JOSIAH had to go to Shackville with a hemlock saw log that day, so he
went off most imegiatly after Cousin John Richard departed.
And I resoomed the occupation I had laid down for the last week, and did
a big day’s work, with Philury’s help, a cleanin’ house.
But I had a good warm supper when my companion returned. I always will,
work or no work, have meals on time, and good ones too—though I oughtn’t
to boast over such doin’s.
We had cleaned the kitchen that day, papered it all over new and bright,
and put down three breadths of a new rag carpet, acrost the west end.
And I had put up some pretty new curtains of cream-colored and red
cheese cloth, one breadth of each to a winder, and looped ’em back with
some red lute-string ribbon.
And I had hung my canary-cage in between the two south winders, over the
stand of house plants; and the plants had done dretful well, they wuz in
full blow.
And then I brung in the two big easy-chairs covered with handsome new
copper plate—one for Josiah and one for me.
And when I had set the supper-table, covered with a snowy cloth, in
front of the south winders, the place looked well. We had took the
carpet up in the dinin’ room and had to set the table there. But it
looked well enough for anybody.
And havin’ had Philury to do the heaviest of the work, I didn’t feel so
very beat out, and I changed my dress and sot quiet and peaceful and
very calm in my frame a waitin’ for my companion, while the grateful
odor of broiled chicken, and cream biscuit, and the rich coffee riz up
and permeated the room.
Josiah duz love a cup of hot, fragrant coffee with cream into it when he
has been to work in the cold all day. And it wuz quite cold for the time
of year.
Wall, I had put on a good new gingham dress and a white apron, and I had
a lace ruffle round my neck; and though I hain’t vain, nor never wuz
called so, only by the envious, still I knew I looked well.
And I could read this truth in my companion’s eyes as he come home cold
and cross and hungry—come into that warm, pleasant room and into the
presence of his devoted pardner.
At once and imegiatly his cares, his crossness, and his troubled mean
dropped from him like a garment he wuz tired of, and he felt well.
And his appetite was good—excellent.
And it wuzn’t till after the dishes wuz all washed up, and we wuz a
settin’ on each side of the stand, which had a bright cloth and a clean
lamp on it, I with my knittin’ work and he with his _World_, that he
resoomed and took up the conversation about Cousin John Richard’s
beliefs.
And I see, jest what I had seen, that as well as he liked John Richard,
that worthy creeter had not convinced him; and he even felt inclined,
now the magnetism of his presence wuz withdrawn, to pow at his earnest
beliefs and sentiments.
I waved off Josiah’s talk; I tried to evade his eloquence (or what he
called eloquence). For somehow John Richard’s talk had made more
impression onto me than it had onto Josiah, and I could not bear to hear
the cherished beliefs of that good man set all to naut.
So I tried to turn off Josiah’s attention by allusions to the tariff,
the calves, the national debt, to Ury’s new suit of clothes, to the
washboard, to Tirzah Ann’s married life, and to the excellencies and
beauties of our two little granddaughters Babe and Snow—Tirzah Ann’s and
Thomas Jefferson’s little girls.
But though this last subject wuz like a shinin’ bait, and he ketched on
it and hung there for some time, a descantin’ on the rare excellencies
of them two wonderful children, yet anon, or nearly so, he wriggled away
from that glitterin’ bait and swung back to the subject that he had
heard descanted on so powerfully the night John Richard come.
And in spite of all my nearly frenzied but peaceful efforts—for when he
wuz so tired and beat out I wouldn’t use voyalence—he would resoom the
subject.
And sez he for the third or fourth time:
“John Richard is a crackin’ good feller—they most all of ’em are that
are on my side—but for all that I don’t believe a word of what he said
about the South.”
I kep’ demute, and wouldn’t say what I did believe or what I didn’t, for
I felt tired some myself; and I felt if he insisted and went on, I
should be led into arguin’ with him.
For Cousin John Richard’s talk had fell into meller ground in my brain,
and I more than mistrusted it wuz a springin’ up there onbeknown to me.
Josiah Allen and I never did, and I spoze never will, think alike about
things, and I am fur more mejum than he is.
And then he sort o’ satisfies himself by lookin’ at one side of a idee,
while I always want to walk round it and see what is on the other side
on it, and turn it over and see what is under it, etc., etc.
But anon he bust out agin, and his axent was one that must be replied
to; I felt it wouldn’t do to ignore it any longer.
Sez he, “I am dead sick of all this talk about the Race Problem.”
