Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (ebook reader android txt) đź“–
- Author: Marietta Holley
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“Polygamy is done away with anyway; the United States have abolished it in Utah.”
And I sez: “Well, I should be glad to think that wuz so, for one husband and one wife is as much as the Lord in his mercy ort to ask one human creeter to tend to and put up with. Not but what marriage is a beautiful institution and full of happiness if Love props it up and gilds it with its blessed ray. But one is enough,” sez I firmly, “and enough is as good as a feast.”
Miss Meechim sot silently by durin’ this eloquent discussion––what she felt, she that abhorred the institution of marriage anyway––what she felt to look on and see folks so much married as these wuz, will forever remain a secret, but her looks wuz queer, very, and her nose fairly sought the heavens, it wuz held so high. A few of the wives brought in some refreshments to refresh us, and a few more waited on us and the small husband of their eleven hearts, and almost immegiately we tore ourselves away, takin’ in ourn as we left, the hand of the husband and the eleven right hands of the wife.
That evenin’ I wuz told I wuz wanted in the parlor, and as I entered quite a good lookin’ Mormon man got up and advanced and broke out to once askin’ my help. He said he’d read in the paper that I wuz there to that tarven, and knowin’ I stood so high with the public he had ventered to ask my help. He had political yearnin’s and wanted to set in the Senate, but as I stood firm as iron again that idee his linement grew almost frenzied, and sez he:
“Do help me, do use your influence with your President. 53 He’s afraid of race suicide; tell him I’m the father of forty-seven children––will not that touch his heart?”
“Not a mite!” sez I, “his heart is as true as steel to his one wife and six children. It is a good manly heart that can’t be led off by any such brazen statements.”
His linement looked lurid and half demented as he sez, “Mebby some high church dignitaries would help me. Or no,” sez he, “go to the head of it all, go to the Liquor Power––that’s the place to go to, that rules Church and State, that makes the laws. Oh, do go to the Liquor Power, and git it to let me set. I’ll pay their usual price for makin’ personal laws in a man’s favor.”
The cold glare in my gray eye froze the words on his lip. “You ask me to go to the Liquor Power for help! Do you know who you’re speakin’ to?”
“Yes,” sez he feebly, “I’m speakin’ to Josiah Allen’s wife, and I want to set.”
His axent wuz heartbroken and I fancied that there wuz a little tone of repentance in it. Could I influence him for the right? Could I frighten him into the right path? I felt I must try, and I sez in a low, deep voice:
“I’ll help you to set if you’ll set where I want you to.”
“Oh, tell me! tell me,” sez he, “where you want me to set.”
“Not in the high halls where justice is administered, not up there with the pictures of your numerous wives on your heart to make laws condemnin’ a man who has only one extra wife to prison for twenty years, which same law would condemn you to prison for ’most a century. That wouldn’t be reasonable. Presidents and senators are sot up there in Washington D. C. as examplers for the young to foller and stimulate ’em to go and do likewise. Such a example as yourn would stimulate ’em too much in matrimonial directions and land ’em in prison.”
He muttered sunthin’ about lots of public men havin’ other wives in secret.
54“In secret?” sez I. “Well, mebby so, but it has to be in secret, hid away, wropped in disgrace, and if the law discovers it they are punished. That’s a very different thing from makin’ such a life respectable, coverin’ ’em under the mantilly of the law, embroidered too with public honors.”
He turned away despairin’ly and murmured mekanically the old heart-broken wail, “I want to set.”
And I sez reasonably, “There is no objection to your settin’ down, and if I had my way you would set right by them who have done only half or a quarter what you have and in the place the laws have made for them and you.”
He turned quick as a wink, “Then you won’t help me?”
“Yes,” sez I, “I’ll help all I can to put you right in with the others that have done jest what you have––openly set our laws at defiance. But if I know myself I won’t help a tiger cat to hold a canary bird or a wolf to guard a sheep pen. I won’t help a felon up on the seat of justice to make laws for innocent men.”
“Innocent men!” And agin he sez, “Ha! ha!”
And agin I didn’t care what he said. And I got up and sez, “You may as well leave the presence.” And as he turned I sez in conclusion, thinkin’ mebby I’d been too hash, “I dare say you have intellect and may be a good man so fur as I know only in this one iniquity and open defiance of our laws, and I advise you to turn right round in your tracks and git ready to set down on high, for you’ll find it a much worse thing to prance round through all eternity without settin’ than it is to not set here.”
He jest marched out of the door and didn’t say good bye or good day or anything. But I didn’t care. I knowed the minute his card wuz handed to me jest how many wives he had and how he wuz doin’ all he could to uphold what he called his religion, but I did hope I’d done him some good but felt dubersome about it. But knowin’ I’d clung to Duty’s apron strings I felt like leavin’ the event. And when Miss Meechim come in I wuz settin’ calm and serene in a 55 big chair windin’ some clouded blue and white yarn, Aronette holdin’ the skein. I’d brung along a lot of woollen yarn to knit Josiah some socks on the way, to make me feel more homelike.
And the next day we proceeded on to California.
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 57 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 58 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
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