Part 4
“And so I would git up and cut the kindlin’ wood, and build the fire, and feed the cows, and go round the house a gettin’ breakfast, as still as a mice so’s not to disturb him, and he’d lay and sleep till I got the coffee turned out, then he’d git up and tell me his dream. It would be all about how pretty I was, and how much he loved me and how he would die for my sake any time to keep the wind from blowin’ too hard onto me. And he would eat jest as hearty and enjoy himself dretfully. Oh! we took a sight of comfort together, me and Mr. Doodle did. And I can’t never forget him; I can’t never marry again, his linement is so stamped onto my memory. Oh, no, I can’t never forgit his linement; no other man’s linement can be to me what his linement was.”
She stopped a minute to ask me where she should set the dishes she had wiped, and I was glad of the respit, though I knew it would be but a short one. And I was right, for in settin’ up the dishes, she see a little milk pitcher that belonged to my first set of dishes; there was a woman painted onto it, and that set her to goin’ again. Truly, there is nothin’ on the face of the earth, or in the sky above, but what reminds her, in some way, of Doodle. I have known the risin’ sun to set her to goin’, and the fire-shovel, and the dust-pan. She held the pitcher pensively in her hand a minute or two, and then she says:
“This picture looks as I did, when I married Mr. Doodle. I was dretful pretty, so he used to tell me; too pretty to have any hardships put onto me, so he used to say. There was considerable talk about wimmen’s votin’, about that time, and he said there wasn’t money enough in the world to tempt him to let his Dolly vote. Anything so wearin’ as that, he said he should protect me from as long as he had a breath left in his body. He used to git dretful excited about it, he thought so much of me. He said it would ‘wear a woman right out; and how should I feel,’ says he, ‘to see my Dolly wore out.’
“He couldn’t use to bear to have me go a visitin’, either. He said talkin’ with neighborin’ wimmen’ was wearin’ too, and to have to come home and git supper for him after dark; he said he couldn’t bear to see me do it. He never was no hand to pick up a supper, and I always had to come home and git his supper by candle light—meat vittles; he always had to have jest what he wanted to eat, or it made him sick, he was one of that kind—give him the palsy. He never _had_ the palsy, but he always said that all that kep’ him from it, was havin’ jest what he wanted to eat, jest at the time he wanted it; and so he would lay down on the lounge while I got his supper ready. I’d have to begin at the very beginning, for he never was one of the men that could hang over the tea-kettle, or git up potatoes, or anything of that sort; and I’d most always have to build up the fire, for he thought it wasn’t a man’s place to do such things. He was a dretful hand to want everybody to keep their place; that was one reason why he felt so strong about wimmen’s votin’. He had a deep, sound mind, my Doodle did. But, as I said, he’d lay on the lounge and worry so about its bein’ too much for me; that, ruther than make him feel so bad, I give up visitin’ almost entirely. But he never worried about that, so much as he did about votin’; it seemed as if the thought of that almost killed him. He said that with my health, (I didn’t enjoy very good health then) I wouldn’t stand it a year; I would wilt right down under it. Oh! how much that man did think of me!
“When I would be a workin’ in the garden, (I took all the care of the garden,) or when I would be a pickin’ up chips—we was kinder bothered for wood—he’d set out on the back piazza with his paper, the Evenin’ Grippher—awful strong paper against wimmen’s rights—and as I would be a bringin’ my chips in, (we had a old bushel basket that I used,) he would look up from his paper and say to me,—‘Oh, them pretty little hands, how cunning they look, a quirling round the basket handles; and oh, them pretty little eyes; what should I do if it wasn’t for my Dolly? And how should I feel if them pretty little eyes was a lookin’ at the pole?’ Says he, ‘It would kill me Dolly; it would use me right up.’
“And then, when I would be a churnin’—we had a good deal of cream, and the butter come awful hard; sometimes it would take me most all day and lame my back for a week—and when I would be a churnin’, he would be so good to me to help me pass away the time. He would set in his rockin’ chair—I cushioned it a purpose for him—and he would set and read the Evenin’ Grippher to me; sometimes he would read it clear through before I would fetch the butter; beautiful arguments there would be in it ag’inst wimmen’s rights. I used to know the Editor was jest another such a man as my Mr. Doodle was, and I would wonder how any livin’ woman could stand out ag’inst such arguments, they proved right out so strong that votin’ would be too much for the weaker sect, and that men wouldn’t feel nigh so tender and reverential towards ’em, as they did now.
