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

I wondered then and I wonder now if the spirit of revenge 59 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 60 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 61 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, 62 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 63 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 64 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 65 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