“Look at my dress, look at my bonnet and cape, any one ought to be a iron
clad to stand it, look at my dishes!” says I.
“I guess the old heroes of the Revolution went through more than that,”
says Josiah.
“Well I haint a old hero!” says I coolly.
“Well you can honor ’em can’t you?”
“Honor ’em! Josiah Allen what good has it done to old Mr. Layfayette to
have my new earthern pie plates smashed to bits, and a couple of tines
broke off of one of my best forks? What good has it done to old Thomas
Jefferson, to have my lawn dress tore off of me by Betsey Bobbet? what
benefit has it been to John Adams, or Isaac Putnam to have old Peedick
step through it? what honor has it been to George Washington to have my
straw bonnet flatted down tight to my head? I am sick of this talk about
honorin’, and liberty and duty, I am sick of it,” says I “folks will make
a pack horse of duty, and ride it to circuses, and bull fights, if we
had ’em. You may talk about honorin’ the old heroes and goin’ through all
these performances to please ’em. But if they are in Heaven they can get
along without heerin’ the Jonesville brass band, and if they haint, they
are probably where fireworks haint much of a rarity to ’em.”
Josiah quailed before my lofty tone and I relapsed into a weary and
delapidated silence.
[Illustration: COUNTIN’ THE COST]
SIMON SLIMPSEY AND HIS MOURNFUL FOREBODIN’S.
Two or three weeks after this, Thomas Jefferson went to the school house
to meetin’ one Sunday night, and he broke out to the breakfast table the
next mornin’--
“Mother, I am sick of the Jews,” says he, “I should think the Jews had
a hard enough time a wanderin’ for 40 years, it seems to me if I was in
minister’s places I would let ’em rest a little while now, and go to
preachin’ to livin’ sinners, when the world is full of ’em. There was two
or three drunkards there last night, a thief, four hypocrites, and--”
“One little conceited creeter that thinks he knows more than his old
minister,” says I in a rebukin’ tone.
“Yes, I noticed Shakespeare Bobbet was there,” says he calmly. “But
wouldn’t it have been better, mother, to have preached to these livin’
sinners that are goin to destruction round him, and that ought to be
chased up, and punched in the side with the Gospel, than to chase round
them old Jews for an hour and a half? Them old men deserve rest, and
ought to have it.”
Says I, “Elder Wesley Minkley used ’em as a means of grace to carry his
hearers towards heaven.”
Says Thomas, “I can go out in the woods alone, and lay doun and look up
to the sky, and get nearer to heaven, than I can by follerin’ up them old
dead Jews.”
Says I in awful earnest tones, “Thomas Jefferson, you are gettin’ into a
dangerous path,” says I, “don’t let me hear another word of such talk; we
should all be willin’ to bear our crosses.”
“I am willin’ to bear any reasonable cross, mother, but I hate to tackle
them old Jews and shoulder ’em, for there don’t seem to be any need of
it.”
I put on about as cold a look onto my face as I could under the
circumstances, (I had been fryin’ buckwheat pancakes,) and Thomas J.
turned to his father--
“Betsey Bobbet talked in meetin’ last night after the sermon, father, she
said she knew that she was religious, because she felt that she loved the
bretheren.”
Josiah laughed, the way he encourages that boy is awful, but I spoke in
almost frigid tones, as I passed him his 3d cup of coffee,
“She meant it in a scriptural sense, of course.”
“I guess you’d think she meant it in a earthly sense, if you had seen
her hang on to old Slimpsey last night, she’ll marry that old man yet, if
he don’t look out.”
“Oh shaw!” says I coolly, “she is payin’ attention to the Editer of the
Augur.”
“She’ll never get him,” says he; “she means to be on the safe side, and
get one or the other of ’em; how stiddy she has been to meetin’ sense old
Slimpsey moved into the place.”
“You shall not make light of her religion, Thomas Jefferson,” says I,
pretty severely.
