Marietta Holley

“ After the table was cleared, and Josiah looked like a new man,—the girl bein' out in the kitchen washin' the dishes,—I mentioned the creek; and he owned up that he didn't know as it was exactly a creek, but “it was a dumb pain, anyway, and he felt that he must see me.”
It is sweet, passing sweet, to be missed, to be necessary to the happiness of one you love. But, at the same time, it is bitter to know that your pardner has prevaricated to you, and so the sweet and the bitter is mixed all through life. ”

“ But Cicely went right on, with her eyes a shinin', and a red spot in her white cheeks that I didn't like to see.
“A thousand temptations that surround my boy now, could be removed, a thousand low influences changed into better, helpful ones. There are drunkards who long, who pray, to have temptations removed out of their way,—those who are trying to reform, and who dare not pass the door of a saloon, the very smell of the liquor crazing them with the desire for drink. They want help, they pray to be saved; and we who are praying to help them are powerless. ”

“ Why, mother could always tell when aunt Mary was ill or in trouble, and she was just the same in regard to mother. And I can't think that when death has freed the soul from the flesh, that they will have less spiritual knowledge of each other than when they were here; and I felt, that with such a love as theirs, death would only make their souls nearer: and you know what the Bible says,—that 'God shall make of his angels ministering spirits;' and I know He would send no other angel but my mother, to dear aunt Mary's bedside, to take her spirit home. ”

“ And he told her she could save him, her influence could redeem him, and it wus the only thing that could save him.
And Cicely couldn't stand such talk, of course; and she believed him—believed that she could love him so well, throw her influence so around him, as to hold him back from any evil course.
It is a beautiful hope, the very beautifulest and divinest piece of folly a woman can commit. Beautiful enough in the sublime martyrdom of the idee, to make angels smile; and vain enough, and foolish enough in its utter uselessness, to make sinners weep. ”

“ When you think how big a country the land of Truth is, and how many great unexplored regions lay in it, why should Josiah Allen's wife stand and lean up aginst a tree on the outmost edge of the frontier, and say what duz and what duzn't lay hid in them mysterius and beautiful regions that happier eyes than hern shall yet look into? ”

“ How the calm blue eyes look down into the boy's impassioned soul, how the shadowy hands beckon him upward, up the rocky heights of noble endeavor, noble deeds! How the inspiration of this life, these deeds of might and valor, nerve the young heart for future strivings for freedom and justice and truth! ”

“ I want to, like a dog, I want the money there is in it, and I want the honor. You know they have elected me path-master, but I hain't a goin' to accept it. I tell you, when anybody gets into political life, ambition rousts up in 'em: path-master don't satisfy me. I want to be senator: I want to, like a dog. And I don't lay out to tackle the job as Elburtus did, and act too good.”
“No!” says I sternly. “There hain't no danger of your bein' too good.” ”

“ You know, and I know, that these angelic, tender bein's, half clothed, fill our streets on icy midnights, huntin' up drunken husbands and fathers and sons. They are driven to death and to moral ruin by the miserable want liquor-drinkin' entails. They are starved, they are frozen, they are beaten, they are made childless and hopeless, by drunken husbands killing their own flesh and blood. ”

“ Any such great laws for the benifit of the nation, of course, would justify a change in the Constitution and the laws; but for any frivolous cause, any trivial cause, madam, we male custodians of the sacred Constitution would stand as walls of iron before it, guarding it from any shadow of change. Faithful we will be, faithful unto death. ”

“ And Dorlesky told me to tell you that she didn't ask the rights of a angel: she would be perfectly contented and proud if you would give her the rights of a dog—the assured political rights of a yeller dog. She said 'yeller;' and I am bound on doin' her errent jest as she wanted me to, word for word.
“A dog, Dorlesky says, don't have to be hung if it breaks the laws it is not allowed any hand in making. A dog don't have to pay taxes on its bone to a Government that withholds every right of citizenship from it. ”

“ Wall, he was dretful polite: good land! politeness is no name for his mean. Truly, as Josiah Allen says, I don't like to see anybody too good.
He drawed a chair up, for me and for himself, and asked me,—
“If he should have the inexpressible honor and the delightful joy of aiding me in any way: if so, command him to do it,” or words to that effect. I can't put down his smiles, and genteel looks, and don't want to if I could.
But tacklin' hard jobs as I always tackle 'em, I sot right down calmly in front of him, with my umberell acrost my lap, and told him over all of Dorlesky's errents. ”

