Marietta Holley

“ We dip the brush in carelessly that is to leave its mark on us for life, that no turpentine can wash out, recklessly, onheedingly, blindly, we make the fatal marks, blot out the hull of happiness mebby, with the wretched fatality of ignorance. ”

“ This job she had tackled only from a sense of duty and in a [125] real martyr sperit become the greatest comfort and pleasure of her life. For pretty soon Love, the great high priest, come in and sanctified her offerings of comfort and ease, and made her way glorious. How she did love Anna, and how Anna did love her. Of course clouds sometimes dimmed the horizon, shadders from Tamer’s personality and influence dimmed the clear sky that she wanted always to shine down onto her darling, also some lighter shadders from Hamen’s onwisdom. ”

“ You can’t like yourself, nor God can’t like you if you do a mean, shabby, contemptible act. Do jest as near right as you can, Thomas Jefferson Allen, and leave success or failure with Him who sees into your soul and your future clear to the end, if there is a end, which I don’t spoze there is. You had better be a failure outside than inside.” Sez I, “Let the one who can see inside of you look down into a clean soul, and even if you are covered with rags outside your Ma will be satisfied.” ”

“ How can the baby wisdom part the smile from the groan, and find truth under ’em? How can we? They are taught under fear of severest punishment to be honest—“Thou shalt not steal.” And then, with their earliest knowledge, they hear their mother boast of some advantage she has gained over the shopkeeper, and their father congratulating himself on how he got the better of his neighbor in a horse trade. ”

“ Safe from the cruel blows that fell on him anywhere, hard blows that beat the little, tender body and soft, dimpled limbs, leavin’ blue, livid marks where there should be nothin’ but dimples. Safe from the deeper marks and scars that deface the eager, seekin’ mind, the active, impressionable nature, the little white soul. ”

“ The divine faith in other’s goodness so soon to be dimmed by distrust. The gay, onthinkin’ happiness, so soon to be darkened by sorrow and anxiety—the rosy hopes so soon to fade away to the gray ashes of disappointment. ”

“ I knew that high, clear mountain air would do wonders for sick folks in a short time, and I knew that my will to help her towered up perfectly mountainous and high, and I spoze mebby it braced her up. We mortals are such strange creeters anyway that we can’t really understand how things be thus and so. ”

“ Some frivolous young girl, whose highest thought and ambition has never soared above her hair ribbon, some brainless boy, whose deepest desire and highest aim has been to wear as small a boot as he could, and contract hopeless debts for hair oil and cheap cigars and whiskey. ”

“ Even with the experience of maturity, with all the wisdom gathered from the words of them who have gone the way before, with all the experience of the travelers through the past to guide us, with the lamp of Caution in our hand, the shoes of Watchfulness to creep along on, and the great book of God’s will open before us, His strength to lean on—if with all these helps we stumble and blunder, how can we condemn the children so harshly, with no guide but the waverin’ will, the undeveloped conscience and understandin’, if they make mistakes? ”

“ The thoughts in her little brain jest wakin’ up, and to a imaginative child the dreams and fancies that fill her little mind, the child’s world within, must seem as strange as the new strange things of the world about her.
It is all a untried mystery to her, and it stands to reason that she can’t separate things all to once and put the right names to ’em all. The gay romances of the child’s fairy world within from the colder reasonin’ of the world without. The child’s world is purer than ourn, it is the only land of innocence and truth we know in this dreary life. ”

“ If you find him worthy, and you are to be his wife, make his home the most delightful place on earth—a clean, sweet restin’-place from the toils of life and a shelter from its storms; but don’t burn up your own individuality as incense before him; keep it to make his home more charmin’ than any other. ”

“ Now, a father and mother are to their children the controlling power, the visible Deity of their lives. They stand in the High Place in their souls. Let ’em tremble and quail if they don’t hold that high place reverently, thoughtfully, prayerfully. ”

“ These are the real mourners who do not go about the streets, but who sit inside the gayly curtained box and see the play of life go on before them till the lights are put out, the curtain down, and the real play of life is at an end. ”

“ Children have sharp eyes and are quick to see injustice, and things sink deep into their little souls. They are whipped if they don’t tell the truth, skaired dark nights with the lurid passage—“Liars shall have their portion in the lake of fire and brimstone.” ”

