Says I, fixin’ my sharp grey eyes upon her keenly, “I have had more
experience with men than you have, Betsey;” I see a dark shadow settlin’
on her eye-brow, and I hastened to apologise--“you haint to blame for it,
Betsey--we all know you haint to blame.”
She grew calm, and I proceeded, “How long do you suppose you could board
a man on clear smiles, Betsey--you jest try it for a few meals and you’d
find out. I have lived with Josiah Allen 14 years, and I ought to know
somethin’ of the natur of man, which is about alike in all of ’em, and I
say, and I contend for it, that you might jest as well try to cling to
a bear as to a hungry man. After dinner, sentiment would have a chance,
and you might smile on him. But then,” says I thoughtfully, “there is the
dishes to wash.”
Jest at that minute the Editor of the Augur stopped at the gate, and
Betsey, catchin’ up a twin on each arm, stood up to the winder, smilin’.
He jumped out, and took a great roll of poetry out from under the buggy
seat--I sithed as I see it. But fate was better to me than I deserved.
For Josiah was jest leadin’ the horse into the horse barn, when the
Editor happened to look up and see Betsey. Josiah says he swore--says he
“the d----!” I won’t say what it was, for I belong to the meetin’ house,
but it wasn’t the Deity though it begun with a D. He jumped into the
buggy agin, and says Josiah,
“You had better stay to dinner, my wife is gettin’ a awful good one--and
the sugar is most done.”
Josiah says he groaned, but he only said--
“Fetch out the twins.”
Says Josiah, “You had better stay to dinner--you haint got no women folks
to your house--and I know what it is to live on pancakes,” and wantin’ to
have a little fun with him, says he, “Betsey Bobbet is here.”
Josiah says he swore agin, and agin says he, “fetch out the twins.” And
he looked so kind o’ wild and fearful towards the door, that Josiah
started off on the run.
Betsey was determined to carry one of the twins out, but jest at the door
he tore every mite of hair off’en her head, and she, bein’ bald naturally,
dropped him. And Josiah carried ’em out, one on each arm, and he drove
off with ’em fast. Betsey wouldn’t stay to dinner all I could do and say,
she acted mad. But one sweet thought filled me with such joyful emotion
that I smiled as I thought of it--I shouldn’t have to listen to any more
poetry that day.
THE MINISTER’S BEDQUILT.
The Baptists in our neighborhood have been piecen’ up a bedquilt for
their minister. He has preached considerable, and held a Sunday school
to our school-house, and I wasn’t goin’ to have any bedquilts done for
him without havin’ my hand in it to help it along. I despise the idee of
folks bein’ so sot on their own meetin’ housen. Thier is enough worldly
things for neighbors to fight about, such as hens, and the school-marm,
without takin’ what little religion they have got and go to peltin’ each
other with it.
Sposen’ Baptists do love water better’n they do dry land? What of it?
If my Baptist brethren feel any better to baptise thierselves in the
Atlantic ocian, it haint none of my business. Somehow Josiah seems to be
more sot onto his own meetin’ house than I do. Thomas Jefferson said when
we was a arguin’ about it the mornin’ of the quiltin’, says he, “The more
water the better,” says he, “it would do some of the brethren good to
put ’em asoak and let ’em lay over night.”
I shet him up pretty quick, for I will not countenance such light
talk--but Josiah laughed, he encourages that boy in it, all I can do and
say.
I always make a pint of goin’ to quiltin’s any way, whether I go on
Methodist principle (as in this case) or not, for you can’t be backbited
to your face, that is a moral certainty. I know women jest like a book,
for I have been one quite a spell. I always stand up for my own sect,
still I know sartin effects foller sartin causes. Such as two bricks
bein’ sot up side by side, if one tumbles over on to the other, the other
can’t stand up, it haint natur. If a toper holds a glass of liquor to his
mouth he can’t help swallowin’ it, it haint nater. If a young man goes
out slay-ridin’ with a pretty girl, and the buffalo robe slips off, he
can’t help holdin’ it round her, it haint nater. And quiltin’ jest sets
women to slanderin’ as easy and beautiful as any thing you ever see. I
was the first one there, for reasons I have named; I always go early.
I hadn’t been there long before Mrs. Deacon Dobbins came, and then the
Widder Tubbs, and then Squire Edwards’es wife and Maggie Snow, and then
the Dagget girls. (We call ’em _girls_, though it would be jest as proper
to call mutton, lamb.)
Miss Wilkins’ baby had the mumps, and the Peedicks and Gowdey’s had
unexpected company. But with Miss Jones where the quiltin’ was held, and
her girls Mary Ann and Alzina, we made as many as could get round the
quilt handy.
