"Wall, Samantha, though they are well meanin', good people, they haint what you may call fashionable, they haint the upper 10."Says I, "Josiah Allen you have fell over 15 cents in my estimation, sense we have begun talkin', you won't go with 'em because they haint fashionable.They are good, honest Christian Methodists, and have stood by you and me many a time, in times of trouble, and now," says I, "you turn against 'em because they haint fashionable." Says I, "Josiah Allen where do you think you'll go to?""Oh, probable down through Congress Park, and we may walk up as fur as the Indian Encampment.I feel kinder mauger to-day, and my corns ache feerful." (His boots wuz that small that they wuz sights to behold, sights!) "We probably shan't walk fur," says he.
I see how 'twuze in a minute.That English girl had asked him to walk with her, and my pardner had broken a solemn engagement with Ezra and Druzilla Balch to go a walkin' with her.I see how 'twuz, but I sot in silence and one of the big rockin' chairs, and didn't say nothin'.
Finally he says, with a sort of a anxious look onto his foreward:
"You don't feel bad, do you Samantha? You haint jealous, are you?""Jealous!" says I, a lookin' him calmly over from head to feet --it wuz a witherin' look, and yet pitiful, that took in the hull body and soul, and weighed 'em in the balances of common sense, and pity, and justice.It wuz a look that seemed to envelop him all to one time, and took him all in, his bald head, his vest, and his boots, and his mind (what he had), and his efforts to be fashionable, and his trials and tribulations at it, and -- and everything.I give him that one long look, and then I says:
"Jealous? No, I haint jealous."
Then silence rained again about us, and Josiah spoke out (his conscience was a troublin' him), and he says:
"You know in fashionable life, Samantha, you have to do things which seem unkind, and Ezra, though a good, worthy man, can't understand these things as I do."Says I: "Josiah Allen, you'll see the day that you'll be sorry for your treatment of Druzilla Balch, and Ezra.""Oh wall," says he, pullin' up his collar, "I'm bound to be fashionable.While I can go with the upper 10, it is my duty and my privilege to go with 'em, and not mingle in the lower classes like the Balches."Says I firmly, "You look out, or some of them 10 will be the death of you, and you may see the day that you will be glad to leave 'em, the hull 10 of em, and go back to Druzilla and Ezra Balch."But what more words might have passed between us, wuz cut short by the arrival of Ezra and Druzilla in a good big carriage, with Miss Balch on the back seat, and Ezra acrost from her, and a man up in front a drivin'.It wuz a good lookin' sight, and I hastened down the steps, Josiah disappearin' inside jest as quick as he ketched sight of their heads.
They asked me anxiously "where Josiah wuz and why he didn't come?"And I told 'em, "that Josiah had told me that mornin' that he felt manger, and he had some corns that wuz a achin'."So much wuz truth, and I told it, and then moved off the subject, and they seein' my looks, didn't pursue it any further.They proposed to go back to their boardin' place, and take in Deacon Balch, Ezra's brother from Chicago, who wuz stayin' there a few days to recooperate his energies, and get help for tizick.So they did.He wuz a widowed man.Yes, he was the widower of Cornelia Balch who I used to know well, a good lookin' and a good actin' man.And he seemed to like my appeerance pretty well, though I am fur from bein' the one that ort to say it.
And as we rolled on over the broad beautiful road towards Saratoga Lake, I begun to feel better in my mind.
The Deacon wuz edifyin' in conversation, and he thought, and said, "that my mind was the heftiest one that he had ever met, and he had met hundreds and hundreds of 'em." He meant it, you could see that, he meant every word he said.And it wuz kind of comfortin'
to hear the Deacon say so, for I respected the Deacon, and I knew he meant just what he said.
He said, and believed, though it haint so, but the Deacon believed it, "that I looked younger than I did the day I wuz married."I told him "I didn't feel so young."
"Wall," he said, "then my looks deceived me, for I looked as young, if not younger."Deacon Balch is a good, kind, Christian man.
His conversation was very edifyin', and he looked kinder good, and warm-hearted at me out of his eyes, which wuz blue, some the color of my Josiah's.But alas! I felt that though some comforted and edified by his talk, still, my heart was not there, not there in that double buggy with 2 seats, but wuz afur off with my pardner.
I felt that Josiah Allen wuz a carryin' my heart with him wherever he wuz a goin'.Curious, haint it? Now you may set and smile, and talk, and seem to be enjoyin' yourself first-rate, with agreeable personages all around you, and you do enjoy yourself with that part of your nater.But with it all, down deep under the laughs, and the bright words, the comfort you get out of the answerin' laughs, the gay talk, under it all is the steady consciousness that the real self is fur away, the heart, the soul is fur away, held by some creeter whether he be high, or whether he be low, it don't matter -- there your heart is, a goin' towards happiness, or a travellin' towards pain as the case may be --curious, haint it?
