming:
+
+'I have secured Pancho for Charles the Wrestler.  Oh, he was
+fearfully obstinate! but when I told him he would only be on the
+stage two minutes, and would not have to speak a word, but just let
+Geoff throw him, he consented.  Isn't that good?  Did you decide
+about the decorations?'
+
+'It will have to be just as we suggested,' answered Margery.  'Fans,
+parasols, flowers, and leaves, with the madrono-wood furniture
+scattered about, sheep-skins, etc.'
+
+'A few venison rugs, I presume you mean,' said Geoffrey, slyly.
+'Say, Polly, omit the cold cream for once, will you?  You don't want
+to outshine everybody.'
+
+'Thank you,' she replied.  'I will endeavour to take care of my own
+complexion, if you will allow me.  As for yours, you look more like
+Othello than Orlando.'
+
+'Come, come, girls,' said industrious Margery, 'let us go to the tent
+and sew.  It is nothing but nonsense here, and we are not
+accomplishing anything.'
+
+So they wisely left the boys to themselves for the entire day, and
+transformed their tent into a mammoth dressmaking establishment, with
+clever Aunt Truth as chief designer.
+
+
+The intervening hours had slipped quickly away, and now the fatal
+moment had arrived, and everything was ready for the play.
+
+The would-be actresses were a trifle excited when the Professor and
+his eight students were brought up and introduced by Jack and Scott
+Burton; and, as if that were not enough, who should drive up at the
+last moment but the family from the neighbouring milk ranch, and beg
+to be allowed the pleasure of witnessing the performance.  Mr.
+Sandford was the gentleman who had sold Dr. Winship his land, and so
+they were cordially invited to remain.
+
+All the cushions and shawls belonging to the camp were arranged
+carefully on the knoll, for audience seats; it was a brilliant
+moonlight night, and the stage assumed a very festive appearance with
+its four pounds of candles and twelve Chinese lanterns.
+
+Meanwhile the actors were dressing in their respective tents.  Bell's
+first dress was a long pink muslin wrapper of Mrs. Burton's, which
+had been belted in and artistically pasted over with bouquets from
+the cretonne trunk covers, in imitation of flowered satin; under this
+she wore a short blue lawn skirt of her own, catching up the pink
+muslin on the left side with a bouquet of wild roses, and producing
+what she called a 'positively Neilson effect.'
+
+Her bright hair was tossed up into a fluffy knot on the top of her
+head; and with a flat coronet of wild roses and another great bunch
+at her belt, one might have gone far and not have found a prettier
+Rosalind.
+
+'I declare, you are just too lovely--isn't she, Laura?' asked
+Margery.
+
+'Yes, she looks quite well,' answered Laura, abstractedly, being much
+occupied in making herself absurdly beautiful as Audrey.  'Of course
+the dress fits horridly, but perhaps it won't show in the dim light.'
+
+'Oh, is it very bad?' sighed Bell, plaintively; 'I can't see it in
+this glass.  Well, the next one fits better, and I have to wear that
+the longest.  Shall I do your hair, Laura?'
+
+'No--thanks; Margery has such a capital knack at hair-dressing, and
+she doesn't come on yet.'
+
+During this conversation Polly was struggling with Aunt Truth's
+trained white wrapper.  It was rather difficult to make it look like
+a court dress; but she looked as fresh and radiant as a rose in it,
+for the candle-light obliterated every freckle, and one could see
+nothing but a pair of dancing eyes, the pinkest of cheeks, and a head
+running over with curls of ruddy gold.
+
+'Now, Bell, criticise me!' she cried, taking a position in the middle
+of the tent, and turning round like a wax figure.  'I have torn out
+my hair by the roots to give it a "done up" look, and have I
+succeeded? and shall I wear any flowers with this lace surplice? and
+what on earth shall I do with my hands? they're so black they will
+cast a gloom over the stage.  Perhaps I can wrap my handkerchief
+carelessly round one, and I'll keep the other round your waist,
+considerable, tucked under your Watteau pleat.  Will I do?'
+
+'Do?  I should think so!' and Bell eyed her with manifest approval.
+'Your hair is very nice, and your neck looks lovely with that lace
+handkerchief.  As for flowers, why don't you wear a great mass of
+yellow and white daisies?  You'll be as gorgeous as--'
+
+'As a sunset by Turner,' said Laura, with a glance at Polly's auburn
+locks.  'Seems to me this is a mutual admiration society, isn't it?'
+and she sank languidly into a chair to have her hair dressed.
+
+'Yes, it is,' cried Polly, boldly; 'and it's going to "continner."
+Meg, you're a darling in that blue print and pretty hat.  I'll fill
+my fern-basket with flowers, and you can take it, as to have
+something in your hand to play with.  You look nicer than any Phoebe
+I ever saw, that's a fact.  And now, hurrah! we're all ready, and
+there's the boys' bell, so let us assemble out in the kitchen.  Oh
+dear!  I believe I'm frightened, in spite of every promise to the
+contrary.'
+
+When the young people saw each other for the first time in their
+stage costumes there was a good deal of merriment and some honest
+admiration.  Geoff looked very odd without his eyeglasses and with
+the yellow wig that was the one property belonging to this star
+dramatic organisation.
+
+The girls had not succeeded in producing a great effect with the
+masculine costumes, because of insufficient material.  But the boys
+had determined not to wear their ordinary clothes, no matter what
+happened; so Jack had donned one of Hop Yet's blue blouses for his
+Sylvius dress, and had ready a plaid shawl to throw gracefully over
+one shoulder whenever he changed to the Banished Duke.
+
+His Sylvius attire was open to criticism, but no one could fail to
+admire his appearance as the Duke, on account of a magnificent ducal
+head-gear, from which soared a bunch of tall peacock feathers.
+
+'Oh, Jack, what a head-dress for a Duke!' laughed Margery; 'no wonder
+they banished you.  Did you offend the court hatter?'
+
+Phil said that at all events nobody could mistake him for anything
+but a fool, in his 'Touchstone' costume, and so he was jest-er going
+to be contented.
+
+Scott Burton was arranging Pancho's toilette for the wrestling-match,
+and meanwhile trying to raise his drooping spirits; and Rosalind was
+vainly endeavouring to make Adam's beard of grey moss stay on.
+
+While these antics were going on behind the scenes, the audience was
+seated on the knoll, making merry over the written programmes, which
+had been a surprise of Geoff's, and read as follows:-
+
+
+THE PRINCESS' THEATRE.
+July 10th, 188-.
+
+APPEARANCE THE GREATEST DRAMATIC COMPANY ON EARTH (FACT).
+THE COOLEST THEATRE IN THE WORLD.
+
+A Royal Galaxy and Boyaxy of Artists in the play of
+AS YOU LIKE IT,
+By William Shakespeare, or Lord Bacon.
+
+CAST.
+
+'Alas! unmindful of their doom, the little victims play;
+No sense have they of ills to come, or cares beyond to-day.'
+
+ROSALIND             The Lady Bell-Pepper.
+                     (Her greatest creation.)
+CELIA                The Countess Paulina.
+PHOEBE               The Duchess of Sweet Marjoram.
+AUDREY               A talented Incognita of the Court.
+ORLANDO              Hennery Irving Salvini Strong.
+                     (Late from the Blank Theatre, Oil City.)
+ADAM                 Dr. Paul Winship.
+                     (By kind permission of his manager,
+                     Mrs. T. W.)
+BANISHED DUKE }
+SYLVIUS       }      Lord John Howard } Lightning
+TOUCHSTONE }                          } Change Artists.
+JACQUE     }         Duke of Noble    }
+               (N.B.--The Duke of Noble has played
+                       the 'fool' five million times.)
+OLIVER               Mr. Scott Burton.
+                     (Specially engaged.)
+CHARLES THE WRESTLER Pancho Muldoon Sullivan.
+                     (His first appearance.)
+
+The Comb Orchestra will play the Music of the Future.
+
+The Usher will pass pop-corn between the Acts.  Beds may be ordered
+at 10.30.
+
+
+The scene between Adam and Orlando went off with good effect; and
+when Celia and Rosalind came through the trees in an affectionate
+attitude, and Celia's blithe voice broke the stillness with, 'I pray
+thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry,' there was a hearty burst of
+applause which almost frightened them into silence.
+
+At the end of the first act everybody was delighted; the stage-
+manager, carpenter, scene-shifter, costumier, and all the stars were
+called successively before the curtain.
+
+Hop Yet declared it was 'all the same good as China theatre'; and
+every one agreed to that criticism without a dissenting voice.
+
+To be sure, there was an utter absence of stage-management, and all
+the 'traditions' were remarkable for their absence; but I fancy that
+the spirits of Siddons and Kemble, Macready and Garrick, looked down
+with kind approval upon these earnest young actors as they recited
+the matchless old words, moving to and fro in the quaint setting of
+trees and moonlight, with an orchestra of cooing doves and murmuring
+zephyrs.
+
+The forest scenes were intended to be the features of the evening,
+and in these the young people fairly surpassed themselves.  Any one
+who had seen Neilson in her doublet and hose of silver-grey, Modjeska
+in her shades of blue, and Ada Cavendish in her lovely suit of green,
+might have thought Bell's patched-up dress a sorry mixture; yet these
+three brilliant stars in the theatrical firmament might have envied
+this little Rosalind the dewy youth and freshness that so triumphed
+over all deficiencies of costume.
+
+Margery's camping-dress of grey, shortened to the knee, served for
+its basis.  Round the skirt and belt and sleeves were broad bands of
+laurel-leaf trimming.  She wore a pair of Margery's long grey
+stockings and Laura's dainty bronze Newport ties.  A soft grey chudda
+shawl of Aunt Truth's was folded into a mantle to swing from the
+shoulder, its fringes being caught up out of sight, and a laurel-leaf
+trimming added.  On her bright wavy hair was perched a cunning flat
+cap of leaves, and, as she entered with Polly, leaning on her
+manzanita staff, and sighing, 'Oh Jupiter, how weary are my spirits!'
+one could not wish a lovelier stage picture.
+
+And so the play went on, with varying fortunes.  Margery was
+frightened to death, and persisted in taking Touchstone's speeches
+right out of his mouth, much to his discomfiture.  Adam's beard
+refused to stay on; so did the moustache of the Banished Duke, and
+the clothes of Sylvius.  But nothing could damp the dramatic fire of
+the players, nor destroy the enthusiasm of the sympathetic audience.
+
+Dicky sat in the dress-circle, wrapped in blankets, and laughed
+himself nearly into convulsions over Touchstone's jokes, and the
+stage business of the Banished Duke; for it is unnecessary to state
+that Jack was not strictly Shakespearean in his treatment of the
+part.
+
+As for Polly, she enjoyed being Celia with all her might, and
+declared her intention of going immediately on the 'regular' stage;
+but Jack somewhat destroyed her hopes by affirming that her nose and
+hair wouldn't be just the thing on the metropolitan boards, although
+they might pass muster in a backwoods theatre.
+
+
+'Hello!  What's this?' exclaimed Philip, one morning.  'A visitor?
+Yes--no!  Why, it's Senor Don Manuel Felipe Hilario Noriega coming up
+the canyon!  He's got a loaded team, too!  I wonder if Uncle Doc is
+expecting anything.'
+
+The swarthy gentleman with the long name emerged from one cloud of
+dust and disappeared in another, until he neared the gate where
+Philip and Polly were standing.
+
+Philip opened the gate, and received a bow of thanks which would have
+made Manuel's reputation at a Spanish court.
+
+'Going up to camp?'
+
+'Si, senor.'
+
+'Those things for us?'
+
+'Si, senor.'
+
+'What are they?'
+
+'Si, senor.'
+
+'Exactly!  Well, are there any letters?'
+
+'Si, senor.'  Whereupon he drew one from his gorgeously-decorated
+leather belt.
+
+Philip reached for it, and Polly leaned over his shoulder, devoured
+with curiosity.
+
+'It's for Aunt Truth,' she said; 'and--yes, I am sure it is Mrs.
+Howard's writing; and if it is--'
+
+Hereupon, as Manuel spoke no English, and neither Philip nor Polly
+could make inquiries in Spanish, Polly darted to the cart in her
+usual meteoric style, put one foot on the hub of a wheel and climbed
+to the top like a squirrel, snatched off a corner of the canvas
+cover, and cried triumphantly, 'I knew it!  Elsie is coming!  Here's
+a tent, and some mattresses and pillows.  Hurry!  Help me down,
+quick!  Oh, slow-coach!  Keep out of the way and I'll jump!  Give me
+the letter.  I can run faster than you can.'  And before the vestige
+of an idea had penetrated Philip's head, nothing could be seen of
+Polly but a pair of twinkling heels and the gleam of a curly head
+that caught every ray of the sun and turned it into ruddier gold.
+
+It was a dusty, rocky path, and up-hill at that; but Polly, who was
+nothing if not ardent, never slackened her pace, but dashed along
+until she came in sight of the camp, where she expended her last
+breath in one shrill shriek for Aunt Truth.
+
+It was responded to promptly.  Indeed, it was the sort of shriek that
+always commands instantaneous attention; and Aunt Truth came out of
+her tent prepared to receive tragic news.  Bell followed; and the
+entire family would have done the same had they been in camp.
+
+Polly thrust the letter into Mrs. Winship's hand, and sank down
+exhausted, exclaiming, breathlessly, 'There's a mattress--and a tent-
+-coming up the canyon.  It's Elsie's, I know.  Philip is down at the
+gate--with the cart--but I came ahead.  Phew! but it's warm!'
+
+'What!' cried Bell, joyfully.  'Elsie at the gate!  It can't be
+true!'  And she darted like an arrow through the trees.
+
+'Come back! come back!' screamed Polly.
+
+'Elsie is not at the gate.  Don S. D. M. F. H. N. is there with a
+team loaded down with things.  Isn't it from Mrs. Howard, Aunt
+Truth?'
+
+'Yes, it is.  Written this morning from Tacitas Rancho.  Why, how is
+this?  Let me see!'
+
+
+TACITAS RANCHO, Monday morning.
+
+Dear Truth,--You will be surprised to receive a letter from me,
+written from Tacitas.  But here we are, Elsie and I; and, what is
+better, we are on our way to you.
+
+('I knew it!' exclaimed the girls.)
+
+Elsie has been growing steadily better for three weeks.  The fever
+seems to have disappeared entirely, and the troublesome cough is so
+much lessened that she sleeps all night without waking.  The doctor
+says that the camp-life will be the very best thing for her now, and
+will probably complete her recovery.
+
+('Oh, joy, joy!' cried the girls.)
+
+I need not say how gladly we followed this special prescription of
+our kind doctor's, nor add that we started at once.
+
+('Oh, Aunt Truth, there is nobody within a mile of the camp; can't I,
+PLEASE can't I turn one little hand-spring, just one little lady-like
+one?' pleaded Polly, dancing on one foot and chewing her sun-bonnet
+string.
+
+'No, dear, you can't!  Keep quiet and let me read.')
+
+Elsie would not let me tell you our plans any sooner, lest the old
+story of a sudden ill turn would keep us at home; and I think very
+likely that she longed to give the dear boys and girls a surprise.
+
+We arrived at the Burtons' yesterday.  Elsie bore the journey
+exceedingly well, but I would not take any risks, and so we shall not
+drive over until day after to-morrow morning.
+
+('You needn't have hurried quite so fast, Polly dear.')
+
+I venture to send the tent and its belongings ahead to-day, so that
+Jack may get everything to rights before we arrive.
+
+The mattress is just the size the girls ordered; and of course I've
+told Elsie nothing about the proposed furnishing of her tent.
+
+I am bringing my little China boy with me, for I happen to think
+that, with the Burtons, we shall be fourteen at table.  Gin is not
+quite a success as a cook, but he can at least wash dishes, wait at
+table, and help Hop Yet in various ways; while I shall be only too
+glad to share all your housekeeping cares, if you have not escaped
+them even in the wilderness.
+
+I shall be so glad to see you again; and oh, Truth, I am so happy, so
+happy, that, please God, I can keep my child after all!  The weary
+burden of dread is lifted off my heart, and I feel young again.  Just
+think of it!  My Elsie will be well and strong once more!  It seems
+too good to be true.
+
+Always your attached friend,
+JANET HOWARD.
+
+
+Mrs. Winship's voice quivered as she read the last few words, and
+Polly and Bell threw themselves into each other's arms and cried for
+sheer gladness.
+
+'Come, come, dears!  I suppose you will make grand preparations, and
+there is no time to lose.  One of you must find somebody to help
+Philip unload the team.  Papa and the boys have gone fishing, and
+Laura and Margery went with them, I think.'  And Mrs. Winship bustled
+about, literally on hospitable thoughts in-tent.
+
+Polly tied on her sun-bonnet with determination, turned up her
+sleeves as if washing were the thing to be done, and placed her arms
+akimbo.
+
+'First and foremost,' said she, her eyes sparkling with excitement,
+'first and foremost, I am going to blow the horn.'
+
+'Certainly not,' said Aunt Truth.  'Are you crazy, Polly?  It is
+scarcely ten o'clock, and everybody would think it was dinnertime,
+and come home at once.'
+
+'No, they'd think something had happened to Dicky,' said Bell, 'and
+that would bring them in still sooner.'
+
+'Of course!  I forgot.  But can't I blow it earlier than usual?
+Can't I blow it at half-past eleven instead of twelve?  We can't do a
+thing without the boys, and they may not come home until midnight
+unless we do something desperate.  Oh, delight!  There's Don S. D. M.
+F. H. N., and Phil has found Pancho to help unload.'