The quilt was made of different kinds of calico; all the women round had
pieced up a block or two, and we took up a collection to get the battin’
and linin’ and the cloth to set it together with, which was turkey red,
and come to quilt it, it looked well. We quilted it herrin’ bone, with a
runnin’ vine round the border.
After the pathmaster was demorilized, the school-teacher tore to pieces,
the party to Peedicks scandalized, Sophronia Gowdey’s charicter broke
doun--and her mother’s new bunnet pronounced a perfect fright, and twenty
years too young for her--and Miss Wilkins’ baby voted a unquestionable
idiot, and the rest of the unrepresented neighborhood dealt with, Lucinda
Dagget spoke up and says she--
“I hope the minister will like the bedquilt.” (Lucinda is the one that
studies mathematics to harden her mind, and has the Roman nose.)
“It haint no ways likely he will,” says her sister Ophelia; (she is the
one that frizzles her hair on top and wears spectacles.) “It haint no
ways likely he will--for he is a cold man, a stun statute.”
Now you see I set my eyes by that minister, if he is of another
persuasion. He is always doin’ good to somebody, besides preachin’ more
like a angel than a human bein’. I can’t never forget--and I don’t want
to--how he took holt of my hand, and how his voice trembled and the tears
stood in his eyes, when we thought our Tirzah Ann was a dyin’--she was in
his Sunday School class. There is some lines in your life you can’t rub
out, if you try to ever so hard. And I wasn’t goin’ to set still and hear
him run down. It riled up the old Smith blood, and when that is riled,
Josiah says he always feels that it is best to take his hat and leave,
till it settles. I spoke right up and says I--
“Lucky for him he was made of stun before he was married, for common
flesh and blood would have gin’ out a hundred times, chaste round by the
girls as he was.” You see it was the town talk, how Ophelia Dagget acted
before he was married, and she almost went into a decline, and took heaps
of motherwort and fetty.
“I don’t know what you mean, Miss Allen,” says she, turnin’ red as a red
brick, “I never heard of his bein’ chaste, I knew I never could bear the
sight of him.”
“The distant sight,” says Alzina Jones.
Ophelia looked so mad at that, that I don’t know but she would have
pricked her with her quiltin’ needle, if old Miss Dobbins hadn’t spoke
up. She is a fat old lady, with a double chin, mild and lovely as Mount
Vernon’s sister. She always agrees with everybody. Thomas Jefferson
calls her “Woolen Apron” for he says he heard her one day say to Miss
Gowdy--“I don’t like woolen aprons, do you Miss Gowdy?”
“Why yes, Miss Dobbin, I do.”
“Well so do I,” says she. But good old soul, if we was all such peace
makers as she is, we should be pretty sure of Heaven. Though Thomas
Jefferson says, “if Satan should ask her to go to his house, she would
go, rather than hurt his feelin’s.” That boy worrys me, I don’t know what
he is a comin’ to.
As I said, she looked up mildly over her spectacles, and nodded her
purple cap ribbons two or three times, and said “yes,” “jest so,” to both
of us. And then to change the subject says she;
“Has the minister’s wife got home yet?”
“I think not,” says Maggie Snow. “I was to the village yesterday, and she
hadn’t come then.”
“I suppose her mother is well off,” says the Widder Tubbs, “and as long
as she stays there, she saves the minister five dollars a week, I should
think she would stay all summer.” The widder is about as equinomical a
woman as belongs to his meetin’ house.
“It don’t look well for her to be gone so long,” says Lucinda Dagget, “I
am very much afraid it will make talk.”
“Mebby it will save the minister five dollars a week,” says Ophelia, “as
extravagant as she is in dress, as many as four silk dresses she has got,
and there’s Baptist folks as good as she is that hain’t got but one--and
one certain Baptist person _full_ as good as she is that hain’t got any.”
(Ophelia’s best dress is poplin.) “It won’t take her long to run out the
minister’s salary.”
“She had her silk dresses before she was married, and her folks were
wealthy,” says Mrs. Squire Edwards.
“As much as we have done for them, and are still doing,” says Lucinda,
“it seems ungrateful in her to wear such a bunnet as she wore last
summer, a plain white straw, with a little bit of ribbon onto it, not a
flower nor a feather, it looked so scrimped and stingy, I have thought
she wore it on purpose to mortify us before the Methodists. Jest as if we
couldn’t afford to dress our minister’s wife as well as they did theirs.”
Maggie Snow’s cheeks was a getting as red as fire, and her eyes began to
shine, jest as they did that day she found some boys stonein’ her kitten.