“I won’t, mother, I shouldn’t feel right to, for it is light enough now,
it don’t all consist in talkin’ in meetin’, mother. I don’t believe
in folks’es usin’ up all their religion Sunday nights, and then goin’
without any all the rest of the week, it looks as shiftless in ’em as
a three-year-old hat on a female. The religion that gets up on Sunday
nights, and then sets down all the rest of the week, I don’t think much
of.”
Says I in a tone of deep rebuke, “Instead of tendin’ other folks’es
motes, Thomas Jefferson, you had better take care of your own beams,
you’ll have plenty work, enough to last you one spell.”
“And if you have got through with your breakfast,” says his father, “you
had better go and fodder the cows.”
Thomas J. arose with alacraty and went to the barn, and his father soon
drew on his boots and follered him, and with a pensive brow I turned out
my dishwater. I hadn’t got my dishes more than half done, when with no
warnin’ of no kind, the door bust open, and in tottered Simon Slimpsey,
pale as a piece of a white cotton shirt. I wildly wrung out my dishcloth,
and offered him a chair, sayin’ in a agitated tone, “What is the matter,
Simon Slimpsey?”
“Am I pursued?” says he in a voice of low frenzy, as he sunk into a
wooden bottomed chair. I cast one or two eagle glances out of the window,
both ways, and replied in a voice of choked doun emotion,
“There haint nobody in sight; has your life been attackted by burglers
and incindiarys? speak, Simon Slimpsey, speak!”
He struggled nobly for calmness, but in vain, and then he put his hand
wildly to his brow, and murmured in low and hollow accents--
“Betsey Bobbet.”
I see he was overcome by as many as six or seven different emotions
of various anguishes, and I give him pretty near a minute to recover
himself, and then says I as I sadly resumed my dishcloth,
“What of her, Simon Slimpsey?”
“She’ll be the death on me,” says he, “and that haint the worst on it,
my sole is jeopardized on account of her. Oh,” says he, groanin’ in
a anguish, “could you believe it, Miss Allen, that I--a member of a
Authodox church and the father of 13 small children--could be tempted to
swear? Behold that wretch. As I come through your gate jest now, I said
to myself ‘By Jupiter, I can’t stand it so, much longer.’ And last night
I wished I was a ghost, for I thought if I was a apperition I could have
escaped from her view. Oh,” says he, groanin’ agin, “I have got so low as
to wish I was a ghost.”
He paused, and in a deep and almost broodin’ silence, I finished my
dishes, and hung up my dishpan.
“She come rushin’ out of Deacon Gowdey’s, as I come by jest now, to talk
to me, she don’t give me no peace, last night she would walk tight to
my side all the way home, and she looked hungry at the gate, as I went
through and fastened it on the inside.”
Agin he paused overcome by his emotions, and I looked pityingly on him.
He was a small boned man of about seventy summers and winters. He was
always a weak, feeble, helpless critter, a kind of a underlin’ always.
He never had any morals, he got out of morals when he was a young man,
and haint been able to get any sense. He has always drinked a good deal
of liquor, and has chawed so much tobacco that his mouth looks more
like a old yellow spitoon than anything else. As I looked sadly on him
I see that age, who had ploughed the wrinkles into his face, had turned
the furrows deep. The cruel fingers of time, or some other female, had
plucked nearly every hair from his head, and the ruthless hand of fate
had also seen fit to deprive him of his eye winkers, not one solitary
winker bein’ left for a shade tree (as it were) to protect the pale
pupils below; and they bein’ a light watery blue, and the lids bein’
inflamed, they looked sad indeed. Owin’ to afflictive providences he was
dressed up more than men generally be, for his neck bein’ badly swelled
he wore a string of amber beads, and in behalf of his sore eyes he wore
ear rings. But truly outside splendor and glitter won’t satisfy the mind,
and bring happiness. I looked upon his mournful face, and my heart melted
inside of me, almost as soft as it could, almost as soft as butter in the
month of August. And I said to him in a soothin’ and encouragin’ tone,
“Mebby she will marry the Editer of the Augur, she is payin’ attention to
him.”
[Illustration: SIMON SLIMPSEY.]
