Literature · Humor

Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife 5

Chapter 5

HolleyEnglish

Miss Meechim and Dorothy looked brighter and happier as every revolution of the wheels brought us nearer their old home, and they talked about Robert Strong and other old friends I never see.

"Be it ever so humbly, There is no place like hum."

My heart sung them words and carried two parts, one sulferino and one bear tone. The high part caused by my lofty emotions and sweet recollections of home, that hallowed spot; the minor chords caused by feelin's I have so often recapitulated. Tommy, as the day wore on, went to sleep, and I covered him tenderly on the seat with my little shoulder shawl, and sot there alone; alone, as the cars bore us onward, sometimes through broad green fields of alfalfa, anon over a bridge half a mile long, from whence you could look down and see the flowing stream beneath like a little skein of silver yarn glistening in the sun fur below, agin forests and valleys and farms and homesteads, and anon in an opening through a valley, high bluffs, beautifully colored, could be seen towering up over blue waters, up, up as if they wuz bent on touching the fleecy clouds overhead. And then a green sheltered valley, and then a high range of mountains seen fur off as if overlookin' things to see that all wuz well, anon a big city, then a village, then the green country agin, and so the pictures passed before me as I sot there.

I had put on a pair of new cuffs and a collar, made for me and hemstitched by Waitstill Webb, and gin to me by her, though I wanted to pay her. Sweet little creeter! how good she wuz to me and to everybody, and I thought of her sad history, and hoped that brighter days wuz ahead on her. I d'no as I've told the reader much about her history, and mebby I might as well whilst we are rushin' on so fast, and Tommy is asleep.

Alan Thorne, the young man she wuz engaged to, wuz brung up by a uncle who had a family of his own to love and tend to, but he did his duty by Alan, gin him a good education and a comfortable, if not affectionate, home in his family. But it wuz a big family all bound up in each other, and Alan had seemed like one who looks on through a winder at the banquet of Life and Love, kinder hungry and lonesome till he met Waitstill Webb. Then their two hearts and souls rushed together like two streams of water down an inclined plane. They literally seemed to be two bodies with one heart, one soul, one desire, one aspiration. He had always been industrious, honest and hard workin'. Now he had sunthin' to work for; and for the three years after he met Waitstill he worked like a giant. He wuz earning a home for his wife, his idol; how happy he wuz in his efforts, his work, and how happy she wuz to see it, and to work herself in her quiet way for the future.

He had bought a home about a mile out of the city, where he was employed, and had got it all payed for. It wuz a beautiful little cottage with a few acres of land round it, and he had got his garden all laid out and a orchard of fruit trees of all kinds, and trees and flowering shrubs and vines around the pretty cottage. There wuz a little pasture where he wuz to keep his cow and a horse, that she could take him with to his work mornings and drive round where she wanted to, and there wuz a meadow lot with a little rivulet running through it, and they had already planned a rustic bridge over the dancing stream, and a trout pond, and she had set out on its borders some water lilies, pink and white, and Showy Ladies and other wild flowers, and she jest doted on her posy garden and strawberry beds, and they'd bought two or three hives of bees in pretty boxes and took them out there; they had rented the place to a old couple till they wanted it themselves. And every holiday and Sunday they walked out to their own place, and the sun did not shine any brighter on their little home than the sun of hope and happiness did in their hearts as they pictured their life there in that cozy nest.

And Alan Thorne, after he loved Waitstill, not only tried to win outward success for her sake; he tried to weed out all the weaknesses of his nater, to make himself more worthy of her. He said to himself when he would go to see her, he would "robe his soul in holiest purpose as for God himself." His pa had at one time in his life drank considerable, but he wuz not a drunkard, and he wuz a good bizness man when the fever carried him off, and his young wife out of the world the same year. Well, Alan wuz jest as industrious as he could be, and with his happy future to look forward to and Waitstill's love and beloved presence to prop up his manhood, everything promised a fair and happy life for them both; till, like a thunder-cloud out of a clear sky come that deafening report from Spanish brutality that blew up the Maine and this nation's peace and tranquility. Dretful deed! Awful calamity! that sent three hundred of our brave seamen onprepared to meet their God--without a second's warning. Awful deed that cried to heaven for pity! But did it bring back these brave fellows sleeping in Havana harbor to their mothers, wives and sweethearts, to have thousands more added to the list of the slain?

