“Come out here, Josiah Allen, and let me look at you, and wither you!
She that was Alzina Ann Allen is comin’ here a visatin’. She wrote me
three weeks ahead, so’s to have me prepared. And here she is liable to
come in on us any minute, now, and find us all unprepared.” Says I, “I
wouldn’t have had it happen for a ten-cent bill to had one of the
relation on your side come and ketch me in such a condition. There the
curtains are all down in the spare room. Bill Danks fell and dragged ’em
down onto the floor under him, and mussed ’em all up, and I washed ’em
yesterday, and they hain’t ironed. And the carpet in the settin’-room up
to mend, where he fell onto it with a lighted candle in his hand and sot
it afire. And not a mite of fruit-cake in the house, and she a comin’
here to-day. I am mortified most to death, Josiah Allen. And if you had
give me that letter, I should have hired help and got everything done. I
should think your conscience would smart like a burn, if you have got a
conscience, Josiah Allen.”
“Wall, less have a little sunthin’ to eat, Samantha, and I’ll help
round.”
“Help! What’ll you do, Josiah Allen?”
“Oh! I’ll do the barn chores, and help all I can. I guess you’d better
cook a little of that canned sammen I got to Jonesville.”
Says I coldly, “I believe, Josiah Allen, if you was on your way to the
gallus, you’d make ’em stop and get vittles for you—meat vittles, if you
could.”
I didn’t say nothin’ more, for, as the greatest poets have sung, “the
least said, the soonest mended.” But I rose, and with outward calmness
opened the can of salmon, and jest as I put that over the stove, with
some sweet cream and butter, if you’ll believe it, that very minute she
that was Alzina Ann Allen drove right up to the door, and come in. You
could have knocked me down with a hen’s feather (as it were), my
feelin’s was such; but I concealed ’em as well as I could, and advanced
to the door, and says I:
“How do you do, Miss Rickerson?” She is married to Bildad Rickerson, old
Dan Rickerson’s oldest boy.
[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF MISS RICKERSON.]
She is a tall, bony woman, light-complected, sandy-haired, and with big,
light-blue eyes. I hadn’t seen her for nineteen years, but she seemed
dretful tickled to see me, and says she:
“You look younger, Samantha, than you did the first time I ever seen
you.”
“Oh, no!” says I, “that can’t be, Alzina Ann, for that is in the
neighberhood of thirty years ago.”
Says she, “It is true as I live and breathe, you look younger and
handsomer than I ever see you look.”
I didn’t believe it, but I thought it wouldn’t look well to dispute her
any more; so I let it go; and mebby she thought she had convinced me
that I did look younger than I did when I was eighteen or twenty. But I
only said “That I didn’t feel so young any way. I had spells of feelin’
mauger.”
She took off her things, or “wrappers,” as Tirzah Ann says it is more
genteel to call ’em. She was dressed up awful slick, and Josiah helped
the driver bring in her trunk. And I told her jest how mortified I wuz
about Josiah’s forgettin’ her letter, and her ketchin’ me unprepared.
But good land! she told me that “she never in her hull life see a house
in such beautiful order as mine was, and she had seen thousands and
thousands of different houses.”
Says I, “I feel worked up and almost mortified about my settin’-room
carpet bein’ up.”
But she held up both hands—they was white as snow, and all covered with
rings—and says she, “If there is one thing that I love to see more than
another it is to see a settin’-room carpet up, it gives such a sort of a
free, noble look to a room.”
Says I, “The curtains are down in the spare bedroom, and I am almost
entirely out of cookin’.”
Says she, “If I had my way, I never would have a curtain up to a window.
The sky always looks so pure and innocent somehow. It is so beautiful to
set and look up into the calm heavens, with no worldly obstructions
between, such as curtains. It is so sweet to sit in your chair, and knit
tattin’, and commune with holy nature. And cookin’,” says she, with a
look of complete disgust on her face, “why I fairly despise cookin’.
What’s the use of it?” says she, with a sweet smile.
“Why,” says I, reasonably, “if it wasn’t for cookin’ vittles and eatin’
em, I guess we shouldn’t stand it a great while, none of us.”
