Part 13
Josiah thinks considerable of Maggy’s bein’ so fore-handed. I say _myself_ if she hadn’t but one hand in the line of riches, or no hand at all, she would still be _my_ choice. She is a straight-forward sensible girl--with no affectation, or sham about her. She reminds me of what Samantha Allen was, before she had changed her maiden name of Smith. Whether they are really engaged or not, I don’t know, for Thomas J. is such a hand for fun that you can’t find out anything from him no more than you could from the wind. But good land! there is time enough. The children shan’t marry anybody in one good five years from now, if I have my say about it. But as I told Josiah, I remember we was a talkin’ it over last fall, as we sot out a new orchard--I was a holdin’ the trees for him and says I--“Josiah it is our duty to get apple trees and children started in the right direction, and then let them take their time to grow.”
He said, “Yes, so it was.”
He feels well about it, as I say, it is agreeable to us both, and then Josiah’s crops looked well, the crows took a little of his corn, but it had come on, and bid fair to be a first rate crop. And as for his oats and barley and winter wheat, they couldn’t be bettered.
The Editer of the Augur had brought home his bride, a good lookin’ light complected woman, who seemed devoted to him and the two twins. They went to house keepin’ in a bran new house, and it was observed that he bought a cottage bedstead that didn’t have any posts, and life for him seemed blest and peaceful.
Betsey Bobbet did not pine away and expire as might be expected by cursory readers of her last poem in the Jonesville Gimlet. But any deep philosipher who had made the Human Race, his (or her) study for any length of time, never worrys over such efushions, knowin’ that affliction is like the measles, and if they break out freely in pimples and poetry, the patients are doin’ well.
Betsey had been pretty quiet for her through the winter and spring, she hadn’t made overtures only to two more--which was a little pill doctor, and a locul preacher who had been sent round by the Conference. As she remarked to me, “It is so natural to get attached to your minister and your physician.”
As I said the summer sun basked peacefully down and Jonesville almost asleep under her rays, seemed the abode of Repose. But where was there a Eden fenced in, but what Ambition let down the bars, or climbed over the fence. But this was a noble Ambition, a Ambition I was proud to see a gettin’ over the fence. It was a Ambition that leaped over into my door yard the very day I heard the blessed tidings, that Horace Greeley was run up for President.
I had always respected Horace, he had always been dear to me. And when I say dear, I want it to be plainly understood--I insist upon it that it _shall_ be understood--that I mean dear, in a scriptural, and political sense. Never sense I united myself to Josiah Allen, has my heart swerved from that man so much as the breadth of a horse hair. But Horace’s honest pure views of life, has endeared him to every true lover of the Human Race, Josiah Allen’s wife included. Of course we don’t think alike on every subject. No 2 human bein’s ever did. Horace and I differ on some things such as biled vittles, Wimmen’s Rights, and cream biscuit. He don’t believe in biled vittles, and it is my favorite beverage. He is a unbeliever in salaratus, I myself don’t see how he makes cream biscuit fit to eat without it. And he--not havin’ me to influence him--hadn’t come out on to the side of wimmen’s havin’ a Right. But as a general thing, Horace Greeley was to be found onto the side of Right. He was onto the side of the weak, the down trodden. He was always a plottin’ to do some good to somebody, and I felt that if the eyes of his spectacles could be once opened onto this subject of wimmen’s havin’ a Right, that he would be more help to us, than a army of banners. Months before he was run up for President I had felt this, and in the fall of 1871, as Josiah was a settin’ by the fire alone, he a readin’ the World and I a knittin’ says I to him,
“Josiah are you willin’ that I should go down to New York village on a tower, and have a talk with Horace about the Human race and wimmen’s havin’ a right?”
Josiah didn’t seem to be willin’, he looked up from the World, and muttered somethin’ about “Tammany’s ring.”
I don’t know when the old Smith blood so riled up in me as it did then. I remember I riz right up where I set in front of the stove, and waved my right hand, I was so excited, and says I,
“Josiah Allen if you have lived with me goin on 15 years, and if you haint no more confidence in me than to think I would accept a ring from old Tammany, then I will stay to home.” Says I, “Josiah Allen, I never mistrusted till this very minute that you had a jealous hair in your head,” says I, “you have fell 35 cents in my estimation to night,” says I, “you know Josiah Allen that I haint never wore no jewelrey sense I jined the Methodist meetin’ house, and if I did, do you spose I would accept a ring from old Tammany, that sneakin’ old Democrat? I hate old Tammany, I perfectly despise the old man.”