+
+'Isn't it lucky that we decided on the place for Elsie's tent, and
+saved it in case she should ever come?' said Bell.  'Now Philip and
+Pancho can set it up whenever they choose.  And isn't it fortunate
+that we three stayed at home to-day, and refused to fish? now we can
+plan everything, and then all work together when they come back.'
+
+Meanwhile Polly was tugging at an immense bundle, literally tooth and
+nail, as she alternated trembling clutches of the fingers with
+frantic bites at the offending knot.
+
+Like many of her performances, the physical strength expended was out
+of all proportion to the result produced, and one stroke of Philip's
+knife accomplished more than all her ill-directed effort.  At length
+the bundle of awning cloth stood revealed.  'Oh, isn't it beautiful?'
+she cried, 'it will be the very prettiest tent in camp; can't I blow
+the horn?'
+
+'Look, mamma,' exclaimed Bell, 'it is green and grey, in those pretty
+broken stripes, and the edge is cut in lovely scollops and bound with
+green braid.  Won't it look pretty among the trees?'
+
+Aunt Truth came out to join the admiring group.
+
+'O-o-o-h!' screamed Polly.  'There comes a piece of the floor.
+They've sent it all made, in three pieces.  What fun!  We'll have it
+all up and ready to sleep in before we blow the horn!'
+
+'And here's a roll of straw matting,' said Phil, depositing a huge
+bundle on the ground near the girls.  'I'll cut the rope to save your
+teeth!'
+
+'Green and white plaid!' exclaimed Bell.  'Well!  Mrs. Howard did
+have her wits about her!'
+
+'Oh, do let me blow the horn!' teased the irrepressible Polly.
+
+'Here are a looking-glass and a towel-rack and a Shaker rocking-
+chair,' called Philip; 'guess they're going to stay the rest of the
+summer.'
+
+'Yes, of course they wouldn't want a looking-glass if they were only
+going to stay a month or two,' laughed Bell.
+
+'Dear Aunt Truth, if you won't let me turn a single decorous little
+hand-spring, or blow the horn, or do anything nice, will you let us
+use all that new white mosquito-netting?  Bell says that it has been
+in the storehouse for two years, and it would be just the thing for
+decorating Elsie's tent.'
+
+'Why, of course you may have it, Polly, and anything else that you
+can find.  There!  I hear Dicky's voice in the distance; perhaps the
+girls are coming.'
+
+Bell and Polly darted through the swarm of tents, and looked up the
+narrow path that led to the brook.
+
+Sure enough, Margery and Laura were strolling towards home with
+little Anne and Dick dangling behind, after the manner of children.
+Margery carried a small string of trout, and Dick the inevitable tin
+pail in which he always kept an unfortunate frog or two.  The girls
+had discovered that he was in the habit of crowding the cover tightly
+over the pail and keeping his victims shut up for twenty-four hours,
+after which, he said, they were nice and tame--so very tame, as it
+transpired, that they generally gave up the ghost in a few hours
+after their release.  Margery had with difficulty persuaded him of
+his cruelty, and the cover had been pierced with a certain number of
+air-holes.
+
+'Guess the loveliest thing that could possibly happen!' called Bell
+at the top of her voice.
+
+'Elsie has come,' answered Margery in a second, nobody knew why; 'let
+me hug her this minute!'
+
+'With those fish?' laughed Polly.  'No! you'll have to wait until day
+after to-morrow, and then your guess will be right.  Isn't it almost
+too good to be true?'
+
+'And she is almost well,' added Bell, joyfully, slipping her arm
+through Margery's and squeezing it in sheer delight.  'Mrs. Howard
+says she is really and truly better.  Oh, if Elsie Howard in bed is
+the loveliest, dearest thing in the world, what will it be like to
+have her out of it and with us in all our good times!'
+
+'Has she always been ill since you knew her?' asked Laura.
+
+'Yes; a terrible cold left her with weakness of the lungs, and the
+doctors feared consumption, but thought that she might possibly
+outgrow it entirely if she lived in a milder climate; so Mrs. Howard
+left home and everybody she cared for, and brought Elsie to Santa
+Barbara.  Papa has taken an interest in her from the first, and as
+far as we girls are concerned, it was love at first sight.  You never
+knew anybody like Elsie!'
+
+'Is she pretty?'
+
+'Pretty!' cried Polly, 'she is like an angel in a picture-book!'
+
+'Interesting?'
+
+'Interesting!' said Bell, in a tone that showed the word to be too
+feeble for the subject; 'Elsie is more interesting than all the other
+girls in the other world put together!'
+
+'Popular?'
+
+'Popular!' exclaimed Margery, taking her turn in the oral
+examination, 'I don't know whether anybody can be popular who is
+always in bed; but if it's popular to be adored by every man, woman,
+child, and animal that comes anywhere near her, why then Elsie is
+popular.'
+
+'And is she a favourite with boys as well as girls?'
+
+'Favourite!' said Bell.  'Why, they think that she is simply perfect!
+Of course she has scarcely been able to sit up a week at a time for a
+year, and naturally she has not seen many people; but, if you want a
+boy's opinion, just ask Philip or Geoffrey.  I assure you, Laura,
+after you have known Elsie a while, and have seen the impression she
+makes upon everybody, you will want to go to bed and see if you can
+do likewise.'
+
+'It isn't just the going to bed,' remarked Margery, sagely.
+
+'And it isn't the prettiness either,' added Polly; 'though if you saw
+Elsie asleep, a flower in one hand, the other under her cheek, her
+hair straying over the pillow (O for hair that would stray
+anywhere!), you would expect every moment to see a halo above her
+head.'
+
+'I don't believe it is because she is good that everybody admires her
+so,' said Laura, 'I don't think goodness in itself is always so very
+interesting; if Elsie had freckles and a snub nose'--('Don't mind
+me!' murmured Polly)--'you would find that people would say less
+about her wonderful character.'
+
+'There are things that puzzle me,' said Polly, thoughtfully.  'It
+seems to me that if I could contrive to be ever so good, nobody ever
+would look for a halo round my head.  Now, is it my turned-up nose
+and red hair that make me what I am, or did what I am make my nose
+and hair what they are--which?'
+
+'We'll have to ask Aunt Truth,' said Margery; 'that is too difficult
+a thing for us to answer.'
+
+'Wasn't it nice I catched that big bull-frog, Margie?' cried Dick,
+his eyes shining with anticipation.  'Now I'll have as many as seven
+or 'leven frogs and lots of horned toads when Elsie comes, and she
+can help me play with 'em.'
+
+When the girls reached the tents again, the last article had been
+taken from the team and Manuel had driven away.  The sound of Phil's
+hammer could be heard from the carpenter-shop, and Pancho was already
+laying the tent floor in a small, open, sunny place, where the low
+boughs of a single sycamore hung so as to protect one of its corners,
+leaving the rest to the full warmth of the sunshine that was to make
+Elsie entirely well again.
+
+'I am tired to death,' sighed Laura, throwing herself down in a
+bamboo lounging-chair.  'Such a tramp as we had! and after all, the
+boys insisted on going where Dr. Winship wouldn't allow us to follow,
+so that we had to stay behind and fish with the children; I wish I
+had stayed at home and read The Colonel's Daughter.'
+
+'Oh, Laura!' remonstrated Margery, 'think of that lovely pool with
+the forests of maiden-hair growing all about it!'
+
+'And poison-oak,' grumbled Laura.  'I know I walked into some of it
+and shall look like a perfect fright for a week.  I shall never make
+a country girl--it's no use for me to try.'
+
+'It's no use for you to try walking four miles in high-heeled shoes,
+my dear,' said Polly, bluntly.
+
+'They are not high,' retorted Laura, 'and if they are, I don't care
+to look like a--a--cow-boy, even in the backwoods.'
+
+'I'm an awful example,' sighed Polly, seating herself on a stump in
+front of the tent, and elevating a very dusty little common-sense
+boot.  'Sir Walter Raleigh would never have allowed me to walk on his
+velvet cloak with that boot, would he, girls?  Oh, wasn't that
+romantic, though? and don't I wish that I had been Queen Elizabeth!'
+
+'You've got the HAIR,' said Laura.
+
+'Thank you!  I had forgotten Elizabeth's hair was red; so it was.
+This is my court train,' snatching a tablecloth that bung on a hush
+near by, and pinning it to her waist in the twinkling of an eye,--
+'this my farthingale,' dangling her sun-bonnet from her belt,--'this
+my sceptre,' seizing a Japanese umbrella,--'this my crown,' inverting
+a bright tin plate upon her curly head.  'She is just alighting from
+her chariot, THUS; the courtiers turn pale, THUS; (why don't you do
+it?) what shall be done?  The Royal Feet must not be wet.  "Go round
+the puddle?  Prit, me Lud, 'Od's body!  Forsooth!  Certainly not!
+Remove the puddle!" she says haughtily to her subjects.  They are
+just about to do so, when out from behind a neighbouring chaparral
+bush stalks a beautiful young prince with coal-black hair and rose-
+red cheeks.  He wears a rich velvet cloak, glittering with
+embroidery.  He sees not her crown, her hair outshines it; he sees
+not her sceptre, her tiny hand conceals it; he sees naught save the
+loathly mud.  He strips off his cloak and floats it on the puddle.
+With a haughty but gracious bend of her head the Queen accepts the
+courtesy; crosses the puddle, THUS, waves her sceptre, THUS, and
+saying, "You shall hear from me by return mail, me Lud," she vanishes
+within the castle.  The next morning she makes Sir Walter British
+Minister to Florida.  He departs at once with a cargo of tobacco,
+which he exchanges for sweet potatoes, and everybody is happy ever
+after.'
+
+The girls were convulsed with mirth at this historical romance, and,
+as Mrs. Winship wiped the tears of merriment from her eyes, Polly
+seized the golden opportunity and dropped on her knees beside her.
+
+'Please, Aunt Truth, we can't get the white mosquito-netting because
+Dr. Winship has the key of the storehouse in his pocket, and so--may-
+-I--blow the horn?'
+
+Mrs. Winship gave her consent in despair, and Polly went to the oak-
+tree where the horn hung and blew all the strength of her lungs into
+blast after blast for five minutes.
+
+'That's all I needed,' she said, on returning; 'that was an escape-
+valve, and I shall be lady-like and well-behaved the rest of the
+day.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI:  QUEEN ELSIE VISITS THE COURT
+
+
+
+'An hour and friend with friend will meet,
+Lip cling to lip and hand clasp hand.'
+
+
+'Now, Laura,' asked Bell, when quiet was restored, 'advise us about
+Elsie's tent.  We want it to be perfectly lovely; and you have such
+good taste!'
+
+'Let me think,' said Laura.  'Oh, if she were only a brunette instead
+of a blonde, we could festoon the tent with that yellow tarlatan I
+brought for the play!'
+
+'What difference does it make whether she is dark or light?' asked
+Bell, obtusely.
+
+'Why, a room ought to be as becoming as a dress--so Mrs. Pinkerton
+says.  You know I saw a great deal of her at the hotel; and oh,
+girls! her bedroom was the most exquisite thing you ever saw!  She
+had a French toilet-table, covered with pale blue silk and white
+marquise lace,--perfectly lovely,--with yards and yards of robin's-
+egg blue watered ribbon in bows; and on it she kept all her toilet
+articles, everything in hammered silver from Tiffany's with monograms
+on the back,--three or four sizes of brushes, and combs, and mirrors,
+and a full manicure set.  It used to take her two hours to dress; but
+it was worth it.  Oh, such gorgeous tea-gowns as she had!  One of old
+rose and lettuce was a perfect dream!  She always had her breakfast
+in bed, you know.  I think it's delightful to have your breakfast
+before you get up, and dress as slowly as you like.  I wish mamma
+would let me do it.'
+
+'What does she do after she gets dressed in her rows of old lettuce--
+I mean her old rows of lettuce?' asked Polly.
+
+'Do?  Why really, Polly, you are too stupid!  What do you suppose she
+did?  What everybody else does, of course.'
+
+'Oh!' said Polly, apologetically.
+
+'How old is Mrs. Pinkerton?' asked Margery.
+
+'Between nineteen and twenty.  There is not three years' difference
+in our ages, though she has been married nearly two years.  It seems
+so funny.'
+
+'Only nineteen!' cried Bell.  'Why, I always thought that she was old
+as the hills--twenty-five or thirty at the very least.  She always
+seemed tired of things.'
+
+'Well,' said Laura, in a whisper intended to be too low to reach Mrs.
+Winship's tent, 'I don't know whether I ought to repeat what was told
+me in confidence, but the fact is--well--she doesn't like Mr.
+Pinkerton very well!'
+
+The other girls, who had not enjoyed the advantages of city life and
+travel, looked as dazed as any scandalmonger could have desired.
+
+'Don't like him!' gasped Polly, nearly falling off the stump.  'Why,
+she's married to him!'
+
+'Where on earth were you brought up?' snapped Laura.  'What
+difference does that make?  She can't help it if she doesn't happen
+to like her husband, can she?  You can't make yourself like anybody,
+can you?'
+
+'Well, did she ever like him?' asked Margery; 'for she's only been
+married a year or two, and it seems to me it might have lasted that
+long if there was anything to begin on.'
+
+'But,' whispered Laura, mysteriously, 'you see Mr. Pinkerton was very
+rich and the Dentons very poor.  Mr. Denton had just died, leaving
+them nothing at all to live on, and poor Jessie would have had to
+teach school, or some dreadful thing like that.  The thought of it
+almost killed her, she is so sensitive and so refined.  She never
+told me so in so many words, but I am sure she married Mr. Pinkerton
+to save her mother from poverty; and I pity her from the bottom of my
+heart.'
+
+'I suppose it was noble,' said Bell, in a puzzled tone, 'if she
+couldn't think of any other way, but--'
+
+'Well, did she try very hard to think of other ways?' asked Polly.
+'She never looked especially noble to me.  I thought she seemed like
+a die-away, frizzlygig kind of a girl.'
+
+'I wish, Miss Oliver, that you would be kind enough to remember that
+Mrs. Pinkerton is one of my most intimate friends,' said Laura,
+sharply.  'And I do wish, also, that you wouldn't talk loud enough to
+be heard all through the canyon.'
+
+The colour came into Polly's cheeks, but before she could answer,
+Mrs. Winship walked in, stocking-basket in hand, and seated herself
+in the little wicker rocking-chair.  Polly's clarion tones had given
+her a clue to the subject, and she thought the discussion needed
+guidance.
+
+'You were talking about Mrs. Pinkerton, girls,' she said, serenely.
+'You say you are fond of her, Laura, dear, and it seems very
+ungracious for me to criticise your friend; that is a thing which
+most of us fail to bear patiently.  But I cannot let you hold her up
+as an ideal to be worshipped, or ask the girls to admire as a piece
+of self-denial what I fear was nothing but indolence and self-
+gratification.  You are too young to talk of these things very much;
+but you are not too young to make up your mind that when you agree to
+live all your life long with a person, you must have some other
+feeling than a determination not to teach school.  Jessie Denton's
+mother, my dear Laura, would never have asked the sacrifice of her
+daughter's whole life; and Jessie herself would never have made it
+had she been less vain, proud, and luxurious in her tastes, and a
+little braver, more self-forgetting and industrious.  These are hard
+words, dear, and I am sorry to use them.  She has gained the riches
+she wanted,--the carriages and servants, and tea-gowns, and hammered
+silver from Tiffany's, but she looks tired and disappointed, as Bell
+says; and I've no doubt she is, poor girl.'
+
+'I don't think you do her justice, Mrs. Winship; I don't, indeed,'
+said Laura.
+
+'If you are really attached to her, Laura, don't make the mistake of
+admiring her faults of character, but try to find her better
+qualities, and help her to develop them.  It is a fatal thing when
+girls of your age set up these false standards, and order their lives
+by them.  There are worse things than school-teaching, yes, or even
+floor-scrubbing or window-washing.  Lovely tea-gowns and silver-
+backed brushes are all very pretty and nice to have, if they are not
+gained at the sacrifice of something better.  I should have said to
+my daughter, had I been Mrs. Denton, "We will work for each other, my
+darling, and try to do whatever God gives us to do; but, no matter
+how hard life is, your heart is the most precious thing in the world,
+and you must never sell that, if we part with everything else."  Oh,
+my girls, my girls, if I could only make you believe that "poor and
+content is rich, and rich enough."  I cannot bear to think of your
+growing year by year into the conviction that these pretty glittering
+things of wealth are the true gold of life which everybody seeks.
+Forgive me, Laura, if I have hurt your feelings.'
+
+'I know you would never hurt anybody's feelings, if you could help
+it, Mrs. Winship,' Laura answered, with a hint of coldness in her
+voice, 'though I can't help thinking that you are a little hard on
+poor Jessie; but, even then, one can surely like a person without
+wishing to do the very same things she does.'
+
+'Yes, that is true,' said Mrs. Winship, gravely.  'But one cannot
+constantly justify a wrong action in another without having one's own
+standard unconsciously lowered.  What we continually excuse in other
+people we should be inclined by and by to excuse in ourselves.  Let
+us choose our friends as wisely as possible, and love them dearly,
+helping them to grow worthier of our love at the same time we are
+trying to grow worthier of theirs; because "we live by admiration,
+hope, and love," you know, but not by admiring and loving the wrong
+things.
+
+'But there is the horn, and I hear the boys.  Let us come to
+luncheon, and tell our good news of Elsie.'
+
+
+[Music follows]
+With incredible energy.
+The horn!  The horn!  The lus-ty, lus-ty horn!  'Tis
+not a thing to laugh to scorn, A thing to laugh to scorn!
