Part 5
I declare, that excited me so, that entirely unbeknown to myself, I spoke right out loud to Josiah:
“Good land! of all the poor excuses I ever heerd, that is the poorest. If I don’t kill my grandmother, somebody else will; or she’ll die herself, of old age, or sunthin’; good land!”
The sound of my voice kinder brought my mind back, and Josiah hunched me hard, and I went to knittin’ dretful fast. Whitfield looked round to me and kinder smiled, and says he, right out in meetin’:
“That’s so, Mother Allen!”
I declare for’t, I didn’t know whether I was seamin’ two and one, or towin’ off, or in the narrowins. I was agitated.
But Whitfield went right on, for it was his turn. His speech was about licencing wrong: admitting a thing was wrong, evil in itself and evil in its effects, and then allowin’ folks to carry on the iniquity, if they’d pay enough for it. It was about givin’ folks the privilege of bein’ mean, for money; about a nation sellin’ the right to do wrong, and so 4th.
Whitfield done well; I know it, and Tirzah Ann knows it. Jest as quick as he sot down, Solomon Cypher got up and says he—with an air as if the argument he was about to bring forred, would bring down the school-house, convince everybody, and set the question to rest forever:
“The way I look at it, is this:” said he, (smitin’ his breast as hard as I ever see a breast smote,) “if there haint no licence, if a man treats me, and I want to treat him back again, where—” (and again he smote his breast almost fearfully,) “_where_ will I git my likker to do it with.”
“That’s so;” said Simon Slimpsey, “there he has got you; you can’t git round that.”
Then Thomas J. spoke and brought up facts and figgers that nobody couldn’t git over, or crawl round; proved it right out, that intemperance caused more deaths than war, pestilence, and famine; that more than half the crimes committed in the United States could be traced back to drink; and eighty out of every hundred was helped on by it. And then he went on to tell how they transmitted the curse to their childern, and how, through its effects, infant babes was born drunkards, idiots, and criminals, entirely unbeknown to them; that the influence of our free schools is destroyed by the influence of the other free schools the nation allows for the childern of the people—the dram shops, and other legalized places of ruin—that while the cries of the starving and naked were filling our ears from all sides, seven hundred millions of dollars were annually spent for intoxicatin’ drink. Instead of spendin’ these millions for food and clothin’ for the perishin’, we spent them for ignorance, beastliness, taxation, crime, despair, madness and death. Says he:
“The cost of likker-drinkin’, from 1861 to 1870, was six thousand millions of dollars. Add to that, the labor in raisin’ the grain to make it; all the labor of distillin’ it; all the loss of labor the drinkin’ of it entailed; the sickness, deaths and crimes that resulted from its use; the ships that went down in mid-ocean, through the drunkenness of their crews—engulfin’ thousands of lives; the ghastly railroad accidents that fill our newspapers with long death-lists; the suicides and thousands of fatal accidents, all over the land, caused by it; the robberies and murders, and the cost of tryin’ the criminals, buildin’ the prisons, penitentiaries and jails, and supportin’ them therein; the alms-houses for the paupers made by it; the asylums for the insane, and the hirin’ of officers and attendants to take care of them. Imagine the sum-total if you can, and add to it, the six thousand millions of dollars,—and all spent for that which is not only useless, but ruinous. And honest, sober citizens consent to have their property taxed to support this system.
“What if this enormous amount of money was spent by our government, for the compulsory education of the childern of the poor; takin’ them from their wretched haunts and dens—schools of infamy, where they are bein’ educated in criminality—and teachin’ them to be honest and self-supportin’. What a marvelous decrease of crime there would be; what a marvelous increase of the national wealth and respectability.”