I felt so imposed upon and worked up, that I started right off to bed and forgot to wind up the clock, or shet the buttery door, for I remember the clock run down and the cat eat the inside out of the custard pies. Wall from that time I never had opened my head to Josiah about goin’ off on a tower. But I wrote Horace a letter on the subject of Wimmen’s Rights, as good a letter as I knew how, beggin’ him to follow the example of J. Allen’s wife, and all other noble reformers and put his shoulder blades to the wheel.
His answer wasn’t so satisfactory as I could have wished it was, and I knew I could do better to stand face to face with him. But as I say I don’t know as I should ever have started up agin, if that great and good man hadn’t been run up for President.
Now some thought it looked shiftless in the Democrats, and kinder poverty struck in ’em, to think they had got all out of President stuff, and had to borry some of the Republicans. But good land! where is there a housekeeper but what will once in a while get out of tea and have to borry a drawin’ of her neighbors? If good honest, smart men was skurse amongst ’em, if they had got kinder run out of President timber, and wanted to borry a little, why it would have looked dreedful tight and unneighberly in the Republicans to have refused ’em, when they was well on it too for President stuff, they could have spared two or three jest as well as not, even if they never got ’em paid back. But the Democrats only wanted to borry one, and that was Horace. The Democrats thought everything of Horace because he put a bail onto Jeff. Davis. Josiah said at the time that it raised him 25 cents or more in his estimation. At the same time it madded some of the Republicans. But it didn’t me. You see I believe jest what I think is right, and pay no attention to what the other folks who are standin’ on my doorstep may happen to believe.
Nobody that stands on my platform--let ’em stand as close to me as they are a mind to--not one of ’em is answerable to God for what thoughts and principles are performin’ in my mind and soul. Josiah Allen’s wife hangs on to nobody’s apron strings only jest her own.
As far as the party on my doorstep believe what I think is right, I am with ’em heart and hand, but I am not one to shet up my eyes and walk up blindly and hang on to anybody’s apron strings, not even Horace Greeley’s, as anybody can see in the matter of biled vittles, Wimmen’s Rights, and cream biscuit. To think you have got to believe every thing your party does, seems jest as unreasonable to me, as it would when you go out to pick greens, to pick skunk cabbage because cow cabbage is good and wholesome. Why skunk cabbage is pison, jest as pison as sikuta or ratsbane. Now the doctrine of free love as some folks preach it up, folks in both parties, why the smell of it is jest as obnoxious in my political and moral nostrals as the smell of sikuta is, and if anything smells worse than that, I don’t want to go near it. Pick out the good and leave the bad, is my theme in greens and politix.
Now about puttin’ that bail onto Jeff. Davis, though as I say it madded my party, I was glad he put it on. Jeff. was a mean critter no doubt, but I don’t know as chokin’ him to death with a rope would have made him any better. I say this idee of chokin’ folks to death to reform ’em, is where we show the savage in us, which we have brought down from our barbarious ancestors. We have left off the war paint and war whoops, and we shall leave off the hangin’ when we get civilized.
Says some to me, “Look at our poor Northern boys that suffered and died in Libby prison and Andersonville through Jefferson.”
I says to ’em, “Would chokin’ Jefferson bring ’em back? if so I would choke him myself.--not to kill him of course, but so he would feel it, I can tell you.”
No! it was all over, and past. All the sin, and all the sorrow of the war. And God had out of it brought a great good to the black Africans, and the nation, in the way all good is generally brought, through sufferin’ and tribulation. And if a nation is made perfect through sufferin’ what should be the first lesson she should show to the world?
I say, it should be the lesson that Christ and his disciples taught, that of all Heavenly graces, charity is the greatest. The way I looked at it was this. The South that had been so braggin’, and selfish, and overbearin’, stood at the door of the proud and victorious North, like a beggar, harmless, destitute and ragged. Where is the rich happy woman that wouldn’t give a nut-cake to a sick beggar? I don’t see myself how she could help givin’ one, if she had any generosity and nobility and--nut-cakes.