I didn’t really like the way she went on. Never, never, through my hull
life, was I praised up by anybody as I was by her durin’ the three days
that she stayed with us. She praised everything fur beyond what they
would bear.
I believe in praisin’ things that will stand praisin’. Nothin’ does any
one more good than appreciation. Honest admiration, sympathy, and
good-will put into words are more inspirin’ and stimulatin’ than tongue
can tell. They are truly refreshin’. I think as a rule we New Englanders
are too cold in our means. Mebby it is settin’ on Plymouth Rock so much,
or leanin’ up against Bunker Hill Monument; or mebby we took it from our
old Puriten four-fathers, and mebby them four old men ketched cold in
their demeaniers from settin’ under the chilly blue light of their old
laws, or took the trait from the savages. Any way, we are too
undemonstrative and reticent (them are very hefty words, and it is
seldom indeed that I harness up a span of such a size to carry my idees.
As a general thing I don’t have idees so hefty but what I can draw ’em
along with considerable small words. And I prefer ’em always, as bein’
easier reined in, and held up, and governed. Why, I have seen such awful
big words harnessed in front of such weak little idees that they run
away with ’em, kicked in the harness, got all tangled up, and made a
perfect wrack and ruin of the little idee. Hence, I am cautious, and if
I owned droves of ’em, I should be on the safe side, and handle ’em
careful and not drive ’em hardly any. But these two I have heard Thomas
J. use in jest this place, and hain’t a doubt but they are safe and
stiddy as any ever was of their size.)
Thomas J. said, and I believe, that we are too bashful, or shy, or
sunthin’, too afraid of expressin’ our hearty appreciation, the honest,
friendly admiration and regard we entertain for our friends. But if my
friends like me, or my work, I want ’em to tell me of it, to give me the
help, and encouragement, and insperation this knowledge will bring. A
few sympathetic, cheerin’ words and a warm smile and hand-clasp will do
more good than to wait and cut the praise on marble, when the heart they
would have cheered and lightened is beyond the touch of joy or pain. I
think it is not only silly, but unchristian, to be so afraid of tellin’
our friends frankly how pleasant and admirable we think them, _if we do
think so_. But let us not lie. Let us not praise what won’t stand
praisin’. Now when Alzina Ann Rickerson told me that I was as pretty as
any wax doll she ever see in her life—and if my intellect and
Shakespeare’s intellect was laid side by side, Shakespeare’s would look
weak and shiftless compared with mine—and when she said that my old
winter bunnet that I had wore on and off for thirteen years was the most
genteel and fashionable, and the loveliest piece of millionary she ever
sot her eyes on, she was goin’ too fur. Why, that old bunnet wouldn’t
hardly hold together to stand her praisin’. And she praised up
everything. She flattered Kellup Cobb so, when he happened to come in
there one mornin’, that it skairt him most to death.
He had been up by on his father’s business, and as he come along back he
stopped the hearse and come in to see when Kitty was a comin’ back, and
to see if he could borrow Josiah’s stun-bolt that afternoon to draw some
stuns. He was goin’ to wait till Josiah come back from the factory to
see about it, but Alzina Ann praised him up so, and looked so admiringly
at him, that he dassent. As a general thing I think Kellup is afraider
than he need to be of doin’ hurt and gettin’ wimmen in love with him,
but now I’ll be hanged if I blame him for thinkin’ he was doin’ damage.
Why, she praised him up to the very skies.
She pretended to think that his hair and whiskers and eyebrows was the
natural color. They was a sort of a greenish color that mornin’—he had
been a tamperin’ with ’em agin, and tryin’ experements. He had been a
usin’ smartweed and sage, as I found out afterwards, and they bein’
yellow before, the two colors together made ’em a sort of a dark
bottle-green—made him look as curious as a dog, and curiouser than any
dog I ever laid eyes on.
But oh, how Alzina Ann did praise ’em up. You’d have thought, to heard
her go on, that she had all her hull life been longin’ to ketch a
glimpse of jest such colored hair and whiskers. She said they looked so
strikin’, and she never had seen anything like ’em in her life before,
which last I don’t doubt at all. And then she would glance out at the
hearse, and tell him he looked so noble and impressive on it, it give
him such a lofty, majestic look, so becomin’ to his style. And then she
would branch off again and praise up his looks.