"Remember the Maine!" How these words echoed from pulpit and Senate and palace and hovel; how they wuz sung in verse, printed in poems, printed in flaming lines of electric light everywhere! From city to country, you saw and heard these words, "Remember the Maine!"

I wondered then and I wonder now if the spirit of revenge that swep' through our nation at that time wuz the spirit of the Master.

I d'no nor Josiah don't, whether it wuz right and best to influence the souls of the young till they burnt at white heat with the spirit that our Lord said his disciples must avoid, for said he: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord."

Well, it is a deep question, deeper than I've got a line to measure; and Josiah's line and mine both tied together don't begin to touch the bottom on't, for we've tried it time and agin. We've argyed aginst each other about it, and jined on and hitched our arguments together, and they didn't touch bottom then, nor begin to. As Mrs. Browning said (a woman I set store by, and always did, I've hearn Thomas J. read about her so much): "A country's a thing men should die for at need."

Yes, to die for, if its safety is imperilled, that I believe and Josiah duz, but I have eppisoded about it a sight, I've had to. I methought how this nation wuz stirred to its deepest depths; how it seethed and boiled with indignation and wrath because three hundred of its sons wuz killed by ignorant and vicious means; how it breathed out vengeance on the cause that slew them; how it called To Arms! To Arms! Remember the Maine! But how cool and demute it stood, or ruther sot, and see every year sixty thousand of its best sons slain by the saloon, ten-fold more cruel deaths, too, since the soul and mind wuz slain before their bodies went. No cry for vengeance as the long procession of the dead wheeled by the doors of the law-makers of the land; no cry: "To arms! to arms! Remember the Saloon." And more mysterious still, I eppisoded to myself, it would have looked to see the Government rig out and sell to the Spaniards a million more bombs and underground mines to blow up the rest of our ships and kill thousands more of our young men. Wouldn't it have looked dog queer to the other nations of the world to have seen it done?

But there they sot, our law-makers, and if they lifted their eyes at all to witness the long procession of the dead drift by, sixty thousand corpses yearly slain by the Saloon, if they lifted their eyes at all to look at the ghastly procession, they dropped 'em agin quick as they could so's not to delay their work of signin' licenses, makin' new laws, fixin' over old ones, and writin' permits to the murderers to go on with their butchery. Queer sight! queer in the sight of other nations, in the sight of men and angels, and of me and Josiah.

Well, to stop eppisodin' and resoom backwards for a spell. Alan Thorne hearn that cry: "To arms! To arms!" And his very soul listened. His grandfathers on both sides wuz fighting men; at school and college he'd been trained in a soldier regiment, and had been steeped full of warlike idees, and they all waked up at his cry for vengeance. He had just got to go; it wuz to be. Heaven and Waitstill couldn't help it; he had to go; he went.

Well, Waitstill read his letters as well as she could through her blindin' tears; letters at first full of love--the very passion of love and tenderness for his sweetheart, and deathless patriotism and love for his country.

But bime-by the letters changed a little in their tones--they wuzn't so full of love for his country. "The country," so he writ, "wuz shamefully neglecting its sons, neglecting their comfort." He writ they wuz herded together in quarters not fit for a dog, with insufficient food; putrid, dretful food, that no dog would or could eat. No care taken of their health--and as for the health of their souls, no matter where they wuz, if half starved or half clad, the Canteen was always present with 'em; if they could git nothin' else for their comfort, they could always git the cup that the Bible sez: "Cursed is he that puts it to his neighbor's lips." Doubly cursed now--poisoned with adulteration, makin' it a still more deadly pizen.

Well, sickened with loathsome food he could not eat, half starved, the deadly typhoid hovering over the wretched soldier, is it any wonder that as the tempter held the glass to his lips (the tempter being the Government he wuz fightin' for) the tempted yielded and drank?

