Marietta Holley

“ But the children of these marriages that I speak of, when they see such perfect harmony of mind and heart in their father and mother, when they have been brought up in such a warm, bright, happy home—they can’t no more help growin’ up sweet, and noble, and happy, than your wheat can help growin’ up straight and green when the warm rain and the sunshine falls on it. These children, Josiah Allen, are the future men and wimmens who are goin’ to put their shoulder blades to the wheel and roll this world straight into millenium. ”

“ Betsey still looked unconvinced, and I proceeded onwards.
“Now I never was any hand to stand and smile at Josiah for two or three hours on a stretch, it would make me feel like a natural born idiot; but I always have a bright fire, and a warm supper a waitin’ for him when he comes home at night.”
“Oh food! food! what is food to the deathless emotions of the soul. What does the aching young heart care for what food it eats—let my deah future companion smile on me, and that is enough.”
Says I in reasonable tones, “A man can’t smile on an empty stomach Betsey, not for any length of time. ”

“ We men think too much of you wimmin to want you to lose your sweet, dignified, retirin’ modesty that is your chieftest charm. How long would dignity and modesty stand firm before the wild Urena of public life? You are made to be happy wives, to be guarded by the stronger sect, from the cold blast and the torrid zone. To have a fence built around you by manly strength, to keep out the cares and troubles of life. ”

“ Josiah Allen’s wife hangs on to nobody’s apron strings only jest her own.
As far as the party on my doorstep believe what I think is right, I am with ’em heart and hand, but I am not one to shet up my eyes and walk up blindly and hang on to anybody’s apron strings, not even Horace Greeley’s, as anybody can see in the matter of biled vittles, Wimmen’s Rights, and cream biscuit. To think you have got to believe every thing your party does, seems jest as unreasonable to me, as it would when you go out to pick greens, to pick skunk cabbage because cow cabbage is good and wholesome. ”

“ You seem to think that votin’ is goin’ to be such a weight onto a woman that it will drag her right down from her home into public and political affairs and leave her there. Such talk is simple, for love and domestic happiness will be the other weight to the steelyards, as long as the world stands, and keep a woman’s heart and mind jest as straight as a string. Votin’ haint a goin’ to spile any woman at all, be she married, or be she single, and there is a class at the mercy of the world, fightin’ its hard battle alone—it will help them. ”

“ When did you ever see a couple that hated each other, or didn’t care for each other, but what their children, was either jest as mean as pusley—or else wilted and unhappy lookin’ like a potato sprout in a dark suller? What that potato sprout wants is sunshine, Josiah Allen. What them children wants is love. The fact is love is what makes a home—I don’t care whether its walls are white, stone, marble or bass wood. If there haint a face to the winder a waitin’ for you, when you have been off to the store, what good does all your things do you, though you have traded off ten pounds of butter? ”

“ For pretty nigh 2 minutes and a half I had the horrors almost as bad as Simon Slimpsey, (he has ’em now every day stiddy, Betsey is so hard on him) , but oh how sweetly in that solemn time there came to me the thought of Josiah. Yes, on that worrysome time I can truly say that Josiah Allen was my theme, and I thought to myself, there may be handsomer men than he is, and men that weigh more by the steelyards, but there hain’t one to be found that has heftier morals, or more well seasoned principles than he has. ”

“ One that she seems to belong to, jest like North and South America, joined by nature unbeknown to them ever sense creation. She’ll know him if she ever sees him, for their two hearts will suit each other jest like the two halves of a pair of shears. These are the marriages that Heaven signs the certificates of, and this marryin’ for a home, or for fear of bein’ called a old maid, is no more marriage in the sight of God, no more true marriage, than the blush of a fashionable woman that is bought for ten cents an ounce and carried home in her pocket, is true modesty. ”

“ To the south of the house is our big meadow—the smell of the clover in the summer is as sweet as anything, our bees get the biggest part of their honey there, the grass looks beautiful wavin’ in the sunshine, and Josiah cut from it last summer 4 tons of hay to the acre. ”