Why, I don’t wonder a mite that Kellup thought he was ensnarin’ her
affections and doin’ harm.
He follered me out onto the back stoop, where I was feedin’ a chicken
that the old hen had forsook, and I was bringin’ up as a corset. He
follered me out there, and whispered, with a anxious look, that he was
goin’ to start for home that minute, that he dassent wait another minute
to see Josiah about the stun-bolt; and, says he; with a awful anxious
look:
“I am afraid I have done hurt as it is, but Heaven knows I didn’t mean
to.”
I threw the corset another handful of dough, and told him, in a
encouragin’ tone, that “I guessed he hadn’t done much harm.”
“Why,” says he, “don’t you s’pose I could see for myself what I was a
doin’? She was a gettin’ head over heels in love with me. And,” says he,
frownin’ and knittin’ up his eyebrows:
“What good will it do to have another married woman a droopin’ round
after me?”
[Illustration: KELLUP’S CONUNDRUM.]
Says I, mechanically, as I put some fresh water on the corset’s dish:
“I thought you wanted to see Josiah about the stun-bolt, you said you
needed it.”
“Yes, I need the stun-bolt, but I need a easy conscience more. I had
ruther lug the stuns in my arms, and crack my back, and bruise my
stomach, than crack the commandments and strain my principles. I see
from her actions that I have got to leave at once, or no knowin’ what
the consequences will be to her. I am afraid she will suffer now, suffer
intensely. But what can a man do?” says he, frownin’ heavily. “They have
got to go around some, and do errants. And if wimmen lay traps for ’em
on every side, and make fools of themselves, what is a man to do? But I
don’t want to do harm, Heaven knows I don’t.”
And he started for the gate almost on the run. And I was jest a goin’ in
when Alzina Ann come out to the back door herself, and happenin’ to see
the corset, she said “she should rather have it for a pet, and it was
far handsomer and more valuable than any mockin’-bird, or canary, or
parrot she ever laid eyes on.” And so she kep’ on in jest that way. And
one mornin’ when she had been goin’ on dretfully that way, I took Josiah
out one side and told him “I couldn’t bear to hear her go on so, and I
believed there was sunthin’ wrong about it.”
“Oh, no,” says he, “she means every word she says. She is one of the
loveliest creeters on earth. She is most a angel. Oh!” says he,
dreamily, “What a sound mind she has got. How fur she can see into
things.”
Says I, “I heard her a tellin’ you this mornin’ that you was one of the
handsomest men she ever laid eyes on, and didn’t look a day over
twenty-one.”
“Wall,” says he, with the doggy firmness of his sect, “she thinks so;
she says jest exactly what she thinks.” And says he, in firm axents, “I
am a good-lookin’ feller, Samantha—a crackin’ good-lookin’ chap; but I
never could make you own up to it.”
I didn’t say nothin’, but my gray eye wandered up, and lighted on his
bald head. It rested there searchin’ly and very coldly for a moment or
two, and then says I sternly, “Bald heads and beauty don’t go together
worth a cent. But you was always vain, Josiah Allen.”
Says he, “What if I wuz?” And says he, “She thinks different from what
you do about my looks. She has got a keen eye in her head for beauty.
She is very smart, very. And what she says, she means.”
“Wall,” says I, “I am glad you are so happy in your mind. But mark my
words, you won’t always feel so neat about it, Josiah Allen, as you do
now.”
Says he in a cross, surly way, “I guess I know what I do know.”
I hain’t a jealous hair in the hull of my foretop or back hair, but I
thought to myself, I’d love to see Josiah Allen’s eyes opened; for I
knew as well as I knew my name was Josiah Allen’s wife, that that woman
didn’t think Josiah was so pretty and beautiful. But I didn’t see how I
was goin’ to convince him, for he wouldn’t believe me when I told him
she was a makin’ of it; and I knew she would stick to what she had said,
and so there it was. But I held firm, and cooked good vittles, and done
well by her.
[Illustration]