The letters Waitstill got grew shorter and cooler, as the tempter led Alan deeper and deeper into his castle of Ruin where the demon sets and gloats over its victims. When the Canteen had done its work on the crazed brain and imbruted body, other sins and evils our Government had furnished and licensed, stood ready to draw him still further along the down-grade whose end is death.

Finally the letters stopped, and then Waitstill, whose heart wuz broke, jined the noble army of nurses and went forward to the front, always hunting for the one beloved, and, as she feared, lost to her. And she found him. The very day that Alan Thorne, in a drunken brawl, killed Arvilly's husband with a bullet meant for another drunken youth, these wimmen met. A rough lookin' soldier knelt down by the dead man, a weepin' woman fell faintin' on his still, dead heart; this soldier ('twas Arville) wuz sick in bed for a week, Waitstill tendin' him, or her I might as well say, for Arville owned to her in her weakness that she wuz a woman; yes, Waitstill tended her faithfully, white and demute with agony, but kep' up with the hope that the Government that had ruined her lover would be lenient towards the crime it had caused. For she reasoned it out in a woman's way. She told Arvilly "that Alan would never have drank had not the Government put the cup to his lips, and of course the Government could not consistently condemn what it had caused to be." She reasoned it out from what she had learnt of justice and right in the Bible.

But Arvilly told her--for as quick as she got enough strength she wuz the same old Arvilly agin, only ten times more bent on fightin' aginst the Drink Demon that murdered her husband. Sez Arvilly: "You don't take into consideration the Tariff and Saloon arguments of apologizin' Church and State, the tax money raised from dead men, and ruined lives and broken hearts to support poor-houses and jails and police to take care of their victims." No; Waitstill reasoned from jest plain Bible, but of course she found out her mistake. Arvilly said: "You'll find the nation that opens its sessions with prayer, and engraves on its money, 'In God We Trust,' don't believe in such things. You'll find their prayers are to the liquor dealers; their God is the huge idol of Expediency."

Alan Thorne wuz hung for the murder, guilty, so the earthly court said. But who wuz sot down guilty in God's great book of Justice that day? Arvilly believes that over Alan Thorne's name wuz printed:

"Alan Thorne, foolish boy, tempted and ondone by the country he was trying to save." And then this sentence in fiery flame:

"The United States of America, guilty of murder in the first degree."

Dretful murder, to take the life of the one that loved it and wuz tryin' to save it.

Well, Arvilly's last thing to love wuz taken from her cruelly, and when she got strong enough she sot off for Jonesville in her soldier clothes, for she thought she would wear 'em till she got away, but she wuz brung back as a deserter and Waitstill stood by her durin' her trial, and after Alan's death she too wuz smit down, like a posy in a cyclone. Arvilly, in her own clothes now, tended her like a mother, and as soon as she wuz able to travel took her back to Jonesville, where they make their home together, two widders, indeed, though the weddin' ring don't show on one of their hands.

Waitstill goes about doin' good, waitin' kinder still, some like her name, till the Lord sends her relief by the angel that shall stand one day in all our homes. She don't talk much.

But Arvilly's grief is different. She told me one day when I wuz tellin' her to chirk up and be more cheerful and comfortable:

"I don't want to be comfortable; I don't want to feel any different."

"Whyee, Arvilly!" sez I, "don't you want to see any happiness agin?"

"No, I don't," sez she, "I don't want to take a minute's comfort and ease while things are in the state they be." Sez she, "Would you want to set down happy, and rock, and eat peanuts, if you knew that your husband and children wuz drowndin' out in the canal?"

"No," sez I, "no, indeed! I should rush out there bareheaded, and if I couldn't save 'em, would feel like dyin' with 'em."

"Well," sez she, short as pie crust, "that's jest how I feel."

I believe and so Josiah duz that Arvilly would walk right up to a loaded cannon and argy with it if she thought it would help destroy the Saloon, and after she had convinced the cannon she would be perfectly willin' to be blowed up by it if the Saloon wuz blowed up too.