He said he had been lookin’ upon the subject in a financial point of view, for its moral effects could not be reduced to statistics. Says he:
“Now, with our boasted civilization, we support four drinkin’ saloons to one church. Which exerts the widest influence? In one of the finest cities of New England, there are to-day, ten drinkin’ saloons to one church, and a buildin’ owned by the Governor of the state has two drinkin’ saloons in it, the rumsellers hiring directly of him. The Indians, Buddhists, and Brahmins, the savage and heathen races, whom we look down upon with our wise and lofty pity, are our superiors in this matter, for they know nothin’ of drunkenness still we teach them. How will it be looked upon by the Righteous Judge above, that with all our efforts to evangelize the heathen; our money offerin’s of millions of dollars; our life offerin’s of teachers and missionaries; our loud talkin’, and our long prayers; after all the efforts of the Christian world, the facts face us: that for one heathen who is converted to Christ by the preachin’ of the tongue of our civilized race, one thousand sober heathen are made drunkards by the louder preachin’ of our example; are made by us—if we believe the Bible—unfit for ever enterin’ the heaven we make such powerful efforts to tell them of.”
“And” says he, “the sufferin’ intemperance has caused cannot possibly be reckoned up by figgers,—the shame, disgrace, and desolation, wretchedness to the guiltless, as well as the guilty. The blackness of despair that is dark enough to veil the very heavens from innocent eyes, and make them doubt the existence of a God—who can permit a nation to make such a traffic respectable and protect it with the shadow of the law.”
Says he, “When you have licenced a man to sell likker, and protected him by the law you have helped to make, he sells a pint of likker to a drunkard; do you know what you and he are sellin’? You know you are sellin’ poverty, and bodily ruin, and wretchedness; this you know. But you may be sellin’ a murder, a coffin and a windin’-sheet; sellin’ broken hearts, and a desolate hearth-stone; sufferin’ to the innocent, that will outlast a life-time; ruin, disgrace, despair, and the everlastin’ doom of a deathless soul. Tell me any one has a right to do this? Men in their greed and self interest may make their wretched laws to sanction this crime, but God’s laws are mightier and will yet prevail.”
Every word Thomas J. said went right to my heart. You see, a heart where a child’s head has laid—asleep or awake—till it has printed itself completely onto it, that heart seems to be a holdin’ it still when the head’s got too large to lay there bodily (as it were.) Their wrong acts pierce it right through, and their noble doin’s cause it to swell up with proud happiness.
Dr. Bombus bein’ dretful excited riz right up, and says he, “How any good man can sanction this infamous traffic, how any minister of the Gospel-—” But here the President made the Dr. set down, for it was Elder Easy’s turn.
And the Elder got up. I see he was kinder touched up by what the Dr. had said, and he made a long speech about what he thought it was a minister’s place to do. He thought it wasn’t their place to meddle in political matters. I kinder got it into my head from what he said, though he didn’t say it right out, that he thought there was bad men enough to make our laws without good men meddlin’ with ’em. And in windin’ up he said he thought ministers took too active a part in the Temperance move; he heerd of ministers preachin’ sermons about it on Sunday, and though he had no doubt they meant well, still, he must say he thought there was other subjects that was better fitted for good men to hold forth and improve upon. He thought the cross of Christ, warnin’ sinners to keep out of a future hell, was better subjects for ’em, and then he said the Bible was full of beautiful themes for Sunday discourses, such as the possibility of recognizin’ our friends in a future world, and so 4th.
Thomas J. got up and answered him.
Says he, “The subject of recognizin’ our friends in a future world is a beautiful one, and worthy of much thought. But I think it is commendable to try to keep our friends in a condition to recognize us in this world, try to keep a man while he is alive, so he will know his own wife and children, and not turn them out into the storm of a winter midnight, and murder them in his mad frenzy.”
Jest at this minute—when Thomas J. was goin’ on his noblest—some unprincipled creeter and no nothing,—whoever it was—yelled out “Blim!” again, and Cornelius Cork, the President, bein’ on a keen watch for iniquities, jumped out of his seat as if he had been shot out of it with a shot-gun. And he lifted up his head nobly and walked down the aisle of the school-house, in jest that proud triumphant way that Napoleon walked along on top of the Alp, and with that same victorious mean of a conqueror onto him, with his forefinger pinted out firmly and calmly, and almost nobly, he exclaimed in loud, glad tones, and the majesticest I ever heerd in my life:
“I’ve catched him at it! I’ve catched the blimmer! I heerd him blim! I seen him! I seen him when he was a blimmin’! Ike Gansey, I fine you ten cents and cost for _blimmin_.”
