"There is nothin' so useless in life, and so sort a wearin' as to be a lookin' for sunthin' that haint there.And when you pretend it is there when it haint, you are addin' iniquity to uselessness;so if you'll take my advice, the advice of a wellwisher, you will stop lookin', for I tell you plain that it haint there."Sez Miss Tutt, "Josiah Allen's wife, you have for reasens best known to your conscience baulked my hopes of a speedy immortality.
You have willfully tried to break down my hopes of an immense, immediate income to flow out of them poems for luxuries, jewelry, charity, etc.But I can at least claim this at your hands, Idemand honesty.Tell me honestly what you yourself think of them poems."Sez I (gettin' up sort a quick and goin' into the buttery, and bringin' out a little basket), "Here are some beautiful sweet apples, won't you have one?""Apples, at such a time as this;" sez Miss Tutt "When the slumberin' world trembles before the advancin' tread of a new poet -- When the heavens are listenin' intently to ketch the whispers of an Ardelia's fate -- Sweet apples! in such a time as this!" sez she.But she took two.
"I demand the truth," sez she."And you are a base, trucklin'
coward, if you give it not."
Sez I, tryin' to carry off the subject and the apples into the buttery; "Poetry ort to have pains took with it.""Jealousy!" sez Miss Tutt."Jealousy might well whisper this.
Envy, rank envy might breathe the suspicion that Ardelia haint been took pains with.But I can see through it," sez she."I can see through it.""Well," sez I, wore out, "if they belonged to me, and if she wuz my girl, I would throw the verses into the fire, and set her to a trade."She stood for a minute and bored me through and through with them eyes.Why it seemed as if there wuz two holes clear through my very spirit, and sole; she partly lifted that fearful lookin'
umberell as if to pierce me through and through; it wuz a fearful seen.
At last she turned, and flung the apple she wuz a holdin' onto the floor at my feet -- and sez she, "I scorn 'em, and you too." And she kinder stomped her feet and sez, "I fling off the dust I have gethered here, at your feet."Now my floor wuz clean and looked like yeller glass, almost, it wuz so shinin' and spotless, and I resented the idee of her sayin'
that she collected dust off from it.But I didn't say nothin'
back.She had the bag of poetry on her arm, and I didn't feel like addin' any more to her troubles.
But Ardelia, after her mother had swept out ahead, turned round and held out her hand, and smiled a sweet but ruther of a despondent and sorrowful smile, and I kissed her warmly.I like Ardelia.And what I said, I said for her good, and she knew it.
I like Ardelia.
Well, Miss Tutt and Ardelia went from our house to Eben Pixley's.
They are distant relatives of hern, and live about 3 quarters of a mile from us.The Pixleys think everything of Ardelia but they can't bear her mother.There has been difficulties in the family.
But Ardelia stayed there mor'n two weeks right along.She haint very happy to home I believe.And before she went back home it wuz arranged that she should teach the winter's school and board to Miss Pixley's.But Miss Pixley wuz took sick with the tyfus before she had been there two weeks -- and, for all the world, if the deestrict didn't want us to board her.Josiah hadn't much to do, so he could carry her back and forth in stormy weather, and it wuz her wish to come.And it wuz Josiah's wish too, for the pay wuz good, and the work light -- for him.And so I consented after a parlay.
But I didn't regret it.She is a good little creeter and no more like her mother than a feather bed is like a darnin' needle.Ilike Ardelia: so does Josiah.
