Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete by Marietta Holley (the reader ebook .txt) đź“–
- Author: Marietta Holley
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And I told her calmly “that I presumed I could.”
It seemed that her father died two months after marriage, right in the midst of the mellow light of the honeymoon, before he had had time to drop the exstatic sweetness of courtship and newly-married bliss and come down into the ordinary, everyday, good and bad demeanors of men.
And she had always lived with her mother (who naturally worshipped and mentally knelt before the memory of her lost husband) and three sentimental maiden aunts. And they had drawed all their knowledge of manhood from Moore's poems and Solomon's Songs. So Serena Fogg's idees of men and married life wuz about as thin and as well suited to stand the wear and tear of actual experience as a gauze dress would be to face a Greenland winter in.
And so, after considerable urgin' on her part (for I kinder hung back and hated to tackle the job, but not knowin' but that it wuz duty's call), I finally consented, and it wuz arranged this way:
She wuz to come down to our house some day, early in the mornin', and stay all day, and she wuz to stand up in front of me and rehearse the lecture over to me, and I wuz to set and hear it, and when she came to a place where I didn't agree with her I wuz to lift up my right hand and she wuz to stop rehearsin', and we wuz to argue with each other back and forth and try to convince each other.
And when we got it all arranged Josiah and I set out for home, I calm in my frame, though dreadin' the job some.
CHAPTER III.
But Josiah Allen wuz jest crazy over that lecture—crazy as a loon. He raved about it all the way home, and he would repeat over lots of it to me. About “how a man's love was the firm anchor that held a woman's happiness stiddy; how his calm and peaceful influence held her mind in a serene calm—a waveless repose; how tender men wuz of the fair sect, how they watched over 'em and held 'em in their hearts.”
“Oh,” sez he, “it went beyond anything I ever heard of. I always knew that men wuz good and pious, but I never realized how dumb pious they wuz till to-night.”
“She said,” sez I, in considerable dry axents—not so dry as I keep by me, but pretty dry—“No true man would let a woman perform any manuel labor.”
“Wall, he won't. There ain't no need of your liftin' your little finger in emanuel labor.”
“Manuel, Josiah.”
“Wall, I said so, didn't I? Hain't I always holdin' you back from work?”
“Yes,” sez I. “You often speak of it, Josiah. You are as good,” sez I, firmly, “full as good as the common run of men, and I think a little better. But there are things that have to be done. A married woman that has a house and family to see to and don't keep a hired girl, can't get along without some work and care.”
“Wall I say,” sez he, “that there hain't no need of you havin' a care, not a single care. Not as long as I live—if it wuzn't for me, you might have some cares, and most probable would, but not while I live.”
I didn't say nothin' back, for I don't want to hurt his feelin's, and won't, not if I can help it. And he broke out again anon, or nearly anon—
“Oh, what a lecture that wuz. Did you notice when she wuz goin' on perfectly beautiful, about the waveless sea of married life—did you notice how it took the school house down? And I wuz perfectly mortified to see you didn't weep or even clap your hands.”
“Wall,” sez I, firmly, “when I weep or when I clap, I weep and clap on the side of truth. And I can't see things as she duz. I have been a-sailin' on that sea she depictured for over twenty years, and have never wanted to leave it for any other waters. But, as I told her, and tell you now, it hain't always a smooth sea, it has its ups and downs, jest like any other human states.”
Sez I, soarin' up a very little ways, not fur, for it wuz too cold, and I was too tired, “There hain't but one sea, Josiah Allen, that is calm forever, and one day we will float upon it, you and me. It is the sea by which angels walk and look down into its crystal depths, and behold their blessed faces. It is the sea on whose banks the fadeless lilies blow—and that mirrors the soft, cloudless sky of the Happy Morning. It is the sea of Eternal Repose, that rude blasts can never blow up into billows. But our sea—the sea of married life—is not like that, it is ofttimes billowy and rough.”
“I say it hain't,” sez he, for he was jest carried away with the lecture, and enthused.
“We have had a happy time together, Josiah Allen, for over twenty years, but has our sea of life always been perfectly smooth?”
“Yes, it has; smooth as glass.”
“Hain't there never been a cloud in our sky?”
“No, there hain't; not a dumb cloud.”
Sez I, sternly, “There has in mine. Your wicked and profane swearin' has cast many and many a cloud over my sky, and I'd try to curb in my tongue if I was in your place.”
“'Dumb' hain't swearin',” sez he. And then he didn't say nothin' more till anon, or nearly at that time, he broke out agin, and sez he:
“Never, never did I hear or see such eloquence till to-night I'll have that girl down to our house to stay a week, if I'm a living Josiah Allen.”
“All right,” sez I, cheerfully. “I'd love to have her stay a week or ten days, and I'll invite her, too, when she comes down to rehearse her lecture.”
Wall we got home middlin' tired, and the subject kinder dropped down, and Josiah had lots of work come on the next day, and so did I, and company. And it run along for over a week before she come. And when she did come, it wuz in a dreadful bad time. It seems as if she couldn't have come in a
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