“No she won’t,” says he in a solemn and affectin’ way, that brought
tears to my eyes as I sot peelin’ my onions for dinner. “No she won’t,
I shall be the one, I feel it. I was always the victim, I was always
down trodden. When I was a baby my mother had two twins, both of ’em
a little older than me, and they almost tore me to pieces before I got
into trowses. Mebby it would have been better for me if they had,” says
he in a mewsin’ and mournful tone--I knew he thought of Betsey then--and
heavin’ a deep sigh he resumed,
“When I went to school and we played leap frog, if there was a frog
to be squshed down under all the rest, I was that frog. It has always
been so--if there was ever a underlin’ and a victim wanted, I was that
underlin’ and that victim. And Betsey Bobbet will get round me yet, you
see if she don’t, wimmen are awful perseverin’ in such things.”
“Cheer up Simon Slimpsey, you haint obleeged to marry her, it is a free
country, folks haint obleeged to marry unless they are a mind to, it
don’t take a brass band to make that legal.” I quoted these words in a
light and joyous manner hopin’ to rouse him from his dispondancy, but in
vain, for he only repeated in a gloomy tone,
“She’ll get round me yet, Miss Allen, I feel it.” And as the dark shade
deepened on his eye brow he said,
“Have you seen her verses in the last week’s Augur?”
“No,” says I “I haint.”
In a silent and hopeless way, he took the paper out of his pocket and
handed it to me and I read as follers:--
A SONG.
Composed not for the strong minded females, who madly and
indecently insist on rights, but for the retiring and delicate
minded of the sex, who modestly murmer, “we will not have any
rights, we scorn them.” Will some modest and bashful sisteh set
it to music, that we may timidly, but loudly warble it; and
oblige, hers ’till deth, in the glorious cause of wimmen’s only
true speah.
BETSEY BOBBET.
Not for strong minded wimmen,
Do I now tune up my liah;
Oh, not for them would I kin-
dle up the sacred fiah.
Oh, modest, bashful female,
For you I tune up my lay;
Although strong minded wimmen sneah,
We’ll conqueh in the fray.
CHORUS.--Press onward, do not feah, sistehs,
Press onward, do not feah;
Remembeh wimmen’s speah, sistehs,
Remembeh wimmen’s speah.
It would cause some fun if poor Miss Wade
Should say of her boy Harry,
I shall not give him any trade,
But bring him up to marry;
And would cause some fun, of course deah maids,
If Miss Wades’es Harry,
Should lose his end and aim in life,
And find no chance to marry.
CHORUS.--Press onward, do not feah, sistehs, &c.
Yes, wedlock is our only hope,
All o’er this mighty nation;
Men are brought up to other trades,
But this is our vocation.
Oh, not for sense or love, ask we;
We ask not to be courted,
Our watch-word is to married be,
That we may be supported.
CHORUS.--Press onward, do not feah, sistehs, &c.
Say not, you’re strong and love to work;
Are healthier than your brotheh,
Who for a blacksmith is designed;
Such feelin’s you must smotheh;
Your restless hands fold up, or gripe
Your waist into a span,
And spend your strength in looking out
To hail the coming man.
CHORUS.--Press onward, do not feah, sistehs, &c.
Oh, do not be discouraged, when
You find your hopes brought down;
And when you meet unwilling men,
Heed not their gloomy frown,
Yield not to wild dispaih;
Press on and give no quartah,
In battle all is faih;
We’ll win for we had orteh.
CHORUS.--Press onward, do not feah, sistehs,
Press onward do not feah,
Remembeh wimmen’s speah, sisters,
Remembeh wimmen’s speah.
“Wall,” says I in a encouragin’ tone, “that haint much different from the
piece she printid a week or two ago, that was about woman’s spear.”
“It is that spear that is a goin’ to destroy me,” says he mournfully,
“Don’t give up so, Simon Slimpsey, I hate to see you lookin’ so gloomy
and depressted.”
