Samantha at Saratoga by Marietta Holley (e book reader pc .TXT) š
- Author: Marietta Holley
Book online Ā«Samantha at Saratoga by Marietta Holley (e book reader pc .TXT) šĀ». Author Marietta Holley
Sez I, considerinā, āI canāt get her up there alone, I haint strong enough.ā Sez I, sort a mekanikly, āI have got the rheumatez.ā
āSo you scoff me do you? I came to you to get bread, am I to get worse than a stunāa scoff?ā
āI haint gin you no scoff,ā sez I, a spunkinā up a little, āI haint thought on it. I like Ardelia and wish her well, but I canāt do merikles, I canāt compel the public to like things if they donāt.ā
Sez Miss Tutt, āYou are jealous of her, you hate her.ā
āNo, I donāt,ā sez I, āI haint jealous of her, and I like her looks first-rate. I love a pretty young girl,ā sez I candidly, ājest as I love a fresh posy with the dew still on it, a dainty rose-bud with the sweet fragrance layinā on its half-folded heart. I love āem,ā sez I, a beginninā to eppisode a little unbeknown to me, āI love āem jest as I love the soft unbroken silence of the early spring morninā, the sun all palely tinted with rose and blue, and the earth alayinā calm and unwoke-up, fresh and fair. I love such a morninā and such a life, for itself and for the unwritten prophecis in it. And when I see genius in such a sweet, young life, why it makes me feel as it duz to see through all the tender prophetic beauty of the morninā skies, a big white dove a soarinā up through the blue heavens.ā
Sez Miss Tutt, āYou see that in Ardelia, but you wont own it, you know you do.ā
āNo!ā sez I, āI would love to tell you that I see it in Ardelia; I would honest, but I canāt look into them morninā skies and say I see a white dove there, when I donāt see nothinā more than a plump pullet, a jumpinā down from the fence or a pickinā round calmly in the back door-yard. Jest as likely the hen is, as the white dove, jest as honerable, but you mustnāt confound the two together.ā
āA hen,ā sez Miss Tutt bitterly. āTo confound my Ardelia with a hen! And I donāt think there wuz ever a more ironieler āhenā than that wuz, or a scornfuller one.ā
āWhy,ā sez I reasonably. āHens are necessary and useful in any position, both walkinā and settinā, and layinā. You canāt getāem in any position hardly, but what they are useful and respectable, only jest flyinā. Hens canāt fly. Their wings haint shaped for it. They look some like a doveās wings on the outside, the same feathers, the same way of stretchinā āem out. But there is sunthin lackinā in āem, some heaven-given capacity for soarinā an for flight that the hens donāt have. And it makes trouble, sights and sights of trouble when hens try to fly, try to, and canāt!
āAt the same time it is hard for a dove to settle down in a back yard and stay there, hard and tegus. She can and duz sometimes, but never till after her wings have been clipped in some way. Poor little dove! I am always sorry for āem to see āem a walkinā round there, a wantinā to flyāa not forgettinā how it seemed to have their wings soarinā up through the clear sky, and the rush of the pure liquid windwaves a sweepinā aginst āem, as they riz up, up, in freedom, and happiness, and glory. Poor little creeters.
āYes, but doves can, if you clip their wings, settle down and walk, but hens CANāT fly, not for any length of time they canāt. No amount of stimulatinā poultices applied to the ends of their tail feathers and wings can ever make āem fly. They canāt; it haint their nater. They can make nests, and fill them with pretty downy chicks, they can be happy and beautiful in life and mean; they can spend their lives in jest as honerable and worthy a way as if they wuz a flyinā round, and make a good honerable appearance from day to day, till they begin to flop their wings, and flyāthen their mean is not beautiful and inspirinā; no, it is fur from it. It is tuff to see āem, tuff to see the floppinā, tuff to see their vain efforts to soar through the air, tuff to see āem fall percepitously down onto the ground agin. For they must come there in the end; they are morally certain to.
āNow Ardelia is a sweet pretty lookinā girl, she can set down in a cushioned arm-chair by a happy fireside, with pretty baby faces a clusterinā around her and some manās face like the sun a reflectinā back the light of her happy heart. But she canāt sit up on the pinnacle of fameās pillow. I donāt believe she can ever get up there, I donāt. Honestly speakinā, I donāt.ā
āEnvy!ā sez Miss Tutt, āglarinā, shameless envy! You donāt want Ardelia to rise! You donāt want her to mount that horse I spoke of; you donāt want to own that you see genius in her. But you do, Josiah Allenās wife, you know you doāā
āNo,ā sez I, āI donāt see it. I see the sweetness of pretty girlhood, the beauty and charm of openinā life, but I donāt see nothinā else, I donāt, honest. I donāt believe she has got genius,ā sez I, āseeinā you put the question straight to me and depend a answer; seeinā her future career depends on her choice now, I must tell you that I believe she would succeed better in the millionary trade or the mantilly makerās than she will in tryinā to mount the horse you speak on.