Here he collared him, dragged him out by the seat of his breeches, and shet the door in his face, and came back pantin’ for breath, but proud and victorious in his mean. Then the Editor of the Auger got up to make the closing speech, when all of a sudden the door opened, and in walked Miss Gowdey. I thought in a minute she looked dretful kinder flustrated and awe-struck. She sot right down by me—Josiah had gone across the school-house to speak to Whitfield on business—and says I:
“What is the matter, sister Gowdey!” (sister in the church;) says I: “you look as white as a white woolen sheet.”
Then she says to me and sister Minkley; says she:
“Sunthin’ dretful has happened!”
“What is it?” says I.
“Do tell us sister Gowdey!” says sister Minkley.
Says she, “You know how cold it is!”
Says I, “I _guess_ I do; Josiah froze one of his ears a comin’ here to-night, as stiff as a chip offen the north pole.”
“And our buttery shelves froze for the first time in years,” says sister Minkley.
“Well,” says she “Willie Harris, Widder Harris’es Willie, was found froze to death in that big snow drift jest the other side of the canal. You know sense they licenced that new drinkin’ saloon, Willie has got into bad company, and he left there late last night, after he and a hull party of young fellers had been a drinkin’ and carousin’; he couldn’t hardly stand up when he left, and they s’pose he lost his way and fell in the snow; and there he was, jest the other side of his mother’s, half covered up in the snow; some boys that were skatin’ on the canal found him jest at dark. I never see such a house in my life; the Dr. thinks it will kill his mother, you know she has worked so hard to educate him, almost killed herself, and was happy a doin’ it; she loved him so, and was so proud of him; and she has such a loving, dependent nature; such a affectionate tender-hearted little woman; and Willie was all she had. She lays there, lookin’ like a dead woman. I have been there all the evenin’.”
All the while Miss Gowdey was a speakin’, my heart kep’ a sinkin’ lower and lower, further and further down every minute, till I declare for’t, I didn’t know where it would go to, and I didn’t much care. Willie Harris! that handsome, happy boy that had sot on my knee a hundred times with my Thomas Jefferson; played with him, slept with him. That bright pretty boy, with his frank generous face, his laughing blue eyes, and his curly brown hair—his mother’s pride and darling. Oh! what feelin’s I felt. And then all of a sudden, my heart took a new start, and sunk down more’n two inches I’ll bet, at one sinkin’, as a thought gripped holt of me. What if it had been my Thomas Jefferson! And as that thought tackled me, without mistrustin’ what I was a doin’ I turned round in my seat and spoke right out loud to sister Minkley. Says I:
“Sister Minkley what if it was my Thomas Jefferson that was murdered accordin’ to law? What if it was _my_ boy that was layin’ out there under the snow?”
Sister Minkley had her white linen handkerchief up to her eyes, and she didn’t say a word; but she give several sithes, awful deep; she has got a mother’s heart under her breast bone; she has had between twelve and thirteen childern of her own, and they was on her mind. She couldn’t speak a word, but she sithed powerful, and frequent. But though I was as agitated as agitated could be, and though there wasn’t a dry eye in my head, I began to feel dretful eloquent in mind; my soul soared up awfully, and I kep’ on:
Says I, “Sister Minkley, how can we mother’s live if we don’t put our shoulder blades to the wheel?” says I, “we must put ’em there whether or no; we are movin’ the wheel one way, or the other anyway. In this, as in every other reform, public sentiment has got to work with the law, stand behind the law and push it ahead of it, or else it wont never roll onward to victory.” Says I, “It is a wheel that is loose jinted, the spokes are sot loose on the hub; it is slippery, and easy to run backwards; it is always easier to push anything down hill than up, and there is far more pushers in that direction. And one of the solemnest things I ever see, sister Minkley, is this thought—that you and I, and everybody else is a pushin’ it one way or the other every day of our lives; we can’t shirk out of it, we are either for it or ag’inst it. A man or a woman can’t git away from castin’ their influence one way or the other no more than they can git away from their shadder on a desert, with the sun bilein’ down on ’em, and no shade trees in sight. There haint no trees tall enough to hide us from the blazin’ sun of God’s truth; this cause is before us, and we must work with God or ag’inst him.”
“Amen!” says sister Minkley out from under her white linen handkerchief, and she sithed hard.
