Part 21

“I know it,” says I. “But the law gets right onto such a man and stamps onto him. And public sentiment sets down on him hard. And I can tell you that when the hull community and law and religion and everything are all a settin’ on a man, and settin’ heavy, that man finds it is a pretty tuckerin’ business; he gets sick of it, and is glad to do better and be let up. But you make the iniquity lawful. You make law and religion and public sentiment all get under such a man, and boost him up—make out that the more crimes a man commits, the more wives he has, the higher place he will have in heaven. Why,” says I, “when I think it over, it hain’t no wonder to me that the Mormon leaders, before they let loose this shameful doctrine and putrifyin’ sin of polygamy, they settled down by a salt lake. I should have thought they would have needed salt. But salt never was made salt enough to save ’em, and they’ll find out so.”

He quailed a very little, or, that is, it looked like quail, though it might have been meachin’ness strong and severe. Powerful meach looks some like quail, at a first look. But he recovered himself in half a moment, and went on, in the haughtiest, impudentest tone he had used as yet:

“Wall, whether salt has helped us, or whatever did, we have flourished—nobody can deny that. We have made the desert blossom like a rose. We are industrious, stiddy, prudent, equinomical, hard-working. You can’t deny the good we have done in that way. We are full of good qualities, brim full of ’em.”

Says I, coldly, almost frigidly, “No amount of white-wash can cover up a whited sepulker so that my specks can’t see through it, and see the sepulker. Good store clothes can’t cover up a bad soul worth a cent. A blue satin vest, or even a pink velvet one, buttoned up over a bad heart, can’t make that heart none the purer. The vest might look well, and probable would. But when you know the bad heart beats under it, vile and wicked beats, why, that vest don’t seem no better to you, nor seem to set the man off no more, than if it was calico, with leather buttons. Material good can never make up for moral degradation.

“And your good qualities only make your sinful practices more dangerous, more successful in luring souls to destruction. It is like wreathin’ a sword with flowers, for folks to grip holt of and get their hands cut off (morally). It is like coverin’ a bottomless gulf with blossoming boughs, for folks to walk off on, and break their necks (as it were).”

“Wall,” says he proudly, “we have flourished, and are flourishin’ and are goin’ to still more. We are goin’ to extend our doctrine of polygamy further and further. We are goin’ to carry it into Arizona and all the other new territories—”

I riz right up, I was so agitated, and says I: “You shan’t carry it, not one step.”

Says he, firmly: “We will!”

Says I: “I tell you agin that you shan’t; and if you do I’ll know the reason why. I tell you that you shall drop it right there, by that salt lake, and let it lay there. It needs brine if anything ever did. You shan’t make no move to carry it a step further. You shall not carry this godless crime, a disgrace to religion and civilization, into new territories. The green turf of them lands is too fresh and bright to be blood-stained by the feet of weepin’ wimmen, bearin’ this heaviest of crosses that was ever tackled by ’em. You shall not darken the sunny skies and pollute the sweet air of new lands with this moral pestilence.”

Says he: “We will!”

Says I, firmly and sternly: “You won’t; and when I say you won’t, I mean it.”

“Wall,” says he, with a proud mean, “how are you goin’ to help yourself?”

Says I, in loud, excited axents: “If I can’t stop you myself, I know who can, and I will go to Uncle Sam myself. I’ll have a plain talk with that good old man. I’ll jest put it into his head what you are a tryin’ to do, and I’ll hunch him up, and make him stop you.”

Says he: “Don’t you s’pose sin and sorrow will ever be carried into the territories only as they are carried in by Mormons?”

“Yes, I do,” says I. “I s’pose that whenever humanity is sot down under the light of the Eternal, it will forevermore, as it has forever in the past, be followed by two shadows, the joyful and the sorrowful. Human nature can’t help itself; the Eternal Soul above will shine on, and the human nature below will throw its shadows—the dark one and the light one, first one and then the other, unbeknown to us, followin’ us all the time, and will follow us till the darkness of the human is all lost in the light of the divine. There hain’t no territories been discovered distant enough for the human soul to escape from itself—from the shadow of sorrow. I hain’t said there wuz. Neither have I said it could escape from sin. I s’pose the old man in human nature won’t never be wholly drove out of it this side of Eternity; and I s’pose wherever that old man is there will be caperin’ and cuttin’ up and actin’. But, as I have said more’n forty times, you ort to whip that old man, make him behave himself as well as you possibly can, be awful severe with him, and keep him under. But you don’t try to. You jest pet that old man, and humor him, and encourage him in his caperin’s. You try to make sin and cuttin’ up and actin’ respectable; protect it by the law.

“Why, sin is what all good men and wimmen must fight aginst; educate public sentiment aginst it; make it obnoxious; or what will become of everybody and the world if they don’t? Why, they will be ondone, they and the hull world, if they don’t. I will,” says I firmly, “I will see Uncle Sam about it at once.”

“Oh,” says he, in a impudent, pert tone, “Uncle Sam won’t do nothin’ to hinder us. He has always protected us. He has done well by us. He has let us do about as we was a mind to.”

“I know it,” says I, “but I’ll tell you,” says I, ontyin’ my apron-strings in a absent-minded sort of a mechanicle way, and then tyin’ ’em up agin in the same way (or about the same), “I’ll tell you what,” says I, for I was fairly determined to find some excuse for Samuel, if I possibly could, “the fact is, that old man hain’t been well for quite a number of years. He has seemed to be sort o’ runnin’ down; his constitution hain’t seemed right to me. And he has had miserable doctors; or that is, he has got help in some directions, good help, and in others he has had the poorest kind of physic. But,” says I, firmly, “that old man means well; there hain’t a well-meanin’er, conscientiouser old creeter on the face of the earth than that old man is.”

“Yes,” says he, “he has done well by us. We hain’t no fault to find with him.”

Oh! how that madded me. But I was determined to find all the excuses for Samuel that I could (though I was at my wit’s end, or pretty nigh there, to find ’em, and I can’t deny it). Says I,

“That old man has been more than half crazy for a number of years back. What with fightin’ and bloodshed right in his own family, amongst his own childern—and the injins screechin’ and warhoopin’ round his frontiers, and the Chinamen a cuttin’ up behind his back, and his neighbors a fightin’ amongst themselves, and jabbin’ at him every chance they got; and congressmen and everybody a stealin’ everything they could, right under his nose, and cuttin’ up and actin’. It is a wonder to me that the old man hain’t gin up long ago, and died off. I guess lots of folks thought, a number of years ago, that he wouldn’t live a year. And it wasn’t nothin’ but his goodness and solid principles that kep’ him up, and everybody knows it. He’s had enough to bear to kill a ox.”

“We ort to speak well of him,” says he agin. “He has done first-rate by us. He has seemed to like us.”

“Shet up!” says I. “I won’t hear another word from you aginst that old man. Your doin’s has worried Samuel almost to death—I know it has. I wouldn’t be afraid to bet (if I believed in bettin’) that it has wore on him more than all the work he has done for years.

“He wants to do right, that old Uncle does. He would be jest as glad to get rid of all of you,—Mormons, Oneida Communities, Free Lovers, and the hull caboodle of you,—as our old mare would be glad to get rid of flies in fly-time. But the thing of it is, with Samuel and the mare, how to go to work to do it. He can’t see to everything without help. I know what he needs. He needs a good, strong friend to help him. He wants to have somebody tell him the plain truth, to get his dander completely up; and then he wants to have that same female stand right by him, with a cast-iron determination, and hand him bullets and cartridges, while he aims his old revolutionary musket, and shoots down iniquities on every side of him.

“Why, where would Josiah Allen be, if it wuzn’t for me? He would come to nothin’, morals and all, if it wuzn’t for me to hunch him up. And Samuel has as much agin to worry him as Josiah has.

“Why, there is no tellin’ how many things that old man has to plague him and torment the very life out of him. Little things, too, some of ’em, but how uncommon little things will worry anybody, ’specially in the night. Curious things, too, some of ’em, that has worried me most to death way off here in Jonesville, and what feelin’s I should have felt to have had it a goin’ on right under my nose, as Samuel did.

“Now, when they made that new silver dollar, right there in his house I s’pose they done it, or in his wood-shed or barn—anyway, it was right where he could see it a goin’ on, and worry over it—you know they put onto it, ‘In God we trust.’ And it has fairly hanted me to find out what the government really meant by it—whether they meant that God wouldn’t let ’em get found out in their cheatin’ seven cents on every dollar, or trusted He would let ’em cheat fourteen cents on the next ones they made.

“Why, it has worried me awfully, and how Samuel must have felt about it. And that is only one little thing.

“There is the trade dollars we made on purpose to cheat China with, and sent over in the same ship we sent missionaries to convert ’em. I persume to say that old man has laid awake nights a worryin’ over what the heathens would think about it—about our sendin’ religion and robbery over to ’em in the same ship—about our sendin’ religious tracts, exhortin’ ’em to be honest, or they would certainly go to that bad place which I do not, as a Methodist, wish to speak of, and send these dollars to cheat ’em with in the same box—sendin’ eloquent and heartrendin’ tracts provin’ out to ’em that no drunkard can possibly go to Heaven, packed side by side with barrels of whiskey to teach ’em how to get drunk, so they will be sure not to go there. I know it has wore on him, so afraid that the heathens would be perfectly disgusted with a religion taught by professed followers of Him who come down to earth bearing peace, good-will to men, and then, after 1800 years of professed loyalty to Him, and His pure and exalted teachings, bore to their shores such fruit as cheating, falsehood, and drunkenness.

“It has hanted Samuel, I know it has. Hantin’ me as it has, it must have hanted him fur worse. He has had severe trials, that old gentleman has, and he has needed somebody to hunch him up, and lock arms with him, and draw him along on the path of Right. And I tell you when I talk with him I shan’t spare no pains with him. I shall use my eloquent tone freely. I shan’t be savin’ of gestures or wind. I shall use sharp reason, and, if necessary, irony and sarcasm. And I shall ask him (usin’ a ironicle tone, if necessary) how he thinks it looks in the eyes of the other nations to see him, who ort to be a model for ’em all to foller, allow such iniquity as Mormonism to flourish in his borders. To let a regular organized band of banditty murder and plunder and commit all sorts of abominations right under his honest old nose. And how it must look to them foreign nations to see such a good, moral old gentleman as he is lift his venerable old eyewinker and wink at such crime and sin. How insignificant and humiliatin’ it must look to ’em to see him allow a man in Congress to make laws that will imprison a man for havin’ two wives when the same man has got four of ’em, and is lookin’ round hungry for more.

“And I shall hunch him up sharp about sellin’ licenses to do wrong for money—licenses to make drunkards, and unfit men for earth or heaven—licenses to commit other crimes that are worse—sellin’ indulgences to sin as truly as ever Mr. Pope did.

“I don’t s’pose, in fact, I know, that Sam hain’t never thought it over, and took a solemn, realizin’ sense of how bad he was a cuttin’ up (entirely unbeknown to him). And, if necessary, to convince him and make him see his situation, I shall poke fun at him (in a jokin’ way, so’s not to get him mad). And I shall ask him if he thinks it is any nobler for him to set up in his high chair at Washington and sell indulgences to sin, than it was in Mr. Pope to set up in his high chair in Vatican village and sell ’em.

“And I shall skare him mebby, that is, if I have to, and ask him in a impressive, skareful tone that if he can’t be broke in any other way, if he don’t think he ort to be brought down to a diet of Worms.

“It will go aginst my feelin’s to skare the excellent old gentleman. But I shall feel it to be my duty to not spare no pains. But at the same time I shall be very clever to him. I shall resk it. I don’t believe he will get mad at me. He knows my feelin’s for him too well. He knows there hain’t a old man on the face of the earth I love so devotedly, now father Smith is dead, and father Allen, and all the other old male relatives on my side, and on his’en. I’ll bet a cent I can convince him where he is in the wrong on’t.”

Here I paused for a moment for wind, for truly I was almost completely exhausted. But I was so full and runnin’ over with emotions that I couldn’t stop, wind or no wind. And I went on:

“He hain’t realized, and he won’t, till I go right there and hunch him up about it, how it looks for him to talk eloquent about the sanctity of home. How the household, the Christian home, is the safeguard, the anchor of church and state, and then make his words seem emptier and hollower than a drum, or a hogsit, by allowin’ this sin of Mormonism to undermind and beat down the walls of home.”