“ And he talked grand about how woman’s weakness arroused all the shivelry and nobility of a man’s nature, and how it was his dearest and most sacred privilege and happiness, to protect her from even a summer’s breeze, if it dared to blow too hard on her beloved and delicate form. ”

“ I rose right up in my seat, for at the mention of them two honored names, such emotions rushed onto me—that it drownded out fear, and all the shrinkin’ bashfulness of my sect, and I forgot in that wrapped moment that I wasn’t Josiah, and I advanced right [280] onwards towards them two noble men. Every man round ’em see the lofty expression onto my face, and kinder fell back, and I walked right up and gripped Skylers’es hand with one of mine, while I held my umbrell in the other tremblin’ with emotion. ”

“ To be [391] the wife of a good man, and the mother of his children, ought to be a woman’s highest aim, and purest happiness. Jest as it is man’s highest happiness to have a woman entirely dependant on him. It rouses his noblest and most generous impulses, it moves his heart to do and dare and his arm to labor—to have a gentle bein’ clingin’ to his manly strength.”
His eloquence so impressed me, that I had no words to reply to him. And for the first time sense I had begun to foller up the subject, my mind wavered back and forth, as Bunker Hill monument might, in a eloquent earthquake. ”

“ There have been a good many things Josiah Allen’s wife that you have not been required to stand, God and man united you to a good husband whom you love. But in your happiness you shouldn’t forget that some other woman has been less fortunate. ”

“ But still that Becon shines, that pure love triumphs over lost teeth and vanished sandy hair. There haint a man on the face of the earth that looks so good to me as Josiah Allen. I don’t tell him this, mind you, 14 years experience of married life has taught me caution. Josiah is as good as they’ll average generally, but no man can’t stand too much flattery, men are naturally vain. ”

“ Yet it was always my idee that if a woman can’t make home the pleasantest spot in the world for her husband, she needn’t complain if he won’t stay there any more than he can help. I believe there wouldn’t be so many men a meanderin’ off nights into grog shops, and all sorts of wickedness, if they had a bright home and a cheerful companion to draw ’em back, (not but what men have to be corrected occasionally, I have to correct Josiah every little while.) But good land! It is all I can do to get Josiah Allen and Thomas Jefferson out of the house long enough to mop. ”

“ Always havin’ some spear ready under their soft mantilly, to sweetly spear some other woman in the back. Horace, they haint my style. Beautiful weakness and simplicity may do for one evenin’ in a ball room. But it don’t wear well for all the cares and emergencies that come in a life of from 40 to 50 years. Was George Washington’s mother any the less a industrious equinomical and affectionate wife and mother, because she took a interest in public affairs?” And says I, with a lower and more modest tone, “Is Josiah Allen’s wife on that account any the less devoted to Josiah?” ”

“ I don’t go on clear looks, I go onto principle. Will the Lord say to me in the last day, ‘Josiah Allen’s wife, how is it with the sole of Tirzah Ann—as for Thomas Jefferson’s sole, he bein’ a boy it haint of no account?’ No! I shall have to give an account to Him for my dealin’s with both of these soles, male and female. And I should feel guilty if I brought him up to think that what was impure for a woman, was pure for a man. If man has a greater desire to do wrong—which I won’t dispute,” says I lookin’ keenly on to Josiah, “he has greater strength to resist temptation. ”

“ Nature never makes any mistakes.”
“Nature made queen bees Horace. Old Nature herself clapped the crown on to ’em. You never heard of king bees, did you? Industrious equinomical critters the bees are too. The public duties of that female don’t spile her, for where will you find house-work done up slicker than hern? Where will you find more stiddy, industrious, equinomical orderly doin’s through a whole nation than she has in hern? All her constituents up to work early in the mornin’, home at night too, jest as stiddy as the night comes. ”

“ And no man can’t eat soggy bread, with little chunks of salaratus in it, and clammy potatoes, and beefsteak burnt and raw in spots, and drink dishwatery tea, and [132] muddy coffee, and smile—or they might give one or 2 sickly, deathly smiles, but they wouldn’t keep it up, you depend upon it they wouldn’t, and it haint in the natur’ of a man to, and I say they hadn’t ought to. I have seen bread Betsey Bobbet, that was enough to break down any man’s affection for a woman, unless he had firm principle to back it up—and love’s young dream has been drounded in thick, muddy coffee more’n once. ”