+
+
+Long before the boys appeared in sight, their voices rang through the
+canyon in a chorus that woke the echoes, and presently they came into
+view, bearing two quarters and a saddle of freshly killed mutton,
+hanging from a leafy branch swung between Jack's sturdy shoulder and
+Geoff's.
+
+'A splendid "still hunt" this morning, Aunt Truth!' exclaimed Jack.
+'Game plenty and not too shy, dogs in prime condition, hunters ditto.
+Behold the result!'
+
+The girls could scarcely tell whether or no Laura was offended at
+Aunt Truth's unexpected little lecture.  She did not appear quite as
+unrestrained as usual, but as everybody was engaged in the
+preparations for Elsie's welcome there was a general atmosphere of
+hilarity and confusion, so that no awkwardness was possible.
+
+The tool-shop resounded with blows of hammer and steel.  Dicky was
+under everybody's feet, and his 'seven or ten frogs,' together with
+his unrivalled collection of horned toads, were continually escaping
+from their tin pails and boxes in the various tents, and everybody
+was obliged to join in the search to recover and re-incarcerate them,
+in order to keep the peace.
+
+Hop Yet was making a gold and silver cake, with 'Elsie' in pink
+letters on chocolate frosting.  Philip had pitched the new tent so
+that in one corner there was a slender manzanita-tree which had been
+cropped for some purpose or other.  He had nailed a cross-piece on
+this, so that it resembled the letter T, and was now laboriously
+boring holes and fitting in pegs, that Elsie might have a sort of
+closet behind her bed.
+
+As for the rustic furniture, the girls and boys declared it to be too
+beautiful for words.  They stood in circles about it and admired it
+without reserve, each claiming that his own special piece of work was
+the gem of the collection.  The sunlight shining through the grey and
+green tints of the tent was voted perfection, Philip's closet a
+miracle of ingenuity, the green and white straw matting an
+inspiration.
+
+The looking-glass had been mounted on a packing-box, and converted by
+Laura into a dressing-table that rivalled Mrs. Pinkerton's; for green
+tarlatan and white mosquito-netting had been so skilfully combined
+that the traditional mermaid might have been glad to make her toilet
+there 'with a comb and a glass in her hand.'  The rest of the green
+and white gauzy stuff had been looped from the corners of the tent to
+the centre of the roof-piece, and delicate tendrils of wild clematis
+climbed here and there as if it were growing, its roots plunged in
+cunningly hidden bottles of water.  Bell had gone about with pieces
+of awning cloth and green braid, and stitched an elaborate system of
+pockets on the inside of the tent wherever they would not be too
+prominent.  There were tiny pockets for needle-work, thimbles, and
+scissors, medium-sized pockets for soap and combs and brushes, bigger
+pockets for shoes and slippers and stockings, and mammoth pockets for
+anything else that Elsie might ordain to put in a pocket.
+
+By four o'clock in the afternoon Margery had used her clever fingers
+to such purpose that a white silesia flag, worked with the camp name,
+floated from the tip top of the front entrance to the tent.  The
+ceremony of raising the flag was attended with much enthusiasm, and
+its accomplishment greeted by a deafening cheer from the entire
+party.
+
+'Unless one wants Paradise,' sighed Margery, 'who wouldn't be
+contented with dear Camp Chaparral?'
+
+'Who would live in a house, any way?' exclaimed Philip.  'Sniff this
+air, and look up at that sky!'
+
+'And this is what they call "roughing it," in Santa Barbara,' quoth
+Dr. Winship.  'Why, you youngsters have made that tent fit for the
+occupancy of a society belle.'
+
+'Now, let's organise for reception!' cried Geoffrey.  'Assemble, good
+people!  Come over here, Aunt Truth!  I will take the chair myself,
+since I don't happen to see anybody who would fill it with more
+dignity.'
+
+'I am going to mount my broncho and go out on the road to meet my
+beloved family,' said Jack, sauntering up to the impromptu council-
+chamber.
+
+'How can you tell when they will arrive?' asked Mrs. Winship.
+
+'I can make a pretty good guess.  They'll probably start from Tacitas
+as early as eight or nine o'clock, if Elsie is well.  Let's see:
+it's about twenty-five miles, isn't it, Uncle Doc?  Say twenty-three
+to the place where they turn off the main road.  Well, I'll take a
+bit of lunch, ride out ten or twelve miles, hitch my horse in the
+shade, and wait.'
+
+'Very well,' said Geoffrey.  'It is not usual for committees to
+appoint themselves, but as you are a near relative of our
+distinguished guests we will grant you special consideration and
+order you to the front.  Ladies and gentlemen, passing over the
+slight informality of the nomination, all in favour of appointing Mr.
+John Howard Envoy Extraordinary please manifest it by the usual
+sign.'
+
+Six persons yelled 'Ay,' four raised the right hand, and one stood
+up.
+
+'There seems to be a slight difference of opinion as to the usual
+sign.  All right.--Contrary minded!'
+
+'No!' shouted Polly, at the top of her lungs.
+
+'It is a unanimous vote,' said Geoffrey, crushingly, bringing down
+his fist as an imaginary gavel with incredible force and dignity.
+'Dr. and Mrs. Winship, will you oblige the Chair by acting as a
+special Reception Committee?'
+
+'Certainly,' responded the doctor, smilingly.  'Will the Chair kindly
+outline the general policy of the committee?'
+
+'Hm-m-m!  Yes, certainly--of course.  The Chair suggests that the
+Reception Committee--well, that they stay at home and--receive the
+guests,--yes, that will do very nicely.  All-in-favour-and-so-forth-
+it-is-a-vote-and-so-ordered.  Secretary will please spread a copy on
+the minutes.'  Gavel.
+
+'I rise to a point of order,' said Jack, sagely.  'There is no
+secretary and there are no minutes.'
+
+'Mere form,' said the Chair; 'sit down; there will be minutes in a
+minute,--got to do some more things first; that will do, SIT DOWN.
+Will the Misses Burton and Messrs. Burton and Noble kindly act as
+Committee on Decoration?'
+
+'Where's the Committee on Music, and Refreshments, and Olympian
+Games, and all that sort of thing?' interrupted Polly, who had not
+the slightest conception of parliamentary etiquette; 'and why don't
+you hurry up and put me on something?'
+
+'If Miss Oliver refuses to bridle her tongue, and persists in
+interrupting the business of the meeting, the Chair will be obliged
+to remove her,' said Geoffrey, with chilling emphasis.
+
+Polly rose again, undaunted.  'I would respectfully ask the Chair,
+who put him in the chair, any way?'
+
+'Question!' roared Philip.
+
+'Second the motion!' shrieked Bell, that being the only parliamentary
+expression she knew.
+
+'Order!' cried Geoffrey in stentorian accents.  'I will adjourn the
+meeting and clear the court-room unless there is order.'
+
+'Do!' remarked Polly, encouragingly.  'I will rise again, like
+Phoebus, from my ashes, to say that--'
+
+Here Jack sprang to his feet.  'I would suggest to the Chair that the
+last speaker amend her motion by substituting the word "Phoenix" for
+"Phoebus."'
+
+'Accept the amendment,' said Polly, serenely, amidst the general
+hilarity.
+
+'Question!' called Bell, with another mighty projection of memory
+into a missionary meeting that she had once attended.
+
+'I am not aware that there is any motion before the house,' said
+Geoffrey, cuttingly.
+
+'Second the motion!'
+
+'Second the amendment!' shouted the girls.
+
+'Ladies, there IS no motion.  Will you oblige the Chair by remaining
+quiet until speech is requested?'
+
+'Move that the meeting be adjourned and another one called, with a
+new Chair!' remarked Margery, who felt that the honour of her sex was
+at stake.
+
+'Move that this motion be so ordered and spread upon the minutes, and
+a copy of it be presented to the Chairman,' suggested Philip.
+
+'Move that the copy be appropriately bound in CALF,' said Jack,
+dodging an imaginary blow.
+
+'Move that the other committees be elected by ballot,' concluded
+Scott Burton.
+
+'This is simply disgraceful!' exclaimed the Chair.  'Order! order!  I
+appoint Miss Oliver Committee on Entertainment, with a view of
+keeping her still.'
+
+This was received with particular as well as general satisfaction.
+
+'Miss Winship, we appoint you Committee on Music.'
+
+'All right.  Do you wish it to be original?'
+
+'Certainly not; we wish it to be good.'
+
+'But we only know one chorus, and that's "My Witching Dinah Snow."'
+
+'Never mind; either write new words to that tune or sing tra-la-la to
+it.  Mr. Richard Winship, the Chair appoints you Committee on
+Menagerie, and suggests that as we have proclaimed a legal holiday,
+you give your animals the freedom of the city.'
+
+'Don't know what freedom of er city means,' said Dicky, who feared
+that he was being made the butt of ridicule.
+
+'Why, we want you to allow the captives to parade in the evening,
+with torch-lights and mottoes.'
+
+'All right!' cried Dicky, kindling in an instant; ''n' Luby, 'n' the
+doat, 'n' my horn' toads, all e'cept the one that just gotted away in
+Laura's bed; but may be she'll find him to-night, so they'll be all
+there.'
+
+This was too much for the various committees, and Laura's wild shriek
+was the signal for a hasty adjournment.  A common danger restored
+peace to the assembly, and they sought the runaway in perfect
+harmony.
+
+'Well,' said Jack, when quiet was restored, 'I am going a little
+distance up the Pico Negro trail; there are some magnificent Spanish
+bayonets growing there, and if you'll let me have Pancho, Uncle Doc,
+we can bring down four of them and lash them to each of the corners
+of Elsie's tent,--they'll keep fresh several days in water, you
+know.'
+
+'Take him, certainly,' said Dr. Winship.
+
+'Do let me go with you!' pleaded Laura, with enthusiasm.  'I should
+like the walk so much.'
+
+'It's pretty rough, Laura,' objected Margery.  'If you couldn't
+endure our walk this morning, you would never get home alive from
+Pico Negro.'
+
+'Oh, that was in the heat of the day,' she answered.  'I feel equal
+to any amount of walking now, if Jack doesn't mind taking me.'
+
+'Delighted, of course, Miss Laura.  You'll be willing to carry home
+one of the trees, I suppose, in return for the pleasure of my
+society?'
+
+'Snub him severely, Laura,' cried Bell; 'we never allow him to say
+such things unreproved.'
+
+'I think he is snubbed too much already,' replied Laura, with a
+charming smile, 'and I shall see how a course of encouragement will
+affect his behaviour.'
+
+
+'That will be what I long have sought,
+And mourned because I found it not,'
+
+
+sang Jack, nonchalantly.
+
+'Oh, Laura,' remonstrated Bell, 'think twice before you encourage him
+in his dreadful ways.  We have studied him very carefully, and we
+know that the only way to live with him is to keep him in a sort of
+"pint pot" where we can hold the lid open just a little, and clap it
+down suddenly whenever he tries to spring out.'
+
+'Do not mind that young person, Miss Laura, but form your own
+impressions of my charming character.  Excuse me, please, while I put
+on a celluloid collar, and make some few changes in my toilet
+necessary to a proper appearance in your distinguished company.'
+
+'I prefer you as you are,' answered Laura, laughingly.  'Let us start
+at once.'
+
+'Do you hear that, young person?  She prefers me as I are!  Now see
+what magic power her generosity has upon me!'  And he darted into the
+tent, from which he issued in a moment with his Derby hat, a
+manzanita cane, a pocket-handkerchief tied about his throat, and a
+flower pinned on his flannel camping-shirt--a most ridiculous figure,
+since nothing seems so out of place in the woods as any suggestion of
+city costumes or customs.  Laura was in high good-humour, and looked
+exceedingly brilliant and pretty, as she always did when she was the
+central figure of any group or the bright particular star of any
+occasion.
+
+'Be home before dark,' said Dr. Winship.  'Pancho, keep a look-out
+for the pack-mule.  Truth, one of the pack-mules has disappeared.'
+
+'So?  Dumpling or Ditto?'
+
+'Ditto, curiously enough.  His name should have led him not to set an
+example, but to follow one.'
+
+
+Elsie came.
+
+Perhaps you thought that this was going to be an exciting story, and
+that something would happen to keep her at the Tacitas ranch; but
+nothing did.  Everything came to pass exactly as it was arranged, and
+Jack met his mother and sister at twelve o'clock some four miles from
+the camp, and escorted them to the gates.
+
+'Welcome' had been painted on twenty different boards or bits of
+white cloth and paper, and nailed here and there on the trees that
+lined the rough wood-road; the strains of an orchestra, formed of a
+guitar, banjo, castanets, Chinese fiddle, and tin cans, greeted them
+from a distance, but were properly allowed to die away in silence
+when the guest neared the tents.  Everything wore a new and smiling
+face, and Elsie never came more dangerously near being squeezed to
+death.
+
+Elsie, in the prettiest of gingham dresses, and her cloud of golden
+hair braided in two funny little pugs to keep it out of the dust;
+Elsie, with a wide hat that shaded her face, already a little tanned
+and burned, no longer colourless; Elsie, with no lines of pain in her
+pretty forehead, and the hollow ring gone from her voice; Elsie, who
+jumped over the wheel of the wagon, and hugged her huggers with the
+strength of a young bear!  It was too good to believe, and nobody did
+quite believe it for days.
+
+At three o'clock the happiest party in the world assembled at the
+rough dining-table under the sycamore-trees.
+
+Elsie beamed upon the feast from the high-backed manzanita chair, a
+faint colour in her cheeks, and starry prisms of light in a pair of
+eyes that had not sparkled for many a weary month.  Hop Yet smiled a
+trifle himself, wore his cap with a red button on the top to wait
+upon the table, and ministered to the hungry people with more
+interest and alacrity than he had shown since he had been dragged
+from Santa Barbara, his Joss, and his nightly game of fantan.  And
+such a dinner as he had prepared in honour of the occasion!--longer
+by four courses than usual, and each person was allowed two plates in
+the course of the meal.
+
+
+BILL OF FARE FOR HER MAJESTY'S DINNER
+
+Quail Soup.          Crackers.
+         Chili Colorado.
+(Mutton stew, in Spanish style,
+      with Chili peppers, tomatoes,
+          and onions.)
+Cold Boiled Ham.       Fried Potatoes.
+   Apples and Onions stewed together.
+Ginger-snaps.          Pickles.
+  Peaches, Apricots, and Nectarines.
+California Nuts and Raisins.
+             Coffee.
+
+
+And last of all, a surprise of Bell's, flapjacks, long teased for by
+the boys, and prepared and fried by her own hands while the merry
+party waited at table, to get them smoking hot.
+
+She came in flushed with heat and pride, the prettiest cook anybody
+ever saw, with her hair bobbed up out of the way and doing its best
+to escape, a high-necked white apron, sleeves rolled up to the elbow,
+and an insinuating spot of batter in the dimple of her left cheek.
+
+'There!' she cried, joyfully, as she deposited a heaping plate in
+front of her mother, and set the tin can of maple syrup by its side.
+'Begin on those, and I'll fry like lightning on two griddles to keep
+up with you,' and she rushed to the brush kitchen to turn her next
+instalments that had been left to brown.  Hop Yet had retired to a
+distant spot by the brook, and was washing dish-towels.  All Chinese
+cooks are alike in their horror of a woman in the kitchen; but some
+of them will unbend so far as to allow her to amuse herself so long
+as they are not required to witness the disagreeable spectacle.
+
+Bell delicately inserted the cake-turner under the curled edges of
+the flapjacks and turned them over deftly, using a little too much
+force, perhaps, in the downward stroke when she flung them back on
+the griddle.
+
+'Seems to me they come down with considerable of a thud,' she said,
+reflectively.  'I hope they're not tough, for I should never hear the
+last of it.  Guess I'll punch one with the handle of this tin shovel,
+and see how it acts.  Goodness! it's sort of--elastic.  That's funny.
+Well, perhaps it's the way they ought to look.'  Here she transferred
+the smoking mysteries to her plate, passed a bit of pork over the
+griddles, and, after ladling out eight more, flew off to the group at
+the table.
+
+'Are they good?' she was beginning to ask, when the words were frozen
+on her lips by the sight of a significant tableau.
+
+The four boys were standing on the bench that served instead of
+dining-chairs, each with a plate and a pancake on the table in front
+of them.  Jack held a hammer and spike, Scott Burton a hatchet,
+Geoffrey a saw, and Philip a rifle.  Bell was nothing if not
+intuitive.  No elaborate explanations ever were needed to show her a
+fact.  Without a word she flung the plate of flapjacks she held as
+far into a thicket as she had force to fling it, and then dropped on
+her knees.
+
+
+"'Shoot, if you must, this old grey head,
+But spare my flapjacks, sirs," she said!
+
+
+'What's the matter with them?  Tough?  I refuse to believe it.  Your
+tools are too dull,--that's all.  Use more energy!  Nothing in this
+world can be accomplished without effort.'
+
+'They're a lovely brown,' began Mrs. Winship, sympathetically.
+
+'And they have a very good flavour,' added Elsie.
+
+'Don't touch them, dearest!' cried Bell, snatching the plate from
+under Elsie's very nose.  'I won't have you made ill by my failures.
+But as for the boys, I don't care a fig for them.  Let them make
+flapjacks more to their taste, the odious things!  Polly Oliver, did
+you put in that baking powder, as I told you, while I went for the
+pork?'
+
+Polly blanched.  'Baking powder?' she faltered.
+
+'Yes, baking powder!  B-A-K-I-N-G P-O-W-D-E-R!  Do I make myself
+plain?'
+
+'Oh, baking powder, to be sure.  Well, now that you mention the
+matter, I do remember that Dicky called me away just as I was getting
+it; and now that I think of it, Elsie came just afterwards, and--and-
+-'
+
+'And that's the whole of my story, O,' sang Jack.  'I recommend the
+criminal to the mercy of the court.'