“We wasn’t very well off in them days, for Mr. Doodle was obliged to mortgage the farm I brought him when we was married, and it was all we could do to keep up the money due on the mortgage, and father wouldn’t help us much; he said we must work for a livin’, jest as he did; and the farm kinder run down, for Mr. Doodle said he couldn’t go out to work and leave me for a hull day, he worshiped me so; so we let out the place on shares, and I took in work a good deal. When I was a workin’, Mr. Doodle would set and look at me for hours and hours, with a sweet smile on his linement, and tell me how delicate and pretty I was and how much he thought of me, and how he would die and be skinned—have his hide took completely off of him—before he’d let me vote, or have any other hardship put on me. Oh! what a sight of comfort me and Mr. Doodle did take together; and when I think how he died, and was a corpse—and he was a corpse jest as quick as he was dead, Mr. Doodle was—oh how I do feel. I can’t never forget him, his linement is so stamped onto my memory. I never can forget his linement, never.”
And so she’ll go on from hour to hour, and from day to day, about Doodle and Wimmen’s Rights—Wimmen’s Rights and Doodle; drivin’ ahead of her a drove of particulars, far, far more numerous than was ever heerd of in Jonesville, or the world; and I—inwardly callin’ on the name of John Rogers—hear her go on, and don’t call Doodle all to nothin’, or argue with her on Wimmen’s Rights. My mean is calm and noble; I am nerved almost completely up by principle; and then, it is dretful wrenchin’ to the arm to hit hard blows ag’inst nothin’.
Truly, if anybody don’t know anything, you can’t git any sense out of ’em. You might jest as well go to reckonin’ up a hull row of orts, expectin’ to have ’em amount to sunthin’. Ort times ort is ort, and nothin’ else; and ort from ort leaves nothin’ every time, and nothin to carry; and you may add up ort after ort, all day, and you wont have nothin’ but a ort to fall back on. And so with the Widder Doodle, you may pump her mind till the day of pancakes, (as a profane poet observes,) and you wont git anything but a ort out of it,—speakin’ in a ’rithmatic way.
Not that she is to blame for it, come to look at it in a reasonable and scientific sense. All figgers in life can’t count up the same way. There’s them that count one,—made so; got a little common sense unbeknown to them. Then there’s some that double on that, and count two,—more sense, and can’t help it; and all the way up to nine; and then there is the orts—made orts entirely unbeknown to them; and so, why should figgers seven, or eight, or even nine, boast themselves over the orts.
Truly, we all have abundant reason to be humble, and feel a humiliatin’ feelin’. The biggest figgers in this life don’t count up any too high, don’t know any too much. And all the figgers put together, big and little mingled in with orts, all make up a curious sum that our heads haint strong enough to figger out straight. It is a sum that is bein’ worked out by a strong mind above our’n, and we can’t see the answer yet, none on us.
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A DEBATE ON INTEMPERANCE.
Last Tuesday evenin’ the “Creation Searchin’ Society” argued on this question.
“Resolved; It is right to licence intemperance.”
Cornelius Cork, the President, got up and give the question out, and then a stern majestic look swept over his face, some like a thunder cloud, and says he, pintin’ out his forefinger nobly:
“Brother ‘Creation Searchers,’ and friends and neighbors promiscous. Before we tackle this momentous subject to-night, I have got a little act of justice to preform, which if I shirked out of doin’ of it, would send my name down to posterity as a coward, a rank traitor, and almost a impostor. The public mind is outraged at the present time, by officers in high places provin’ traitors to their trust: traitors to the confidin’ public that have raised ’em up to their high stations. The public of Jonesville will find that _I_ am not one of that kind, that _I_ am not to be trifled with, nor will _I_ be seduced by flattery or gifts, to permit them that have raised me up to the height I now stand on, to be trifled with.”