Well, I sot thinkin' of all this till Tommy waked up and we all went out into the dining car and had a good meal. We wuz a little over two days goin' from Salt Lake City to San Francisco, and durin' that time I calculated that I eat enough dirt, that bitter alkali sand, to last lawful all my life. I believe one peck of dirt is all the law allows one person to consume durin' their life. It seems as if I eat more than enough to meet legal requirements for me and Josiah, and I seemed to have a thick coatin' of it on my hull person. And poor little Tommy! I tried to keep his face clean and that wuz all I could do.

But as we drew nearer to California the weather became so balmy and delightful that it condoned for much that wuz onpleasant, and I sez to myself, the lovely views I have seen between Chicago and California I shall never forgit as long as memory sets up in her high chair.

What a panorama it wuz--beautiful, grand, delightful, majestic, sublime--no words of mine can do it justice. No. I can never describe the views that opened on our admirin' and almost awe-struck vision as the cars advanced through natural openin's in the mountains and anon artificial ones.

Why, I had thought that the hill in front of old Grout Nickelson's wuz steep, and the road a skittish one that wound around it above the creek. But imagine goin' along a road where you could look down thousands of feet into running water, and right up on the other side of you mountains thousands of feet high. And you between, poor specks of clay with only a breath of steam to keep you agoin' and prevent your dashin' down into that enormous abyss.

But Grandeur sot on them mountain tops, Glory wuz enthroned on them sublime heights and depths, too beautiful for words to describe, too grand for human speech to reproduce agin, the soul felt it and must leave it to other souls to see and feel.

On, on through mountain, valley, gorge and summit, waves of green foliage, rocks all the beautiful colors of the rainbow, majestic shapes, seemin'ly fashioned for a home for the gods; white peaks--sun-glorified, thousands of feet high with blue sky above; ravines thousands of feet deep with a glint of blue water in the depths, seemin' to mirror to us the truth that God's love and care wuz over and under us. And so on and on; valleys, mountains, clear lakes, forests and broad green fields, tree sheltered farms, and anon the broad prairie. It wuz all a panorama I never tired of lookin' at, and lasted all the way to California.

As our stay wuz to be so short in San Francisco, Miss Meechim and Dorothy thought it would be best to go to a hotel instead of openin' Dorothy's grand house; so we all went to the tarven Miss Meechim picked out, the beautifullest tarven that ever I sot eyes on, it seemed to me, and the biggest one. Havin' felt the swayin', jiggerin' motion of the cars so long, it wuz indeed a blessin' to set my foot on solid ground once more, and Tommy and I wuz soon ensconced in a cozy room, nigh Miss Meechim's sweet rooms. For she still insisted on callin' their rooms sweet, and I wouldn't argy with her, for I spoze they did seem sweet to her.

Tommy wuz tired out and I had to take him in my arms and rock him, after we'd had our supper, a good meal which Miss Meechim had brung up into their settin'-room, though I insisted on payin' my part on't (she's a good creater, though weak in some ways). Well I rocked Tommy and sung to him:

"Sweet fields beyend the swellin' flood."

And them sweet fields in my mind wuz our own orchard and paster, and the swellin' flood I thought on wuzn't death's billers, but the waters that rolled between California and Jonesville.

Not one word had I hearn from my pardner sence leavin' New York.

"Oh, dear Josiah! When shall I see thee agin?" So sung my heart, or ruther chanted, a deep solemn chant. "Where art thou, Josiah, and when shall we meet agin? And why, why do I not hear from thee?"

The next mornin' after we arrived at San Francisco, Robert Strong appeared at the hotel bright and early, and I don't know when I've ever seen anybody I liked so well. Miss Meechim invited me into her settin'-room to see him.

Havin' hearn so much about his deep, earnest nater and deathless desire to do all the good he could whilst on his earthly pilgrimage, I expected to see a grave, quiet man with lines of care and conflict engraved deep on his sober, solemn visage.

But I wuz never more surprised to see a bright, laughin', happy face that smiled back into mine as Albina Meechim proudly introduced her nephew to me.

Why, thinkses I to myself, where can such strength of character, such noble purpose, such original and successful business habits be hidden in that handsome, smilin' face and them graceful, winnin' ways, as he laughed and talked with his aunt and Dorothy.

