Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (life changing books TXT) š
- Author: Marietta Holley
Book online Ā«Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (life changing books TXT) šĀ». Author Marietta Holley
Sez he, āWhat foe do you allude to, mam?ā
Sez I, āThe foe that slays one hundred thousand a year, and causes ten thousand murders every year, steals the vittles and clothes from starvinā wimmen and children, has its deadly grip on Church and State, and makes our civilization and Christianity a mock and byword amongst them that think.ā
āYou allude to Intemperance, I presume,ā sez he. Heās dretful smart; he knew it in a minute from my description.
āYes,ā sez I, āa foe a million times as dangerous as any your army ever faced, and a million times as hard to chase out of its ambuscade.ā
Sez I, āFrederic (I thought mebby it would sound more convincinā and friendly if I called him Frederic, and I wanted to convince him; I wanted to like a dog), I donāt believe in war, but when your men died in battle they didnāt moulder out a livinā death, chained to tender hearts, dragged along the putrid death path with āem. Their country honored āem; they wuznāt thrust into dishonored graves, some as paupers, some as criminals swinginā from scaffolds. Their country mourns for āem and honors āem. It wuznāt glad to cover their faces away from the light, brutish faces to hant āem with reproach, I should think, knowinā how they died. Try to think of that, Frederic; try to take it to heart.ā
I hearn Arvilly behind me breathinā hard and kinder chokinā seemināly, and I knew she wuz holdinā herself in as tight as if she had a rope round her emotions and indignations to keep her from breakinā in and jininā our talk, but she wuz as true as steel to her word and didnāt say nothinā and I resoomed:
āYouāve got to take such things to hum to realize āem,ā sez I. āOwinā to a sweet mother and a good father your boy mebby is safe. But spozeinā he wuznāt, spozeinā you and his sweet ma had to look on as millions of other pas and mas have to and see his handsome, manly young face growinā red, dissipated, brutal; his light, gay young heart changed 155 to a demonās, and from beinā your chief pride you had to hide him out of sight like the foul and loathsome leper he had become. Millions of other pas and mas that love their boys as well as you love yours have to do this. And if it wuz your boy what would you say of the legalized crime that made him so? Wouldnāt you turn the might of your great strength aginst it?ā
He didnāt speak out loud, but I see from his looks that he would. āThen,ā sez I, ādo, do think of other pas and mas and sisters and sweethearts and wives weepinā and wailinā for husbands, sons and brothers slain by this enemy! I spoze,ā sez I reasonably, āthat you think it is an old story and monotonous, but Love is an old story and Grief and Death, but they are jest as true as at the creation and jest as solemn.ā I thought he looked a good deal convinced, but he looked as if he wuz thinkinā of the extreme difficulty of reachinā and vanquishinā this foe intrenched as it is in the lowest passions of men, hidinā behind the highest legal barriers and barricaded behind meetinā house doors, guarded by the ballots of saint and sinner; I read these thoughts on his forehead, and answered āem jest as if heād spoke.
Sez I, āWhen your illustrious father come up face to face with a foe no other general could manage, did he flinch and draw back because it had been called onmanageable by everybody else? No, he drawed a line between good and evil, black and white, and says, āIāll fight it right out on this line.ā And he did, and before his courage and bravery and persistence the foe fell. Now, Frederic, here is the biggest foe that the American people are facinā to-day; here are weak generals and incompetent ones. Nobody can manage it; them high in authority wink at it and dassent tackle it, and so on down through all the grades of societyāāChurch and Stateāāthey dassent touch it. And what is the burnināest shame, them that ort to fight it support it with all the political and moral help they can give it. Here is a chance, Frederic, for you to do tenfold more for your countryās good 156 than ever your revered father did, and you know and I know that if it wasnāt for this great evil and a few others, such as the big Trusts and a few other things, our country is the greatest and best that the sun ever shone on. If we loved our country as we ort to we would try to make her do away with these evils and stand up perfect under the heavens. It is the ma that loves her child that spanks her into doinā right if she canāt coax her, and now do lay hold and help your country up onto the highest pedestal that a country ever stood on, and Iāll help boost all I can.ā I hearn behind me a loud āamen,ā turned into a cough. Arvilly wuznāt to blame; it spoke itself onbeknown to her.
Sez I, āThis is a hard job I am askinā you to tackle. The foe your father fit was in front of him, but this foe is within and without, and has for allies, powers and principalities and the Prince of Darkness. And now will you, bearinā the name you do, of General Grant, will you flinch before this black-hearted foe that aims at the heart and souls of your countrymen and countrywomen, or will you lead the Forlorn Hope? I believe that if you would raise the White Banner and lead on this army of the Cross, Church and State would rally to your battle-cry, angels would swarm round your standard and the Lord of Hosts go forward before you.ā
He didnāt say he would, I spoze he wuz too agitated. But he sez sunthinā in a real polite way about what a good Ambassador his country had in me.