Here he paused a moment, and laid his forefinger on his heart and looked round on us, as if he was invitin’ us all to take our lanterns and walk through it, and behold its purity. That gesture took dretful well with the audience. The President realized it, he see what he had done, and he kep’ the same position as he proceeded and went on.
“Every one who was present at the last meetin’ of our ‘Creation Searchin’ Society’ knows there was a disturbance there. They know and I know that right in the midst of our most searchin’ investigations, some unprincipled villain in the disguise of humanity outraged us, and insulted us, and defied us by blimmin’; in other words by yellin’ out ‘Blim! Blim!’ every few minutes. And now I publicly state and proclaim to that blimmer, that if he blims here to night, I will put the papers onto him. I will set the law at him. I’ll see what Blackstone and Coke has to say about blimmin’.”
He hadn’t no more’n got the words out of his mouth, when “Blim!” came from one side of the house, and “Blim! Blim!” came from the other side. Nobody couldn’t tell who it was, there was such a crowd. Cornelius Cork’s face turned as red as a root-a-bagy beet, and he yelled out in the awfulest tone I had ever heerd him use—and if we had all been polar bears right from the pole, he couldn’t have took a more deadly aim at us with that awful forefinger:
“Stop that blimmin’ instantly!”
His tone was so loud and awful, and his gesture so fearfully commandin’ and threatenin’, that the house was still as a mice. You could hear a clothes-pin drop in any part of it.
Here he set down, and the meetin’ begun. Elder Easy was on the affirmative, and Thomas J. on the negative, as they call it.
Elder Easy is a first-rate man, and a good provider, but awful conservative. He believes in doin’ jest as his 4 fathers did every time round. If anybody should offer to let him look at the other side of the moon, he would say gently but sweetly: “No, I thank you, my 4 fathers never see it, and so I would rather be excused from beholdin’ it if you please.” He is polite as a basket of chips, and well meanin’; I haint a doubt of it in my own mind. But he and Samantha Allen, late Smith, differs; that female loves to look on every side of a heavenly idee. I respect my 4 fathers, I think a sight of the old men. They did a good work in cuttin’ down stumps and so 4th. I honor ’em; respect their memory. But cities stand now where they had loggin’ bees. Times change, and we change with ’em. They had to rastle with stumps and brush-heaps, it was their duty; they did it, and conquered. And it is for us now, who dwell on the smooth places they cleared for us, to rastle with principle and idees. Have loggin’ bees to pile up old rusty brushwood of unjust laws and customs, and set fire to ’em and burn ’em up root and branch, and plant in their ashes the seeds of truth and right, that shall yet wave in a golden harvest, under happier skies than ourn. If we don’t, shall we be doin’ for posterity what they did for us? For we too are posterity, though mebby we don’t realize it, as we ort to.
But Elder Easy, although he lives in the present time, is in spirit a 4 father, (though I don’t say it in a runnin’ way at all, for I like ’em, have swapped hens with him and her, and neighbored with ’em considerable.) He was on the likker side, not that he wants to get drunk, or thinks anything particular of likker himself, but he believes in moderate drinkin’ because his 4 fathers drank moderate. He believes in licensin’ intemperance because his 4 fathers was licensed. And Shakespeare Bobbet was on his side, and old Mr. Peedick, and the Editor of the Auger, (he is a democrat and went for slavery strong, felt like death when the slaves was set free, and now he wants folks to drink all they can, goes for intemperance strong. He drinks, so they say, though I wouldn’t have it go from Josiah or me for the world.) And Solomon Cypher was on that side. He drinks. And Simon Slimpsey; howsumever, he haint of much account anyway, he has almost ruined himself with the horrors. He has ’em every day stiddy, and sometimes two and three times a day. He told a neighborin’ woman that he hadn’t been out of ’em sense the day he was married to Betsey, she was so uncommon mean to him. I told her when she was a tellin’ me about it (she is a real news-bearer, and I didn’t want to say anything she could carry back) I merely observed in a cool way: “I have always had my opinion about clingers, and wimmen that didn’t want no rights, I have kep’ my eye on ’em, I have kep’ my eye on their husbands, and my mind haint moved a inch concernin’ them from the place it stood in more formally.” I didn’t say no more, not wantin’ to run Betsey to her back, and then truly, as a deep thinker observes in one of his orations, “a dog that will fetch a bone, will carry one.”