+
+'A case of too many cooks,' laughed Dr. Winship.  'Cheer up, girls;
+better fortune next time.'
+
+'There are eight more of them burning on the griddles this moment,
+Polly,' said Bell, scathingly; 'and as they are yours, not mine, I
+advise you to throw them in the brook, with the rest of the batter,
+so that Hop Yet won't know that there has been a failure.'
+
+'Some people blight everything they touch,' sighed Polly, gloomily,
+as she departed for the kitchen.
+
+
+'But when I lie in the green kirkyard -
+
+
+'Oh, Polly, dear,' interrupted Margery, 'that apology will not serve
+any longer; you've used it too often.'
+
+'This is going to be entirely different,' continued Polly,
+tragically.
+
+
+'But when I lie in the green kirkyard,
+   With the mould upon my breasts
+Say not that she made flapjacks well,
+   Only, she did her best.'
+
+
+'We promise!' cried Bell.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII:  POLLY'S BIRTHDAY:  FIRST HALF
+IN WHICH SHE REJOICES AT THE MERE FACT OF HER EXISTENCE.
+
+
+
+'"O frabjous day!  Calooh!  Callay!"
+He chortled in his joy.'
+
+
+Polly's birthday dawned auspiciously.  At six o'clock she was kissed
+out of a sound sleep by Bell and Margery, and the three girls slipped
+on their wrappers, and prepared to run through the trees for a
+morning plunge in Mirror Pool.  Although it was August there was
+still water enough in Minnehaha Brook to give one a refreshing dip.
+Mirror Pool was a quarter of a mile distant and well guarded with
+rocks and deep hidden in trees; but a little pathway had been made to
+the water's edge, and thus the girls had easy access to what they
+called The Mermaid's Bath.  A bay-tree was adorned with a little
+redwood sign, which bore a picture of a mermaid, drawn by Margery,
+and below the name these lines in rustic letters:-
+
+
+   'A hidden brook,
+That to the sleeping woods all night
+Singeth a quiet tune.'
+
+
+Laura had not lived long enough in the woods to enjoy these cold
+plunges; and, as her ideal was a marble tub, with scented water, and
+a French maid to apply the same with a velvet sponge, it is not much
+wonder.  She insisted that, though it was doubtless a very romantic
+proceeding, the bottom and sides of the natural tub were quite too
+rocky and rough for her taste, and that she should be in constant
+terror of snakes curling round her toes.
+
+'I've a great mind to wake Laura, just for once,' said Bell, opening
+the tent door.  'There never was such a morning!  (I believe I've
+said that regularly every day; but I simply never can get used to
+it.)  There must have been a wonderful sunrise, dears, for the glow
+hasn't faded yet.  Not a bit of morning fog--that's good for Elsie.
+And what a lovely day for a birthday!  Did they use to give you
+anything like this in Vermont, Polly?'
+
+'Hardly,' said Polly, peering over Bell's shoulder.  'Let's see.
+What did they give us in Vermont this month?  Why, I can't think of
+anything but dog-days, hot nights, and hay fever; but that sounds
+ungrateful.  Why, Geoff's up already!  There's Elsie's bunch of
+vines, and twigs, and pretty things hanging on her tent-door.  He's
+been off on horseback.  Just my luck to have him get up first.  Jack
+always does, you know; and last night I sewed up the tent-opening
+with carpet-thread, good and tight, overhand--stitches I wouldn't be
+ashamed of at a sewing-school.'
+
+'Oh you naughty girl!' laughed Bell.  'The boys could rip it open
+with a knife in half the time it took you to sew it.'
+
+'Certainly.  I didn't mean to keep them sewed up all day; but I
+thought I'd like Jack to remember me the first thing this morning.'
+
+'Girls,' whispered Margery, excitedly, 'don't stand there mooning--or
+sunning--for ever!  I thought there was a gopher in this tent last
+night.  I heard something scratching, and I thought it was the dog
+outside; but just look at these two holes almost under Laura's
+pillow!'
+
+'Let's fill them up, cover them over--anything!' gasped Bell.  'Laura
+will never sleep here another night if she sees them.'
+
+'Nobody insured Laura against gophers,' said Polly.  'She must take
+the fortunes of war.'
+
+'I wouldn't wake her,' said Margery.  'She didn't sleep well, and her
+face is flushed.  Come, or we shall be late for breakfast.'
+
+When they returned, fresh and rosy, from their bath, there was a stir
+of life in all the tents.  Pancho had come from the stage-station
+with mail; an odour of breakfast issued from the kitchen, where Hop
+Yet was humming a fragment of Chinese song, that ran something like
+this,--not loud, but unearthly enough, as Bell used to say, to spoil
+almost any cooking:-
+
+[Music follows]
+Fong fong mongmong tiu he sun yi-u
+sow chong how ki-u me yun tan-tar che ku choi song!
+
+
+Dicky was abroad, radiant in a new suit of clothes, and Elsie pushed
+her golden head out between the curtains, and proclaimed herself
+strong enough for a wrestling-match with any boy or man about the
+camp.
+
+But they found Laura sitting on the edge of her straw bed, directly
+over the concealed gopher-holes, a mirror in her hand and an
+expression of abject misery on her countenance.
+
+'What's the matter?' cried the girls in one breath.  But they needed
+no answer, as she turned her face towards the light, for it was
+plainly a case of poison-oak--one eye almost closed, and the cheek
+scarlet and swollen.
+
+'Where do you suppose you got it?' asked Bell.
+
+'Oh, I don't know.  It's everywhere; so I don't see how I ever hoped
+to escape it.  Yet I've worn gloves every minute.  I think I must
+have touched it when I went up the mountain trail with Jack.  I'm a
+perfect fright already, and I suppose it has only begun.'
+
+'Is it very painful?' asked Polly, sympathetically.  'Oh, you do look
+so funny, I can hardly help laughing, but I'm as sorry as I can be.'
+
+'I should expect you to laugh--you generally do,' retorted Laura.
+'No, it's not painful yet; but I don't care about that--it's looking
+so ridiculous.  I wonder if Dr. Winship could send me home.  I wish
+now that I had gone with Scott, for I can't be penned up in this tent
+a week.'
+
+'Oh, it won't hurt you to go out,' said Bell, 'and you can lie in the
+sitting-room.  Just wait, and let mamma try and cure you.  She's a
+famous doctor.'  And Bell finished dressing hurriedly, and went to
+her mother's tent, while Polly and Margery smoothed the bed with a
+furtive kick of straw over the offending gopher-holes, and hung a
+dark shawl so as to shield Laura's eyes.
+
+Aunt Truth entered speedily, with a family medical guide under one
+arm, and a box of remedies under the other.
+
+'The doctor has told me just what to do, and he will see you after
+breakfast himself.  It doesn't look so very bad a case, dear; don't
+run about in the sun for a day or two, and we'll bring you out all
+right.  The doctor has had us all under treatment at some time or
+other, because of that troublesome little plant.'
+
+'I don't want to get up to breakfast,' moaned Laura.
+
+'Just as you like.  But it is Polly's birthday, you know (many happy
+returns, my sweet Pollykins), and there are great preparations going
+on.'
+
+'I can't help it, Mrs. Winship.  The boys would make fun of my looks;
+and I shouldn't blame them.'
+
+'Appear as the Veiled Lady,' suggested Margery, as Mrs. Winship went
+out.
+
+'I won't come, and that's the end of it,' said Laura.  'Perhaps if I
+bathe my face all the morning I can come to dinner.'
+
+After breakfast was cleared away, Hop Yet and Mrs. Howard's little
+China boy Gin were given a half-holiday, and allowed to go to a--
+neighbouring ranch to see a 'flend' of Hop Yet's; for it was a part
+of the birthday scheme that Bell and Geoffrey should cook the
+festival dinner.
+
+Jack was so delighted at the failure of Polly's scheme to sew him in
+his tent, that he simply radiated amiability, and spent the whole
+morning helping Elsie and Margery with a set of elaborate dinner-
+cards, executed on half-sheets of note-paper.
+
+The dinner itself was a grand success.  Half of the cards bore a
+caricature of Polly in the shape of a parrot, with the inscription
+'Polly want a cracker?'  The rest were adorned with pretty sketches
+of her in her camping-dress, a kettle in one hand, and underneath,
+
+
+'Polly, put the kettle on,
+We'll all have tea.'
+
+
+This was the bill of fare arranged by Bell and Geoffrey, and written
+on the reverse side of the dinner-cards
+
+
+DINNER A LA MOTHER GOOSE.
+CAMP CHAPARRAL.
+August 15, 18-.
+
+'Come with a whoop, come with a call;
+Come with a good will, or not at all.'
+
+'VICTUALS AND DRINK.'
+
+BEAN SOUP.
+'She gave them some broth, she gave them some bread.'
+SALT CODFISH.
+'You shall have a fishy
+In a little dishy.'
+ROAST MUTTON A LA VENISON.
+'Dear sensibility, O la!
+I heard a little lamb cry ba-a!'
+POTATOES IN JACKETS.
+'The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker,
+All jumped out of a roasted potato.'
+STEWED BEANS.
+'You, nor I, nor nobody knows,
+Where oats, peas, beans, and barley grows.'
+CHICKEN AND BEEF SANDWICHES.
+'Hickety, pickety, my pretty hen
+Laid good eggs for gentlemen.'
+Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief,
+Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef.'
+LEMON PIE.
+'A pie sat on a pear-tree.'
+PLUM TARTS.
+'The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
+All on a summer's day.'
+FRUIT, NUTS, AND RAISINS.
+'You shall have an apple,
+You shall have a plum.'
+'I had a little nut-tree, nothing would it bear
+But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear.'
+BREAD AND CHEESE.
+'When I was a bachelor I lived by myself,
+And all the bread and cheese I got I put upon the shelf.'
+COFFEE AND LEMONADE.
+'One, two, three, how good you be!
+I love coffee and Billy loves tea.'
+'Oranges and lemons,
+Says the bell of St. Clemen's.'
+
+'What they ate I can't tell,
+But 'tis known very well
+That none of the party grew fat.'
+
+
+Bell and Geoff took turns at 'dishing up' in the kitchen, and sat
+down at the table between whiles; and they barely escaped being
+mobbed when they omitted one or two dishes on the programme, and
+confessed that they had been put on principally for the 'style' of
+the thing,--a very poor excuse to a company of people who have made
+up their mouths for all the delicacies of the season.
+
+Jack was head waiter, and having donned a clean white blouse of Hop
+Yet's and his best cap with the red button, from which dangled a
+hastily improvised queue of black worsted, he proceeded to convulse
+everybody with his Mongolian antics.  These consisted of most
+informal remarks in clever pigeon English, and snatches of Chinese
+melody, rendered from time to time as he carried dishes into the
+kitchen.  Elsie laughed until she cried, and Laura sat in the
+shadiest corner, her head artistically swathed in white tarlatan.
+
+Polly occupied the seat of honour at the end of the table opposite
+Dr. Winship, and was happier than a queen.  She wore her new green
+cambric, with a bunch of leaves at her belt.  She was sun-burned, but
+the freckles seemed to have disappeared mysteriously from her nose,
+and almost any one would have admired the rosy skin, the dancing
+eyes, and the graceful little auburn head, 'sunning over with curls.'
+
+When the last bit of dessert had been disposed of, and Dicky had gone
+to sleep in his mother's lap, like an infant boa-constrictor after a
+hearty meal, the presentation of gifts and reading of poems took
+place; and Polly had to be on the alert to answer all the nonsensical
+jokes that were aimed at her.
+
+Finally, Bell crowned the occasion by producing a song of Miss
+Mulock's, which had come in the morning mail from some girl friend of
+Polly's in the East, who had discovered that Polly's name had
+appeared in poetry and song without her knowledge, and who thought
+she might be interested to hear the composition.  With the aid of
+Bell's guitar and Jack's banjo the girls and boys soon caught the
+pretty air, and sung it in chorus.
+
+1.  Pretty Pol-ly Ol-i-ver, will you be my own?
+Pret-ty Pol-ly Ol-i-ver, as cold as a
+stone; But my love has grown warm-er as
+cold-er you've grown, O Pret-ty Pol-ly
+Ol-i-ver, will you be my own?
+
+2.  Pret-ty Pol-ly Ol-i-ver, I love you so dear!
+Pret-ty Pol-ly Ol-i-ver, my hope and my
+fear; I've wait-ed for you, sweet-heart, this
+many a long year; For Pret-ty Pol-ly
+Ol-i-ver, I've loved you so dear!
+
+3.  Pret-ty Pol-ly Ol-i-ver, I'll bid you good bye:
+Pret-ty Pol-ly Ol-i-ver, for you I'll not
+die; You'll nev-er get a tru-er true
+lov-er than I, So Pret-ty Pol-ly
+Ol-i-ver, good-bye, love, good-bye!
+
+
+At the end, Dr. Winship raised his glass of lemonade, and proposed to
+drink Miss Oliver's health.  This was done with enthusiasm, and
+Geoffrey immediately cried, 'Speech, speech!'
+
+'I can't,' said Polly, blushing furiously.
+
+'Speech!' sung Jack and Philip vociferously, pounding on the table
+with knife-handles to increase the furore.
+
+'Speech!' demanded the genial doctor, going over to the majority, and
+smiling encouragingly at Polly, who was pushed to her feet before she
+knew very well what she was doing.  'Oh, if Laura were not looking at
+me,' she thought, 'I'd just like to speak right out, and tell them a
+little bit of what is in my heart.  I don't care--I will!'
+
+'I know you are all in fun,' she said, looking bravely into the good
+doctor's eyes, 'and of course no one could make a proper speech with
+Jack grinning like a Cheshire cat, but I can't help telling you that
+this is the happiest summer and the happiest birthday of my whole
+life, and that I scarcely remember nowadays that I have no father and
+no brothers and sisters, for I have never been alone or unhappy since
+you took me in among you and Bell chose me for her friend; and I
+think that if you knew how grateful I am for my beautiful summer,
+dear Dr. Paul and Aunt Truth, you would be glad that you gave it to
+me, and I love you all, dearly, dearly, dearly!'  Whereupon the
+impulsive little creature finished her maiden speech by dashing round
+the table and giving Mrs. Winship one of her 'bear hugs,' at which
+everybody laughed and rose from the table.
+
+Laura Burton, who was thoroughly out of conceit with the world, and
+who was never quite happy when other people seemed for the moment to
+be preferred to herself, thought this burst of affection decidedly
+theatrical, but she did not know of any one to whom she could confine
+her opinions just then; indeed, she felt too depressed and out of
+sorts to join in the general hilarity.
+
+Dinner being over, Dr. Paul and the boys took the children and
+sauntered up the canyon for a lazy afternoon with their books.  Elsie
+went to sleep in the new hammock that the doctor had hung in the
+sycamores back of the girls' sleeping-tent, and Mrs. Winship lay down
+for her afternoon nap.  Pancho saddled the horses for Bell and
+Margery, who went for a gallop.  Polly climbed into the sky-parlour
+to write a long letter to her mother, and Laura was left to solitude
+in the sleeping-tent.  Now everybody knows that a tent at midday is
+not a particularly pleasant spot, and after many a groan at the glare
+of the sun, which could not be tempered by any system of shawls, and
+moans at the gopher-holes which she discovered while searching for
+her ear-ring, and repeated consultations with the hand-glass at brief
+intervals, during which she convinced herself that she looked worse
+every minute,--she finally discovered a series of alarming new spots
+on her neck and chin.  She felt then that camping out was a complete
+failure, and that she would be taken home forthwith if it could be
+managed, since she saw nothing before her but day after day of close
+confinement and unattractive personal appearance.  'It's just my
+luck!' she grumbled, as she twisted up her hair and made herself as
+presentable as possible under the trying circumstances.  'I don't
+think I ever had a becoming or an interesting illness.  The chicken-
+pox, mumps, and sties on my eyes--that's the sort of thing I have!'
+
+'I feel much worse, Mrs. Winship,' she said, going into the sitting-
+room tent and waking Aunt Truth from a peaceful snooze.  'If you can
+spare Pancho over night, I really think I must trouble you to send
+Anne and me home at once.  I feel as if I wanted to go to bed in a
+dark room, and I shall only be a bother if I stay.'
+
+'Why, my child, I'm sorry to have you go off with your visit
+unfinished.  You know we don't mind any amount of trouble, if we can
+make you comfortable.'
+
+'You are very kind, but indeed I'd rather go.'
+
+'I hardly dare let you start in the hot sun--without consulting the
+doctor, and everybody is away except Polly; they will feel badly not
+to say good-bye.'
+
+'It is nearly three o'clock now, so the worst of the sun is over, and
+we shall be at the ranch by eight this evening.  I feel too ill to
+say good-bye, any way, and we shall meet Bell and Margery somewhere
+on the road, for they were going to the milk ranch.'
+
+'Very well, my dear, if you've made up your mind I must yield,'
+replied Mrs. Winship, getting up and smoothing her hair.  'I don't
+dare wake Elsie, she has had such an exciting day; but I'll call
+Polly to help you pack, and then tell Pancho to find Anne and harness
+the team.  While he is doing that, I'll get you a little lunch to
+take with you and write a note to your mother.  Perhaps you can come
+again before we break camp, but I'm sorry to send you home in such a
+sad plight.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII:  POLLY'S BIRTHDAY:  SECOND HALF
+IN WHICH SHE WISHES SEE HAD NEVER BEEN BORN.
+
+
+
+'From Hebrew wit the maxim sprung,
+Though feet should slip, ne'er let the tongue.
+
+
+Polly came at once to the tent, where she found Laura getting her
+belongings together.