But anon at some chance word of blame and criticism from Miss Meechim, makin' light of his City of Justice and its inhabitants, a light blazed up in his eyes and lit up his face, some as a fire in our open fireplace lights up the spare-room, and I see stand out for a minute on the background of his fair handsome face a picture of heroism, love, endeavor that fairly stunted me for a time. And I never felt afterwards anything but perfect confidence in him; no matter how light and trifling wuz his talk with Dorothy, or how gay and boyishly happy wuz his clear laughter.

He had worked well and faithful, givin' his hull mind and heart to his endeavor to do all the good he could, and now he wuz bound to play well, and git all the good and rest he could out of his play spell. And I hadn't been with 'em more'n several hours before I thought that I had seen further into his heart and hopes and intentions than Miss Meechim had in all her born days.

Robert Strong, before he went away, invited us all to go and see his City of Justice, and we agreed with considerable satisfaction to do so, or at least I did and I spoze the rest did. Miss Meechim would be happy in any place where her nephew wuz, that you could see plain, as much as she disapproved of his methods. Dorothy, I couldn't see so plain what she did think, she bein' one that didn't always let her lips say everything her heart felt, but she used Robert real polite, and we all had a real agreeable visit.

Robert got a big carriage and took us all out driving that afternoon, Miss Meechim and I settin' on the back seat, and Robert and Dorothy facing us, and Tommy perched on Robert's knee; Tommy jest took to him, and visey-versey. Robert thought he wuz just about the brightest little boy he had ever seen, and Tommy sot there, a little pale but happy, and wonnered about things, and Robert answered all his "wonners" so fur as he could.

We drove through beautiful streets lined with elegant houses, and the dooryards wuz a sight. Think of my little scraggly geraniums and oleanders and cactuses I've carried round in my hands all winter and been proud on. And then think of geranium and oleander trees just as common as our maples and loaded with flowers. And palm and bananna trees, little things we brood over in our houses in the winter, and roses that will look spindlin' with me, do the best I can, in December, all growin' out-doors fillin' the air with fragrance.

Robert Strong said we must go to the Cliff House, and Tommy wanted to see the seals.

Poor things! I felt bad to see 'em and to think there wuz a war of extermination tryin' to be waged aginst 'em, because they interfered with the rights of a few. One of the most interesting animals on the Western continent! It seems too bad they're tryin' to wipe 'em out of existence because the fishermen say they eat a sammon now and then. Why shouldn't they who more than half belong to the water-world once in a great while have a little taste of the good things of that world as well as to have 'em all devoured by the inhabitants of dry land? And they say that the seals eat sharks too--I should think that that paid for all the good fish they eat. But to resoom. Tommy didn't think of the rights or the wrongs of the seals, he had no disquietin' thoughts to mar his anticipations, but he wonnered if he could put his hands through 'em like he could his ma's seal muff. He thought that they wuz muffs, silk lined--the idee! And he "wonnered" a sight when he see the great peaceable lookin' creeters down in the water and on the rocks, havin' a good time, so fur as we could see, in their own world, and mindin' their own bizness; not tryin' to git ashore and kill off the fishermen, because they ketched so many sammons. And Tommy had to feed the seals and do everything he could do, Robert Strong helpin' him in everything he undertook, and he "wonnered" if they would ever be changed into muffs, and he "wonnered" if they would like to be with "ribbon bows on."

At my request we went through Lone Mountain Cemetery, a low mountain rising from the sandy beach full of graves shaded by beautiful trees and myriads of flowers bending over the silent sleepers, the resistless sea washing its base on one side--just as the sea of Death is washing up aginst one side of Life--no matter how gay and happy it is.

We rode home through a magnificent park of two thousand acres. Money had turned the sandy beach into a wealth of green lawns, beautiful trees and myriads of flowers. I had always sposed that them Eastern Genis in the "Arabian Nights" had palaces and things about as grand and luxurious as they make, but them old Genis could have got lots of pinters in luxury and grand surroundin's if they'd seen the homes of these nabobs in the environins of San Francisco. No tongue can tell the luxury and elegance of them abodes, and so I hain't a goin' to git out of patience with my tongue if it falters and gins out in the task.

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