Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (ebook reader android txt) 📖

liked so well, City of Justice! Why the name fairly 21 takes hold of my heart-strings,” sez I; “has he made well by his big manufactory?”

“Why, yes, fairly well,” sez she, “but he has strange ideas. He says he don’t want to coin a big fortune out of other men’s sweat and brains. He wants to march on with the great army of toilers, and not be carried ahead of it on a down bed. He says he wants to feel that he is wronging no man by amassing wealth out of the half-paid labor of their best years, and that he is satisfied with an equal and reasonable share of the labor and capital invested. He has the best of men in his employ and they are all well paid and industrious; all well-to-do, able to live well, educate their children well, and have time for some culture and recreation for themselves and their families. I told him that his ideas were Utopian, but he says they have succeeded even better than he expected they would. But there will come a crash some time, I am sure. There must be rich and there must be poor in this world, or the Scriptures will not be fulfilled.”

Sez I, “There ain’t no need to be such a vast army of poverty marching on to the almshouse and grave, if it wuzn’t for the dram-shop temptin’ poor human nater, and the greed of the world, and the cowardice and indifference of the Church of Christ. Enough money is squandered for stuff that degrades and destroys to feed and clothe all the hungry and naked children of the world.”

“Oh,” sez Miss Meechim, “I don’t believe all this talk and clamor about prohibition. My people all drank genteelly, and though of course it was drink that led to the agony and divorces of three of my sisters, and my father’s first downfall, yet I have always considered that moderate drinking was genteel. Our family physician always drank genteel, and our clergyman always kept it in his wine cellar, and if people would only exert self control and drink genteel, there would be no danger.”

“How duz Robert Strong feel about it?” sez I.

“Oh, he is a fanatic on the subject; he won’t employ 22 a man who drinks at all. He says that the city he is founding is a City of Justice, and it is not just for one member of a family to do anything to endanger the safety and happiness of the rest; so on that ground alone he wouldn’t brook any drinking in his model city. There are no very rich ones there, and absolutely no poor ones; he is completely obliterating the barriers that always have, and I believe always should exist between the rich and the poor. Sez I, ‘Robert, you are sacrilegiously setting aside the Saviour’s words, “the poor ye shall always have with you.”’

“And he said there was another verse that our Lord incorporated in his teachings and the whole of his life-work, that he was trying to carry out: ‘Do unto others as ye would have them to do unto you.’ He said that love and justice was the foundation and cap-stone of our Saviour’s life and work and he was trying in his weak way to carry them out in his own life and work. Robert talked well,” sez she, “and I must confess that to the outward eye his City of Justice is in a happy and flourishing condition, easy hours of work, happy faces of men, women and children as they work or play or study. It looks well, but as I always tell him, there is a weak spot in it somewhere.”

“What duz he say to that?” sez I, dretful interested in the story.

“Why, he says the only weak spot in it is his own incompetence and inability to carry out the Christ idea of love and justice as he wants to.”

“I wish I could see that City of Justice,” sez I dreamily, for my mind’s eye seemed to look up to Robert Strong in reverence and admiration. “Well,” sez she, “I must say that it is a beautiful place; it is founded on a natural terrace that rises up from a broad, beautiful, green plain, flashing rivers run through the valley, and back of it rises the mountains.”

“Like as the mountains are about Jerusalem,” sez I.

“Yes, a beautiful clear stream rushes down the mountain 23 side from the melting snow on top, but warmed by the southern sun, as it flows through the fertile land, it is warm and sweet as it reaches Robert’s place. And Robert says,” continued Miss Meechim, “that that is just how old prejudices and injustices will melt like the cold snow and flow in a healing stream through the world. He talks well, Robert does. And oh, what a help he has been to me with Dorothy!”

“What duz she say about it?” sez I.

“She does not say so, but I believe she thinks as I do about the infeasibility as well as the intrinsic depravity of disproving the Scriptures.”

“Well,” sez I, “Robert was right about the mission of our Lord being to extend justice and mercy, and bring the heart of the world into sweetness, light and love. His whole life was love, self-sacrifice and devotion, and I believe that Robert is in the right on’t.”

“Oh, Robert is undoubtedly following his ideas of right, but they clash with mine,” sez Miss Meechim, shakin’ her head sadly, “and I think he will see his error in time.”

Here Miss Meechim stopped abruptly to look apprehensively at a young man that I knew wuz a Jonesville husband and father of twins. He was lookin’ admirin’ly at Dorothy, and Miss Meechim went and sot down between ’em, and Tommy come and set with me agin.

Tommy leaned up aginst me and looked out of the car window and sez kinder low to himself:

“I wonner what makes the smoke roll and roll up so and feather out the sky, and I wonner what my papa and my mama is doin’ and what my grandpa will do––they will be so lonesome?” Oh, how his innocent words pierced my heart anew, and he begun to kinder whimper agin, and Aronette, good little creeter, come up and gin him an orange out of the lunch-basket she had.

