Sweet Cicely — or Josiah Allen as a Politician, Marietta Holley [best books to read ever txt] 📗
- Author: Marietta Holley
Book online «Sweet Cicely — or Josiah Allen as a Politician, Marietta Holley [best books to read ever txt] 📗». Author Marietta Holley
“You are laborin' under a mistake, mom.”
“No, I hain't laborin' under no mistake! And don't you tell me agin that I be. We have got a good farm all paid for, and money out on interest; and whose business is it whether he works all day, or don't. When I get to goin' round to see who works, and who don't; and when I get so low as to watch my neighbors the hull of the time, to find out every minute they set down; when I can't find nothin' nobler to do,—I'll spend my time talkin' about hens' teeth, and lettis seed.”
Says he, lookin' as amiable and patient as a factory-cloth rag-babe, but as determined as a weepin' live one, with the colic,—
“You don't seem to get my meaning. I merely wished to remark that I could fix over your feller if you wanted me to”—
Oh! how burnin' indignant I wuz! But all of a sudden, down on this seethin' tumult of anger fell this one calmin' word,—Meeting-house! I felt I must be calm,—calm and impressive; so says I,—
“You need not repeat your infamous proposal. I say to you agin, that the form where Love has set up his temple, is a sacred form. Others may be more beautiful, and even taller, but they don't have the same look to 'em. It is one of the strangest things,” says I, fallin' agin' a little ways down into a revery,—
“It is one of the very solemnest things I ever see, how a emotion large and boundless enough to fill eternity and old space itself, should all be gathered up and centered into so small a temple, and such a lookin' one, too, sometimes,” says I pensively, as I thought it over, how sort o' meachin' and bashful lookin' Josiah Allen wuz, when I married to him. And how small his weight wuz by the steelyards. But it is so, curious it can be, but so it is.
“Why Love, like a angel, springs up in the heart unawares, as Lot entertained another, I don't know. If you should ask me why, I'd tell you plain, that I didn't know where Love come from; but if you should ask me where Love went to, I should answer agin plain, that it don't go, it stays. The only right way for pardners to come, is to come down free gifts from above, free as the sun, or the showers—that fall down in a drouth—and perfectly unbeknown, like them. Such a love is oncalculatin', givin' all, unquestionin', unfearin', no dickering no holdin' back lookin' for better chances.”
“Yes, mom,” says he, a twirlin' his hat round, and standin' on one foot some like a patient old gander in the fall of the year.
“Yes, mom, what you say is very true; but your elequent remarks, your very sociable talk, has caused me to tarry a longer period than is really consistent with the claims of business. As I told you when I first come in, I merely called to see if I could sell you”—
“Yes, I know you did. And a meaner, low-liveder proposal I never heard from mortal lips, be he male, or be he female. The idee of me, Josiah Allen's wife, who has locked arms with principle, and has kep' stiddy company with it, for years and years—the idee of me buyin' a feller! I dare persume to say”—
Says I more mildly, as he took up his hat and little box he had, and started for the door,—and seein' I was goin' to get rid of him so soon, I felt softer towards him, as folks will towards burdens when they are bein' lifted from 'em,—
“I dare persume to say, you thought I was a single woman, havin' been told time and agin, that I am young-lookin' for my age, and fair complected. I won't think,” says I, feelin' still softer towards him as I see him a openin' the door,—
“I won't think for a minute that you knew who it was you made your infamous proposal to. But never, never make it agin to any livin' human bein', married or single.”
He looked real sort o' meachin' as I spoke; and he said in considerable of a meek voice,—
“I was talkin' to you about a new feller, jest got up by the richest firm in North America.”
“What difference does it make to me who he belongs to? I don't care if he belongs to Vanderbilt, or Aster'ses family. Principle—that is what I am a workin' on; and the same principle that would hender me from buyin' a feller that was poor as a snail, would hender me from buyin' one that had the riches of Creshus; it wouldn't make a mite of difference to me.
“As the poet Mr. Burns says,—I have heard Thomas J. repeat it time and agin, and I always liked it: I may not get the words exactly right, but the meanin' is,—
“Rank is only the E pluribus Unum stamp, on the trade dollar: a feller is a feller for all that.”
But I'll be hanged if he didn't, after all my expenditure of wind and eloquence, and quotin' poetry, and every thing—if he didn't turn round at the foot of that doorstep, and strikin' that same patient, determined attitude of hisen, say, says he,—
“You are mistaken, mom. I merely stopped this mornin' to see if I could sell you”—
But I jest shet the door in his face, and went off upstairs into the west chamber, and went to windin' bobbin's for my carpet. And I don't know how long he stayed there, nor don't care. He had gone when I come down to get dinner, and that was all I cared for.
I told Josiah about it when he and the boy come home; and I tell you, my eyes fairly snapped, I was that mad and rousted up about it: but he said,—
“He believed it was a sewin'-machine man, and wanted to sell me a feller for my sewin'-machine. He said he had heard there was a general agent in Jonesville that was a sendin' out agents with all sorts of attachments, some with hemmers, and some with fellers.”
But I didn't believe a word of it: I believe he was mean. A mean, low-lived, insultin' creeter.
CHAPTER XIV.
Wall, Cicely died in June; and how the days will pass by, whether we are joyful or sorrowful! And before we knew it (as it were), September had stepped down old Time's dusty track, and appeared before us, and curchied to us (allegory).
Ah, yes! time passes by swiftly. As the poet observes, In youth the days pass slowly, in middle life they trot, and in old age they canter.
But the time, though goin' fast, had passed by very quietly and peacefully to Josiah Allen and me.
Every thing on the farm wus prosperous. The children was well and happy; the babe beautiful, and growin' more lovely every day.
Ury had took his money, and bought a good little house and 4 acres of land in our neighborhood, and had took our farm for the next and ensuin' year. And they was happy and contented. And had expectations. They had (under my direction) took a tower together, and the memory of her lonely pilgrimage had seemed to pass from Philury's mind.
The boy wus a gettin' healthier all the time. And he behaved better and better, most all the time. I had limited him down to not ask over 50 questions on one subject, or from 50 to 60; and so we got along first-rate.
And we loved him. Why, there hain't no tellin' how we did love him. And he would talk so pretty about his ma! I had learned him to think that he would see her bime by, and that she loved him now jest as much as ever, and that she wanted him to be a good boy.
And he wuz a beautiful boy, if his chin wuz sort o' weak. He would try to tell the truth, and do as I would tell him to—and would, a good deal of the time. And he would tell his little prayers every night, and repeat lots of Scripture passages, and would ask more'n 100 questions about 'em, if I would let him.
There was one verse I made him repeat every night after he said his prayers: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
And I always would say to him, earnest and deep, that his ma was pure in heart.
And he'd say, “Does she see God now?”
And I'd say, “Yes.”
And he would say, “When shall I see Him?”
And I'd say, “When you are good enough.”
And he'd say, “If I was good enough, could I see Him now?”
And I would say, “Yes.”
And then he would tell me that he would try to be good; and I would say, “Wall, so do.”
And late one afternoon, a bright, sunny afternoon, he got tired of playin'. He had been a horse, and little Let Peedick had been a drivin' him. I had heard 'em a whinnerin' out in the yard, and a prancin', and a hitchin' each other to the post.
But he had got tired about sundown, and come in, and leaned up against my lap, and asked me about 88 questions about his ma and the City. He had never forgot what his uncle Josiah had read about it, and he couldn't seem to talk enough about it.
And says he, with a dreamy look way off into the glowin' western sky, “My mamma Cicely said it would swing right down out of heaven some day, and would open, and I could walk in; and don't you believe mamma will stand just inside of the gate as she used to, and say, 'Here comes my own little boy'?”
And he wus jest a askin' me this,—and it beats all, how many times he had tackled me on this very subject,—when Whitfield drove up in a great hurry. Little Samantha Joe had been taken sick, very sick, and extremely sudden.
Scarlet-fever was round, and she and the boy had both been exposed. I was all excitement and agitation; and I hurried off without changin' my dress, or any thing. But I told Josiah to put the boy to bed about nine.
Wall, there was a uncommon sunset that night. The west was all aflame with light. And as we rode on towards Jonesville right towards it,—though very anxious about the babe,—I drawed Whitfield's attention to it.
The hull of the west did look, for all the world, like a great, shinin' white gate, open, and inside all full of radience, rose, and yellow, and gold light, a streamin' out, and changin', and glowin', movin' about, as clouds will.
It seemed sometimes, as if you could almost see a white, shadowy figure, inside the gate, a lookin' out, and watchin' with her arms reached out; and then it would all melt into the light again, as clouds will.
It wus the beautifulest sunset I had seen, that year, by far. And we s'pose, from what we could learn afterwards, that the boy, too, was attracted by that wonderful glory in the west, and strolled out to the orchard to look at it. It wus a favorite place with him, anyway. And there wus a certain tree that he loved to lay under. A sick-no-further apple. It wus the very tree I found him under that day in the spring, a lookin' up into the sky, a watchin' for the City to come down from heaven. You could see a good ways from there off into the west, and out over the lake. And the sunset must have looked beautiful from there, anyway.
Wall, my poor companion Josiah wus all rousted up in his mind about the babe, and he never thought of the boy till it was half-past nine; and then he hurried off to find him, skairt, but s'posen he was up on his bed with his clothes on, or asleep on the lounges, or carpets, or somewhere.
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