“ The making or the marring of a life, a endless, immortal life, is in their hands, let ’em tremble at the thought.
Jack’s mouth is a good natered one more’n half the time, most all the time, when he is down on the farm with Josiah and me (he loves to be there) . It is quite a big mouth, but none too big, not at all, with red lips, the upper one kinder short, and the ends curl up in a dretful sort of a laughin’, roguish way. But them curls can droop right down and the lips quiver like a baby’s—I’ve [10] seen ’em. That is when he is nagged at. Tamer Ann nags at Jack more’n half the time. ”

“ Why, what heart will that child bring to her lessons, her Elementary Arithmetic all mixed up with problems about flirtin’ and social supremacy, her Gography full of countries that can’t be bounded, realms of jealousy, hatred and strife, her plain readin’ and spellin’ full of readin’ and spellin’ that grown folks can’t read or spell straight to save their lives. What will remain to that child when she gits to be a young woman? All the emotions of youth outgrown and wasted, she will be old at fourteen, a worn-out old young flirt when she enters her teens. ”

“ She’s got big, kinder talkin’ eyes, a warm soft hazel, I guess they be, but they are so full of light and soul and expression that you don’t care so much what the color really is, a fair, white complexion, wavy, flaxen hair, good features, and the sweetest mouth you ever see with most always a smile curvin’ the rosy lips, and a pretty plump little figger most always dressed in white. ”

“ They say he is a sad and humble sperited man, who sets a good deal on their back doorstep at Newport and New York, when he sets anywhere, a modest, bald headed man, with iron gray mustache and sad eyes. They say he don’t seem at home in the palatial front rooms and boodoors, and is kinder trompled on by the high headed servants in livery. ”

“ Amidst the gripin’ of colic I compared this home to the home Marion had composed like a rare poem of beauty, and I bethought how much more desirable is real practical duty and beauty than the gauzy fabric wrought of imagination, or ’tennyrate how necessary it wuz not to choose two masters. If one loved Art well enough to wed it and leave father and mother for its sake, well and good, but after chosin’ love and home and children, how necessary and beautiful it wuz to tend to them first of all, and then pay devotion to Art afterwards. ”

“ But I sez solemnly, “Tirzah Ann and Tamer, that is [199] a great mistake; you try for half an hour each day to make your children the inmates of another world, surrounded by different beings and circumstances. Now, that hain’t so, God is with Jack and Delight at this minute out there in the playground, jest as nigh as He is when they are kneelin’ at your four feet, and in my opinion they ought to be learnt that is the case, and what is proper for them to think of God at one time is proper at another. ”

“ Oh, Samantha,” sez she, “you don’t know how much that girl is a-sufferin’. There she is, jest the same as engaged, and she jest as faithful as the north star to the pole, and he growin’ cool all the time and indifferent.”
“Well,” sez I, “the stiddy faithfulness of the star can’t be changed, Fidelia, nor the coldness of the north pole, for it is the nater of that pole to be frigid, and we can’t do anything to warm it up. But,” sez I, “as for this matter of Elinor and Louis Arnold, I believe my soul that I could make a change in their doin’s if I had my way.” ”

“ Suffer forever physically, morally, mentally from the evil, the total depravity of their hereditary and teachings. Suffer herself and grow up in the black shadow to transmit its hopeless darkness and guilt down to other generations. Strange, strange, most marvelous of mysteries, why this should be so. But I can’t bear to even look on this dretful picture even in hours of eppisodin’, it is bad enough and strange enough to look in Christian homes, amongst meetin’ house brothers and sisters, and see how the little ones are maltreated. ”

“ It would be a good thing for these heroes and for our own souls if we put a few of the flowers we put on the monuments of dead heroes into the empty hands, the poor, tired, scarred hands of our live heroes to-day. ”

“ There are paths, long, cold, shinin’, that go up the mountain side, where the glitterin’ tops gleam and beckon, and we are willin’ to drop every weight that would hender us from climbin’.
“Oh, those times to look back upon when life wuz to be chosen, or what proved to be (onbeknown to us) a livin’ death! How calm the fields lay under the light of that autumn sky, long flat fields, green and calm and stretchin’ back to the quiet woods. How the road in front lengthened out in a long, shinin’, yellow-brown ribbon with cozy sheltered homes layin’ by its side. ”

