We heerd that you was sick, and we thought we would all come doun and
spend the day with you. We have got relations from a distance visitin’
us,--relations on fathah’s side--and they are all a comin’. Mothah is
comin’ and Aunt Betsey, and cousin Annah Mariah and her two children.
But we don’t want you to make any fuss for us at all--only cousin Annah
Mariah was sayin’ yesterday that she did want an old-fashioned boiled
dinnah, before she went back to New York. Mothah was goin’ to boil one
yesterday, but you know jest how it scents up a house, and in _my_
situation, not knowin’ _when_ I shall receive interestin’ calls, I _do_
want to keep up a agreeable atmospheah. I told Annah Mariah _you_ had
all kinds of garden sauce. We don’t want you to make any difference for
us--not in the least--but boiled dinnahs, with a boiled puddin’ and sugar
sauce, are perfectly beautiful.”
I groaned in a low tone, but Betsey was so engaged a talkin’, that she
didn’t heed it, but went on in a high, excited tone--
“I come on a little ahead, for I wanted to get a pattern for a bedquilt,
if you have got one to suit me. I am goin’ to piece up a bedquilt out
of small pieces of calico I have been savin’ for yeahs. And I brought
the whole bag of calicoes along, for Mothah and cousin Annah Mariah said
they would assist me in piecin’ up to-day, aftah I get them cut out. You
know I may want bedquilts suddenly. A great many young girls are bein’
snatched away this spring. I think it becomes us all to be prepared.
Aunt Betsey would help me too, but she is in a dreadful hurry with a rag
carpet. She is goin’ to bring down a basket full of red and yellow rags
that mothah gave her, to tear up to-day. She said that it was not very
pretty work to carry visatin’, but I told her you was sick and would not
mind it. I guess,” she continued, takin’ up her bag, “I will pour these
calicoes all out upon the table, and then I will look at your bedquilts
and patterns.” And she poured out about half a bushel of crazy lookin’
pieces of calico on the table, no two pieces of a size or color.
[Illustration: KEEPIN’ THE SICK QUIET.]
I groaned loudly, in spite of myself, and shut my eyes. She heard the
groan, and see the agony on to my eye brow, and says she,
“The doctor said to our house this morning, that you must be kept
perfectly quiet--and I tell you Josiah Allen’s wife, that you _must not_
get excited. We talked it over this morning, we said we were all going
to put in together, that you should keep perfectly quiet, and not get
excited in your mind. And now what would you advise me to do? Would you
have a sunflower bedquilt, or a blazing stah? Take it right to yourself
Josiah Allen’s wife, what would you do about it? But do not excite
yourself any. Blazing stahs look more showy, but then sun-flowehs
are easier to quilt. Quilt once around every piece, and it is enough,
and looks well on the other side, I am going to line it with otteh
coloh--white looks betteh, but if two little children jest of an age,
should happen to be a playing on it, it would keep clean longeh.”
Agin I groaned, and says Betsey, “I do wish you would take my advice
Josiah Allen’s wife, and keep perfectly quiet in your mind. I should
think you would,” says she reproachfully. “When I have told you, how much
betteh it would be for you. I guess,” says she, “that you need chirking
up a little. I must enliven you, and make you look happier before I go
on with my bedquilt, and before we begin to look at your patterns and
bedquilts, I will read a little to you, I calculated too, if you was low
spirited; I came prepared.” And takin’ a paper out of her pocket she says,
“I will now proceed to read to you one of the longest, most noble and
eloquent editorials that has eveh come out in the pages of the Augah,
written by its noble and eloquent Editah. It is six columns in length,
and is concerning our relations with Spain.”
This was too much--too much--and I sprung up on my couch, and cried
wildly,
“Let the Editor of the Augur and his relations go to Spain! And do you go
to Spain with your relations!” says I, “and do you start this minute!”
Betsey was appalled, and turned to flee, and I cried out agin,
“Do you take your bedquilt with you.”