āWhy,ā sez I, candidly, āsome folks canāt get up on that horse, their legs haint strong enough. And if they do manage to get on, it throws āem, and they lay under the heels for life. I donāt want to see Ardelia there, I donāt want to see her maimed and lamed and stunted so early in the morninā of life, by a kick from that animal, for she canāt ride it,ā sez I, āhonestly she canāt.
āThere is nothinā so useless in life, and so sort a wearinā as to be a lookinā for sunthinā that haint there. And when you pretend it is there when it haint, you are addinā iniquity to uselessness; so if youāll take my advice, the advice of a wellwisher, you will stop lookinā, for I tell you plain that it haint there.ā
Sez Miss Tutt, āJosiah Allenās 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, I demand honesty. Tell me honestly what you yourself think of them poems.ā
Sez I (gettinā up sort a quick and goinā into the buttery, and bringinā out a little basket), āHere are some beautiful sweet apples, wonāt you have one?ā
āApples, at such a time as this;ā sez Miss Tutt āWhen the slumberinā world trembles before the advancinā tread of a new poetāWhen the heavens are listeninā intently to ketch the whispers of an Ardeliaās fateāSweet apples! in such a time as this!ā sez she. But she took two.
āI demand the truth,ā sez she. āAnd you are a base, trucklinā coward, if you give it not.ā
Sez I, tryinā to carry off the subject and the apples into the buttery; āPoetry ort to have pains took with it.ā
āJealousy!ā sez Miss Tutt. āJealousy might well whisper this. Envy, rank envy might breathe the suspicion that Ardelia haint been took pains with. But I can see through it,ā sez she. āI can see through it.ā
āWell,ā sez I, wore out, āif they belonged to me, and if she wuz my girl, I would throw the verses into the fire, and set her to a trade.ā
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 lookinā 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 holdinā onto the floor at my feetāand sez she, āI scorn āem, and you too.ā And she kinder stomped her feet and sez, āI fling off the dust I have gethered here, at your feet.ā
Now my floor wuz clean and looked like yeller glass, almost, it wuz so shininā and spotless, and I resented the idee of her sayinā that she collected dust off from it. But I didnāt say nothinā back. She had the bag of poetry on her arm, and I didnāt feel like addinā 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 Pixleyās. They are distant relatives of hern, and live about 3 quarters of a mile from us. The Pixleys think everything of Ardelia but they canāt bear her mother. There has been difficulties in the family.
But Ardelia stayed there morān 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 winterās school and board to Miss Pixleyās. But Miss Pixley wuz took sick with the tyfus before she had been there two weeksāand, for all the world, if the deestrict didnāt want us to board her. Josiah hadnāt much to do, so he could carry her back and forth in stormy weather, and it wuz her wish to come. And it wuz Josiahās wish too, for the pay wuz good, and the work lightāfor him. And so I consented after a parlay.
But I didnāt regret it. She is a good little creeter and no more like her mother than a feather bed is like a darninā needle. I like Ardelia: so does Josiah.
THE CHERITY OF THE JONESVILLIANS.
We have been havinā a pound party here in Jonesville. There wuz a lot of children left without any father or mother, nobody only an old grandma to take care of āem, and she wuz half bent with the rheumatiz, and had a swelled neck, and lumbago and fits.
They lived in an old tumble-down house jest outside of Jonesville. The father wuz, I couldnāt deny, a shiftless sort of a chap, good-natured, always ready to obleege a neighbor, but he hadnānt no faculty. And I donāt know, come to think of it, as anybody is any more to blame if they are born without a faculty, than if they are born with only one eye. Faculty is one of the things that you canāt buy.
He loved to hunt. That is, he loved to hunt some kinds of things. He never loved to hunt stiddy, hard work, and foller on the trail of it till he evertook success and captured it. No, he druther hunt after catamounts and painters, in woods where catamounts haint mounted, and painters haint painted sence he wuz born.
He generally killed nothinā bigger than red squirrels and chipmunks. The biggest game he ever brought down wuz himself. He shot himself one cold day in the fall of the year. He wuz gettinā over a brush fence, they sāposed the gun hit against somethinā and went off, for they found him a layinā dead at the bottom of the fence.
I always sāposed that the shock of his death cominā so awful sudden unto her, killed his wife. She had been sick for a long spell, she had consumption and dropsy, and so forth, and so forth, for a long time, and after he wuz brought in dead, she didnāt live a week. She thought her eyes of him, for no earthly reason as I could ever see. How strange, how strange a dispensation of Providence it duz seem, that some women love some men, and vicy versey and the same.
But she did jest about worship him, and she died whisperinā his name, and reachinā out her hands as if she see him jest ahead of her. And I told Josiah I didnāt know but she did. I shouldnāt wonder a mite if she did see him, for there is only the veil of mystery between us and the other world at any time, and she had got so nigh to it,
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