And then (this theme always did make me talk beautiful), as I thought of home and Josiah, and the fearful dangers that had threatened ’em both, why, as I thought of this, I begun to feel eloquenter far than I had felt durin’ the hull interview, and I don’t know as the feelin’s I felt then had been gone ahead of by me in five years. Why, I branched out perfectly beautiful, and very deep, and says I:

“Home! The Christian home! The mightiest power on earth for good. Each home seperate and perfect in itself, like the little crystal drops of water, each one on ’em round and complete and all floatin’ on together, unbeknown to them, makin’ a mighty ocian floatin’ right into that serene bay into which all our hopes and life dreams empty. That soundless sea that floats human souls right up to the eternal city.

“The love of parents, wives, and children, like golden rings, bindin’ the hearts to the happy hearth-stone, and then widenin’ out in other golden rings, bindin’ them hearth-stones to loyalty and patriotism, love of country, love of law and order, and love of Heaven, why, them gold rings within rings, they all make a chain that can’t be broke down; they twist all together into a rope that binds this crazy old world to the throne of God.

“And,” says I, lookin’ at Elder Judas Wart, with a arrow in each eye (as it were): “This most wholesome restraint, this strongest of ropes that is stretched firm and solid between safety and old Error, you are tryin’ to break down. But you’ll find you can’t do it. No sir! You may all get onto it,—the whole caboodle of you, Mormons, Oneida Communities, Free Lovers, the hull set on you,—and you’ll find it is a rope you can’t break! You’ll find that the most you can do is to teter and swing on it, and stretch it out a little ways, mebby. You can’t break it! No sir! Uncle Samuel (after I have hunched him up) will hold one end of it firm and strong, and Principle and Public Sentiment the other end of it; and if necessary, if danger is at hand, she that was Samantha Smith will lay holt of it, too; and I’d love to see any shacks, or set of shacks, a gettin’ it out of our hands then.”

Oh, how eloquent I had been. But he wuzn’t convinced. I don’t s’pose anybody would hardly believe that a man could listen to such talk, and not be proselyted and converted. But he wuzn’t. After all my outlay and expenditure of eloquence and wind and everything, he wuzn’t convinced a mite. And after he had got his hat all on to go, he jest stood there in front of me, with his hands in his pockets, and says he, bold as brass, and as impudent as brass ever was:

“I am a goin’, mum, and I don’t never expect to see you agin. I never shall see you in the kingdom.”

“I am afraid you won’t,” says I, givin’ him a awful keen look, but pityin’. “I am afraid if you don’t turn right square round, and stop actin’, you won’t be there.”

“I shall be there,” says he, “but you won’t.”

Says I, “How do you know I won’t?”

Says he, “Because I do know it.”

Says I, with dignity, “You don’t know it.”

“Why,” says he, comin’ out plain with his biggest and heftiest argument, the main pillow in the Mormon church, “a woman can’t be saved unless some man saves ’em, some Mormon. That is one reason,” says he, “why I would have bore my cross, and married you; obtained an entrance for you in the heavenly kingdom. But now it is too late. I won’t save you.”

“You won’t save me?” says I, lookin’ keen at him, as he stood there before me, with his red bloated face, a face that had that low, disipated, animal expression lookin’ out so plain under the sanctimonious, hypocritical look he had tried to cover it with. “You won’t save me! Won’t take me into the heavenly kingdom! Wall, I rather think you won’t.”

I was so engaged and bound up in my indignant emotions and principles and everything that I didn’t see what was goin’ on behind me. But there was a fearful scene ensuin’ and goin’ on there. A awful scene of vengeance and just retribution. For my faithful pardner, maddened by the terrible insult to his Samantha, jest lifted himself up on one elbo, his righteous anger liftin’ him up for the moment above stitches and all other earthly infirmities, and he threw that broom-handle at Elder Judas Wart with terrific force, and aimed it so perfect that it hit him right on the nap of the neck. It was a fearful blow. I s’pose it come jest as near breakin’ his neck as anything ever did and miss.