On Thomas Jefferson’s side was himself, the Editor of the Gimlet, Lawyer Nugent, Doctor Bombus, Elder Morton, and Whitfield Minkley—six on each side. Thomas Jefferson spoke first, and he spoke well, that I know. I turned right round and give sister Minkley a proud happy look several times while Thomas J. was a talkin’; she sot right behind me. I felt well. And I hunched Josiah several times when he said his best things, and he me, for we both felt noble in mind to hear him go on.
His first speech was what they call an easy, or sunthin’ considerable like that; Josiah said when we was a goin’ home that they called it an essence, but I told him I knew better than that. He contended, and I told him I would leave it to Thomas J. but it slipped my mind. Howsumever it haint no matter; it is the thing itself that Josiah Allen’s wife looks at, and not the name of it. The easy—or sunthin’ like it,—run as follows: I believe my soul I can git the exact words down, for I listened to it with every ear I had, and upheld by the thoughts of the future generations, and the cause of Right, I kinder took it out of his overcoat pocket the next day, and read it over seven times from beginnin’ to end. I should have read it eight times, if I had had time.
He seemed to be a pryin’ into what the chief glory and pleasure of gettin’ drunk consisted in; he said the shame, the despair, and the ruin of intemperance anyone could see. And he pictured out the agony of a drunkard’s home, till there wasn’t a dry eye in my head, nor Josiah’s nuther. And he said in windin’ up, (I shan’t put down the hull on’t, for it would be too long) but the closin’ up of it was:
“I don’t believe there is a sadder sight for men or angels, than to see a man made in the image of God willfully casting aside his heritage of noble and true manhood; slipping the handcuffs over his own wrists; and offering himself a willing captive to the mighty but invisible wine spirit.
“No slave bound to the chariot wheels of a conqueror is so deplorable a sight as the captive of wine. His face does not shine like the face of an angel, as did a captive in the old time—but with so vacant and foolish an expression, that you can see at once that he is hopelessly bound, body, mind and soul to his conqueror’s chariot. And a wonderful conqueror is he, so weak in seeming as to hide beneath the ruby glitter of a wine cup, and yet so mighty as to fill our prisons with criminals, our asylums with lunatics—and our graveyards with graves. Mightier than Time or Death, for outstripping time, he ploughs premature furrows on the brow of manhood and alienates affection Death has no power over.
“I have often marvelled where the chief glory of dissipation came in. Its evil effects were always too hideously palpable to be misunderstood; but in what consists the gloating pleasure for which a man is willing to break the hearts of those who love him, bring himself to beggary, endow his children with an undeserved heritage of shame, destroy his intellect, ruin his body, and imperil his soul, is a mystery.
“I have wondered whether its chief bliss consisted in the taste of the cup; if so, it must be indeed a delicious enjoyment, transitory as it is, for which a man would be willing to loose earth and heaven. Or if it were in that intermediate stage, before the diviner nature is entirely merged in the animal—the foolish stage, when a man is so affectionately desirous of doing his full duty by his hearers, that he repeats his commonest remarks incessantly, with a thick tongue and thicker meaning, and if sentimentally inclined, smiles, oh how feebly, and sheds such very foolish tears. In lookin’ upon such a scene, another wonder awakens in me, whether Satan, who with all his faults is uncommonly intelligent, is not ashamed of his maudlin friend. Or is the consummation of glory in the next stage, where with oaths and curses a man dashes his clenched fists into the faces of his best friends, pursues imaginary serpents and fiends, thrusts his wife and children out into the cold night of mid-winter, and bars against them the doors of home. And home! what a desecration of that word which should be the synonym of rest, peace and consolation, is a drunkard’s home. Or is the full measure of pleasure attained when he, the noblest work of God, is stretched out at his full six feet length of unconsciousness, stupidity and degradation.