+
+'Why, Laura, it seems too bad you should go off so suddenly.  What
+can I do to help you?'
+
+The very spirit of evil entered Laura's heart as she looked at Polly,
+so fresh and pretty and radiant, with her dimples dancing in and out,
+her hair ruffled with the effort of literary composition, and the
+glow of the day's happiness still shining in her eyes.  She felt as
+if Polly was 'glad inside' that she was poisoned; she felt sure she
+was internally jumping for joy at her departure; and, above all, she
+felt that Polly was entirely too conceited over the attention she had
+received that day, and needed to be 'taken down a peg or two.'
+
+'Red-haired, stuck-up, saucy thing,' she thought, 'how I should like
+to give her a piece of my mind before I leave this place, if I only
+dared!'
+
+'I don't need any help, thank you,' she said aloud, in her iciest
+manner.
+
+'But it will only make your head ache to bend over and tug away at
+that valise, and I'll be only too glad to do it.'
+
+'I've no doubt of that,' responded Laura, meaningly.  'It is useless
+for you to make any show of regret over my going, for I know
+perfectly well that you are glad to get me out of the way.'
+
+'Why, Laura, what do you mean?' exclaimed Polly, completely dazed at
+this bombshell of candour.
+
+'I mean what I say; and I should have said it before if I could ever
+have found a chance.  Because I didn't mention it at the time, you
+needn't suppose I've forgotten your getting me into trouble with Mrs.
+Winship, the day before the Howards came.'
+
+'That was not my fault,' said Polly, hotly.  'I didn't speak any
+louder than the other girls, and I didn't know Aunt Truth objected to
+Mrs. Pinkerton, and I didn't know she was anywhere near.'
+
+'You roared like the bull of Bashan--that's what you did.  Perhaps
+you can't help your voice, but anybody in the canyon could have heard
+you; and Mrs. Winship hasn't been the same to me since, and the boys
+don't take the slightest notice of me lately.'
+
+'You are entirely mistaken, Laura.  Dr. and Mrs. Winship are just as
+lovely and cordial to you as they are to everybody else, and the boys
+do not feel well enough acquainted with you to "frolic" with you as
+they do with us.'
+
+'It isn't so, but you are not sensitive enough to see it; and I
+should never have been poisoned if it hadn't been for you!'
+
+'Oh, go on, do!' said Polly, beginning to lose her self-control,
+which was never very great.  'I didn't know I was a Lucrezia Borgia
+in disguise.  How did I poison you, pray?'
+
+'I didn't say you poisoned me; but you made me so uncomfortable that
+day, bringing down Mrs. Winship's lecture on my head and getting my
+best friend abused, that I was glad to get away from the camp, and
+went out with Jack for that reason when I was too tired and warm; and
+you are always trying to cut me out with Bell and the boys.'
+
+'That's a perfectly--jet black--fib!' cried Polly, who was now
+thoroughly angry; 'and I don't think it is very polite of you to
+attack the whole party, and say they haven't been nice to you, when
+they've done everything in the world!'
+
+'It isn't your party any more than mine, is it?  And if I don't know
+how to be polite, I certainly shan't ask YOU for instruction; for I
+must know as much about the manners of good society as you do,
+inasmuch as I have certainly seen more of it!'
+
+Polly sank into a camp-chair, too stunned for a moment to reply,
+while Laura, who had gone quite beyond the point where she knew or
+cared what she said, went on with a rush of words:  'I mean to tell
+you, now that I am started, that anybody who isn't blind can see why
+you toady to the Winships, who have money and social position, and
+why you are so anxious to keep everybody else from getting into their
+good graces; but they are so partial to you that they have given you
+an entirely false idea of yourself; and you might as well know that
+unless you keep yourself a little more in the background, and grow a
+little less bold and affected and independent, other people will not
+be quite as ready as the Winships to make a pet of a girl whose
+mother keeps a boarding-house.'
+
+Poor Laura!  It was no sooner said than she regretted it--a little,
+not much.  But poor Polly!  Where was her good angel then?  Why could
+she not have treated this thrust with the silence and contempt it
+deserved?  But how could Laura have detected and probed the most
+sensitive spot in the girl's nature?  She lost all command of
+herself.  Her rage absolutely frightened her, for it made her deaf
+and blind to all considerations of propriety and self-respect, and
+for a moment she was only conscious of the wild desire to strike--
+yes, even to kill--the person who had so insulted all that was
+dearest to her.
+
+'Don't dare to say another word!' she panted, with such flaming
+cheeks and such flashing eyes that Laura involuntarily retreated
+towards the door, half afraid of the tempest her words had evoked.
+'Don't dare to say another word, or I don't know what I may do!  Yes,
+I am glad you are going, and everybody will be glad, and the sooner
+you go the better!  You've made everybody miserable ever since you
+came, with your jealousy and your gossip and your fine-lady airs; and
+if Aunt Truth hadn't loved your mother, and if we were mean enough to
+tell tales, we would have repeated some of your disagreeable speeches
+long ago.  How can you dare to say I love the Winships for anything
+but themselves?  And if you had ever seen my darling mother, you
+never could have called her a boarding-house keeper, you cruel--'
+
+Oh, but the dashing torrent of angry words stopped at the mere
+mention of her mother.  The word recalled her to herself, but too
+late.  It woke in her memory the clasp of her mother's arms, the
+sound of the sweet, tired voice:  'Only two of us against the big
+world, Polly--you and I.  Be brave, little daughter, brave and
+patient.'  Oh, how impatient and cowardly she had been!  Would she
+never learn to be good?  The better impulses rushed back into her
+heart, and crowded out the bad ones so quickly that in another moment
+she would have flung herself at Laura's feet, and implored her
+forgiveness merely to gain again her own self-respect and her
+mother's approval; but there was no time for repentance (there isn't
+sometimes), for the clatter of wheels announced Pancho's approach
+with the team, and Mrs. Winship and Anne Burton came into view,
+walking rapidly towards the tent.
+
+Laura was a good deal disconcerted at their ill-timed appearance, but
+reflected rapidly that if Mrs. Winship had overheard anything, it was
+probably Polly's last speech, in which case that young person would
+seem to be more in fault than herself, so stepping out of the tent
+she met Mrs. Winship and kissed her good-bye.
+
+Little Anne ran on and jumped into the wagon, with all a child's joy
+at the prospect of going anywhere.  Polly's back was turned, but she
+could not disappear entirely within the tent without causing Mrs.
+Winship surprise; and she went through a lifetime of misery and self-
+reproach in that minute of shame and fear, when she dared neither to
+advance nor retreat.
+
+'I don't quite like to let you go alone, Laura, without consulting
+the doctor, and I can't find him,' said Mrs. Winship.  'Why, you are
+nervous and trembling!  Hadn't you better wait until to-morrow?'
+
+'No, thank you, Mrs. Winship.  I am all ready now, and would prefer
+to go.  I think perhaps I have stayed quite long enough, as Polly has
+just told me that everybody is glad to see the last of me, and that
+I've made you all miserable since I came.
+
+This was the climax to Polly's misery; for she was already so
+overcome by the thought of her rudeness that she was on the point of
+begging Laura's pardon for that particular speech then and there, and
+she had only to hear her exact words repeated to feel how they would
+sound in Mrs. Winship's ears.
+
+Mrs. Winship was so entirely taken aback by Laura's remark, that she
+could only ejaculate, 'Polly--said--that!  What do you mean?'
+
+'Oh, I am quite ready to think she said more than she intended, but
+those were her words.'
+
+'Polly!'
+
+Polly turned.  Alas! it was plain enough that this was no false
+accusation.  Her downcast eyes, flushed, tear-stained cheeks,
+quivering lips, and the silent shame of her whole figure, spoke too
+clearly.
+
+'Can it be possible, Polly, that you spoke in such a way to a guest
+who was about to leave my house?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+The word was wrung from Polly's trembling lips.  What could she say
+but 'Yes,'--it was true,--and how could she repeat the taunts that
+had provoked her to retort?  They were not a sufficient excuse; and
+for that matter, nothing could be a sufficient excuse for her
+language.  Now that she was confronted with her own fault, Laura's
+seemed so small beside it that she would have been ashamed to offer
+it as any justification.
+
+Mrs. Winship grew pale, and for a moment was quite at a loss as to
+the treatment of such a situation.
+
+'Don't say any more about it, Mrs. Winship,' said Laura; 'we were
+both angry, or we should never have forgotten ourselves, and I shall
+think no more of it.'  Laura spoke with such an air of modest virtue,
+and seemed so ready to forgive and forget, that Polly in her silence
+and confusion appeared worse than ever.
+
+'But I want you to remember that you are my guest, not Pauline's;
+that I asked you to come and ask you to remain.  I cannot allow you
+to go simply because you do not chance to be a favourite with another
+of my guests.'  (Oh! the pang these words gave Polly's faulty, tender
+little heart!)
+
+'I am only going because I feel so ill,--not a bit because of what
+Polly said; I was in the wrong, too, perhaps, but I promise not to
+let anybody nor anything make me quarrel when I visit you again.
+Good-bye!' and Laura stepped into the wagon.
+
+'I trust you will not mention this to your mother, since I hope it is
+the only unpleasant incident of your visit; and it is no fault of
+mine that you go away with an unhappy impression of our hospitality.'
+Here Mrs. Winship reached up and kissed little Anne, and as the
+horses were restive, and no one seemed to have anything further to
+say, Pancho drove off.
+
+'I don't care to talk with you any more at present, Polly,' said Mrs.
+Winship.  'I am too hurt and too indignant to speak of your conduct
+quietly.  I know the struggles you have with your temper, and I am
+quite willing to sympathise with you even when you do not come off
+victorious; but this is something quite different.  I can't conceive
+how any amount of provocation or dislike could have led you into such
+disloyalty to me'; and with this she walked away.
+
+Polly staggered into a little play-room tent of Dicky's, where she
+knew that she could be alone, pinned the curtains together so that no
+one could peep in, and threw herself down upon the long cushioned
+seat where Dicky was wont to take his afternoon nap.  There, in grief
+and despair, she sobbed the afternoon through, dreading to be
+disturbed and dreading to be questioned.
+
+'My beautiful birthday spoiled,' she moaned, 'and all my own fault!
+I was so happy this morning, but now was ever anybody so miserable as
+I?  And even if I tell Aunt Truth what Laura said, she will think it
+no excuse, and it isn't!'
+
+As it neared supper-time she made an opening in the back of the tent,
+and after long watching caught sight of Gin on his way to the brook
+for water, signalled him, and gave him this despairing little note
+for Mrs. Winship:-
+
+
+Dear Aunt Truth,--I don't ask you to forgive me--I don't deserve to
+be forgiven--but I ask you to do me just one more of your dear little
+kindnesses.  Let me stay alone in Dicky's tent till morning, and
+please don't let any one come near me.  You can tell everybody the
+whole story to-night, if you think best, though I should be glad if
+only Dr. Paul and Bell need know; but I do not mind anything after
+displeasing you--nothing can be so bad as that.  Perhaps you think I
+ought to come out and confess it to them myself, as a punishment; but
+oh, Aunt Truth, I am punishing myself in here alone worse than any
+one else can do it.  I will go back to Santa Barbara any time that
+you can send me to the stage station, and I will never ask you to
+love me again until I have learned how to control my temper.  Your
+wretched, wretched
+
+POLLY.
+
+P.S.--I remember that it is my birthday, and all that you have done
+for me, to-day and all the other days.  It looks as if I were
+ungrateful, but in spite of what I did I am not.  The words just
+blazed out, and I never knew that they were going to be said till I
+heard them falling from my mouth.  It seems to me that if I ever
+atone for this I will have a slate and pencil hanging to my belt, and
+only write what I have to say.  POLLY.
+
+
+The moisture came to Mrs. Winship's eyes as she read this tear-
+stained little note.  'There's something here I don't quite
+understand,' she thought; 'and yet Polly confessed that Laura told
+the truth.  Poor child!--but she has got to learn patience and self-
+control through suffering.  However, I'll keep the matter a secret
+from everybody at present, and stand between her and my inquisitive
+brood of youngsters,' and she slipped the note into her pocket.
+
+At six o'clock the members of the family came into camp from various
+directions, and gathered about the supper-table.  All were surprised
+at Laura's sudden departure, but no one seemed especially grief-
+stricken.  Dicky announced confidentially to Philip that Laura was a
+'norful 'fraid-cat of frogs,' and Jack ventured the opinion that Miss
+Laura hadn't 'boy' enough in her for camp-life.
+
+'But where is Polly?' asked Bell, looking round the table, as she
+pinned up her riding-skirt and sat down in her usual seat.
+
+'She has a bad headache, and is lying down,' said Mrs. Winship,
+quietly; 'she'll be all right in the morning.'
+
+'Headache!' ejaculated four or five people at once, dropping their
+napkins and looking at each other in dismay.
+
+'I'll go and rub her head with Cologne,' said Margery.
+
+'Let me go and sit with her,' said Elsie.
+
+'Have you been teasing her, Jack?' asked Mrs. Howard.
+
+'Too much birthday?' asked Dr. Paul.  'Tell her we can spare almost
+anybody else better.'
+
+'Bless the child, she wants me if she is sick.  Go on with your
+suppers, I'll see to her,' and Bell rose from the table.
+
+'No, my dear, I want you all to leave her alone at present,' said
+Mrs. Winship, decidedly.  'I've put her to bed in Dicky's play-tent,
+and I want her to be quiet.  Gin has taken her some supper, and she
+needs rest.'
+
+Polly Oliver in need of rest!  What an incomprehensible statement!
+Nobody was satisfied, but there was nothing more to be said, though
+Bell and Philip exchanged glances as much as to say, 'Something is
+wrong.'
+
+Supper ended, and they gathered round the camp-fire, but nothing was
+quite as usual.  It was all very well to crack jokes, but where was a
+certain merry laugh that was wont to ring out, at the smallest
+provocation, in such an infectious way that everybody else followed
+suit?  And who was there, when Polly had the headache, to make a
+saucy speech and look down into the fire innocently, while her
+dimples did everything that was required in order to point the shaft?
+And pray what was the use of singing when there was no alto to Bell's
+treble, or of giving conundrums, since it was always Polly who
+thought of nonsensical answers better than the real ones?  And as for
+Jack, why, it was folly to shoot arrows of wit into the air when
+there was no target.  He simply stretched himself out beside Elsie,
+who was particularly quiet and snoozed peacefully, without taking any
+part in the conversation, avowing his intention to 'turn in' early.
+'Turn in' early, forsooth!  What was the matter with the boy?
+
+'It's no use,' said Bell, plaintively; 'we can't be anything but
+happy, now that we have Elsie here; but it needs only one small
+headache to show that Polly fills a long-felt want in this camp.  You
+think of her as a modest spoke in the wheel till she disappears, and
+then you find she was the hub.'
+
+'Yes,' said Margery, 'I think every one round this fire is simply
+angelic, unless I except Jack; but the fact is that Polly is--well,
+she is--Polly, and I dare any one to contradict me.'
+
+'The judgment of the court is confirmed,' said Philip.
+
+
+'And the shark said, "If you
+Don't believe it is true,
+Just look at my wisdom tooth!"'
+
+
+sang Geoffrey.
+
+'And if any one ever tells me again that she has red hair and hasn't
+good features, I should just like to show them a picture of her as
+she was to-day at the dinner-table!' exclaimed Bell.
+
+'As if anybody needed features with those dimples,' added Elsie, 'or
+would mind red hair when it was such pretty hair!'
+
+'I think a report of this conversation would go far towards curing
+Polly,' said Dr. Winship, with a smile.
+
+'And you say we can't go in there before we go to bed, mamacita?'
+whispered Bell in her mother's ear, as the boys said good-night--and
+went towards their tent.
+
+'My dear,' she answered decidedly, with a fond kiss for each of the
+girls, 'Polly herself asked me to keep everybody away.'
+
+Polly herself wanted to be alone!  Would wonders never cease?
+
+Meanwhile Dicky, who had disappeared for a moment, came back to the
+fire, his bosom heaving with grief and rage.
+
+'I went to my play-tent,' he sobbed, 'and putted my hand underneath
+the curtain and gave Polly a piece of my supper cake I saved for her-
+-not the frosted part, but the burnt part I couldn't eat--and she
+liked it and kissed my hand--and then I fought she was lonesome, and
+would like to see my littlest frog, and I told her to put out her
+hand again for a s'prise, and I squeezed him into it tight, so 't he
+wouldn't jump--and she fought it was more cake, and when she found it
+wasn't she frew my littlest frog clear away, and it got losted!'
+
+This brought a howl of mirth from everybody, and Dicky was
+instructed, while being put to bed, not to squeeze little frogs into
+people's hands in the dark, as it sometimes affected them
+unpleasantly.
+
+
+All this time Polly was lying in the tent, quite exhausted with
+crying, and made more wretched by every sound of voices wafted
+towards her.  Presently Gin appeared with her night-wrapper and
+various things for comfort sent her by the girls; and as she wearily
+undressed herself and prepared for the night, she found three little
+messages of comfort pinned on the neck and sleeves of her flannel
+gown, written in such colossal letters that she could easily read
+them by the moonlight.
+
+On the right sleeve:-
+
+
+Cheer up!  'I will never desert Mr. Micawber!'  BELL
+
+
+On the left sleeve:-
+
+
+Darling Polly,--Get well soon, or we shall all be sick in order to
+stay with you.  Lovingly, MEG.
+
+PS.--Jack said you were the LIFE OF THE CAMP!  What do you think of
+that??  M.
+
+
+On the neck:-
+
+
+Dearest,--You have always called me the Fairy Godmother, and
+pretended I could see things that other people couldn't.