But I sez sadly, āI canāt do much, Frederic. I am a woman, and the only weepon that is able to slay this demon is hung up there in Washington, D. C. Wimmen canāt reach up to it, they canāt vote. But you can; your arm is longer, and with that you can slay this demon as St. George slew the dragon. And heaven itself would drop down heavenly immortelles to mix with our laurel leaves to crown your forehead. Think on it, Frederic, no war wuz ever so holy, no war on earth wuz ever so full of immortal consequences.ā
And here I riz up, for I felt that I must leave the Presence, 157 not wantinā to make the Presence twice glad. I reached out my right hand and sez, āGood-by, and God bless you, for your own sake and for the sake of your noble pa.ā
He looked earnest and thoughtful, that allusion to the boy he loved so, named after his illustrious grandpa, had touched his very soul. I felt that I had not lost my breath or the eloquence I had lavished. I felt that he would help save other bright young boys from the demon that sought their livesāāthe bloody demon that stalks up and down our country wrapped in a shelterinā mantilly made of the Stars and Stripesāāoh, for shame! for shame that it is so! But I felt that General Grant would come up to the help of the Lord aginst the mighty, I felt it in my bones. But I wuz brung down a good deal in my feelinās as Arvilly advanced to the front. She had kepā her word as to talkinā, though the indignant sniffs and sithes behind me showed how hard it had been for her to keep her word, but now she advanced and sez, as she drew out her two books from her work bag: āGeneral Grant, I have two books here I would like to show you, one is the āTwin Crimes of America: Intemperance and Greed,ā that subject so ably presented to you by Samantha; the other is āThe Wild, Wicked and Warlike Deeds of Men.āā
Sez General Grant, risinā up: āI havenāt time, madam, to examine them, but put me down as a subscriber to both.ā Arvilly wuz in high sperits all the way back. As we wended our way to the tarven agin who should we find but Waitstill Webb, and we wuz dretful glad onāt, for we wuz layinā out to leave Manila in a few days, and this would be our last meetinā for some time, if not forever. Though I wuz glad to see when questioned by me about her return that she didnāt act so determined as she had acted about devotinā her hull life to nursinā the sick.
She told Arvilly confidential that she had had a letter from Ernest White since we had seen her. Arvilly knew that he had wanted to make her his bride before she left Jonesville. But the two ghosts, her murdered love and her duty, 158 stalked between āem then, and I spozed wuz stalkinā some now. But as I said more previous, the sun will melt the snow, and no knowinā what will take place. I even fancied that the cold snow wuz a little more soft and slushy than it had been, but couldnāt tell for certain.
A dretful thing has happened! I am almost too agitated to talk about it, but when I went down with my pardner and Tommy to breakfast ruther late, for we wrote some letters before we went down, Miss Meechim broke the news to me with red eyes, swollen with weepinā. Aronette, that dear sweet little maid that had waited on all on us as devoted as if we wuz her own mas and mas, wuz missinā. Her bed hadnāt been slepā in for all night; she went out early in the eveninā on a errent for Dorothy and hadnāt come back.
She slept in a little room off from Dorothyās, who had discovered Aronetteās absence very early in the morning, and they had all been searching for her ever sence. But no trace of her could be found; she had disappeared as utterly as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up. Dorothy wuz sick in bed from worry and grief; she loved Aronette like a sister; and Miss Meechim said, beinā broke up by sorrow, āNext to my nephew and Dorothy I loved that child.ā
And anon another dretful thing wuz discovered. Whilst we wuz talkinā about Aronette, Elder Wessel rushed in distracted, with his neck-tie hanginā under one ear, and his coat buttoned up wrong and the feathers of his conceit and egotism and self-righteousness hanginā limp as a wet hen.
Lucia had gone too; had disappeared jest as Aronette had, no trace could be found of her; her bed had not been slept in. She, too, had gone out on an errent the evening before. She and Aronette had been seen to leave the hotel together in the early evening. Elder Wessel, half distracted, searched for them with all his strength of mind and purse.
I started Josiah off a huntinā the minute he had got 160 through eatinā. He refused pint blank to go before. āEat,ā sez I, āwho can eat in such a time as this?ā
Sez he, āIt goes agin my stomach every mouāful I take (which was true anyway), but we must eat, Samantha,ā sez he, helpinā himself to another cake. āWe must eat soās to keep up our strength to hunt high and low.ā
Well, I spozed he wuz in the right onāt, but every mouāful he consumed riled me. But at last the plate wuz emptied and the coffee pot out and he sot off. And we searched all that day and the next and the next, and so did Miss Meechim and Arvilly, with tears runninā down her face anon or oftener.
Robert Strong, led on, Miss Meechim said by her anxiety, but I thought mebby by the agony in Dorothyās sweet eyes as well as his own good heart, didnāt leave a stone unturned in his efforts to find āem. But they had disappeared utterly, no trace could be found of āem. They had been seen during the evening with the two young men they had got acquainted with and that I didnāt like. They had been seen speaking with them as they came out of the shop where Dorothy had sent Aronette, and the
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