“If there be a lonely woman amid the multitude of lonely and sorrowful women, more to be pitied than another, I think it is a wife lookin’ upon the one she has promised to honor, lying upon the bed with his hat and boots on. Her comforter, who swore at her as long as he could speak at all. Her protector, utterly unable to brush a fly from his own face. Her companion, lying in all the stupor of death, with none of its solemn dignity. As he is entirely unconscious of her acts, I wonder if she never employs the slowly passing moments in taking down her old idol, her ideal, from its place in her memory, and comparing it with its broken and defaced image before her. Of all the poor broken idols, shattered into fragments for the divine patience of womanhood to gather together and cement with tears, such a ruin as this seems the most impossible to mould anew into any form of comliness. And if there is a commandment seemingly impossible to obey, it is for a woman to love a man she is in deadly fear of, honor a man she can’t help bein’ ashamed of, and obey a man who cannot speak his commands intelligibly.”
It was a proud moment for Josiah Allen and me, to hear Thomas J. go on; and to have the hull house so still, while he was makin’ his eloquent speech, that you could hear a clothes-pin drop in any part of the room. And though my companion, perfectly carried away by his glad emotions, hunched me several time harder than he had any idee of, and almost gored my ribs with his elbo, I didn’t, as you may say, seem to sense it at all. And though in hunchin’ and bein’ hunched, I dropped more’n 20 stitches in Josiah’s socks, I didn’t care for that a mite; I had plenty of time to pick ’em up durin’ the next speech, which was the Editor of the Auger’es, (he has got over the zebra, so’s to be out.)
I have said, and I say still, that I never see a man that would spread a idee out thinner than he will,—cover more ground with it. Talk about Ingy Rubber stretchin’,—why that man will take one small thought and pull it out and string on enough big words to sink it, seemin’ly.
Howsumever, his talk did jest about as much good on Thomas J’s side, as on hisen, for he didn’t seem to pay any attention to the subject, but give his hull mind to stringin’ big words onto his idees, and then stretchin’ ’em out as fur as human strength can go. That, truly, was his strong pint. But jest as he bent his knees and begun to set down, he kinder straightened up again and said the only thing that amounted to a thing. He said,—“Keepin’ folks from sellin’ likker, is takin’ away their rights.”
“Rights!” says Thomas Jefferson, jumpin’ upon his feet the minute he set down. “Rights! The first right and law of our nature, is self-preservation, and what safety has any man while the streets are filled with men turned into crazed brutes by this traffic you are upholdin’? Every one knows that a drunken man entirely loses for the time his reasoning faculties, his morality and his conscience, and is made ripe for any crime. That he is jest as ready to rob and murder innocent citizens as to smoke his pipe. So if you and I lend our influence and our votes to make intemperance legal, we make arson, burglary, rape, robbery, murder, legal. Tell me a man has a right to thus plant the seeds of crime and murder in a man’s soul, and imperil the safety of the whole community. Why, the Bible says, that if a man let loose a wild ox, and it gored men with its horns and killed them, the men that let it go loose should surely be put to death.”
Here Simon Slimpsey got up, kinder hangin’ on to the bench, and made a dretful simple sort of a wink with one eye, and says he:
“Them haint the kind o’ horns we are a talkin’ about, we are talkin’ about takin’ a horn of whisky now and then.”
“Yes,” said Thomas J. “there was never a more appropriate name; for if there ever were horns that gored, and stabbed, and killed, it is these.”
Elder Easy spoke out, and says he,—“The Bible says: ‘take a little wine for the stomach sake.’”
But Elder Morton jumped up, and says he,—“There was two kinds of likker in earlier times; one that was unfermented and harmless, and contained no alcohol or any principle of intoxication, and another that contained this raging mocker.”
Then old Peedick spoke up. Says he,—“Likker would be all right if it wasn’t for the adultery in it: poison stuff, wormwood, and etcetery.”
But Dr. Bombus jumped up, and says he,—“Nothing that can be put into it, can be worse poison than the pure alcohol itself, for that is a rank poison for which no antidote has ever been found; useful for medical purposes, like some other poisons: arsenic, opium, laudanum, and so 4th.”
But old Peedick kep’ a mutterin’,—“I know there’s adultery in it;” and kep’ a goin’ on till Cornelius Cork, the President, sot him down, and choked him off.
Solomon Cypher spoke up, and says he:
“No! licence bills don’t do no good; there is more likker drunk when there haint no licence, than when there is. If you hinder one man from sellin’ it, another will.”