Jeff. Davis was all broke to pieces, and he wanted a bail put onto him so life could grip holt of him agin, and carry him I hope towards that heaven he turned his back to, when he was a fightin’ to uphold slavery. Horace helped put that bail on, and so did other noble men; and all the ministers in creation, of every persuasion, might all stand up in a row in our door yard, and preach to me 2 days, and then I wouldn’t believe that H. G. would turn his hand to anything he thought was wrong.
If there was any fault in him about this, it was on the side of charity and mercy, and as a general thing that end of the board don’t tip up any too fur in this selfish world. As a general thing, folks don’t teter on that end of the board so much as they do on the other.
So, as I said, when I heard that Horace was run up for President, I was so happy that my heart would have sung for joy if it had been anything of a singer, for now, thinks’es I, with that great and good and honest man for President, all he wants is the influence of Josiah Allen’s wife to make him all the sufferin’ nation needs. I felt that now the time had come for J. Allen’s wife to come out boldly and put her shoulder blades to the wheel. I felt that if Horace could be perswaded to draw and Josiah Allen’s wife to push, nothin’ could hender that wheel from movin’ right onward into Freedom. And so my principles, and the great doctrine so goared me, that I couldn’t get no rest, I felt that I _must_ see Horace before he got sot doun in the high chair, because you know when any body gets sot doun they don’t love to nestle round and make no changes. So I atted Josiah about it, but he didn’t seem to be willin’. I didn’t come right out and tell him how I was xcercised on Wimmin’s Rights, knowin’ he was a unbeliever, but I says to him,
“Josiah, Jonesville is a good village, but nobody wants to be tied doun even to a barell of sale molasses. Josiah, I do want to see some other village, I do want to go to New York on a tower.”
Says he, “Samantha, what under the sun do you want to go for at your age, why do you want to start up and go a caperin’ round the country?”
I thought a minute, and then says I, “I want to see Miss Woodhull, and give her a real talkin’ to, about free love. I want to convince her she is in the wrong on it,” and then says I in a kind of a blind way, “I have got other business that I feel that it is my duty to tend to.”
But he didn’t seem to be willin’, and I wouldn’t go without his consent. And so it went on, Josiah hangin’ back, and my principles a goarin’ me. It wore on me. My dresses begun to hook up looser on me, and finally one mornin’, as I dallied over my second potato, and my third egg, not eatin’ ’em with no appetite, Josiah says to me, “What does ail you, Samantha, you don’t eat nothin’, and you seem to be a runnin’ doun.”
Then I broached the subject to him agin. I expected he would object. But he looked at me in a silent, melankolly way for about one minute, and half or three quarters of another, and then says he in a gentle but firm accent,
“Samantha if I can sell the old critter you can go.”
So I was left in uncertainty (as it were) for I knew he wouldn’t sell it for less than the price he had sot it, and no knowin’ whether it would fetch it or not. But I felt in my heart a feelin’ that I should go off on that tower. And so I gradually but silently began makin’ preperations, I quietly and calmly took two breadths out of my brown alapaca dress and goared ’em and put a overskirt on to it, for I was determined not to go to New York village without a overskirt on to me. Not that I care about such triflin’ things myself, but I felt that I was representin’ a great cause, and I wasn’t goin’ to put our cause to open shame by not havin’ on a overskirt. Men sometimes say that great and strong minded wimmen are slack in the matter of dressin’ up, I was determined to show ’em that that weakness wasn’t mine. I wasn’t goin’ to be all tattered out, with ends and tag locks of bows and pleatin’s, and tow curls and frizzles, but I felt there was a megium course to pursue, and I was determined to hit against it.
Then agin I felt that the color of my dress suited the great cause. I wasn’t goin’ rigged out in pink muslin, or sky-blue cambric, or anything of that sort. A good solid sensible brown seemed to be jest the thing. Black would have seemed too much in the mournin’ line, as if we was despondent when we wasn’t. White book muslin would have looked as if my principles was too thin, and I was too light and triflin’, and didn’t realize the great issues dependent on to me. No; brown alapaca with a overskirt I felt was jest what the anxious nation required of me, as I stood face to face with the future President of the United States--with my spectacles calmly gazin’ into his’en, a influencin’ him in the cause of Right.