She and the minister’s wife are the greatest friends that ever was. And I
see she couldn’t hold in much longer. She was jest openin’ her mouth to
speak, when the door opened and in walked Betsey Bobbet.
“My! it seems to me you are late, Betsey, but walk right into the spare
bedroom, and take off your things.”
“Things!” says Betsey, in a reckless tone, “who cares for things!” And
she dropped into the nearest rocking chair and commenced to rock herself
violently and says she “would that I had died when I was a infant babe.”
“Amen!” whispered Alzina Jones, to Maggie Snow.
Betsey didn’t hear her, and again she groaned out, “Would that I had been
laid in yondeh church yard, before my eyes had got open to depravity and
wickedness.”
“Do tell us what is the matter Betsey,” says Miss Jones.
“Yes do,” says Miss Deacon Dobbins.
“Matter enuff,” says she, “No wondeh there is earthquakes and jars. I
heard the news jest as I came out of our gate, and it made me weak as
a cat, I had to stop to every house on the way doun heah, to rest, and
not a soul had heard of it, till I told ’em. Such a shock as it gave me,
I shant get over it for a week, but it is just as I always told you, I
always said the minister’s wife wasn’t any _too_ good. It didn’t surprise
me not a bit.”
“You can’t tell me one word against Mary Morton that I’ll believe,” says
Maggie Snow.
“You will admit that the minister went North last Tuesday, won’t you.”
Seven wimmin spoke up at once and said: “Yes, his mother was took sick,
and telegraphed for him.”
“So he said,” said Betsey Bobbet, “so he said, but I believe it is for
good.”
“Oh dear,” shrieked Ophelia Dagget, “I shall faint away, ketch hold of
me, somebody.”
“Ketch hold of yourself,” says I coolly, and then says I to Betsey, “I
don’t believe he has run away no more than I believe that I am the next
President of the United States.”
“Well, if he is not, he will wish he had, his wife come home this morning
on the cars.”
Four wimmens said “Did she,” two said, “Do tell,” and three opened their
mouths and looked at her speechless. Amongst these last was Miss Deacon
Dobbins. But I spoke out in a collected manner, “What of it?”
Says she, “I believe the poor, deah man mistrusted it all out and run
away from trouble and disgrace brought upon him by that female, his wife.”
“How dare you speak the word disgrace in connection with Mary Morton?”
says Maggie Snow.
“How dare I?” says Betsey. “Ask Thomas Jefferson Allen, as it happened, I
got it from his own mouth, it did not come through two or three.”
“Got what?” says I, and I continued in pretty cold tones, “If you can
speak the English language, Betsey Bobbet, and have got sense enough to
tell a straight story, tell it and be done with it,” says I. “Thomas
Jefferson has been to Jonesville ever sense mornin’.”
[Illustration: THE QUILTIN’ PARTY]
“Yes,” says she, “and he was coming home, jest as I started for heah, and
he stopped by our gate, and says he, ‘Betsey, I have got something to
tell you. I want to tell it to somebody that can keep it, it ought to be
kept,’ says he; and then he went on and told; says he,--‘The minister’s
wife has got home, and she didn’t come alone neither.’
“Says I, what do you mean? He looked as mysterious as a white ghost, and
says he, ‘I mean what I say.’ Says he, ‘I was in the men’s room at the
depot this morning, and I heard the minister’s wife in the next room
talking to some body she called Hugh, you know her husband’s name is
Charles. I heard her tell this Hugh that she loved him, loved him better
than the whole world;’ and then he made me promise not to tell, but he
said he heerd not only one kiss, but fourteen or fifteen.
“Now,” says Betsey, “what do you think of that female?”
“Good Heavens!” cried Ophelia Dagget, “am I deceived? is this a
phantagory of the brain? have I got ears? have I got ears?” says she
wildly, glaring at me.
“You can feel and see,” says I pretty short.
“Will he live with the wretched creature?” continued Ophelia, “no he will
get a divorcement from her, such a tender hearted man too, as he is,
if ever a man wanted a comforter in a tryin’ time, he is the man, and
to-morrow I will go and comfort him.”
“Methinks you will find him first,” says Betsey Bobbet. “And after he is
found, methinks there is a certain person he would be as glad to see as
he would another certain person.”
“There is some mistake,” says Maggie Snow. “Thomas Jefferson is always
joking,” and her face blushed up kinder red as she spoke about Thomas J.
I don’t make no matches, nor break none, but I watch things pretty keen,
if I don’t say much.