“It is the awful detarmination these lines breathe forth that appauls me,”
says he. “I have seen it in another. Betsey Bobbet reminds me dreadfully
of another. And I don’t want to marry again Miss Allen, I don’t want to,”
says he lookin’ me pitifully in the face, “I didn’t want to marry the
first time, I wanted to be a bachelder, I think they have the easiest
time of it, by half. Now there is a friend of mine, that never was
married, he is jest my age, or that is, he is only half an hour younger,
and that haint enough difference to make any account of, is it Miss
Allen?” says he in a pensive, and enquirin’ tone.
“No,” says I in a reasonable accent. “No, Simon Slimpsey, it haint.”
“Wall that man has always been a bachelder, and you ought to see what
a head of hair he has got, sound at the roots now, not a lock missing.
I wanted to be one, she, my late wife, came and kept house for me and
married me. I lived with her for 18 years, and when she left me,” he
murmured with a contented look, “I was reconciled to it. I was reconciled
for sometime before it took place. I don’t want to say anything against
nobody that haint here, but I lost some hair by my late wife,” says
he puttin’ his hand to his bald head in a abstracted way, as gloomy
reflections crowded onto him, “I lost a good deal of hair by her, and I
haint much left as you can see,” says he in a meloncholy way “I did want
to save a lock or two for my children to keep, as a relict of me. I have
13 children as you know, countin’ each pair of twins as two, and it would
take a considerable number of hairs to go round.” Agin he paused overcome
by his feelin’s, I knew not what to say to comfort him, and I poured onto
him a few comfortin’ adjectives.
“Mebby you are borrowin’ trouble without a cause Simon Slimpsey! with
life there is hope! it is always the darkest before daylight.” But in
vain. He only sighed mournfully.
[Illustration: SIMON OVERCOME.]
“She’ll get round me yet Miss Allen, mark my words, and when the time
comes you will think of what I told you.” His face was most black with
gloomy aprehension, as he reflected agin. “You see if she don’t get round
me!” and a tear began to flow.
I turned away with instinctive delicacy and sot my pan of onions in the
sink, but when I glanced at him agin it was still flowin’. And I said to
him in a tone of about two thirds pity and one comfort,
“Chirk up, Simon Slimpsey, be a man.”
“That is the trouble,” says he “if I wasn’t a man, she would give me some
peace.” And he wept into his red silk handkerchief (with a yellow border)
bitterly.
FREE LOVE LECTURES.
It was a beautiful mornin’ in October. The trees in the woods nigh by,
had all got their new fall suits on, red and purple and orange, while
further back, the old hills seemed to be a settin’ up with a blue gauze
vail on. There was a little mite of a breeze blowin’ up through the
orchard, where the apples lay in red and yellow heaps in the green grass.
Everything looked so beautiful and fresh, that as I went out on the
doorstep to shake the table-cloth, my heart fairly sung for joy. And I
exclaimed to Josiah in clear, happy tones,
“What a day it is, Josiah, to gather the winter apples and pull the
beets.”
He says, “Yes, Samantha, and after you get your work done up, don’t you
s’pose you could come out and pick up apples a spell?”
I told him in the same cheerful tones I had formally used, “that I would,
and that I would hurry up my dishes as fast as I could, and come out.”
But alas! how little do we know what trial a hour may bring forth; this
hour brought forth Betsey Bobbet. As I went to the door to throw out
my dishwater, I see her comin’ through the gate. I controlled myself
pretty well, and met her with considerable calmness. She was in awful
good spirits. There had been a lecture on Free Love to Jonesville; Prof.
Theron Gusher had been a lecturin’ there, and Betsey had attended to it,
and was all full of the idee. She begun almost before she sot down, and
says she,
“Josiah Allen’s wife you can’t imagine what new and glorious and soaring
ideahs that man has got into his head.”
“Let him soar,” says I coldly, “it don’t hurt me.”
Says she, “He is too soaring a soul to be into this cold unsympathizing
earth, he ought by good right to be in a warmeh speah.”
Says I coldly, and almost frigidly, “From what I have heard of his
lecture I think so too, a good deal warmer.”
