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

remarkin’ that Dorothy and Robert set store by me and I by 448 them. Them that told me said that they felt like death to not tell Miss Meechim of the engagement, but knowin’ her onconquerable repugnance to matrimony and to Dorothy’s marriage in particular, and not knowin’ but what the news would kill her stun dead, them that told me said they felt that they had better git her back to her own native shores before bein’ told, which I felt wuz reasonable.

How I did hate to part with sweet Dorothy, I loved her and she me visey versey. And Robert Strong, he sot up in my heart next to Thomas J., and crowdin’ up pretty clost to him too. Miss Meechim also had her properties, and we had gone through wearisome travel, dangers and fatigues, pleasant rest, delightful sight-seeing, poor vittles, joy and grief together, and it wuz hard to break up old ties. But it had to be. Our life here on this planet is made up of meetin’s and partin’s. It is hail and farewell with us from the cradle to the grave.

We all retired early, bein’ tired out, and we slept well, little thinkin’ of the ghastly shape that would meet us on the thresholt of the new day. But, oh, my erring but beloved country! why ortn’t we to expect it as long as you keep the mills a-goin’ that turns out such black, ghastly shadders by the thousands and thousands all the time, all the time, to enwrap your children.

Dorothy never knowed it––what wuz the use of cloudin’ her bright young life with the awful shadder? But then, as I told Robert, that black, dretful pall hangs over every home and every heart in our country and is liable to fall anywhere and at any time, no palace ruff is too high and no hovel ruff is too low to be agonized and darkened by its sombry folds.

But he said it would make Dorothy too wretched, and he could not have her told, and I agreed to it, but of course I told my pardner and his heart wuz wrung and his bandanna wet as sop in consequence on’t. And he told Miss Meechim, too, that mornin’, and her complaisant belief in genteel drinkin’ and her conservative belief in the Poor Man’s Club, wuz 449 shook hard––how hard I didn’t know until afterwards. Oh, how she, too, loved Aronette! The children when they wuz told on’t mourned because we did, and on their own account too, for they sot store by her what little they had seen of her––for nobody could see her without loving her.

As for Arvilly, her ideas on intemperance couldn’t be added to or diminished by anything, but she wep’ and cried for days.

Well, I spoze you all want to know the peticulars. Robert Strong wuz the first one that left the tarven in the mornin’. He had to see a man very early on business. He went out by the ladies’ entrance. And there crouched on the cold stun steps, waitin’ we spozed to ketch another glimpse of Dorothy, and mebby to ask for help, for she wuz almost naked, and her plump little limbs almost skin and bone, dead and cold, frozen and starved, so we spozed, lay Aronette. Pretty, happy little girl, dearly beloved, thrown by Christian America to the wild beasts just as sure as Nero ever did, only while he threw his human victims to be torn and killed for fun, America throws her human victims, her choicest, brightest youth, down to ruin and death, for greed. Which looks the Worst in God’s sight? I d’no nor Josiah don’t.

Well, Robert called a ambulance, had the poor boney, ragged victim took to a hospital, but all efforts wuz vain to resuscitate her. She had gone to give in her evidence against America’s license laws, aginst Army Canteen, Church and State, aginst Licensed Saloon Keeper, aginst highest official and lowest voter, aginst sinner and saint, who by their encouragement or indifference make such crimes possible.

The evidence wuz carried in, the criminals must meet it, it is waitin’ for ’em, waitin’. Of course the New York parties who helped Robert, policemen, doctors, and nurses, thought very little of it, it wuz so common, all over the land, they said, such things was happening all the time from the same cause. And we knew it well, we knew of the wide open pit, 450 veiled with tempting covering, wove by Selfishness and Greed, scattered over with flimsy flowers of excuse, palliation, expediency that tempts and engulfs our brightest youth, the noblest manhood, old and young, rich and poor––it is very common.

But to us who loved the pretty, merry little maid, rememberin’ her so happy and so good, and saw her ruined and killed before our eyes by the country that should have protected her, we kept it in our hearts, we could not forgit it.

Robert Strong had her buried in a quiet corner of a cemetery and left orders for a stun cross to be put up to mark her grave. He asked me to write the epitaph which he had carved in the marble, and I did:

Aronette

Young, Happy, Beloved––Murdered!
Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.

Robert had it put on just as I writ it. He didn’t tell Dorothy anything about her death till they got home. She never see the epitaph; it wuz true as truth itself, but it wuz hash, and might have made her bed-sick, lovin’ Aronette as she did. But after Dorothy Strong wuz livin’ with him, blessed and happy in their pretty, simple home in his City of Justice, then he told her that Aronette wuz dead, died in a hospital and wuz buried in a pleasant graveyard. And Dorothy mourned for her as she would for a beloved sister.

Yes, Dorothy will mourn for her all her days. The young man who wuz to marry her will live under the shadow of this sorrow all his life, for he is one of the constant ones who cannot forgit. The old grandmother in Normandie waited for letters from her darling which never came, and will die waiting for her.

The young man who enticed the pretty little maid into the canteen, licensed by America, and gave her stupefying drink, licensed by our laws, took her, staggering and stupid, 451 to another dretful house, made as respectable as they can make it by our Christian civilization. He lived long enough, I spoze, to add several more victims to the countless list of such murders that lays on our country’s doorsteps, and then he too died, a bloated, loathsome wreck, makin’ another victim for the recordin’ angel to mark down, if there is room in her enormous books of debt and credit with this traffic for another name. And I spoze there is, for them books tower up mountain high, and new ones have to be opened anon or oftener, and will I spoze till God’s time of reckonin’ comes and the books are opened and the debts paid.

It wuz a lovely day when we see the towers of Jonesville loom up above the billows of environin’ green.

(I mean the M. E. steeple showin’ up beyend Grout Nickleson’s pine woods.)

As the cars drew into the station they tooted their delight agin and agin at our safe return as the train stopped.

As we walked up the platform I see Josiah furtively on-button his stiff linen cuffs as if preparin’ to throw ’em off for life. His face radiant, and hummin’ sotey vosey his favorite ballad: