It was about a week after the Danks’es departure and exodus. It was a
cool day for the time of the year, and very windy. And I was settin’
calm and peaceful, hullin’ some strawberries for dinner. For my
companion, Josiah Allen, had gone to Jonesville, and I wanted to have
dinner ready by the time of his arrival. But I had only jest got my
potatoes pared and over the stove, when I heard the old mare and him
drive into the barn-yard. He had come sooner than I looked for. But it
didn’t excite me; I was prepared. For not knowin’ exactly the time of
his arrival, I had made ready for any emergency. I had drawed the table
out, and put the table-cloth on; and I felt at rest, and peaceful.
Let wimmen whose pardners are wont to rampage round and act, when they
come in and find dinner only jest begun—let ’em not tell any wrong
stories or exagerations or parables, let ’em not bandy words or argue,
but let ’em, jest before he comes in, draw out the table and throw the
table-cloth on, and everything will move on peaceful; their pardners
will think dinner is most ready, and as they glance at that snowy
table-cloth their wrath will leave ’em, and they will demean themselves
like lambs.
I only tell what I have learnt from experience. And any little crumbs of
wisdom and knowledge that I have gained by hard experience, and through
tribulation, I am willin’ to share freely, without money and without
price, with the female sect; I think so much of ’em, and wish ’em so
well. Now jest this one little receipt,—this table-cloth
performance,—would have been worth dollars and dollars to me if I had
known it when I was first a pardner. But I never found it out till I had
been married over thirteen years, and had been jawed accordingly, when I
was belated and dinner wasn’t ready. Why no woman would have any idee of
its value till they try it. Men are as likely creeters as the earth
affords, if you only know how to get along with ’em. And wimmen has to
try various ways and measures. I learnt this jest by tryin’ it as a
experiment. I have tried a good many experiments—little harmless ones
like this. Some of ’em work, and some don’t.
Wall, I sot there hullin’ my berries, and listenin’ to the wind, which
was a roarin’ round the house. Seems as if I never heard it blow no
harder. It blowed for all the world as if it had been kep’ in through
sickness in its family, or sunthin’, and was out now for the first time,
on a regular spree.
And though it didn’t come right out and sing ’em in plain words, yet it
seemed to be a roarin’ it down the chimbley, and blowin’ it through the
orchard and round the corners of the house, and whistlin’ it through the
open buttery window—the song that other elevated and gay spirits indulge
in, about bein’ fairly determined and sot to not go home till mornin’.
It blowed fearfully. But I was calm and peaceful, knowin’ the
table-cloth was on, and Josiah would act first-rate. And then, when a
tempest is a howlin’ and a actin’ out-doors, it seems as if I enjoy more
than ever the safety and sweet repose and happiness of my own
hearth-stun (which last is a poetical simely, our hearth not bein’ stun
at all, but iron, with a nickel platin’ round it).
Wall, there I sot, feelin’ well and lookin’ well. I had combed my hair
slick, and put on a clean gingham dress,—when Josiah Allen opened the
door and walked in. He glanced at the table-cloth, and a calm, contented
look settled upon his eye-brow, but he left the door open behind him as
composed as if he had been born in a saw-mill; and says I:
“Josiah Allen, if there was a heavy fine to pay for shettin’ up doors,
you wouldn’t never loose a cent of your property in that way.” And says
I, clutchin’ my pan of strawberries with a firmer grip, for truly it was
a movin’ and onstiddy, and my apron was a flutterin’ like a banner in
the cold breeze: “If you don’t want me to blow away, Josiah Allen, shet
up that door.”
[Illustration: “SHUT THAT DOOR.”]
“Oh shaw! Samantha. You won’t blow away; you are too hefty. It would
take a hurrycane and a simon, too, to tackle you, and lift you.”
“Simon who?” says I, in cold axents, caused partly by my frigid emotions
and the cool blast, and partly by his darin’ to say any man could take
me up and carry me away.
“Oh! the simons they have on the desert. We hearn Thomas J. read about
’em. They’ll blow camels away, and everything.”
Says I dreamily: “Who’d have thought twenty years ago, to have heard
that man a courtin’ me, and callin’ me a zephire and a pink posy and a
angel, that he’d ever live to see the day he’d call me a camel.”
“I hain’t called you a camel. I only meant you was hefty, and camels was
hefty, and it would take a simon or two to lift you round, either on
you.”
“Wall,” says I, in frigid tones, “what I want to know is, are you a
goin’ to shet that door?”
“Yes, I be, jest as quick as I change my clothes. I don’t want to fodder
in these new briches.”
I rose with dignity,—or as much dignity as I could lay holt of, half
bent, tryin’ to keep five or six quarts of strawberries from spillin’
all over the floor,—and went and shet the door myself, which I might
have known enough to done in the first place, and saved time and breath.
For shettin’ up doors is a accomplishment that Josiah Allen never will
master. I have tutored him up on lots of things since we was married,
but in this branch of education he has been too much for me. Experiments
have been vain; I have about gin up.
In the course of ten or fifteen minutes, Josiah come out of the bedroom
lookin’ as pleasant and peaceful as you please, with his hands in his
pantaloons pockets, seemin’ly searchin’ their remotest depths, and says
he in a off-hand, careless way:
“I’ll be hanged if there hain’t a letter for you, Samantha.”
“How many weeks have you carried it ’round, Josiah Allen?” says I. “It
would scare me if you should give me a letter before you had carried it
round in your pockets a month or so.”
“Oh! I guess I only got this two or three days ago. I meant to handed it
to you the first thing when I got home. But I hain’t had on these old
breeches sence that day I went to mill.”
“Three weeks ago to-day,” says I, in almost frosty axents, as I opened
my letter.
“Wall,” says Josiah cheerfully, as he hunted round in the bedroom for
his old hat, “I knew it wuzn’t long, anyway.”