“How can we help workin’, sister Minkley? How can we fold our hands up, and rest on our feather beds? If a deadly serpent had broke loose from some circus, and was a wreathin’ and twistin’ his way through Jonesville, swallerin’ down a man or a woman every few days, would men stand with their hands in their pockets, or a leanin’ up ag’inst barn-doors a whittlin’; arguin’ feebly from year to year, whether it was best to try to catch the serpent and cut its head off, or whether it was best after all to let him go free? After they had seen some of their best friends swallered down by it, wouldn’t they make an effort to capture it? Wouldn’t they chase it into any hole they could get it into? Wouldn’t they turn the first key on it they could git holt of? And if it broke loose from that, wouldn’t they try another key, and another, till they got one that would holt him?
“Do you s’pose they would rent out that serpent at so much a year to crunch and swaller folks accordin’ to law? And would it be any easier for the folks that was crunched and swallered, and for the survivin’ friends of the same, if they was killed by act of Congress? What would such a law be thought of sister Minkley? and that is nothin’ to the wickedness of the laws as they be. For what is one middlin’ sized serpent in a circus, that couldn’t eat more’n one man a week with any relish, to this of intemperance that swallers down a hundred thousand every year, and is as big as that Great Midgard serpent I have heerd Thomas J. read about, whose folds encompass the earth.”
Sister Minkley sithed so loud that it sounded some like a groan, and I kep’ on in a dretful eloquent way:
“We have got to take these things to home sister Minkley, in order to realize ’em. Yours and mine, are as far apart as the poles when we are talkin’ about such things. As a general rule we can bear other folks’es trials and sufferin’s with resignation. When it is your brother, and husband, that is goin’ the downward road, we can endure it with considerable calmness; but when it is a part of my own heart, _my_ Willie, or _my_ Charley that is goin’ down to ruin, we feel as if men and angels must help rescue him. When it is mine, when it is mother’s boy that is lyin’ murdered by this trade of death—when the cold snow has drifted down over the shinin’ curls that are every one wove into her heart strings, and the colder drifts of disgrace and shame are heaped over his memory—how does the poison look to her that has killed her darling? How does the law that sanctions the murder seem to her? Then it is that yours and mine draw near to each other. It is the divine fellowship of suffering our Lord speaks of, that brings other hearts near to ours, makes us willin’ to toil for others, live for them, die for them if need be. It was this, that sent forth that wonderful Woman’s Crusade, made tender timid women into heroes willin’ to oppose their weakness to banded strength. It was this that made victory possible to them.
“When a king was chosen in the old time to lead the people of the Lord to victory, he was consecrated by the touch of a royal hand. And it was these women, weak and tender, touched with the divine royalty of sorrow, that God chose to confound the mighty.
“And other great souled women, who loved the praise of God better than the praise of the world, joined ’em; they swept over the land, the most wonderful army that was ever seen. Conquerin’ minds and hearts, instead of bodies, with tears and prayers for weapons. Hindered not by ridicule, helped by angels, enduring as seeing Him who is invisible, conquerin’ in His name. What was the Crusade to the Holy Land that I have heerd Thomas J. read about, to this? That was to protect the sepulchre where the body of our Lord was once laid, but this was to defend the living Christ, the God in man.”
I don’t know how much longer I should have kep’ on, for I seemed to feel more and more eloquent every minute—if I hadn’t all of a sudden heerd a little low modest snore right in front of me, and I see sister Minkley was asleep, and that brung my senses back as you may say, and when I took a realizin’ sense of my situation, and see how still the school-house was and everybody a listenin’ to me, I was completely dumbfounded to think I had spoke right out in meetin’ entirely unbeknown to me.
Cornelius Cork the President was a sheddin’ tears, though bein’ a man he tried to conceal ’em by blowin’ his nose and coughin’ considerable hard. But coughin’ couldn’t deceive me; no! the whoopin’ cough couldn’t, not if he had whooped like an Injun’s warwhoop. I see ’em, I had my eye on ’em.
You see he was own cousin to Willie Harris on his mother’s side—Willie’s mother and his, was own sisters. They was old Joe Snyder’ses girls by his first wife.