“ Tamer’s icy, cold mean broke up and pulverized by the hand of Grief, the flood of awakened remorse sweepin’ away on its current old foolish ambitions, pride and self-will. Anna left free to marry the man of her choice, Tamer and Hamen rousted up to good deeds and the performance of duty, so layin’ up a store of blessed remembrances to replace the old wretched ones. Cicero comin’ home repentant to begin a new life under the guardianship of a new father and mother, all this and more. ”

“ Now, marryin’ is sunthin’ I hate dretfully to hear children talkin’ about. But then, come to reason on it, Jack had heard it talked from one week’s end to another at home, though I don’t spoze he knew what it meant no more than a Hottentot understands snow-shoes. But he heard Tamer argue for hours and hours that Anna should not marry Tom Willis and should marry Von Crank, rehearsin’ the reasons why she should marry one and not marry the other. How wuz Jack to know that marriage wuz not a congenial or suitable subject for old or young? ”

“ No, out of the rich storehouse she selects the best, what she needs. Now, the Bible is so full, Tirzah Ann, of all wisdom, divine knowledge, tenderest love, and divine pity, full of the glory of the Great Father of us all, why can’t you select out of it what you and your children need instead of settin’ up that puny reason of readin’ it by course, and gettin’ by that process all the earth of the human natures through which God’s inspiration is filtered down into our comprehension? ”

“ Oh, no,” sez I, lookin’ pensively at Tamer Ann, who had begun to embroider agin fiercely, “I should hate to tell folks what I thought of ’em for even half an hour. And there is no need of it, everybody can mind their own bizness a good deal of the time, it don’t require much of any nack to keep your tongue between your teeth, and not tell what you think, to keep back things when it hain’t necessary to tell ’em.” Sez I reasonable, “It is hard to do oft times, but it is much better than to say a lot of things you don’t mean.” ”

“ And almost simeltaneous with the stars overhead come the lightin’ of a thousand lights around us, behind us, and before us, sparkling, glittering, shining lights of all shapes and colors glancin’ through the evergreen boughs and soft foliage, and hung in long lines of brilliant color from tree to tree. ”

“ And if she be the child of a business man, happy for her if she does not wonder at that sight strange to men and gods, to see her father lose all his wealth one day, to rise up rich the next, rise up from a crowd of poor men and wimmen he has cheated and ruined. ”

“ And many is the time I’ve seen Hamen sprinkle water down onto Jack’s curly head to see him duck and wink to git away from it. Jack wuz only follerin’ his father’s example, Tamer Ann, though, as I said before, I don’t approve on’t in Jack, and want no man or woman throwed out or poured down on.”
“Oh, you will always stand up for Jack.”
“I stand for reason,” sez I solemnly, “and justice and common sense. In ninety cases out of a hundred folks whip their children for what they or somebody else has learnt ’em to do.” ”

“ The homely old philosopher, with her rugged sense, her quick wit, her unfailing humor, and her lively faculty of observation, will make her old friends more steadfast than ever and gain a host of new ones, by her latest adventures. ”

“ Anna loves Tom, loves him as she duz her eyes, and [127] as I say, Hamenses wife had invited him there and let ’em grow up together like a mornin’ glory vine round the pillow of a porch, never sayin’ a word aginst their bein’ together, never noticin’ that under the divine spring of youth and love her heart’s tendrils wuz puttin’ out livin’ branches and twinin’ round the pillow of his steadfast devotion, jest as firmly and jest as onbeknown to her as the vines she had planted wuz twinin’ round their supports in the spring and summer of the year. ”

“ But we do not, we meet its pure and sweet unwisdom with our grim, rebukin’ knowledge which we gained as Eve did, its innocent, guileless ways with the intolerance of our dry old customs, its broken fancies, its sweet romancin’ with cold derision or the cruelty of punishment. ”

“ I declare for’t I had been thinkin’ them very thoughts as I sot there lookin’ at the stars and their bright reflections in the water. I had been thinkin’ of how sweet it would be for them who are unhappy, seperated by some cruel chance from them they love, how sweet it would be if them shinin’ worlds wuz indeed restful, lovely playgrounds where they could wander together like happy children full of the delight and wonder of readin’ new truths and new happiness in each other’s eyes. ”