She gathered up her calicoes, and fled. And I sunk back, shed one or two
briny tears of relief, and then sunk into a sweet and refreshin’ sleep.
And from that hour I gained on it. But in the next week’s Augur, these
and 10 more verses like ’em come out.
BLASTED HOPES.
I do not mind my cold rebuffs
To be turned out with bedquilt stuffs;
Philosophy would ease my smart,
Would say, “Oh peace, sad female heart.”
But Oh, this is the woe to me,
She would not listen unto he.
If it had been _my_ soaring muse,
That she in wild scorn did refuse,
I could like marble statute rise,
And face her wrath with tearless eyes;
’Twould not have been such a blow to me,
But, she would not listen unto _he_.
THE JONESVILLE SINGIN’ QUIRE.
Thomas Jefferson is a good boy. His teacher to the Jonesville Academy
told me the other day, says he,
“Thomas J. is full of fun, but I don’t believe he has a single bad habit;
and I don’t believe he knows any more about bad things, than Tirzah Ann,
and she is a girl of a thousand.”
This made my heart beat with pure and fervent emotions of joy, for I knew
it was true, but I tell you I have had to work for it. I was determined
from the first, that Thomas Jefferson needn’t think because he was a boy
he could do anything that would be considered disgraceful if he was a
girl. Now some mothers will worry themselves to death about thier girls,
so afraid they will get into bad company and bring disgrace onto ’em. I
have said to ’em sometimes,
“Why don’t you worry about your boys?”
“Oh things are winked at in a man that haint in a woman.”
Says I, “There is one woman that no man can get to wink at ’em, and that
is Samantha Allen, whose maiden name was Smith.” Says I, “It is enough
to make anybody’s blood bile in thier vains to think how different sin
is looked upon in a man and woman. I say sin is sin, and you can’t make
goodness out of it by parsin’ it in the masculine gender, no more’n you
can by parsin’ it in the feminine or neutral.
“And wimmin are the most to blame in this respect. I believe in givin’
the D----I won’t speak the gentleman’s name right out, because I belong
to the Methodist Meetin’ house, but you know who I mean, and I believe in
givin’ him his due, if you owe him anything, and I say men haint half so
bad as wimmen about holdin’ up male sinners and stompin’ down female ones.
“Wimmen are meaner than pusley about some things, and this is one of ’em.
Now wimmen will go out and kill the fatted calf with thier own hands to
feast the male prodigal that has been livin’ on husks. But let the woman
that he has been boardin’ with on the same bundle of husks, ask meekly
for a little mite of this veal critter, will she get it? No! She won’t
get so much as one of the huffs. She will be told to keep on eatin’ her
husks, and after she has got through with ’em to die, for after a _woman_
has once eat husks, she can’t never eat any other vittles. And if she
asks meekly, why is her stomach so different from the male husk eater,
_he_ went right off from husks to fatted calves, they’ll say to her
‘what is sin in a woman haint sin in a man. Men are such noble creatures
that they _will_ be a little wild, it is expected of ’em, but after they
have sowed all thier wild oats, they always settle down and make the very
best of men.’
“‘Can’t I settle down too?’ cries the poor woman. ‘_I_ am sick of wild
oats too, _I_ am sick of husks--I want to live a good life, in the sight
of God and man--can’t I settle down too?’
“‘Yes you can settle down in the grave,’ they say to her--‘When a woman
has sinned once, that is all the place there is for her--a woman _cannot_
be forgiven.’ There is an old sayin’ ‘Go and sin no more.’ But that is
eighteen hundred years old--awful old fashioned.”
And then after they have feasted the male husk eater, on this gospel
veal, and fell on his neck and embraced him a few times, they will
take him into thier houses and marry him to their purest and prettiest
daughter, while at the same time they won’t have the female husker in
thier kitchen to wash for ’em at 4 cents an article.
I say it is a shame and a disgrace, for the woman to bear all the burden
of sufferin’ and all the burden of shame too; it is a mean, cowardly
piece of business, and I should think the very stuns would go to yellin’
at each other to see such injustice.