“Then why,” sez I, mildly but firmly, “why do you insist on talkin’ on
it?”
“I want to tell you my feelin’s,” sez he.
Sez I, “I know ’em, Josiah Allen.”
And then I sot demute, and hoped I had averted the storm—or, ruther, I
would call it the squall, for I didn’t expect a hard tempest, more of a
drizzle.
So I knit fast, and sot in hope.
But anon he begun agin:
“I am sick on’t. I believe more’n half the talk is for effect. I don’t
believe the South is a bleedin’; I hain’t seen no blood. I don’t believe
the niggers are a rizen, I hain’t seen ’em a gettin’ up. I believe it is
all folderol.”
And then I sez, a lookin’ up from my knittin’ work:
“Be mejum, Josiah Allen; you don’t live there. You hain’t so good a
judge as if you lived in the South; you hain’t so good a judge as John
Richard is, for he has lived right there.”
And he snapped out real snappish:
“Wall, there is lots of places I never lived in, hain’t there? But
anybody can know sunthin’, whether they live anywhere or not.”
But I kep’ on real mejum and a talkin’ deep reason, I know well.
“When anybody is a passin’ through deep waters, Josiah Allen, they can
feel the cold waves and the chill as nobody can who is on dry land.”
And then Josiah said them inflammatory words agin that he had hurled at
the head of John Richard, and that had gaulded him so. He sez in a loud,
defiant axent, “Oh shaw!”
And I sez, “You hain’t there, Josiah Allen, and you hain’t so well
qualified to shaw, and shaw accordin’ to principle, as if you wuz
there.”
“Wall, I say, and contend for it,” sez he, almost hotly, “that there is
too much dumb talk. Why don’t the niggers behave themselves, and why
don’t the Southerners treat ’em as I treat Ury?
[Illustration]
“Ury has worked for me upwards of seven years, and he hain’t riz, has
he? And I hain’t been a howlin’ at him, and a whippin’ him, and a
shootin’ at him, and a ridin’ him out on a rail, and a burnin’ him to
the stake if he wouldn’t vote me in President; and he hain’t been a
massecreein’ us, not that I have ever hearn on, or a rapinin’ round, and
I hain’t rapined Philury, have I?
“If there is any truth in these stories, why don’t the South foller on
and do as I do? That would end their troubles to once.
“Let the Southerners act as I do, and the niggers act like Ury, and that
would end up the Race Problem pretty sudden.”
Sez I, in pretty lofty axents, for I begun to feel eloquent and by the
side of myself, “How many generations has it took to make you honest and
considerate, and Ury faithful and patient? How long has it took, Josiah
Allen?”
“Why, about seven years or thereabouts. He come in the middle of winter,
and now it is spring.”
Sez I, “It has took hundreds and hundreds of years, Josiah Allen.”
And I went on more noble and deep:
“Ury’s parents and grandparents, and back as fur as he knows, wuz good,
hard-workin’, honest men—so wuz yours. You are both the children of
freedom and liberty. You haven’t been saddled with a burden of ignorance
and moral and physical helplessness and want. He has no lurid background
of abuse and wrongs and arrogance to inflame his fevered fancies.
“You might as well say that you could gather as good grain down in your
old swamp that has never been tilled sence the memory of man, as you can
in your best wheat field, that has been ploughed, and harrowed, and
enriched for year after year.
“The old swamp can be made to yield good grain, Josiah Allen, but it has
got to be burned over, and drained, and ploughed, and sown with good
grain.
“There is a Hand that is able to do this, Josiah Allen. And,” sez I,
lookin’ off some distance beyend him and Jonesville, “there is a Hand
that I believe is a dealin’ with that precious soil in which saints and
heroes are made, and where the beauteous flower of freedom blows out.
“Has not the South been ploughed with the deep plough of God’s
purpose—burned with the lightnin’ of His own meanin’, enriched with the
blood of martyrs and heroes? Has not the cries of His afflicted ones
rose to the heavens while onbeknown to ’em the chariot of Freedom wuz
marchin’ down towards the Red Sea, to go ahead on ’em through the
dretful sea of bloodshed and tribulations, while the black clouds of
battle riz up and hid the armies of Slavery and Freedom, hid the
oppressors and the oppressed?
“But the sea opened before ’em, and they passed through on dry land.