Another reason, I won’t deny, influenced me in tryin’ to get a good pattern for my overskirt so as to have it set good, (I got it of Miss Gowdey and made it a little bigger round the waist,) I thought more’n likely as not Horace’s and my picture would be took, and in the future would be hung up by the side of that good honest old Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
“Josiah Allen’s wife influencin’ Horace in the Great Cause of Wimmen’s Rights.”
And though I haint vain, I thought how poor it would be, and what a eye sore to the nation if my dress didn’t hang good. And how pleasin’ it would be both to America and Josiah, to see me dressed in a noble and becomin’ way. So I finished my overskirt, and silently done up my best petticoat, and in the same mysterious manner I put some tape trimmin’ on to the bottom of it.
And so the long and tegus days passed away from me. I felt that suspense was a wearin’ on me. Josiah see that it was. And on Saturday mornin’ I see him pensively leanin’ over the barn yard fence, mewsin’ as it was, and pretty soon he hitched up the old mare, and went to Jonesville, and when he came back he says to me, in sorrowful tones but some composed,
“Samantha, you can start to-morrow if you want to, I have sold the old critter.”
And then he added pensively. “I wish you would have a few griddle cakes for supper, with some maple molasses on to ’em.”
GOVERNED BY PRINCIPLES.
On the next Monday mornin’, I let loose to my feelin’s as it was, and begun to make open preparations. I baked up the best vittles the house afforded, for I determined Josiah should live like a king durin’ his temporary widowerhood. Then after I got through bakin’ and got the house clean as a pin, I commenced to fix a dress to wear on the journey, for of course I wasn’t goin’ to wear my best dress with a overskirt on the railway. I am a master hand for bein’ careful of my clothes, and I knew it would almost spile one of my best dresses, but I had a calico dress as good as new. It was a dark blue ground work with a handsome sprig on it, and after I took up two tacks in it, I felt that it was jest the thing to wear on the tower.
I had jest put it on, and had got the lookin’ glass onto the floor to see if it cleared the floor enough, when Thomas Jefferson come in, and says he,
“Your dress is too short, mother, I hate to see short dresses, they look so hihorsical.”
I answered him with dignity as I looked over my shoulder into the glass,
“Samantha Allen, whose maiden name was Smith, haint a goin’ to mop out the cars for the railroad company, free gratis for nothin’,” and I added with still more impressive dignity, as I hung up the lookin’ glass, “what you mean by hihorsical I don’t know.”
He said it was a compound word derived from the Greek, “high,” to intoxicate, and “horsical,” a race horse, which two words strained off from the dead language and biled doun into English meant “hihorsical.”
I told him “I didn’t care for his Greek, I didn’t care if it was dead, not a mite, I shouldn’t cry over it,” and I told him further, fixin’ my gray eyes upon him serenely, “that there was two or three words that wasn’t dead, that he would do well to strain off, and bile doun, and take ’em for a stiddy drink.”
He wanted to know what they was, and I told him plainly they was “Mind your own business.”
He said he would bile ’em doun, and take ’em stiddy as a clock, and pretty soon he started off for Jonesville--he had staid to home that day to help his father. And I went on with a serene face a makin’ my preparations. Josiah didn’t hardly take his eyes off of my face, as I made ’em. He sot in a dejected way, a claspin’ the World in his two hands, with a sad look onto his face. He hated to think of my leavin’ him, and goin’ off on a tower. I see he did, and I says to him in a real affectionate tone,
“Josiah, haint there nothin’ I can do for you in New York, haint you got any errands to the village?”
He rubbed his bald head in deep thought for a minute or two, and then says he, (he thinks everything of the World,) “The nigger barber’s wife to Jonesville came pretty near runnin’ away with another nigger last night; if you have time I should love to have you go to the Editer of the World and tell him of it. I am afraid,” says he, and a gloomy, anxious look over-spread his eye-brow, “I am afraid he haint heard of it.”