“ I had got one sleeve so I could see streaks of white in it, (Josiah is awful hard on his shirt sleeves) , and I lifted up my face and continued in still more reesonable tones, as I took out my rice puddin’ and cleaned out the bottom of the oven, (the pudden had run over and was a scorchin’ on) , and scraped the oven bottom with a knife,
“Now Josiah Allen will go out into that lot,” says I, glancein’ out of the north window “and plough right straight along, furrow after furrow, no sweat of mind about it at all; his mind is in that free calm state that he could write poetry.” ”

“ I looked him keenly in the face all the time I spoke, for I thought he was kinder’ upholdin’ Sister Gansey’s husband, and I wanted my words to apaul him, but I suppose he made a mistake, and thought I was admirin’ of him I looked so earnest at him, for he spoke up and says he,
“I see by your stiddy glance that you have discovered who I be. Yes Madam, you see before you the Editor of the Augur, but don’t be nervous, don’t let it affect you more than you can help, I am a mortal like yourself.” ”

“ But let folks once get the idee into thier heads, that marriage is a solemn thing, and lasts as long as thier lives do, and they can’t get away from each other, they will be ten times as careful to live peacible and happy with thier companions.” Says I, “When a man realizes that he can if he wants to, start up and marry a woman before breakfast, and get divorced before dinner, and have a new one before supper [327] time, it has a tendency to make him onstiddy and worrysome.” ”

“ Rememberin’ myself, I sot down, and Horace, pensively wipin’ his brow with his lead pencil, went on to say,
“I admit there is some truth in what you say, Josiah Allen’s wife. I admit, as a truthful man should, that whatever wimmen has laid thier hands to, such as churches, hospital work, foreign missionary work, ragged schools, Sunday schools, charity balls and fairs, and Good Templars, they have done more than men in thier efforts and good influence. They are more patient than men; they are not so strong, but they are more persistent. ”

“ He is always doin’ good to somebody, besides preachin’ more like a angel than a human bein’. I can’t never forget—and I don’t want [72] to—how he took holt of my hand, and how his voice trembled and the tears stood in his eyes, when we thought our Tirzah Ann was a dyin’—she was in his Sunday School class. There is some lines in your life you can’t rub out, if you try to ever so hard. And I wasn’t goin’ to set still and hear him run down. It riled up the old Smith blood, and when that is riled, Josiah says he always feels that it is best to take his hat and leave, till it settles. ”

“ If I had wanted to remain free I shouldn’t have give my heart and hand to Josiah Allen. I didn’t do it deleriously, I had my senses.” Says I, “you can’t set down and stand up at the same time, each situation has its advantages, but you can’t be in both places at once, and this tryin’ to, is what makes so much trouble amongst men and wimmen. They want the rights and advantages of both stations to once—they want to set down and stand up at the same time, and it can’t be did. Men and wimmen hain’t married at the pint of the bayonet, they go into it with both their eyes [198] open. ”

“ Says I, firmly, “The Cause of Right, and the Good of the Human Race will ever be dear to the soul of her who was formally Samantha Smith. But at the same time that don’t hender me from thinkin’ a sight of my home, and from gettin’ good suppers. It will be ready, Josiah, jest as quick as the tea is steeped, I didn’t want to make it till you come, for bilein’ jest spiles that last tea you got,” and I went on in tones as firm as Plymouth Rock, yet as tender as a spring chicken. ”

“ What an awful thing it is to bring the little creeters into the world without their votin’ on the subject at all, and then neglect ’em, and abuse ’em, and make their poor little days awful long in the world, and then expect them to honor you for it. You are right in your views of health, and wimmin’s votin’ and etcetery—but you are wrong Victory, and I don’t want you to get mad at me, for I say it with as friendly feelin’s as if I was your mother in law,—you are wrong in this free love business, you are wrong in keepin’ house with two husbands at the same time. ”