“Now they are encamped in the wilderness, and the tall, dark shapes of
Ignorance and Hereditary Weakness and Vice are a stalkin’ along by their
sides, and coverin’ ’em with their black shadows. The stumps are thick
in their way. The old trees of Custom and Habit, though their haughty
tops may have been cut off a little by the lightnin’ of war, yet the
black, solid, onbroken stumps stand thick in their way—so thick they
can’t force their way through ’em—and the black mud of Open Enmity, and
Arrogance, and Prejudice is on one side of ’em, and on the other the
shiftin’, treacherous quicksands of Mistaken Counsel.
“Their way is blocked up, and the light is dim over their heads.
Religion and Education is the light that is goin’ ahead on ’em; but that
piller of fire is some ways ahead of ’em, and its rays are hindered by
the branchin’ shadows over their heads. And who will be the Moses to
lead ’em out of this wilderness into their own land?”
I wuz almost entirely by the side of myself with deep emotions of pity
and sympathy and a desire to help ’em, and I felt riz up, too, in my
mind—awful riz up—and I spoke out agin, entirely onbeknown to myself:
“Who will be the Moses to lead ’em into the Promised Land?”
“Wall, it won’t be me,” sez Josiah. “I am goin’ out to bed down the
horses.”
I wuz took aback, and brung down too sudden from the Mount of Eloquence
I had been standin’ on.
And I put on my nightcap and went to bed.
Now, I don’t spoze you would believe it—most anybody wouldn’t—but the
very next mornin’ Josiah Allen resoomed and took up that conversation
agin, that I fondly hoped he had thrown down for good when he so
suddenly departed to the horse barn.
But if you can believe it, before I got breakfast ready, while he was a
wipin’ his hands to the sink on the roller towel, he broke out agin as
fresh seemingly in debate as ever.
If I had mistrusted it ahead I should have made extra preparation for
breakfast, for the purpose of quellin’ him down, but I hadn’t dreamed of
his resoomin’ it agin; and I only got my common run of brekfasses,
though it wuz very good and appetizin’.
I had some potatoes warmed up in cream, and some lamb-chops broiled
brown and yet juicy, some hot muffins light as a feather, and some
delicious coffee—it wuz good enough for a King or a Zar—but then it
wuzn’t one of my choice efforts, for principle’s sake, which I often
have to make in the cookin’ line, and—good land!—which every other human
woman has to make who has a man to deal with.
We can’t vote, and we have to do sunthin’ or other to get our own way.
Wall, as I wuz a sayin’, he broke out anew, and sez he:
“I am sick as a dog of all this talk about the Race Problem.”
And then agin I uttered them wise words I had spoken the night before;
they wuz jest heavy with wisdom if he had only known it; and sez I:
“What makes you keep a bringin’ it up, then and a talkin’ about it?”
And agin he sez, “He done it to let me know how he felt about it.”
And agin I sez, “I knew it before.”
And I silently but smoothly poured my sweet cream over my sliced
potatoes, and turned my lamb-chops and drawed my coffee forwards so it
would come to a bile.
And he repeated, “I believe in lettin’ things alone that don’t consarn
us; it hain’t none of our bizness.”
And seein’ he wuz bound on talkin’ on it, why, I felt a feelin’ that I
must roust up and set him right where I see he wuz wrong; I see it was
my duty as a devoted pardner. And so, after we had got down to the
table, and he sez agin in more powerful and even high-headed axents,
“that it wuz none of our bizness,” then I spunked up and sez, “It seems
to me, Josiah Allen, that the cause of eternal truth is _always_ our
bizness.”
“Oh, wall! it hain’t best to meddle; that is my idee, and that is my
practice. Don’t you know that when Ury had that fight with Sam
Shelmadine, I said I wouldn’t either make nor break? I said I won’t
meddle, and I didn’t meddle. It wuzn’t my bizness.”
[Illustration:
“WHEN URY HAD THAT FIGHT WITH SAM.”
]
“But you found it wuz your bizness before you got through with it—you
lost Ury’s help six weeks in your hurryenst time, when he wuz away to
the lawsuit, etc., etc. And it made Philury sick, and you and I had to
be up with her more or less, and you took cold there one night, and had
a sickness that lasted you for weeks and almost killed you; and if you
_had_ died,” sez I in deep tones of affection and pathos, “if you _had_
left your devoted pardner forever, could you have looked me in the face
and said that this trouble of theirs wuzn’t nuthin’ that affected us?
No; when a black cloud comes up the sky you can’t tell where the
lightnin’ is a goin’ to hit—whether it will strike saint or sinner.” I
see he wuz affected by my tender and eloquent allusion to his passin’
away; for a moment he looked softened and almost as if he wuz a goin’ to
lay down the argument somewhere and leave it there. But anon his
linement clouded up, and he assumed the expression of doggy obstinacy
his sect knows so well how to assume, and sez he:
“But this is sunthin’ entirely different. There hain’t no earthly
possibility that this nigger question can affect us one way or another;
there hain’t no way for it to,” sez he.