But Josiah Allen’s children haint been brought up in any such kind of a
way. They have been brought up to think that sin of any kind is jest as
bad in a man as it is in a woman. And any place of amusement that was bad
for a woman to go to, was bad for a man.
Now when Thomas Jefferson was a little feller, he was bewitched to go to
circuses, and Josiah said,
“Better let him go, Samantha, it haint no place for wimmin or girls, but
it won’t hurt a boy.”
Says I, “Josiah Allen, the Lord made Thomas Jefferson with jest as pure a
heart as Tirzah Ann, and no bigger eyes and ears, and if Thomas J. goes
to the circus, Tirzah Ann goes too.”
That stopped that. And then he was bewitched to get with other boys that
smoked and chewed tobacco, and Josiah was jest that easy turn, that he
would have let him go with ’em. But says I--
“Josiah Allen, if Thomas Jefferson goes with those boys, and gets to
chewin’ and smokin’ tobacco, I shall buy Tirzah Ann a pipe.”
And that stopped that.
“And about drinkin’,” says I. “Thomas Jefferson, if it should ever be
the will of Providence to change you into a wild bear, I will chain you
up, and do the best I can by you. But if you ever do it yourself, turn
yourself into a wild beast by drinkin’, I will run away, for I never
could stand it, never. And,” I continued, “if I ever see you hangin’
round bar-rooms and tavern doors, Tirzah Ann shall hang too.”
Josiah argued with me, says he, “It don’t look so bad for a boy as it
does for a girl.”
Says I, “Custom makes the difference; we are more used to seein’ men.
But,” says I, “when liquor goes to work to make a fool and a brute of
anybody it don’t stop to ask about sect, it makes a wild beast and a
idiot of a man or a woman, and to look down from Heaven, I guess a man
looks as bad layin’ dead drunk in a gutter as a woman does,” says I;
“things look different from up there, than what they do to us--it is a
more sightly place. And you talk about _looks_, Josiah Allen. I don’t go
on clear looks, I go onto principle. Will the Lord say to me in the last
day, ‘Josiah Allen’s wife, how is it with the sole of Tirzah Ann--as for
Thomas Jefferson’s sole, he bein’ a boy it haint of no account?’ No! I
shall have to give an account to Him for my dealin’s with both of these
soles, male and female. And I should feel guilty if I brought him up to
think that what was impure for a woman, was pure for a man. If man has
a greater desire to do wrong--which I won’t dispute,” says I lookin’
keenly on to Josiah, “he has greater strength to resist temptation. And
so,” says I in mild accents, but firm as old Plymouth Rock, “if Thomas
Jefferson hangs, Tirzah Ann shall hang too.”
I have brought Thomas Jefferson up to think that it was jest as bad for
him to listen to a bad story or song, as for a girl, or worse, for he had
more strength to run away, and that it was a disgrace for him to talk
or listen to any stuff that he would be ashamed to have Tirzah Ann or me
hear. I have brought him up to think that manliness didn’t consist in
havin’ a cigar in his mouth, and his hat on one side, and swearin’ and
slang phrases, and a knowledge of questionable amusements, but in layin’
holt of every duty that come to him, with a brave heart and a cheerful
face; in helpin’ to right the wrong, and protect the weak, and makin’ the
most and the best of the mind and the soul God had given him. In short,
I have brought him up to think that purity and virtue are both masculine
and femanine gender, and that God’s angels are not necessarily all she
ones.
Tirzah Ann too has come up well, though I say it, that shouldn’t, her
head haint all full, runnin’ over, and frizzlin’ out on top of it, with
thoughts of beaux and flirtin’. I have brought her up to think that
marriage wasn’t the chief end of life, but savin’ her soul. Tirzah
Ann’s own grandmother on her mother’s side, used to come visatin’ us
and stay weeks at a time, kinder spyin’ out I spose how I done by the
children,--thank fortune, I wasn’t afraid to have her spy, all she was a
mind too, I wouldn’t have been afraid to had Benedict Arnold, and Major
Andre come as spys. I did well by ’em, and she owned it, though she did
think I made Tirzah Ann’s night gowns a little too full round the neck,
and Thomas Jefferson’s roundabouts a little too long behind. But as I
was a sayin’, the old lady begun to kinder train Tirzah Ann up to the
prevailin’ idee of its bein’ her only aim in life to catch a husband, and
if she would only grow up and be a real good girl she should marry.