+
+The boys (great stupids!) think you have the headache.  We girls can
+all see that you are in trouble, but only the Fairy Godmother KNOWS
+WHY; and though she can't make a beautiful gold coach out of this
+pumpkin, because there's something wrong about the pumpkin, yet she
+will do her best for Cinderella, and pull her out of the ashes
+somehow.
+
+ELSIE.
+
+
+Polly's tears fell fast on the dear little notes, which she kissed
+again and again, and tucked under her pillow to bring her sleep.
+'Elsie knows something,' she thought, 'but how? she knows that I'm in
+trouble and that I've done wrong, or she wouldn't have said that
+about not being able to turn a bad pumpkin into a beautiful gold
+coach; but perhaps she can get Aunt Truth to forgive me and try me
+again.  Unless she can do it, it will never come to pass, for I
+haven't the courage to ask her.  I would rather run away early in the
+morning and go home than have her look at me again as she did to-day.
+Oh! what shall I do?' and Polly went down on her knees beside the
+rough couch, and sobbed her heart out in a childish prayer for help
+and comfort.  It was just the prayer of a little child telling a
+sorrowful story; because it is when we are alone and in trouble that
+the unknown and mysterious God seems to us most like a Father, and we
+throw ourselves into the arms of His love like helpless children, and
+tell Him our secret thoughts and griefs.
+
+'Dear Father in heaven,' she sobbed, 'don't forgive me if I ought not
+to be forgiven, but please make Aunt Truth feel how sorry I am, and
+show me whether I ought to tell what made me so angry, though it's no
+excuse.  Bless and keep my darling patient little mother, and help me
+to grow more like her, and braver and stronger too, so that I can
+take care of her soon, and she needn't work hard any longer.  Please
+forgive me for hating some things in my life as much as I do, and I
+will try and like them better; but I think--yes, I know--that I am
+full of wicked pride; and oh, it seems as if I could never, never get
+over wanting to live in a pretty house, and wear pretty dresses, and
+have my mother live like Bell's and Margery's.  And oh, if Thou canst
+only forgive me for hating boarders so dreadfully, and being ashamed
+of them every minute, I will try and like them better and tell
+everybody that we take them--I will indeed; and if I can only once
+make Aunt Truth love and trust me again, I will make the boarders'
+beds and dust their rooms for ever without grumbling.  Please, dear
+Father in heaven, remember that I haven't any father to love me or to
+teach me to be good; and though mamma does her best, please help her
+to make something out of me if it can be done.  Amen.'
+
+'Truth,' said Mrs. Howard, when all was quiet about the camp, 'Elsie
+wants to see you a moment before she goes to sleep.  Will you go to
+her tent, while I play a game of cribbage with Dr. Paul?'
+
+Elsie looked like a blossom in all the beautiful greenness of her
+tent, with her yellow head coming out from above the greens and
+browns of the cretonne bed-cover for all the world like a daffodil
+pushing its way up through the mould towards the spring sunshine.
+
+'Aunt Truth,' she said softly, as Mrs. Winship sat down beside her,
+'you remember that Dr. Paul hung my hammock in a new place to-day,
+just behind the girls' sleeping-tent.  Now I know that Polly is in
+trouble, and that you are displeased with her.  What I want to ask,
+if I may, is, how much you know; for I overheard a great deal myself-
+-enough to feel that Polly deserves a hearing.'
+
+'I overheard nothing,' replied Mrs. Winship.  'All that I know Polly
+herself confessed in Laura's presence.  Polly told Laura, just as she
+was going away, that everybody would be glad to see the last of her,
+and that she had made everybody miserable from the beginning of her
+visit.  It was quite inexcusable, you know, dear, for one of my
+guests to waylay another, just as she was leaving, and make such a
+cruel speech.  I would rather anything else had happened.  I know how
+impetuous Polly is, and I can forgive the child almost anything, her
+heart is so full of love and generosity; but I cannot overlook such a
+breach of propriety as that.  Of course I have seen that Laura is not
+a favourite with any of you.  I confess she is not a very lovable
+person, and I think she has led a very unwholesome life lately and is
+sadly spoiled by it; still that is no excuse for Polly's conduct.'
+
+'No, of course it isn't,' sighed Elsie, with a little quiver of the
+lip.  'I thought I could plead a better case for Polly, but I see
+exactly how thoughtless and impolite she was; yet, if you knew
+everything, auntie, dear, you would feel a little different.  Do you
+think it was nice of Laura to repeat what Polly said right before
+her, and just as she was going away, when she knew it would make you
+uncomfortable and that you were not to blame for it?'
+
+'No, hardly.  It didn't show much tact; but girls of fifteen or
+sixteen are not always remarkable for social tact.  I excused her
+partly because she was half-sick and nervous.'
+
+'Well,' Elsie went on, 'I didn't hear the whole quarrel, so that I do
+not know how long it lasted nor who began it.  I can't help thinking
+it was Laura, though, for she's been trying her best to provoke Polly
+for the last fortnight, and until to-day she has never really
+succeeded.  I was half asleep, and heard at first only the faint
+murmur of voices, but when I was fully awake, Laura was telling Polly
+that she doted on you simply because you had money and position,
+while she had not; that you were all so partial to her that she had
+lost sight of her own deficiencies.  Then she called her bold and
+affected, and I don't know what else, and finally wound up by saying
+that nobody but the Winships would be likely to make a pet of the
+daughter of a boarding-house keeper.'
+
+'Elsie!' ejaculated Mrs. Winship; 'this grows worse and worse!  Is it
+possible that Laura Burton could be guilty of such a thought?'
+
+'I can't be mistaken.  I was too excited not to hear very clearly;
+and the moment the words were spoken I knew my poor dear's fiery
+temper would never endure that.  And it didn't; it blazed out in a
+second, but it didn't last long, for before I could get to the tent
+she had stopped herself right in the middle of a sentence; and in
+another minute I heard your voice, and crept back to the hammock,
+thinking that everything would be settled by Laura's going away.  I'd
+no idea that she would pounce on Polly and get her in disgrace, the
+very last thing, when she knew that she was responsible for the whole
+matter.  You see, auntie, that, impolite as Polly was, she only told
+Laura that we girls were glad she was going.  She didn't bring you
+in, after all; and Laura knew perfectly well that she was a welcome
+visitor, and we all treated her with the greatest politeness, though
+it's no use to say we liked her much.'
+
+'I am very sorry for the whole affair,' sighed Mrs. Winship, 'there
+is so much wrong on both sides.  Laura's remark, it is true, would
+have angered almost anybody who was not old and wise enough to see
+that it deserved only contempt; but both the girls should have had
+too much respect for themselves and for me to descend to such an
+unladylike quarrel.  However, I am only too glad to hear anything
+which makes Polly's fault less, for I love her too dearly not to
+suffer when I have to be severe with her.'
+
+'She wouldn't ask you to overlook her fault,' continued Elsie, with
+tears in her eyes.  'I know just how wretched and penitent she must
+be--Polly is always so fierce against her own faults--but what must
+be making her suffer most is the thought that she has entirely lost
+your confidence and good opinion.  Oh, I can't help thinking that God
+feels sorrier this very minute for Polly, who fights and fights
+against her temper, like a dear sunbeam trying to shine again and
+again when a cloud keeps covering it up, than He does for Laura, who
+has everything made smooth for her, and who is unhappy when her
+feathers are ruffled the least bit.'
+
+'You are right, dear, in so far that a fiery little soul like Polly's
+can, if it finds the right channels, do God's work in the world
+better than a character like Laura's, which is not courageous, nor
+strong, nor sweet enough for great service, unless it grows into
+better things through bitter or rich experiences.  Now, good-night,
+my blessed little peacemaker; sleep sweetly, for I am going into
+Polly's tent to have a good talk with her.'
+
+As Mrs. Winship dropped the curtains of Elsie's tent behind her, and
+made her way quietly through the trees, the tinkling sound of a banjo
+fell upon the still night air; and presently, as she neared Polly's
+retreat, this facetious serenade, sung by Jack's well-known voice,
+was wafted to her ears:
+
+
+'Prithee, Polly Oliver, why bide ye so still?
+Pretty Polly Oliver, we fear you are ill.
+I'm singing 'neath thy window, when night dews are chill,
+For, pretty Polly Oliver, we hear you are ill.'
+
+
+She was about to despatch Master Jack to his tent with a round
+scolding, when the last words of the song were frozen on his lips by
+the sound of a smothered sob, in place of the saucy retort he hoped
+to provoke.  The unexpected sob frightened him more than any fusilade
+of hot words, and he stole away in the darkness more crestfallen than
+he had been for many a year.
+
+Mrs. Winship, more troubled than ever, pulled apart the canvas
+curtains, and stood in the opening, silently.  The sight of the
+forlorn little figure, huddled together on the straw bed, touched her
+heart, and, when Polly started up with an eloquent cry and flew into
+her extended arms, she granted willing forgiveness, and the history
+of the afternoon was sobbed out upon her motherly shoulder.
+
+The next morning Mrs. Winship announced that Polly was better, sent
+breakfast to her tent, and by skilful generalship drove everybody
+away from the camp but Elsie, who brought Polly to the sitting-room,
+made her comfortable on the lounge, and, administering much good
+advice to Margery and Bell concerning topics to be avoided, admitted
+them one by one into her presence, so that she gradually regained her
+self-control.  And at the dinner-table a very pale Polly was present
+again, with such a white face and heavy eyes that no one could doubt
+there had been a headache, while two people, at least, knew that
+there had been a heartache as well.  The next day's mail carried the
+following letter to Laura Burton:
+
+
+CAMP CHAPARRAL, August 16, 188-.
+
+My dear Laura,--As I told you when you were leaving, I cannot well
+say how sorry I am that anything should have occurred to mar your
+pleasant remembrance of your stay with us.  That your dear mother's
+daughter should have been treated with discourtesy while she was my
+guest was very disagreeable to me; but I have learned that you were
+yourself somewhat to blame in the affair, and therefore you should
+have borne the harsh treatment you received with considerable
+patience, and perhaps have kept it quite to yourself.  ('That little
+cat told her, after all,' said Laura, when she read this.  'I didn't
+think she was that kind.')  Polly would never have confessed the
+cause of the quarrel, because she knew nothing could justify her
+language; but Elsie was lying in the hammock behind the tent and
+overheard the remark which so roused Polly's anger.  You were not
+aware, of course, how sore a spot you touched upon, or you could
+never have spoken as you did, though I well know that you were both
+too angry to reflect.  Polly is a peculiarly proud and high-spirited
+girl--proud, I confess, to a fault; but she comes, on her mother's
+side, from a long line of people who have had much to be proud of in
+the way of unblemished honesty, nobility, fine attainments, and
+splendid achievements.  Of her father's honourable services to his
+country, and his sad and untimely death, you may have heard; but you
+may not know that Mrs. Oliver's misfortunes have been very many and
+very bitter, and that the only possibility of supporting and
+educating Polly lies at present in her taking boarders, for her
+health will not admit just now of her living anywhere save in
+Southern California.  I fail to see why this is not thoroughly
+praiseworthy and respectable; but if you do not consider it quite an
+elegant occupation, I can only say that Mrs. Oliver presides over the
+table at which her 'boarders' sit with a high-bred dignity and grace
+of manner that the highest lady in the land might imitate; and that,
+when health and circumstances permit her to diminish the distance
+between herself and the great world, she and her daughter Polly, by
+reason of their birth and their culture, will find doors swinging
+wide to admit them where you and I would find it difficult to enter.
+Polly apologises sincerely for her rudeness, and will write you to
+that effect, as of course she does not know of this letter.
+
+Sincerely your friend,
+
+TRUTH WINSHIP.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX:  ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE
+
+
+
+'The time before the fire they sat,
+And shortened the delay by pleasing chat.'
+
+
+The August days had slipped away one after another, and September was
+at hand.  There was no perceptible change of weather to mark the
+advent of the new month.  The hills were a little browner, the dust a
+little deeper, the fleas a little nimbler, and the water in the brook
+a trifle lower, but otherwise Dame Nature did not concern herself
+with the change of seasons, inasmuch as she had no old dresses to get
+rid of, and no new ones to put on for a long time yet; indeed, she is
+never very fashionable in this locality, and wears very much the same
+garments throughout the year.
+
+Elsie seemed almost as strong as any of the other girls now, and
+could enter with zest into all their amusements.  The appetite of a
+young bear, the sound, dreamless sleep of a baby, and the constant
+breathing in of the pure, life-giving air had made her a new
+creature.  Mrs. Howard and Jack felt, day by day, that a burden of
+dread was being lifted from their hearts; and Mrs. Howard especially
+felt that she loved every rock and tree in the canyon.
+
+It was a charming morning, and Polly was seated at the dining-room
+table, deep in the preparation of a lesson in reading and
+pronunciation for Hop Yet.  Her forehead was creased with many
+wrinkles of thought, and she bit the end of her lead-pencil as if she
+were engaged in solving some difficult problem; but, if that were so,
+why did the dimples chase each other in and out of her cheeks in such
+a suspicious fashion?  She was a very gentle, a very sedate Polly,
+these latter days, and not only astonished her friends, but surprised
+herself, by her good behaviour, her elegant reserve of manner, her
+patience with Jack, and her abject devotion to Dicky.
+
+'I'm afraid it won't last,' she sighed to herself occasionally.  'I'm
+almost too good.  That's always the way with me--I must either be so
+bad that everybody is discouraged, or else so good that I frighten
+them.  Now I catch Bell and Elsie exchanging glances every day, as
+much as to say, "Poor Polly, she will never hold out at this rate; do
+you notice that nothing ruffles her--that she is simply angelic?"  As
+if I couldn't be angelic for a fortnight!  Why I have often done it
+for four weeks at a stretch!'
+
+Margery was in the habit of giving Hop Yet an English lesson every
+other day, as he had been very loath to leave his evening school in
+Santa Barbara and bury himself in a canyon, away from all educational
+influences; but she had deserted her post for once and gone to ride
+with Elsie, so that Polly had taken her place and was evolving an
+exercise that Hop Yet would remember to the latest day of his life.
+It looked simple enough:-
+
+1.  The grass is dry.
+2.  The fruit is ripe.
+3:  The chaparral is green.
+4.  The new road is all right.
+5.  The bay-'rum' tree is fresh and pretty.
+
+But as no Chinaman can pronounce the letter 'r,' it was laboriously
+rendered thus, when the unhappy time of the lesson came:
+
+1.  The-glass-is-dly.
+2.  The-fluit-is-lipe.
+3.  The-chap-lal-is-gleen.
+4.  The-new-load-is-all-light-ee.
+5.  The bay-lum-tlee-is-flesh-and-plitty.
+
+Finally, when she attempted to introduce the sentence, 'Around the
+rough and rugged rock the ragged rascal ran,' Hop Yet rose hurriedly,
+remarking, 'All lightee; I go no more school jus' now.  I lun get
+lunchee.'
+
+Bell came running down the path just then, and linking her arm in
+Polly's said, 'Papa has the nicest plan.  You know the boys are so
+disappointed that Colonel Jackson didn't ask them over to that rodeo
+at his cattle ranch--though a summer rodeo is only to sort out fat
+cattle to sell, and it is not very exciting; but papa promised to
+tell them all about the old-fashioned kind some night, and he has
+just remembered that to-morrow is Admission Day, September 9, so he
+proposes a real celebration round the camp-fire to amuse Elsie.  She
+doesn't know anything about California even as it is now, and none of
+us know what it was in the old days.  Don't you think it will be
+fun?'
+
+'Perfectly splendid!'
+
+'And papa wants us each to contribute something.'
+
+'A picnic!--but I don't know anything.'
+
+'That's just what I'm coming to.  I have such a bright idea.  He said
+that we might look in any of his books, but Geoff and Jack are at
+them already, and I'd like a surprise.  Now Juan Capistrano, an old
+vaquero of Colonel Jackson's, is over here.  He is a wonderful rider;
+papa says that he could ride on a comet, if he could get a chance to
+mount.  It was he who told the boys that the rodeo was over.  Now I
+propose that we go and interview Pancho and Juan, and get them to
+tell us some old California stories.  They are both as stupid as they
+can be, but they must have had some adventures, I suppose, somewhere,
+sometime.  I'll translate and write the things down, for my part, and
+you and Margery can tell them.'
+
+'Lovely!  Oh, if we can only get an exciting grizzly story, so that
+
+
+Every one's blood upon end it will stand,
+And the hair run cold in their veins!
+
+
+And was Dr. Paul out here when California was admitted into the
+Union--1850, wasn't it?'
+
+'Of course; why, my child, he was one of the delegates called by
+General Riley, the military governor, to meet in convention at
+Monterey and make a State constitution.  That was September, too--the
+first day of September 1849.  He went back to the East some time
+afterwards, and stayed ten or fifteen years; but he was a real
+pioneer and "forty-niner" all the same.
+
+The next night, September 9th, was so cool that the camp-fire was
+more than ordinarily delightful; accordingly they piled on more wood
+than usual, and prepared for a grand blaze.  It was always built
+directly in front of the sitting-room tent, so that Mrs. Howard and
+Mrs. Winship could sit there if they liked; but the young people
+preferred to lie lazily on their cushions and saddles under the oak-
+tree, a little distance from the blaze.  The clear, red firelight
+danced and flickered, and the sparks rose into the sombre darkness
+fantastically, while the ruddy glow made the great oak an enchanted
+palace, into whose hollow dome they never tired of gazing.  When the
+light streamed highest, the bronze green of the foliage was turned
+into crimson, and, as it died now and then, the stars winked brightly
+through the thousand tiny windows formed by the interlacing branches.