And it skairt him fearfully, too; for Josiah had been so still for a spell that he thought he was asleep. And it had come onto him as swift and severe as a judgment right out of the heavens. (Not that I would wish to be understood that broom-handles are judgments, and should be handled as such; not as a general thing. I am speakin’ in a poetical way, and would wish to be took poetically.)

But oh! how fearful Elder Judas Wart looked. It squshed him right down for a minute where he ort to be squshed—right onto his knees. He couldn’t get up for a number of minutes, bein’ stunted and wild with the blow and the fearful horrow of his skare. And oh! how Josiah Allen did converse with him, as he knelt there helpless before him; hollered! it wasn’t conversation, it was hollerin’; loud, wild holler! almost a beller!

He ordered him out of the house, and threatened him with instant and immediate execution on the galluses. Though he knew we hadn’t no gallus built, and no timber suitable to build one; and he disabled with a stitch, and nobody but me to do anything. But he vowed, in that loud, skareful axent, that he would hang him in five minutes’ time; and chop his head off with a broad-axe; and gulotine him; and saw his neck off with our old cross-cut saw; and shoot him down like a dog; and burn him to the stake; and scalp him.

Why, Josiah ort to have known that one of these punishments was enough for any man to bear, and more than any man could stand up under. And he knew we hadn’t the conveniences by us for half of these punishments. But he didn’t think of that. He didn’t think of nothin’, nor nobody, only jest anger and vengeance. He was more delerious and wild in his conversation and mean than I had ever known him to be during our entire aquaintenship. It was a fearful scene. It was harrowin’ to me to see it go on. And Elder Judas Wart, as quick as he could get up,—started off on a quick run, almost a canter. I s’pose, I have heerd sense, and then I could see from his looks and actions, that a skairter man never lived. And well he might be. I don’t blame him for it a mite. I blame him for lots of things, but not for that; for the words and mean of Josiah was enough to apaul a iron man, or a mule.

But as I told Josiah afterwards, after the crazy delerium begun to disperse off of his mean, says I, “Why is it any more of a insult to me than it is to them other poor wimmen who have to endure it?” Says I, “You feel awfully to have that doctrine jest throwed at your pardner, as you may say. And look at the thousands of wimmen that have to submit to the humiliation and degredation of this belief, live in it, and die in it.”

“Wall,” says he, chucklin’, “I jest choked old Wart off of it pretty sudden. I brought him down onto his knees pretty suple. He won’t talk about savin’ wimmen’s souls agin right away. He won’t till his neck gets well, anyway.” And he chuckled agin.

I don’t believe in fightin’, and am the last woman to encourage it; but I could not help sayin’, in fervid axents:

“Oh! if Uncle Samuel, that dear, blunderin’, noble old man, would only hit old Polygamy jest another such a blow, jest as sudden and unexpected, and bring him down on his polluted old knees in front of the nation. Oh! what a day that would be for America and Samantha. What feelin’s we should feel, both on us.”

“Yes,” says Josiah, “I wish it could be did.” In the case of Josiah Allen my powerful talk (aided by previous and more late occurrences) had fell on good ground, I knew. The seed was springin’ up strong. I knew it was by the way he threw that broom-handle, and I knew also by his looks and axents.

He was perfectly and entirely convinced of the awfulness and vile horrors of Mormonism. I knew he was. He looked so good and sort o’ noble at me. And his tone was so sweet and kind of affectin’, somehow, as he added, in gentle and plaintive axents:

“I believe, Samantha, I could relish a little briled steak and some mashed-up potatoes.”

Says I, “So could I, and I will get dinner to once.” And I did.

A CRISIS WITH KELLUP.

The very next day after I gin the Elder such a talkin to, Cassandra and Nathan Spooner come to our house a visitin, or that is, Nathan brought Cassandra up as far as there for a drive, in the mornin’, and I made ’em come in and stay to dinner, Cassandra not bein’ very strong. They have got a young babe, a boy, five weeks old that very day. Wall, while they was there, while I was a gettin’ dinner, I had a letter from Kitty. Kitty had gone home two weeks before, unexpected. A letter bein’ had by her from her mother, to that effect.