I didn’t say nothin’ to the old lady, for I respect old age, but I took
Josiah out one side, and says I,
“Josiah Allen, if Tirzah Ann is to be brought up to think that marriage
is the chief aim of her life, Thomas J. shall be brought up to think that
marriage is his chief aim.” Says I, “it looks just as flat in a woman, as
it does in a man.”
Josiah didn’t make much of any answer to me, he is an easy man. But as
that was the old lady’s last visit (she was took bed rid the next week,
and haint walked a step sense), I haint had no more trouble on them
grounds.
When Tirzah Ann gets old enough, if a good true man, a man for instance,
such as I think Whitfield Minkley, our minister’s oldest boy is a goin’
to make, if such a man offers Tirzah Ann his love which is the greatest
honor a man can do a woman, why Tirzah will, I presume, if she loves him
well enough, marry him. I should give my consent, and so would Josiah.
But to have all her mind sot onto that hope and expectatin’ till she
begins to look wild, I have discouraged it in her.
I have told her that goodness, truth, honor, vertue and nobility come
first as aims in life. Says I,
“Tirzah Ann, seek these things first, and then if a husband is added unto
you, you may know it is the Lord’s will, and accept him like any other
dispensation of Providence, and--” I continued as dreamy thoughts of
Josiah floated through my mind, “make the best of him.”
I feel thankful to think they have both come up as well as they have.
Tirzah Ann is more of a quiet turn, but Thomas J., though his morals are
sound, is dreadful full of fun, I worry some about him for he haint made
no professions, I never could get him forred onto the anxious seat. He
told Elder Minkley last winter that “the seats were all made of the same
kind of basswood, and he could be jest as anxious out by the door, as he
could on one of the front seats.”
Says Elder Minkley, “My dear boy, I want you to find the Lord.”
“I haint never lost him,” says Thomas Jefferson.
It shocked Elder Minkley dreadfully--but it sot me to thinkin’. He was
always an odd child, always askin’ the curiousest questions, and I
brought him up to think that the Lord was with him all the time, and see
what he was doin’, and mebby he was in the right of it, mebby he felt as
if he hadn’t never lost Him. He was always the greatest case to be out
in the woods and lots, findin’ everything--and sometimes I have almost
thought the trash he thinks so much of, such as shells and pieces of
rock and stun, and flowers and moss, are a kind of means of grace to him,
and then agin I don’t know. If I really thought they was I don’t suppose
I should have pitched ’em out of the winder so many times as I have,
clutterin’ up the house so.
I worry about him awfully sometimes, and then agin I lay holt of the
promises. Now last Saturday night to have heard him go on, about the
Jonesville quire, you’d a thought he never had a sober, solemn thought in
his head. They meet to practice Saturday nights, and he had been to hear
’em. I stood his light talk as long as I could, and finally I told him to
stop it, for I would not hear him go on so.
“Wall,” says he, “you go yourself mother sometime, and see thier
carryin’s on. Why,” says he, “if fightin’ entitles anybody to a pension,
they ought to draw 96 dollars a year, every one of ’em--you go yourself,
and hear ’em rehearse if you don’t believe me--” and then he begun to
sing,
‘Just before the battle, mother,
I am thinkin’ now of you.’
“I’ll be hanged if I would rehearse,” says Josiah, “what makes ’em?”
“Let ’em rehearse,” says I sternly, “I should think there was need enough
of it.”
It happened that very next night, Elder Merton preached to the red school
house, and Josiah hitched up the old mare, and we went over. It was the
first time I had been out sense the axident. Thomas J. and Tirzah Ann
walked.