+
+'Well,' said the doctor, bringing his Chinese lounging-chair into the
+circle, and lighting his pipe so as to be thoroughly happy and
+comfortable, 'will you banish distinctions of age and allow me to sit
+among you this evening?'
+
+'Certainly,' Margery said; 'that's the very point of the celebration.
+This is Admission Day, you know, and why shouldn't we admit you?'
+
+'True; and having put myself into a holiday humour by dining off
+Pancho's dish of guisado (I suppose to-night of all nights we must
+call beef and onion stew by its local name), I will proceed to
+business, and we will talk about California.  By the way, I shall
+only conduct the exercises, for I feel rather embarrassed by the fact
+that I've never killed, or been killed by, a bear, never been bitten
+by a tarantula, poisoned by a rattlesnake, assaulted by a stage-
+robber, nor anything of that sort.  You have all read my story of
+crossing the plains.  I even did that in a comparatively easy and
+unheroic fashion.  I only wish, my dear girls and boys, that we had
+with us some one of the brave and energetic men and women who made
+that terrible journey at the risk of their lives.  The history of the
+California Crusaders, the thirty thousand or more emigrants who
+crossed the plains in '48, more than equals the great military
+expeditions of the Middle Ages, in magnitude, peril, and adventure.
+Some went by way of Santa Fe and along the hills of the Gila; others,
+starting from Red River, traversed the Great Stake Desert and went
+from El Paso del Norte to Sonora; others went through Mexico, and,
+after spending over a hundred days at sea, ran into San Diego and
+gave up their vessels; others landed exhausted with their seven
+months' passage round the Horn; and some reached the spot on foot
+after walking the whole length of the California peninsula.'
+
+'What privations they must have suffered!' said Mrs. Howard.  'I
+never quite realised it.'
+
+'Why, the amount of suffering that was endured in those mountain
+passes and deserts can never be told in words.  Those who went by the
+Great Desert west of the Colorado found a stretch of burning salt
+plains, of shifting hills of sand, with bones of animals and men
+scattered along the trails; of terrible and ghastly odours rising in
+the hot air from the bodies of hundreds of mules, and human creatures
+too, that lay half-buried in the glaring white sand.  A terrible
+journey indeed; but if any State in the Union could be fair enough,
+fertile enough, and rich enough to repay such a lavish expenditure of
+energy and suffering, California certainly was and is the one.  Now
+who can tell us something of the name "California"?  You, Geoffrey?'
+
+'Geoffrey has crammed!' exclaimed Bell, maliciously.  'I believe he's
+been reading up all day and told papa what question to ask him!'
+
+'I'll pass it on to you if you like,' laughed Geoffrey.
+
+'No--you'd never get another that you could answer!  Go on!'
+
+'In 1534, one Hernando de Grijalva was sent by Hernando Cortez to
+discover something or other, and it was probably he who then saw the
+peninsula of California; but a quarter of a century before this a
+romance called Esplandian had appeared in Spain, narrating the
+adventures of an Amazonian queen who brought allies from "the right
+hand of the Indies" to assist the infidels in their attack upon
+Constantinople--by the way I forgot to say that she was a pagan.
+This queen of the Amazons was called Calafia, and her kingdom, rich
+in gold and precious stones, was named California.  The writer of the
+romance derived this name, perhaps, from Calif, a successor of
+Mohammed.  He says:  "Know that on the right hand of the Indies there
+is an island named California, very close to the Terrestial Paradise,
+and it was peopled by black women without any man among them, for
+they lived in the fashion of the Amazonia.  They were of strong and
+hardy bodies, of ardent courage, and of great force.  Their island
+was the strongest in all the world, with its steep cliffs and rocky
+shore.  Their arms were all of gold, and so was the harness of the
+wild beasts which they tamed and rode.  For in the whole island there
+was no metal but gold.  They lived in caves wrought out of the rocks
+with much labour, and they had many ships with which they sailed out
+to other countries to obtain booty."  Cortez and Grijalva believed
+that they were near the coast of Asia, for they had no conception of
+the size of the world nor of the vastness of the Pacific Ocean; and
+as the newly-discovered land corresponded with the country described
+in the romance, they named the peninsula California.'
+
+'My book,' said Philip, 'declared that the derivation of the name was
+very uncertain, and that it was first bestowed on one of the coast
+bays by Bernal Diaz.'
+
+'Now, Philip!' exclaimed Margery, 'do you suppose we are going to
+believe that, after Geoff's lovely story?'
+
+'Certainly not; I only thought I'd permit you to hear both sides.  I
+knew of course that you would believe the prettier story of the two--
+girls always do!'
+
+'That isn't a "pretty story"--your remark, I mean, so we won't
+believe it; will we, girls?' asked Bell.
+
+'Now, Polly, your eyes sparkle as if you couldn't wait another
+minute; your turn next,' said Dr. Winship.
+
+'I am only afraid that I can't remember my contribution, which is
+really Bell's and still more really Pancho's, for he told it to us,
+and Bell translated it and made it into a story.  We call it
+"Valerio; or, The Mysterious Mountain Cave."'
+
+'Begins well!' exclaimed Jack.
+
+'Now, Jack, you must be nice.  Remember this is Bell's story, and she
+is letting me tell it so that I can bear my share in the
+entertainment.'
+
+'Pancho believes every word of it,' added Bell, 'and says that his
+father told it to him; but as I had to change it from bad Spanish
+into good English, I don't know whether I've caught the idea
+exactly.'
+
+'Oh, it will do quite nicely, I've no doubt,' said Jack,
+encouragingly.  'We've often heard you do good English into bad
+Spanish, and turn and turn about is only fair play.  Don't mind me,
+Polly; I will be gentle!'
+
+'Jack, if you don't behave yourself I'll send you to bed,' said
+Elsie; and he ducked his head obediently into her lap, as Polly, with
+her hands clasping her knees, and with the firelight dancing over her
+bright face, leaned forward and told the Legend of
+
+
+VALERIO; OR, THE MYSTERIOUS MOUNTAIN CAVE.
+
+'A long time ago, before the settlement of Santa Barbara by the
+whites, the Mission padres had a great many Indians under their
+control, who were known as peons, or serfs.  They were given enough
+to eat, were not molested by the outside Indians, and were entirely
+peaceable.  There were so few mountain passes by which to enter Santa
+Barbara that they were easily held, and of course the padres were
+anxious to keep their Indians from running away, lest they should
+show the wilder tribes the way to get in and commit depredations.
+These peaceable Indians paid tribute to intermediary tribes to hold
+the passes and do their fighting.  Those about the Mission gave corn
+and cereals and hides and the products of the sea, and got in
+exchange pinones (pine nuts).  One of these Indians, named Valerio,
+was a strong, brave, handsome youth, whose haughty spirit revolted at
+his servitude, and, after seeking an opportunity for many weeks he
+finally escaped to the Santa Ynez mountains, where he found a cave in
+which he hid himself, drawing himself up by a rope and taking it in
+after him.  The Indians had unlimited belief in Valerio's mysterious
+and wonderful powers.  Pancho says that he could make himself
+invisible at will, that locks and keys were powerless against him;
+and that no one could hinder his taking money, horses, or food.  All
+sorts of things disappeared mysteriously by day and by night, and the
+robberies were one and all laid to the door of Valerio.  But after a
+while Valerio grew lonely in his mountain retreat.  He longed for
+human companionship, and at length, becoming desperate, he descended
+on the Mission settlement and kidnapped a young Indian boy named
+Chito, took him to his cave, and admitted him into his wild and
+lawless life.  But Chito was not contented.  He liked home and
+comfortable slavery better than the new, strange life; so he seized
+the first opportunity, and being a bright, daring little lad, and
+fleet of foot, he escaped and made his way to the Mission.  Arriving
+there he told wonderful stories of Valerio and his life; how his
+marvellous white mare seemed to fly, rather than gallop, and leaped
+from rock to rock like a chamois; and how they lived upon wheat-
+bread, cheeses, wine, and other delicacies instead of the coarse fare
+of the Indians.  He told them the location of the cave and described
+the way thither; so the Alcalde (he was the mayor or judge, you know,
+Elsie), got out the troops with their muskets, and the padres
+gathered the Mission Indians with their bows and arrows, and they all
+started in pursuit of the outlaw.  Among the troops were two
+hechiceros (wizards or medicine-men), whose bowed shoulders and
+grizzled beards showed them to be men of many years and much wisdom.
+When asked to give their advice, they declared that Valerio could not
+be killed by any ordinary weapons, but that special means must be
+used to be of any avail against his supernatural powers.
+Accordingly, one of the hechiceros broke off the head of his arrow,
+cast a charm over it, and predicted that this would deal the fatal
+blow.  The party started out with Chito as a guide, and, after many
+miles of wearisome travel up rugged mountain sides and over steep and
+almost impassable mountain trails, they paused at the base of a
+cliff, and saw, far up the height, the mouth of Valerio's cave, and,
+what was more, Valerio himself sitting in the doorway fast asleep.
+Alas! he had been drinking too heavily of his stolen wine, or he
+would never have so exposed himself to the enemy.  They fired a
+volley at him.  One shot only took effect, and even this would not
+have been possible save that the spell was not upon him because of
+his sleep; but the one shot woke him and, half rising, he staggered
+and fell from the mouth of the cave to a ledge of rocks beneath.  He
+sprang to his feet in a second and ran like a deer towards a tree
+where his white mare was fastened.  They fired another volley, but,
+though the shots flew in every direction, Valerio passed on unharmed;
+but just as he was disappearing from view the hechicero raised his
+bow and the headless arrow whizzed through space and pierced him
+through the heart.  They clambered up the cliffs with shouts of
+triumph and surrounded him on every side, but poor Valerio had
+surrendered to a more powerful enemy than they!  Wonderful to relate,
+he still breathed, though the wound should have been instantly fatal.
+They lifted him from the ground and tied him on his snow-white mare,
+his long hair reaching almost to the ground, his handsome face as
+pale as death, the blood trickling from his wound; but the mysterious
+power that he possessed seemed to keep him alive in spite of his
+suffering.  Finally one of the hechiceros decided that the spell lay
+in the buckskin cord that he wore about his throat--a rough sort of
+necklace hung with bears' claws and snake rattles--and that he never
+would die until the magic cord was cut.  This, after some
+consultation, was done.  Valerio drew his last breath as it parted
+asunder, and they bore his dead body home in triumph to the Mission.
+
+'But he is not forgotten.  Stories are still told of his wonderful
+deeds, and people still go in search of money that he is supposed to
+have hidden in his cave.  The Mexican women who tell suertes, or
+fortunes, describe the location of the money; but, as soon as any one
+reaches the cave, he is warned away by a little old man who stands in
+the door and protects the buried treasure.  An Indian lad, who was
+riding over the hills one day with his horse and his dogs, dismounted
+to search for his moccasin, when he suddenly noticed that the dogs
+had chased something into a cave in the rocks.  He followed, and,
+peering into the darkness, saw two gleaming eyes.  He thrust his
+knife between them, but struck the air; and, though he had been
+standing directly in front of the opening, so that nothing could have
+passed him, yet he heard the clatter of hoofs and the tinkle of
+spurs, and, turning, saw a mysterious horseman, whose pale face and
+streaming hair melted into the mountain mist, as it floated down from
+the purple Santa Ynez peaks into the lap of the vine-covered foot-
+hills below.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X:  MORE CAMP-FIRE STORIES
+
+
+
+'And still they watched the flickering of the blaze,
+And talked together of the good old days.'
+
+
+'Brava!'  'Bravissima!'  'Splendid, Polly!' exclaimed the boys.
+'Bell, you're a great author!'
+
+'Couldn't have done better myself--give you my word!' cried Jack,
+bowing profoundly to Bell and Polly in turn, and presenting them with
+bouquets of faded leaves hastily gathered from the ground.
+
+'Polly covered herself with glory,' said the doctor; 'and I am very
+proud of your part in it, too, my little daughter.  I have some
+knowledge of Pancho's capabilities as a narrator, and I think the
+"Story of Valerio" owes a good deal to you.  Now, who comes next?
+Margery?'
+
+'No, please,' said Margery, 'for I have another story.  Take one of
+the boys, and let's have more facts.'
+
+'Yes, something historic and profound, out of the encyclopaedia, from
+Jack,' said Polly, saucily.
+
+'Thanks, Miss Oliver.  With you for an audience any man might be
+inspired; but--'
+
+'But not a BOY?'
+
+'Mother, dear, remove that child from my sight, or I shall certainly
+shake her!  Phil, go on, just to keep Polly quiet.'
+
+'Very well.  Being the oldest Californian present, I--'
+
+'What about Dr. Paul?' asked the irrepressible Polly.
+
+'He wasn't born here,' responded Philip, dryly, 'and I was.'
+
+'I think that's a quibble,' interrupted Bell.  'Papa was here twenty
+years before you were.'
+
+'It's not my fault that he came first,' answered Philip.  'Margery
+and I are not only the oldest Californians present, but the only
+ones.  Isn't that so, sir?'
+
+'Quite correct.'
+
+'Oh, if you mean that way, I suppose you are; but still papa helped
+frame the Constitution, and was here on the first Admission Day, and
+was one of the Vigilantes--and I think that makes him more of a real
+Californian than you.  You've just "grown up with the country."'
+
+'Bless my soul!  What else could I do?  I would have been glad to
+frame the Constitution, admit the State, and serve on the Vigilance
+Committee, if they had only waited for me; but they went straight
+ahead with the business, and when I was born there was nothing to do
+but stand round and criticise what they had done, or, as you express
+it, "grow up with the country."  Well, as I was saying when I was
+interrupted--'
+
+'Beg pardon.'
+
+'Don't mention it.  Uncle Doc has asked me to tell Mrs. Howard and
+Elsie how they carried on the rodeos ten or fifteen years ago.  Of
+course I was only a little chap'--('VERY little,' murmured his
+sister)--'but never too small to stick on a horse, and my father used
+often to take me along.  The rodeos nowadays are neither as great
+occasions, nor as exciting ones, as they used to be; but this is the
+way a rodeo is managed.  When the spring rains are mostly over, and
+the grass is fine,--say in April--the ranchero of a certain ranch
+sends word to all his neighbours that he will hold a rodeo on a
+certain day or days.  Of course the cattle used to stray all over the
+country, and get badly mixed, as there were no fences; so the rodeo
+was held for the purpose of separating the cattle and branding the
+calves that had never been marked.
+
+'The owners of the various ranches assemble the night before,
+bringing their vaqueros with them.  They start out very early in the
+morning, having had a cup of coffee, and ride to the "rodeo-ground,"
+which is any flat, convenient place where canyons converge.  Many of
+the cattle on the hills round about know the place, having been there
+before, and the vaqueros start after them and drive them to the
+spot.'
+
+'How many vaqueros would there be?' asked Elsie.
+
+'Oh, nine or ten, perhaps; and often from one thousand to three
+thousand cattle--it depends on the number of ranches and cattle
+represented.  Some of the vaqueros form a circle round the cattle
+that they have driven to the rodeo-ground, and hold them there while
+others go back to the ranch for breakfast and fresh horses.'
+
+'Fresh horses so soon?' said Mrs. Howard.  'I thought the mustangs
+were tough, hardy little beasts, that would go all day without
+dropping.'
+
+'Yes, so they are; but you always have to begin to "part out" the
+cattle with the freshest and best-trained horses you have.  The
+owners and their best vaqueros now go into the immense band of
+cattle, and try to get the cows and the unbranded calves separated
+from the rest.  You can imagine what skilful engineering this takes,
+even though you never saw it.  Two work together; they start a
+certain cow and calf and work them through the band of cattle until
+they near the outside, and then "rush" them to a place three or four
+hundred yards beyond, where other vaqueros are stationed to receive
+and hold them.  Of course the cattle don't want to leave the band,
+and of course they don't want to stay in the spot to which they are
+driven.'
+
+'I don't blame them!' cried Bell impetuously.  'Probably the cows
+remember the time when they were branded themselves, and they don't
+want their dear little bossies put through the same operation.'
+
+'Very likely.  Then more cows and calves are started in the same way;
+the greatest difficulty being had with the first lot, for the cattle
+always stay more contentedly together as the group grows larger.
+Occasionally one "breaks" and runs off on the hills, and a vaquero
+starts after him, throws the reata and lassos him, or "lass's" him,
+as the California boys say.'
+
+'There must be frightful accidents,' said Mrs. Winship.
+
+'Yes; but not so many as you would suppose, for the horsemanship, in
+its particular way, is something wonderful.  When an ugly steer is
+lassoed and he feels the reata or lariat round his neck, he sometimes
+turns and "makes" for the horse, and unless the vaquero is
+particularly skilful he will be gored and his horse too; but he gives
+a dexterous turn to the lariat, the animal steps over it, gets
+tangled and thrown.  Frequently an animal breaks a horn or a leg.
+Sometimes one fall is not enough; the steer jumps up and pursues the
+horse.  Then the vaquero keeps a little ahead of him and leads him
+back to the rodeo-ground, where another vaquero lassos him by the
+hind legs and throws him, while the reata is taken off his neck.'
+
+'There is another danger, too,' added Dr. Winship.  'The vaquero
+winds the reata very tightly round the pommel of his saddle to hold
+the steer, and he is likely to have his finger caught in the hair-
+rope and cut off.'