I answered him in a soothin’ tone, “That I guessed he had heard of it before now, I guessed it would be in the next week’s World,” and Josiah kinder chirked up and went out to work.
The next day I took ten pounds of butter, and 4 dozen of eggs and Josiah carried me to Jonesville to trade ’em out, to get necessarys for me to wear on my tower. I didn’t begrech layin’ out so much expense, neither did Josiah, for we both knew that as I was gettin’ pretty well along in years, it wasn’t likely I should ever go off on a tower agin. And then I had been prudent and equinomical all my days, and it wasn’t no more than right that I should launch out now in a liberal way.
But all the time I was workin’ over that butter, and all the time I was countin’ out them eggs, Horace was in my mind. Hangin’ such hopes on him as I hung, I felt that I must do somethin’ openly, to give vent to my patriotic feelin’s in regard to him.
I never had wore hats, for I felt that I was too old to wear ’em. But now as I was startin’ off to Jonesville to get necessarys to wear on my mission to that great and good Horace, I felt that principle called on me to come out openly, and wear a white hat with a feather. And I felt that Josiah as the husband of Josiah Allen’s wife, and the carrier of her to get them necessarys, must also wear one.
The father of Josiah, had left to him with other clothin’, a large white fur hat. As the old gentleman hadn’t wore it for some 40 or 50 years prior to and before his desease, (he died when Thomas J. was a baby) it wasn’t in the hight of fashion. But says I, “Josiah Allen in the name of Horace and principle will you wear that hat?”
Says he, “I hate to like a dog, for they will think I have stole the Baptist steeple, and am wearin’ it for a hat.” But seein’ my sad dissapointed look, says he, “If you say so Samantha, I will wear it for once.”
Says I with dignity, “It is not your wife, formally Samantha Smith, that says so, it is principle.”
“Wall!” says he “fetch it on.” Josiah was awful clever to me, I guess it is natural for all men to conduct themselves cleverer when they are about to lose their pardners for a spell.
The hat _was big_. I couldn’t deny it. And Josiah bein’ small, with no hair to fill it up, as I lifted it up with both hands and set it onto him, his head went right up into it, the brim takin’ him right across the bottom of his nose.
Says he, out from under the hat, “There hain’t no use a talkin’ Samantha, I can’t never drive the old mare to Jonesville in this condition, blind as a bat.”
But I explained it to him, that by windin’ a piller-case, or somethin’ round the top of his head, the hat would fit on, jest as you would fix a small cork into a big bottle.
So that bein’ arrainged, my next thought was for my own hat, and I thought mournfully as I examined it, mine would be as much too small as his was too big; it was an old one of Tirzah Ann’s, it was pure white, but it was small for _her_, and nobody could have got me even to have tried it onto my head, for love or money. But in such a nature as J. Allen’s wife’s, _principle_ is all in all.
And as I looked in the glass and see how awfully I looked in it, a feelin’ of grandeur--self sacrificin’ nobility and patrotism swelled up in me, and made my face look redder than ever, I am naturally very fresh colored. And I felt that for the sake of Horace and principle, I could endure the burnin’ sun, and mebby the scoffs and sneers of Jonesville, they bein’ most all on the side of Grant. I took a old white silk bunnet linin’ of mine, and put a new bindin’ round the edge, it bein’ formally bound with pink. And then after readin’ a chapter in Fox’es Book of Martyrs--a soul stirrin’ chapter, concernin’ them that was biled in oil and baked on gridirens for principle--I sallied out to get a feather to put onto it.
We hadn’t no white feathers by us, and I shouldn’t have felt like runnin’ Josiah into any extra expense to buy one, if there had been a feather store in the door yard. But our old rooster “Hail the Day,” as Thomas Jefferson calls him, had the most curlin’est, and foamin’est tail feathers you ever see, white as snow. And inspired by the most pure and noble and lofty sentiments that can animate the human breast, I chased up that old rooster for nigh onto half an hour. At last I cornered him behind the barn, and as I held him tight to my breast, and pulled out by main strength two long slim feathers, that quirled and waved in a invitin’ manner, I says to him,
“This is hard for you, old Hail the Day. But you are not the rooster I take you to be, you are not like your mistress, if you are not willin’ to suffer in the cause of Right.”