Well, we got to New York that evenin’ and I wuz glad to think that everybody wuz well there, or so as to git about, 24 for they wuz all there at the deepo, excep’ them that wuz in the street, but we got safe through the noise and confusion to a big, high tarven, with prices as high as its ruff and flagpole. Miss Meechim got for her and Dorothy what she called “sweet rooms,” three on ’em in a row, one for each on ’em and a little one for Aronette. But I d’no as they wuz any sweeter than mine, though mine cost less and wuz on the back of the house where it wuzn’t so noisy. Tommy and I occupied one room; he had a little cot-bed made up for him.

Indeed, I groaned out as I sot me down in a big chair, if he wuz here, the pardner of my youth and middle age, no room Miss Meechim ever looked on wuz so sweet as this would be. But alas! he wuz fur away. Jonesville held on to my idol and we wuz parted away from each other. But I went down to supper, which they called dinner, and see that Tommy had things for his comfort and eat sunthin’ myself, for I had to support life, yes, strength had to be got to cling to that black string that I had holt on, and vittles had to supply some of that strength, though religion and principle supplied the biggest heft. Miss Meechim and Aronette wuz in splendid sperits, and after sup––dinner went out to the theatre to see a noted tragedy acted, and they asked me to accompany and go with ’em, for I spoze that my looks wuz melancholy and deprested in extreme, Aronette offerin’ to take care of Tommy if I wanted to go.

But I sez, “No, I have got all the tragedy in my own bosom that I can ’tend to.” And in spite of my cast-iron resolution tears busted out under my eyeleds and trickled down my nose. They didn’t see it, my back wuz turned, and my nose is a big one anyway and could accommodate a good many tears.

But I controlled my agony of mind. I walked round with Tommy for a spell and showed him all the beauties of the place, which wuz many, sot down with him for a spell in the big, richly-furnished parlors, but cold and lonesome 25 lookin’ after all, for the love-light of home wuz lackin’, and looked at the glittering throng passing and repassing; but the wimmen looked fur off to me and the men wuz like shadders, only one man seemed a reality to me, and he wuz small boneded and fur away. And then we went to our room. I read to Tommy for a spell out of a good little book I bought, and then hearn him say his prayers, his innocent voice askin’ for blessin’s from on high for his parents and my own beloved lonely one, and then I tucked him into his little cot and sot down and writ a letter to my dear Josiah, tears dribblin’ down onnoticed while I did so.

For we had promised to write to each other every day of our lives, else I could not, could not have borne the separation, and I also begun a letter to Philury. I laid out to put down things that I wanted her to ’tend to that I thought on from day to day after I got away, and then send it to her bime by. Sez I:

“Philury, be sure and put woolen sheets on Josiah’s bed if it grows colder, and heat the soap stun for him and see that he wears his woolen-backed vest, takin’ it off if it moderates. Tend to his morals, Philury, men are prone to backslide; start him off reg’lar to meetin’, keep clean bandannas in his pocket, let him wear his gingham neckties, he’ll cry a good deal and it haint no use to spile his silk ones. Oh, Philury! you won’t lose nothin’ if you are good to that dear man. Put salt enough on the pork when you kill, and don’t let Josiah eat too much sassage. And so no more to-night, to be continude.”

The next morning I got two letters from my pardner. He had writ a letter right there in the deepo before he went home, and also another on his arrival there. Agony wuz in every word; oh, how wuz we goin’ to bear it!

But I must not make my readers onhappy; no I must harrow them up no more, I must spread the poultice of silence on the deep gaping woond and go on with the sombry history. After breakfast Miss Meechim got a big, handsome 26 carriage, drawed by two prancin’ steeds, held in by a man buttoned up to his chin, and invited me to take Tommy and go with her and Dorothy up to the Park, which I did. They wuz eloquent in praises of that beautiful place; the smooth, broad roads, bordered with tall trees, whose slim branches stood out against the blue sky like pictures. The crowds of elegant equipages, filled with handsome lookin’ folks in galy attire that thronged them roads. The Mall, with its stately beauty, the statutes that lined the way ever and anon. The massive walls of the Museum, the beautiful lake and rivulets, spanned by handsome bridges. It wuz a fair seen, a fair seen––underneath beauty of the rarest kind, and overhead a clear, cloudless sky.

Miss Meechim wuz happy, though she didn’t like the admiring male glances at Dorothy’s fresh, young beauty, and tried to ward ’em off with her lace-trimmed muff, but couldn’t. Tommy wuz in pretty good sperits and didn’t look quite so pale as when we left home, and he wonnered at the white statutes, and kinder talked to himself, or to Carabi about ’em, and I kinder gathered from what he said that he thought they wuz ghosts, and I thought that he wuz kinder reassurin’ Carabi that they wouldn’t hurt him, and he wonnered at the mounted policemen who he took to be soldiers, and at all the beauty with which we wuz surrounded. And I––I kep’ as cheerful a face as I could on the outside, but always between me and Beauty, in whatsoever guise it appeared, wuz a bald head, a small-sized figger. Yes, it weighed but little by the steelyards, but it shaddered lovely Central Park, the most beautiful park in the world,