“It was a male man,” says Lucinda Dagget, “else why did she call him
Hugh? You have all heerd Elder Morton say that his wife hadn’t a relative
on earth, except a mother and a maiden aunt. It couldn’t have been her
mother, and it couldn’t have been the maiden aunt, for her name was
Martha instead of Hugh; besides,” she continued, (she had so hardened her
mind with mathematics that she could grapple the hardest fact, and floor
it, so to speak,) “besides, the maiden aunt died six months ago, that
settles the matter conclusively, it was not the maiden aunt.”
“I have thought something was on the Elders’ mind, for quite a spell, I
have spoke to sister Gowdy about it a number of times,” then she kinder
rolled up her eyes just as she does in conference meetin’s, and says she,
“it is an awful dispensation, but I hope he’ll turn it into a means of
grace, I hope his spiritual strength will be renewed, but I have borryed
a good deal of trouble about his bein’ so handsome, I have noticed
handsome ministers don’t turn out well, they most always have somethin’
happen to ’em, sooner or later, but I hope he’ll be led.”
“I never thought that Miss Morton was any too good.”
“Neither did I,” said Lucinda Dagget.
“She has turned out jest as I always thought she would,” says Ophelia,
“and I think jest as much of her, as I do of them that stand up for her.”
Maggie Snow spoke up then, jest as clear as a bell her voice sounded. She
hain’t afraid of anybody, for she is Lawyer Snow’s only child, and has
been to Boston to school. Says she “Aunt Allen,” she is a little related
to me on her mother’s side. “Aunt Allen, why is it as a general rule, the
worst folks are the ones to suspect other people of bein’ bad.”
Says I, “Maggy, they draw their pictures from memery, they think, ‘now if
_I_ had that opportunity to do wrong, I should certainly improve it--and
so of course _they_ did.’ And they want to pull down other folks’es
reputations, for they feel as if their own goodness is in a totterin’
condition, and if it falls, they want somethin’ for it to fall on, so as
to come down easier like.”
Maggy Snow laughed, and so did Squire Edwards’ wife, and the
Jones’es--but Betsey Bobbet, and the Dagget girls looked black as
Erobius. And says Betsey Bobbet to me, “I shouldn’t think, Josiah
Allen’s wife, that _you_ would countenance such conduct.”
“I will first know that there is wrong conduct,” says I--“Miss Morton’s
face is just as innocent as a baby’s, and I hain’t a goin’ to mistrust
any evil out of them pretty brown eyes, till I am obleeged to.”
“Well, you will have to believe it,” says Ophelia Dagget--“and there
shall be somethin’ done about it as sure as my name is Ophelia Dagget.”
“Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone,” says Miss
Squire Edwards--a better Baptist women never lived than she is.
“Yes,” says I in almost piercen’ tones, “which of us is good enough to go
into the stun business? Even supposin’ it was true, which I never will
believe on earth, which of us could stun her on gospel grounds?--who will
you find that is free from all kind of sin?” and as I spoke, remorseful
thoughts almost knocked against my heart, how I had scolded Josiah the
night before for goin’ in his stockin feet.
“I never see a female women yet that I thought was perfect, and yet how
willin’ they are to go to handlin’ these stuns--why wimmen fling enough
stuns at each other every day, to make a stun wall that would reach from
pole to pole.”
Just at this minute the hired girl come in, and said supper was on the
table, and we all went out to eat it. Miss Jones said there wasn’t
anything on the table fit to eat, and she was afraid we couldn’t make
out--but it was a splendid supper, fit for the Zaar of Rushy.
We hadn’t more’n got up from the supper table, and got back into the
parlor, when we heard a knock onto the front door, and Miss Jones went
and opened it, and who of all the live world should walk in but the
minister! The faces of the wimmen as he entered would have been a study
for Michael Angelico, or any of them old painters. Miss Jones was that
flustrated that she asked him the first thing to take his bunnet off, and
then she bethought herself, and says she, ‘How’s your Ma?’ before she had
sat him a chair or anything. But he looked as pleasant and composed as
ever, though his eyes kinder laughed. And he thanked her and told her he
left his mother the day before a good deal better, and then he turned to
Maggy Snow, and says he,
“I have come after you Miss Maggy, my wife come home this mornin’ and was
so anxious to see you that I told her as I had business past your house
this afternoon, I would call for you as I went home, and your mother told
me you were here. I think I know why she wants to see you so very much
now. She is so proud of our boy, she can’t wait till----”
“Your boy,” gasped nine wimmen to once.
“Yes,” says he smilin’ more pleasant than I ever seen him. “I know you
will wish me joy, we have a nice little boy, little Hugh, for my wife
has named him already for her father, he is a fine healthy little fellow
almost two months old.”