+
+'Yes, I forgot that.  Two or three of the famous old vaqueros about
+Santa Barbara--Jose Maria, Jose Antonio, and old Clemente--have each
+lost a finger.  Well, the vaqueros at length form in a circle round
+the band of selected cattle.  The ranch owner who gives the rodeo
+takes his own cattle that he has found--the ones bearing his brand,
+you know--and drives them in with the ones to be branded, leaving in
+the rodeo-ground the cattle bearing the brands of all the other
+rancheros.  There has been much drinking of aguardiente (brandy) and
+everybody by this time is pretty reckless.  Then they drive this
+selected band to the home corral, the vaqueros yelling, the cattle
+"calling," and the reatas whizzing and whistling through the air.  If
+any unfortunate tries to escape his fate he is pursued, "lass'd," and
+brought back.  By this time the cattle are pretty well heated and
+angry, and when they get into the crowded corral they horn each other
+and try to gore the horses.  A fire is then built in one corner of
+the corral and the branding-irons are heated.'
+
+'Oh! hold my hand, Polly, if the branding is going to begin, I hate
+it so,' exclaimed Elsie.
+
+'I won't say much about it, but it's no worse than a thousand things
+that people have to bear every year of their lives.  Animals never
+have to have teeth filled, for instance, nor limbs amputated--'
+
+'Oh, just think of a calf with a wooden leg, or a cow with false
+teeth!  Wouldn't it be funny?' laughed Bell.
+
+'They don't have a thousand ills that human flesh is heir to, so they
+must be thankful they get off so easy.  Well! the branding-irons are
+heated, as I say--each cattle-owner having his special brand, which
+is properly recorded, and which may be any device not previously
+used.  Two men now catch the calves; one lassoing them by the head,
+the other by the legs.  A third man takes the iron from the fire and
+brands the chosen letter or hieroglyphic on the animal's hind
+quarter.'
+
+'Sometimes on the fore quarter, don't they?' asked Bell.  'I've seen
+brands there,--your horse has two, and our cow has one also.'
+
+'Yes, a brand on the fore quarter shows that the animal has been
+sold, but it always has the original brand on the hind quarter.  When
+a sale is effected, the new brand is put anywhere in front of the
+fifth rib, and this constitutes what they call a venta, or sale.  If
+you notice some of the little "plugs" ridden by Santa Barbara boys,
+you'll see that they bear half a dozen brands.  By the way, if the
+rodeo has been a very large one, they are several days branding the
+cattle, so they are turned out to pastorear a little while each day.'
+
+'The brand was absolute sign of ownership, you know, girls,' said Dr.
+Winship; 'and though there was the greatest care exercised in
+choosing and recording the brands, there was plenty of opportunity
+for cheating.  For instance, a man would often see unbranded cattle
+when riding about, and there was nothing to prevent his dismounting,
+building a fire, heating his iron, and putting his own brand on them.
+Then, at the next rodeo, they were simply turned over to him, for, as
+I say, the brand was absolute ownership.'
+
+
+'Whene'er I take my rides abroad,
+   How many calves I see;
+And, as I brand them properly,
+   They all belong to me,'
+
+
+said Bell.
+
+'How I should like to see a rodeo!' sighed Elsie.  'I can't imagine
+how the vaqueros can fling the reata while they are riding at full
+speed.'
+
+'It isn't so very wonderful,' said Polly, nonchalantly 'the most
+ordinary people can learn it; why! your brother Jack can lasso almost
+as well as a Mexican.'
+
+'And I can "lass" any stationary object myself,' cried Bell; 'a
+hitching-post, or even a door-knob; I can do it two or three times
+out of ten.'
+
+'That shows immense skill,' answered Jack, 'but, as the thing you
+want to "lass" never does stay still, and as it is absolutely
+necessary to catch it more than three times out of ten, you probably
+wouldn't make a name and fortune as a vaquero.  Juan Capistrano, by
+the way, used to be famous with the lariat.  I had heard of his
+adventure with a bull on the island of Santa Rosa, and I asked him
+about it to-day; but he had so exhausted himself telling stories to
+Bell that he had very few words for me.  You see there was a bull, on
+Santa Rosa island, so wild that they wanted to kill him; but nobody
+could do it, though he was a terror to any one who ventured on the
+island.  They called him "Antiguelo," because of his long horns and
+long tail.  He was such a terrible fighter that all the vaqueros were
+afraid to lass' him, for he always broke away with the lariat.  You
+see a horse throws a bull by skill and not by strength, of course.
+You can choke almost any bull; but this one was too smart! he would
+crouch on his haunches and pull back until the rope nearly choked him
+and then suddenly "make" for the horse.  Juan Capistrano had a
+splendid horse--you see as much depends on the horse as the man in
+such a case--and he came upon Antiguelo on the Cerro Negro and lass'd
+him.  Well, did he fight? I asked.  "Si, Senor."  Well, what
+happened?  "Yo lo mate" (I killed him), he said, with a shrug of his
+shoulders, and that's all I could get out of Juan regarding his
+adventure.'
+
+'But you haven't done your share, you lazy boy,' objected Bell.  'You
+must tell us more.'
+
+'What do you want to hear?  I am up on all the animal and vegetable
+life of Southern California, full of interesting information
+concerning its old customs, can give you Spanish names for all the
+things that come up in ordinary conversation, and am the only man
+present who can make a raw-hide reata,' said Jack, modestly.
+
+'Go on and tell us how, O great and wise reatero,' said Bell.
+
+'I'll tell you that myself,' said Elsie, 'for I've seen him do it
+dozens of times, when he should have been studying his little
+lessons.  He takes a big piece of raw hide, cuts a circle right out
+of the middle, and then cuts round and round this until he has one
+long continuous string, half an inch wide.  He then stretches it and
+scrapes the hair off with a knife or a piece of glass, gets it into
+four strands, and braids it "round."'
+
+'Perhaps you think braiding "round" is easy to do,' retorted Jack, in
+an injured tone; 'but I know it took me six months to learn to do it
+well.'
+
+'I fail to see,' said his mother, 'how a knowledge of "braiding
+round" and lassoing of wild cattle is going to serve you in your
+university life and future career.'
+
+'Oh yes, it will.  I shall be the Buffalo Bill of Harvard, and I
+shall give charming little entertainments in my rooms, or in some
+little garden-plot suitable to the purpose.'
+
+'Shall you make a point of keeping up with your class?' asked Mrs.
+Winship.
+
+'Oh yes, unless they go too fast.  My sports won't take any more time
+than rowing or baseball.  They'll be a little more expensive, because
+I'll have to keep some wild cattle constantly on hand, and perhaps a
+vaquero or two; but a vaquero won't cost any more than a valet.'
+
+'I didn't intend furnishing you with a valet,' remarked his mother.
+
+'But I shall be self-supporting, mother dear.  I shall give
+exhibitions on the campus, and the gate-money will keep me in
+luxury.'
+
+'This is all very interesting,' said Polly, cuttingly; 'but what has
+it to do with California, I'd like to know?'
+
+'Poor dear!  Your brain is so weak.  Can't you see that when I am the
+fashion in Cambridge, it will be noised about that I gained my
+marvellous skill in California?  This will increase emigration.  I
+don't pretend to say it will swell the population like the discovery
+of gold in '48, but it will have a perceptible effect.'
+
+'You are more modest than a whole mossy bank of violets,' laughed Dr.
+Paul.  'Now, Margery, will you give us your legend?'
+
+'Mine is the story of Juan de Dios (literally, Juan of God), and I'm
+sorry to say that it has a horse in it, like Polly's; only hers was a
+snow-white mare, and mine is a coal-black charger.  But they wouldn't
+tell us any romantic love-stories; they were all about horses.'
+
+
+STORY OF JUAN DE DIOS.
+
+'In early days, when Americans were coming in to Santa Barbara, there
+were many cattle-buyers among them; and there were large bands of
+robbers all over the country who were ready to pounce on these
+travellers on their way to the great cattle ranchos, kill them, and
+steal their money and clothes, as well as their horses and trappings.
+No one could understand how the robbers got such accurate information
+of the movements of the travellers, unless they had a spy somewhere
+near the Mission, where they often stopped for rest and refreshment.
+
+'Now, there was a certain young Indian vaquero in the employ of the
+padres at La Mission de la Purisima.  He was a wonderful horseman,
+and greatly looked up to by his brother vaqueros, because he was so
+strong, alert, and handsome, and because he was always dressed
+elegantly in rich old Spanish embroideries and velvets, given to him,
+he said, by men for whom he had done great services.
+
+'One day a certain traveller, a Spanish official of high degree, came
+from Monterey to wed his sweetheart, the daughter of the richest
+cattle-owner in all the country round.  His spurs and bit and bridle
+were of solid silver; his jaquima (halter) was made of a hair rope
+whose strands had been dyed in brilliant colours; his tapaderos
+(front of the stirrups), mochilas (large leather saddle flaps), and
+sudaderos (thin bits of leather to protect the legs from sweat), were
+all beautifully stamped in the fashion used by the Mexicans; his
+saddle blankets and his housings were all superb, and he wore a broad
+sombrero encircled with a silver snake and trimmed with silver lace.
+
+'The traveller stayed at La Purisima all night, and set out early in
+the morning to ride the last forty miles that separated him from his
+bride.  But Juan and two other robbers were lying in wait for him
+behind a great rock that stood at the entrance of a lonely canyon.
+They appeared on horseback, one behind the unfortunate man and two in
+front, so that he could escape neither way.  They finally succeeded
+in lassoing the horse and throwing him to the ground with his rider,
+who defended himself bravely with his knife, but was finally killed
+and robbed, Juan taking his clothes and trappings, and the other two
+dividing the contents of his purse.  They could not have buried their
+victim as successfully as usual, or else they were surprised, and had
+to escape, for the body was found; and Juan, whom the padres had
+begun to view with suspicion, was nowhere to be found about the
+Mission.  Troops were sent out in pursuit of him, for this particular
+traveller was a high official, and it was necessary that his death
+should be avenged.  They at last heard that Juan had been seen going
+towards Santa Ynez Mission, and, pursuing him thither, they came upon
+him as he was driving a band of horses into a corral, and just in the
+act of catching his own horse, a noble and powerful animal, called
+Azabache, because of his jet-black colour.  The men surrounded the
+corral, and ordered him to surrender.  He begged them to wait until
+he had saddled Azabache, and then they might shoot them both down
+together.  He asked permission to call three times (pegar tres
+gritos), and after the third call they were to shoot.  His last wish
+was granted.  He saddled and mounted his splendid horse, called once-
+-twice--thrice,--but when the last shout faded in the air, and the
+troops raised their muskets to fire, behold, there was no Juan de
+Dios to be seen.  They had been surrounding the corral so that no one
+could have ridden out; they looked among the horses, but Asabache was
+nowhere to be found.
+
+'Just then a joyous shout was heard, so ringing and triumphant that
+every man turned in the direction from which it came.  There,
+galloping up the hillside, nearly half a mile distant, was Juan de
+Dios, mounted on his coal-black Azabache!  But it was no common
+sunshine that deepened the gorgeous colours of his trappings and
+danced upon his silver spurs till they glistened like two great
+stars!  It was a broad, glittering stream of light such as no mortal
+had ever seen before and which almost blinded the eyes; and over this
+radiant path of golden sunbeams galloped Juan de Dios, until he
+disappeared over the crest of the mountain.  Then the light faded;
+the padres crossed themselves in silence and went home to their
+Mission! and Juan de Dios never was heard of more.'
+
+Modest little Margery was hailed with such cheers that you could not
+have seen her cheeks for the blushes; and, just as the party began to
+think of forsaking the fascinating camp-fire for bed, Bell jumped up
+impetuously and cried, 'Here, Philip, give me the castanets, please.
+Polly and Jack, you play "Las Palomas" for me, and I'll sing and show
+you the dance of that pretty Mexican girl whom I saw at the ball
+given under the Big Grape Vine.  Wait till I take off my hair ribbon.
+Lend me your scarf, mamma.  Now begin!'
+
+
+LAS PALOMAS. {2}
+(THE DOVES.)
+Cua-tro pa-lo-mi-tas blan-cas que vie-
+nen de por a--lla.  U-nas a las o-tras
+di-cen no hay a-mor como el de a-ca.
+
+
+It is barely possible, but not likely, that anything prettier than
+Bell's Mexican danza was to be seen under the light of the September
+stars that night; although they were doubtless shining down upon a
+thousand lovely things.  With all the brightness of her loosened hair
+rising and falling with the motion of her swaying figure--with her
+twinkling feet, her crimson cheeks and parted lips, she looked the
+very spirit of the dance, and her enraptured--audience only allowed
+her to stop when she was absolutely breathless.
+
+'Oh what a beautiful evening!' exclaimed Elsie, when the celebration
+was finally over.  'Was there ever such a dear, dear canyon with such
+dear people in it!  If it only wouldn't rain and we could live here
+for ever!'
+
+
+'Rain, rain, stay away!
+Come again another day,
+Little Elsie wants to play,'
+
+
+recited Polly, and then everybody went to their straw beds.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI:  BREAKING CAMP
+
+
+
+'The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
+And drinks and gapes for drink again;
+The plants suck in the earth and are,
+With constant drinking, fresh and fair.'
+
+
+But it did rain; and it didn't wait until they were out of the canyon
+either.  It began long before the proper time, and it by no means
+confined itself to a shower, but opened the winter season fully a
+month before there was any need of it, and behaved altogether in a
+most heartless and inconsiderate manner, like a very spoil-sport of a
+rain.
+
+It began after dark, so as to be just as disagreeable as possible,
+and under the too slight cover of their tents the campers could hear
+the rush and the roar of it like the tramping of myriad feet on the
+leaves.  Pancho and the two Chinamen huddled under the broad
+sycamores in their rubber blankets, and were dry and comfortable; but
+all the waterproof tents leaked, save Elsie's.
+
+But when it was dawn, the Sun, having heard nothing apparently of any
+projected change in the weather, rose at the usual time in the most
+resplendent fashion--brighter, rosier, and more gloriously, if you
+will believe me, than he had risen that whole long sunshiny summer!
+And he really must have felt paid for getting up at such an unearthly
+hour in the morning, when, after he had clambered over the grey
+mountain peaks, he looked down upon Las Flores Canyon, bathed in the
+light of his own golden beams.
+
+If he knew anything about Ancient History and Biblical Geography--and
+if he didn't I don't know who should, inasmuch as he had been present
+from the beginning of time--he must have thought it as fair as the
+Garden of Eden; for Nature's face simply shone with cleanliness, like
+that of a smiling child just fresh from its bath, and every leaf of
+every tree glistened as he beamed upon it, and shook off its crystal
+drops that he might turn them into diamonds.
+
+'It was only a shower,' said Dr. Winship, as he seated himself on a
+damp board and partook of a moist breakfast, 'and with this sun the
+tents will be dry before night; Elsie has caught no cold, the dust
+will be laid, and we can stay another week with safety.'
+
+Everybody was hilarious over this decision save the men-of-all-work,
+who longed unspeakably for a less poetic existence--Hop Yet
+particularly, who thought camping out 'not muchee good.'
+
+Dicky was more pleased than anybody, perhaps, as every day in the
+canyon was one day less in school; not that he had ever been to
+school, but he knew in advance, instinctively, that it wouldn't suit
+him.  Accordingly, he sought the wettest possible places and played
+all day with superhuman energy.  He finally found Hop Yet's box of
+blueing under a tree, in a very moist and attractive state of
+fluidity, and just before dinner improved the last shining hour by
+painting himself a brilliant hue and appearing at dinner in such a
+fiendish guise that he frightened the family into fits.
+
+Now Dr. Winship was one of the most weather-wise men in California,
+and his predictions were always quite safe and sensible; but somehow
+or other it did rain again in two or three days, and it poured harder
+than ever, too.  To be sure, it cleared promptly, but the doctor was
+afraid to trust so fickle a person as the Clerk of the Weather had
+become, and marching orders were issued.
+
+The boys tramped over all their favourite bits of country, and the
+girls visited all their best beloved haunts, every one of them dear
+from a thousand charming associations.  They looked for the last time
+in Mirror Pool, and saw the reflection of their faces--rather grave
+faces just then, over the leave-taking.
+
+The water-mirror might have been glad to keep the picture for ever on
+its surface--Margery with her sleek braids and serene forehead; with
+Polly, saucy nose and mischievous eyes, laughing at you like a merry
+water-sprite; Bell, with her brilliant cheeks glowing like two roses
+just fallen in the brook; and Gold Elsie, who, if you had put a frame
+of green leaves about her delicate face and yellow locks, would have
+looked up at you like a water-lily.
+
+They wafted a farewell to Pico Negro, and having got rid of the boys,
+privately embraced a certain Whispering Tree under whose singing
+branches they had been wont to lie and listen to all the murmuring
+that went on in the forest.
+
+Then they clambered into the great thorough-brace wagon, where they
+all sat in gloomy silence for ten minutes, while Dicky's tan terrier
+was found for the fourth time that morning; and the long train, with
+its baggage-carts, its saddle-horses and its dogged little pack-
+mules, moved down the rocky steeps that led to civilisation.  The
+gate that shut them in from the county road and the outer world was
+opened for the last time, and shut with a clang, and it was all over-
+-their summer in a canyon!
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+
+{1} Foot-notes by a rival of the Countess.
+
+{1a}  Is that spelled right?
+{1b}  Fifty miles an hour, Jack says.
+{1c}  Poetic licence.
+{1d}  Gone back to cold cream.
+{1e}  And pie.
+{1f}  For sale at all bookstores, ten cents a copy.
+
+{2}  'Four little white doves began to coo,
+   To coo to their mates so fair;
+And each to the other dove said, 'Your coo
+   With mine cannot compare!'
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Summer in a Canyon
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:21:17 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:21:17 -0700
commit	109b3ed3aa7b577aacde6b21f5d6d2356ca93fa8 (patch)
tree	cb19ce512b31c42645a6dfa5846985ff700486b9