Says she, “He was to our house yesterday, he said he felt dreadful
drawed to me, a kind of a holy drawing you know, I neveh saw such a
saintly, heavenly minded man in my life. Why he got into such a spirutal
state--when motheh went out of the room a minute--he kissed me moah than
a dozen times; that man is moah than half a angel, Josiah Allen’s wife.”
I gave her a look that pierced like sheet lightnin’ through her tow
frizzles and went as much as half through her brain.
“Haint Theron Gusher a married man?”
“Oh yes, some.”
“Some!” I repeated in a cold accent, “He is either married or he haint
married one or the other,” and again I repeated coldly “is he a married
man Betsey?”
“Oh yes, he has been married a few times, or what the cold world calls
marrying--he has got a wife now, but I do not believe he has found his
affinity yet, though he has got several bills of divorcement from various
different wimmen trying to find her. That _may_ be his business to
Jonesville, but it does not become me to speak of it.”
Says I “Betsey Bobbet!” and I spoke in a real solemn camp meetin’ tone,
for I was talkin’ on deep principle; says I, “you say he is a married
man--and now to say nothin’ of your own modesty if you have got any and
stand up onto clear principle, how would you like to have your husband if
you had one, round kissin’ other wimmen?”
“Oh,” says she, “His wife will neveh know it, neveh!”
“If it is such a pious, heavenly, thing, why not tell her of it?”
“Oh Prof. Gusheh says that some natures are too gross and earthly to
comprehend how souls can meet, scorning and forgetting utterly those
vile, low, clay bodies of ours. He does not think much of these clay
bodies anyway.”
“These clay bodies are the best we have got,” says I, “And we have got
to stay in ’em till we die, and the Lord tells us to keep ’em pure, so
he can come and visit us in ’em. I don’t believe the Lord thinks much of
these holy drawin’s. I know I don’t.”
Betsey sot silently twistin’ her otter colored bonnet strings, and I went
on, for I felt it was my duty.
“Married men are jest as good as them that haint married for lots of
purposes, such as talkin’ with on the subject of religeon, and polytix
and miscelanious subjects, and helpin’ you out of a double wagon, and
etcetery. But when it comes to kissin’, marryin’ spiles men in my opinion
for kissin’ any other woman only jest their own wives.”
“But suppose a man has a mere clay wife?” says Betsey.
Says I, “Betsey, Josiah Allen was goin’ to buy a horse the other day that
the man said was a 3 year old; he found by lookin’ at her teeth that she
was pretty near 40; Josiah didn’t buy it. If a man don’t want to marry a
clay woman, let him try to find one that haint clay. I think myself that
he will have a hard time to find one, but he has a perfect right to hunt
as long as he is a mind to--let him,” says I in a liberal tone. “Let him
hire a horse and sulkey, and search the country over and over. I don’t
care if he is 20 years a huntin’ and comparin’ wimmin a tryin’ to find
one to suit him. But when he once makes up his mind, I say let him stand
by his bargain, and make the best of it, and not try afterwards to look
at her teeth.”
Betsey still sot silently twistin’ her bunnet strings, but I see that she
was a mewsin’ on some thought of her own, and in a minute or so she broke
out: “Oh, what a soaring sole Prof. Gusheh is; he soared in his lecture
to that extent that it seemed as if he would lift me right up, and carry
me off.”
For a minute I thought of Theron Gusher with respect, and then agin my
eye fell sadly upon Betsey, and she went on,
“I came right home and wrote a poem on the subject, and I will read it to
you.” And before I could say a word to help myself, she begun to read.
Him of the Free Love Republic.
BY BETSEY BOBBET.
If females had the spunk of a mice,
From man, their foeman they would arise,
Their darning needles to infamy send--
Their dish cloth fetters nobly rend,
From tyrant man would rise and flee;
Thus boldly whispered Betsey B.
CHORUS.--Females, have you a mice’s will,
You will rise up and get a bill.