Sez I, “Hain’t you got a heart, Josiah Allen, to help others who are in
trouble and jeopardy, and don’t know which way to turn to get the right
help?”
“I have got a heart to help Number One—to help Josiah Allen—and I have
got a heart to mind my own bizness, and I am a goin’ to.”
And he passed over his cup agin for the third cup of coffee. That man
drinks too much coffee—it hain’t good for him; but I can’t help it; and
my coffee _is_ delicious anyway, and the cream is thick and sweet, and
he loves it _too_ well, as I say; but as good as it wuz, it couldn’t
draw his mind from his own idees.
Sez he agin, in louder axents and more decideder ones:
“There hain’t no possible way that we can be affected by the Race
Problem one way or another.”
And I begun to feel myself a growin’ real eloquent. I don’t love to get
so eloquent that time of the day, but mebby it wuz the effect of that
gauldin’ tone of hisen. Anyway, I sez:
“It is impossible to guard one’s self aginst the effects of a mighty
wrong.
“The links that weld humanity together are such curius ones, wove out of
so many strands, visible and invisible, strong as steel and relentless
as death, and that reach out so fur, so fur on every side, how can any
one tell whether a great strain and voyalence inflicted on the lowest
link of that chain may not shatter and corrode and destroy the very
highest and brightest one?
“The hull chain of humanity is held in one hand, and we are bein’ pulled
along by that mighty, inexorable hand into we know not what.
“The link that shines the brightest to-day may be rusty to-morrow, the
strongest one may be torn in pieces by some sudden and voyalent wrench,
or some slow, wearin’ strain comin’ from beneath.
“How can we tell, and how dast we say that a evil that affects one class
of humanity can never reach us—how do we know it won’t?”
“Because we do know it!” hollered Josiah. “I know it is jest as I tell
you, that that dumb nigger question can’t never touch us anyway. I’ve
said it, and I’ll stick to it.”
But I still felt real eloquent, and I went right on and drew some
metafors, as I most always do when I get to goin’, I can’t seem to help
it.
Sez I, “The temperate man may say the liquor question will never affect
him, but some day he gathers his sober children about him, and finds one
is missin’—the pet of them all driven down in the street to death by a
drunken driver.
“A Christian woman sez, ‘This question of Social Purity cannot affect
me, for I am pure and come from a pure ancestry.’ But there comes a day
when she finds the lamb of her flock overtaken and slain by this evil
she thought could never touch her.
“The rich capitalist sets back in his luxurious chair and reads of the
grim want that is howlin’ about the hovels of the poor laborers, the
deaths by exposure and starvation. The graves of these starved victims
seem fur off to him. They can never affect him, he thinks, so fur is he
removed in his luxurious surroundin’s from all sights of woe and
squalor.
“But even as he sets there thinkin’ this, in his curtained ease, a
bullet aimed by the gaunt, frenzied hand of some starvin’ child of labor
strikes his heart, and he finds in death the same level that the victims
of want found by starvation.
“The mighty chain of humanity has drawn ’em on together, the high and
the low, down to the equality of the grave.
“The hull chain of humanity is held in one hand anyway, and is beyend
our control in its consequences.
“And how dast we to say with blind confidence that we know thus and so;
that the evils that affect our brothers will not some time come to us;
that the shadows that lay so heavy on their heads will not some time
fall on us?”
“They hain’t our brothers,” hollered out Josiah in fearful axents. He
wuzn’t melted down at all by my eloquent remarks; no, fur from it.
“They hain’t my brothers, and I know these dumb doin’s in the South
won’t affect us, nor can’t, and you can’t make it,” sez he.
The idee of my wantin’ to! But that is the nater of men—wantin’ to say
sunthin’ to kinder blame a female. And truly he acted mad as a hen to
think I should venter to talk back, or even speak on the subject.
Oh, short-sighted man that he wuz—when the darkness wuz even then
gatherin’ in the distance onbeknown to us, to take the shape of the big
shadow that wuz to fall on his poor old heart and mine—the shadow
reachin’ from the Southern sky even unto the North, and that would blot
out all the sunshine for us for many and many a weary day, and that we
must set down under for all the rest of our lives!
But I am a eppisodin’.
[Illustration:
MELINDA.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------