Cornelius Cork never asked a person to judge on the question, or vote on it, or anything. He jest jumped right up onto his feet, and says he in a real agitated and choked up voice:
“It is decided, that it is wrong to licence intemperance.” And then he coughed again awful hard. And Lawyer Nugent got up and said sunthin’ about adjournin’ the meetin’ till “Sime-die.” Though what Simon he meant, and what ailed Sime, and whether he died or not, I don’t know to this day no more than you do. Howsumever, we all started for home.
TIRZAH ANN AS A WIFE.
Tirzah Ann was to home a visitin’, yesterday. They keep house in part of Brother Minkley’ses house, for this winter. Brother Minkley’ses house is a bigger one than they need, or can furnish, and it is handy for Whitfield on account of its bein’ near to the law office where he learnt his trade. But Whitfield lays out to open a office of his own next summer. Everybody says he will do well, for the lawyer he learnt his trade of, has a awful creek in his back most the hull time. If he is a tryin’ anybody, or a swearin’ anybody,—right when he is a usin’ the biggest words, a tryin’ and a swearin’—he is liable to crumple right down, and be carried out with that creek,—no dependence on him at all; and lawyer Snow has got so rich that he don’t care whether he works at his trade or not; so there seems to be a clear road for Whitfield.
And they are a goin’ to have a house of their own, before long,—though nobody knows a word about it, only jest Tirzah Ann’s pa, and me. I atted Josiah to give Tirzah Ann her portion, now. Says I,—“They are a stiddy, likely, equinomical couple, and wont run through it; why not give ’em a start now, when they need it, as well as to wait till you and I die, and have ’em kinder lookin’ forred and ‘hankerin’ after our shoes,’ as the poet says.” Says I,—“give her her talent now, Josiah, and let her improve on it.” Says I,—“less buy ’em a house, Josiah Allen; they wont run through it, I know they wont.”
I would sejest this to Josiah Allen, every little while; but he hung off. Josiah is close, (but honest.) But I kep’ a sejestin’ and I kep’ a ’swaidin’, and finally he give his consent.
We are goin’ to buy ’em a neat little cream-colored house, with green blinds, right on the age of the village. We have got our eyes on it now, Josiah and me have; and to speak more plain, and let out a secret—which _mustn’t go no further_—we have got a contract of it. The man can’t give a clear deed till 1st of September.
This house and the one next to it—which is jest exactly like it—are kinder set off by themselves, and are the handsomest, pleasantest places in Jonesville, and everybody says so. I told Josiah he couldn’t do better than to buy one of ’em, and he sees it now; he feels well.
In the back garden is fruit trees of all kinds, and berry vines, and bushes, and a well of soft water; two acres of land, “be it more or less: to wit, namely, and so 4th, a runnin’ up to a stake, and back again, to wit.”
Josiah read it all off to me; he is a great case to read deeds and insurance papers, and so 4th. He thinks they are dretful agreeable readin’.
I know when we was first married, and he wanted to use me so awful well,—bein jest married, he naturally wanted to make himself agreeable and interestin’ to me—and so to happyfy me and keep me from bein’ homesick, and endear himself still more to me, he would draw out his tin trunk from under the bed, and read over deeds and mortgages to me by the hour. But I didn’t encourage him in it, and kinder broke it up; but he loves to read ’em to this day; and I felt so neat over this contract, that I let him read the hull thing right through, and was glad to hear it, though it took him one hour by the clock. He reads slow, and then there was so many whereases, and namelys, and to wits, that he would git baulked every few minutes. He would git to wanderin’ round in ’em—git perfectly lost—and I’d have to lay holt and help him out.
We are goin’ to git a deed of the house, unbeknown to Whitfield and Tirzah Ann, and make ’em a present of it. They was married the 14th day of September, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon—jest the time Josiah was born—so I told Josiah that I would bake up as nice vittles as I could, and enough of ’em,—enough to last a week or ten days—and we would have supper all ready in the new house, jest the day of the month and the time of the day he was born and they was married, and invite ’em over; and we’d have Thomas Jefferson and Maggie Snow, and the Widder Doodle, and turn it into a sort of 4th of July,—keep the day in a kind of a camp-meetin’, holiday style.