It wouldn’t have done no good for Michael Angelico or Mr. Ruben, to have
been there then, nor none of the rest of them we read about, for if they
had their palates’es and easels’es all ready, they never could have done
justice to the faces of the Dagget girls, and Betsey Bobbet. And as for
Miss Deacon Dobbins, her spectacles fell off unnoticed and she opened
her mouth so wide, it was very doubtful to me if she could ever shut it
again. Maggy Snow’s face shone like a Cherubim, and as for me, I can
truly say I was happy enough to sing the Te Deus.
[Illustration]
A ALLEGORY ON WIMMEN’S RIGHTS.
About a couple of weeks after the quiltin’, Thomas Jefferson said to
Josiah, one Saturday mornin’,
“Father, can I have the old mare to go to Jonesville to-night?”
“What do you want to go to Jonesville for?” said his father, “you come
from there last night.”
“There is goin’ to be a lecture on wimmin’s rights; can I have her,
father?”
“I s’pose so,” says Josiah, kinder short, and after Thomas J. went out,
Josiah went on--
“Wimmin’s rights, wimmin’s rights, I wonder how many more fools are goin’
a caperin’ round the country preachin’ ’em up--I am sick of wimmin’s
rights, I don’t believe in ’em.”
This riled up the old Smith blood, and says I to him with a glance that
went clear through to the back side of his head--
“I know you don’t, Josiah Allen--I can tell a man that is for wimmin’s
rights as fur as I can see ’em. There is a free, easy swing to thier
walk--a noble look to thier faces--thier big hearts and soles love
liberty and justice, and bein’ free themselves they want everybody else
to be free. These men haint jealous of a woman’s influence--haint afraid
that she won’t pay him proper respect if she haint obleeged to--and they
needn’t be afraid, for these are the very men that wimmin look up to, and
worship,--and always will. A good, noble, true man is the best job old
natur ever turned off her hands, or ever will--a man, that would wipe off
a baby’s tears as soft as a woman could, or ‘die with his face to the
foe.’
“They are most always big, noble-sized men, too,” says I, with another
look at Josiah that pierced him like a arrow; (Josiah don’t weigh quite
one hundred by the steelyards.)
“I don’t know as I am to blame, Samantha, for not bein’ a very hefty man.”
“You can let your sole grow, Josiah Allen, by thinkin’ big, noble-sized
thoughts, and I believe if you did, you would weigh more by the
steelyards.”
“Wall, I don’t care, Samantha, I stick to it, that I am sick of wimmin’s
rights; if wimmin would take care of the rights they have got now, they
would do better than they do do.”
Now I love to see folks use reason if they have got any--and I won’t
stand no importations cast on to my sect--and so I says to him in a tone
of cold and almost freezin’ dignity--
“What do you mean, Josiah?”
“I mean that women hain’t no business a votin’; they had better let
the laws alone, and tend to thier house-work. The law loves wimmin and
protects ’em.”
“If the law loves wimmin so well, why don’t he give her as much wages
as men get for doin’ the same work? Why don’t he give her half as much,
Josiah Allen?”
Josiah waved off my question, seemin’ly not noticin’ of it--and continued
with the doggy obstinacy of his sect--
“Wimmin haint no business with the laws of the country.”
“If they haint no business with the law, the law haint no business with
them,” says I warmly. “Of the three classes that haint no business with
the law--lunatics, idiots, and wimmin--the lunatics and idiots have the
best time of it,” says I, with a great rush of ideas into my brain that
almost lifted up the border of my head-dress. “Let a idiot kill a man;
‘What of it?’ says the law; let a luny steal a sheep; again the law
murmurs in a calm and gentle tone, ‘What of it? they haint no business
with the law and the law haint no business with them.’ But let one of
the third class, let a woman steal a sheep, does the law soothe her in
these comfortin’ tones? No, it thunders to her, in awful accents, ‘You
haint no business with the law, but the law has a good deal of business
with you, vile female, start for State’s prisen; you haint nothin’ at all
to do with the law, only to pay all the taxes it tells you to--embrace a
license bill that is ruinin’ your husband--give up your innocent little
children to a wicked father if it tells you to--and a few other little
things, such as bein’ dragged off to prison by it--chained up for life,
and hung, and et cetery.’”
Josiah sot motionless--and in a rapped eloquence I went on in the
allegory way.
“‘Methought I once heard the words,’ sighs the female, ‘True government
consists in the consent of the governed;’ did I dream them, or did the
voice of a luny pour them into my ear?’