Josiah and I sot right behind the quire, and we could hear every word
they said, and while Elder Merton was readin’ the hymn, “How sweet for
brethren to agree,” old Gowdey whispered to Mr. Peedick in wrathful
accents,
“I wonder if you will put us all to open shame to-night by screechin’ two
or three notes above us all?”
He caught my keen grey eye fixed sternly upon him, and his tone changed
in a minute to a mild, sheepish one, and he added smilin’ “as it were,
deah brother Peedick.”
Mr. Peedick designed not to reply to him, for he was shakin’ his fist at
one of the younger brethrin’ in the quire, and says he,
“Let me catch you pressin’ the key agin to-night, you young villain, if
you think it is best.”
“I shall press as many keys as I am a minter for all you. You’re always
findin’ fault with sunthin’ or other,” muttered he.
Betsey Bobbet and Sophronia Gowdey was lookin’ at each other all this
time with looks that made one’s blood run cold in thier vains.
Mr. Peedick commenced the tune, but unfortunately struck into short
metre. They all commenced loud and strong, but couldn’t get any further
than “How sweet for bretherin.” As they all come to a sudden halt there
in front of that word--Mr. Gowdey--lookin’ daggers at Mr. Peedick--took
out his pitch fork, as if it was a pistol, and he was goin’ to shoot him
with it, but applyin’ it to his own ear, he started off on the longest
metre that had ever been in our neighborhood. After addin’ the tune to
the words, there was so much tune to carry, that the best calculator in
tunes couldn’t do it.
At that very minute when it looked dark, and gloomy indeed for the quire,
an old lady, the best behaved in the quire, who had minded her own
business, and chawed caraway peacefully, come out and started it to the
tune of “Oh that will be joyful.”
They all joined in at the top of their voice, and though they each
one put in flats and sharps to suit thier own taste, they kinder hung
together till they got to the chorus, and then Mr. Gowdey looked round
and frowned fiercely at Shakespeare Bobbet who seemed to be flattin’ most
of any of ’em, and Betsey Bobbet punched Sophronia Gowdey in the side
with her parasol, and told her she was “disgracin’ the quire--and to sing
slower,” and then they all yelled
How sweet is unitee--e
How sweet is unitee,
How sweet for bretheren to agree,
How sweet is unitee.
[Illustration: THE SINGING QUIRE.]
It seemed as if the very feather on my bunnet stood up straight, to hear
’em, it was so awful. Then they collected their strength, and drawin’
long breaths, they yelled out the next verses like wild Indians round
sufferin’ whites they was murderin’. If any one had iron ears, it would
have went off well, all but for one thing--there was an old man who
insisted on bein’ in the quire, who was too blind to see the words, and
always sung by ear, and bein’ a little deaf he got the words wrong, but
he sung out loud and clear like a trembone,
How sweet is onion tee--e,
How sweet is onion tea.
Elder Merton made a awful good prayer, about trials purifyin’ folks and
makin’ ’em better, and the same heroic patient look was on his face, when
he give out the next him.
This piece begun with a long duett between the tenor and the alto, and
Betsey Bobbet by open war and strategim had carried the day, and was to
sing this part alone with the tenor. She knew the Editer of the Augur was
the only tenor singer in the quire. She was so proud and happy thinkin’
she was goin’ to sing alone with him, that not rightly sensin’ where she
was, and what she was about, she pitched her part too low, and here was
where I had my trial with Josiah.
There is no more sing to Josiah Allen than there is to a one horse wagon,
and I have tried to convince him of it, but I can’t, and he will probably
go down to the grave thinkin’ he can sing base. But thier is no sing to
it, that, I will contend for with my last breath, it is nothin’ more nor
less than a roar. But one thing I will give him the praise of, he is a
dreadful willin’ man in the time of trouble, and if he takes it into his
head that it is his duty to sing, you can’t stop him no more than you can
stop a clap of thunder, and when he does let his voice out, he lets it
out strong, I can tell you. As Betsey finished the first line, I heard
him say to himself.