But sweeter, sweeter, ’tis to see,
When man hain’t found affinitee,
But wedded unto lumps of clay,
To boldly rise and soar away.
Ah! ’tis a glorious sight to see;
Thus boldly murmured Betsey B.
CHORUS.--Male men, have you a mice’s will,
You will rise up and get a bill.
Haste golden year, when all are free
To hunt for their affinitee;
When wedlock’s gate opens to all,
The halt, the lame, the great, the small.
Ah! blissful houh may these eyes see--
These wishful eyes of Betsey B.
CHORUS.--Males! females! with a mice’s will,
Rise up! rise up! and get a bill.
For that will hasten on that day--
That blissful time when none can say,
Scornful, “I am moah married than thee!”
For _all_ will be married, and all _won’t be_;
But promiscous like. Oh! shall I see
That _blessed_ time, sighed Betsey B.--
CHORUS.--Yes, if folks will have a mice’s will
And will rise up and get a bill.
“You see it repeats some,” says Betsey as she finished readin’. “But
Prof. Gusheh wanted me to write a him to sing at thier Free Love
conventions, and he wanted a chorus to each verse, a sort of a war-cry,
that all could join in and help sing, and he says these soul stirrin’
lines:
‘Have you a mice’s will,
You will rise up and get a bill;’
have got the true ring to them. I had to kind o’ speak against men in it.
I hated too, awfully, but Prof. Gusheh said it would be necessary, in
ordeh to rouse the masses. He says the almost withering sarcasm of this
noble song is just what they need. He says it will go down to posterity
side by side with Yankee Doodle, if not ahead of it. I know by his
countenance that he thought it was superior to Mr. Doodle’s him. But what
think you of it, Josiah Allen’s wife?”
“I think,” says I in a cautious tone, “that it is about off’n’ a piece
with the subject.”
“Don’t you think Josiah Allen’s wife that it would be real sweet to get
bills from men. It is a glorious doctrine for wimmen, so freein’ and
liberatin’ to them.”
“Sweet!” says I hautily “it would be a pretty world wouldn’t it Betsey
Bobbet, if every time a woman forgot to put a button onto a shirt, her
husband would start up and say she wasn’t his affinitee, and go to
huntin’ of her up, or every time his collar choked him.”
“Oh, but wimmen could hunt too!”
“Who would take care of the children, if they was both a huntin’?” says I
sternly, “it would be a hard time for the poor little innocents, if there
father and mother was both of ’em off a huntin’.”
Before I could free my mind any further about Prof. Gusher and his
doctrine, I had a whole houseful of company come, and Betsey departed.
But before she went she told me that Prof. Gusher had heard that I was
in faver of wimmen’s rights and he was comin’ to see me before he left
Jonesville.
The next day he came. Josiah was to the barn a thrashin’ beans, but I
received him with a calm dignity. He was a harmless lookin’ little man,
with his hair combed and oiled as smooth as a lookin’ glass. He had on a
bell-crouned hat which he lifted from his head with a smile as I come to
the door. He wore a plad jacket, and round his neck and hangin’ doun his
bosom was a bright satten scarf into which he had stuck 2 big headed pins
with a chain hitched onto each of ’em, and he had a book under his arm.
He says to me most the first thing after he sot down,
“You believe in wimmin havin’ a right don’t you?”
[Illustration: PROFESSOR GUSHER.]
“Yes Sir,” says I keenly lookin’ up from my knitin’ work. “Jest as many
rights as she can get holt of, rights never hurt any body yet.”
“Worthy statements,” says he. “And you believe in Free Love, do you not?”
“How free?” says I cooly.
“Free to marry any body you want to, and as long as you want to, from
half a day, up to 5 years or so.”
“No Sir!” says I sternly, “I believe in rights, but I don’t believe in
wrongs, of all the miserable doctrines that was ever let loose on the
world, the doctrine of Free Love is the miserable’st. Free Love!” I
repeated in indignant tones, “it ought to be called free devlitry, that
is the right name for it.”
He sunk right back in his chair, put his hand wildly to his brow and
exclaimed,