“It is a shame for one woman to sing base alone, in a room full of men.”
And before I could stop him, he struck in with his awful energy, you
couldn’t hear Betsey’s voice, nor the Editer’s, no more than you could
hear two flies buzzin’ in a car whistle. It was dreadful. And as he
finished the first verse, I ketched hold of his vest, I didn’t stand up,
by reason of bein’ lame yet from the axident--and says I,
“If you sing another verse in that way, I’ll part with you,” says I,
“what do you mean Josiah Allen?”
Says he, lookin’ doun on me with the persperation a pourin’ down his face,
“I am a singin’ base.”
Says I, “Do you set down and behave yourself, she has pitched it too low,
it hain’t base, Josiah.”
Says he, “I know better Samantha, it _is_ base, I guess I know base when
I hear it.”
But I still held him by the vest, determined that he shouldn’t start off
again, if I could hender it, and jest at that minute the duett begun
agin, and Sophronia Gowdey took advantage of Betsey’s indignation and
suprise, and took the part right out of her mouth, and struck in with the
Editer of the Augur--she is kinder after him too, and she broke out with
the curiousest variations you ever heard. The warblin’s and quaverin’s
and shakin’s, she put in was the curiousest of any thing I ever heard.
And thankful was I that it took up Josiah’s attention so, that he sunk
down on his seat, and listened to ’em with breathless awe, and never
offered to put in his note at all.
I waited till they got through singin’ and then I whispered to him, and
says I,
“Now do you keep still for the rest of this meetin’ Josiah Allen.”
Says he, “As long as I call myself a man, I will have the privilege of
singin’ base.”
“_Sing_,” says I in a tone almost cold enough to make his whiskers
frosty, “I’d call it _singin’_ if I was you.” It worried me all through
meetin’ time, and thankful was I when he dropped off into a sweet sleep
jest before meetin’ was out. He never heard ’em sing the last time, and I
had to hunch him for the benediction.
In the next week’s Augur came out a lot of verses, among which were the
following: they were headed
SORROWS OF THE HEART.
Written on bein’ broken into, while singin’ a duett with a deah friend.
BY BETSY BOBBET.
And sweetness neveh seems so sweet,
As when his voice and mine doth meet,
I rise, I soah, earth’s sorrows leaving,
I almost seem to be in heaveng.
But when we are sweetly going on,
’Tis hard to be broke in upon;
To drounded be, oh foul disgrace,
In awful roars of dreadful base.
And when another female in her vain endeavors,
To fascinate a certain noble man, puts in such quavers,
And trills and warbles with such sickish variation,
It don’t raise her at all in that man’s estimation.
There was 13 verses and Josiah read them all, but I wouldn’t read but 7
of ’em. I don’t like poetry.
MISS SHAKESPEARE’S EARRINGS.
Them verses of Betsey’s kinder worked Josiah up, I know, though he didn’t
say much. That line “dreadful roars of awful base” mortified him, I know,
because he actually did think that he sung pretty enough for a orkusstry.
I didn’t say much to him about it. I don’t believe in twittin’ all the
time, about anything, for it makes anybody feel as unpleasant as it does
to set down on a paper of carpet tacks. I only said to him--
“I tried to convince you, Josiah, that you _couldn’t_ sing, for 14 years,
and now that it has come out in poetry mebby you’ll believe it. I guess
you’ll listen to me another time, Josiah Allen.”
He says, “I wish you wouldn’t be so aggravatin’, Samantha.”
That was all that was said on either side. But I noticed that he didn’t
sing any more. We went to several conference meetin’s that week, and not
one roar did he give. It was an awful relief to me, for I never felt
safe for a minute, not knowin’ when he would break out.
The next week Saturday after the poetry come out, Tirzah took it into her
head that she wanted to go to Elder Morton’s a visitin’; Maggie Snow was
a goin’ to meet her there, and I told her to go--I’d get along with the
work somehow.