“ And with such a chin and mouth as he has got, says I to myself, lookin' down on him; but I didn't say it out loud. I am too well bread.
“It must be we can get the laws changed before he grows up. I dare not trust him in a world that has such temptations, such snares set ready for him. Why,” says she—And she fairly trembled as she said it. She would always throw her whole soul into any thing she undertook; and in this she had throwed her hull heart, too, and her hull life—or so it seemed to me, to look at her pale face, and her big, glowin' eyes, full of sadness, full of resolve too. ”

“ He had the strength to lead the way, to overcome obsticles, to keep dangers from Mary, to protect her tenderer form with the mantilly of his generous devotion.
“But she carried the child on her bosom. Pondering high things in her heart that Joseph had never dreamed of. That is what is wanted now, and in the future. The man and the woman walking side by side. He, a little ahead mebby, to keep off dangers by his greater strength and courage. She, a carryin' the infant Christ of love, bearin' the baby Peace in her bosom, carrying it into safety from them that seek to murder it. ”

“ But in a few years he will go out from me, carrying my own life with him, my heart will go with him, to joy or to death. He will go out into dangers a thousand-fold worse than death,—dangers made respectable and legal,—and I can't help him. ”

“ I thought of the graves more hopeless fur than them that entomb the dead,—the graves where lay the livin' dead. Dead souls bound to still breathin' bodies, dead hopes, ambitions, dead dreams of usefulness and respectability, happiness, dead purity, faith, honor, dead, all dead, all bound to the still breathin' body, by the festerin', putrid death-robes of helplessness and despair. ”

“ I see by the looks of his linement, he did. Every honorable man feels so in his heart; and yet they let the liquor ring control 'em, and lead 'em round.
Says I, “All the intellectual and moral power of the United States are jest rolled up and thrust into that Whiskey Ring, and are being drove by the whiskey-dealers jest where they want to drive 'em.” Says I, “It controls New-York village, and nobody pretends to deny it; and all the piety and philanthropy and culture and philosiphy of that village has to be jest drawed along in that Ring. ”

“ Josiah is as kind-hearted a man as was ever made. And he loves me with a devotion, that though hidden sometimes, like volcanic fires, and other married men's affections for their wives, yet it bursts out occasionally in spurts and jets of unexpected tenderness. ”

“ It seems as if nothin' human of so little importance could so move us. Is it God's voice that speaks to us through them? Is it His Spirit that lifts us up, sways us to and fro, that blows upon us, as we listen to their voices? ”

“ Sposen he would have to go to Washington. I knew strange things took place in politics. Strange men run, and run fur: some on 'em run clear to Washington. Mebby he would. Oh! how I groaned at the idee!
I thought of the awfulness of that place as I had heard it described upon to me; and then I thought of the weakness of men, and their liability to be led astray. I thought of the powerful blasts of temptation that blowed through them broad streets, and the small size of my pardner, and the light weight of his bones and principles. ”

“ And Josiah whispered back, “All women hain't like Cicely.”
And I says in the same low, deep tones, “All men hain't like George Washington! Now get me a pail of water.”
And he went out. But it did beat all, how that little thing, when she stood ready, seemin'ly, to tackle the nation—I've seen her jump up in a chair, afraid of a mice. The idee of anybody bein' afraid of a mice, and ready to tackle the Constitution!
And she'd blush up red as a rosy if a stranger would speak to her. But she would fight the hull nation for her boy. ”

“ How the summer follows the spring, and the winter follows the autumn, and the years go by! And the clouds sail on through the sky, and the shadows follow each other over the grass, and the grass fadeth. ”

“ Heavy, hopeless-lookin' vaults they are indeed, whose air is putrid with the sickenin' miasma of moral loathsomness and deseese; whose walls are painted with hideous pictures of murder, rapine, lust, starvation, woe, and despair, earthly and eternal ruin. Shapes of the dreadful past, the hopeless future, that these livin' dead stare upon with broodin' frenzy by night and by day. ”

“ What if, in the future, my boy should be like one of them,—weak, tempted, longing for help, and getting nothing but help towards vice and ruin? Haven't mothers a right to help those they love in every way,—by prayer, by influence, by legal right and might?”
“It would be a dangerous experiment, Cicely,” says Josiah, crossin' his right leg over his left, and turnin' the almanac to another month. ”

“ And death may claim him before he could bear my influence to the world. Why not use it now, myself, to help him, and other mothers' boys? If it is, as you say, an experiment, why not let mothers try it? It could not do any harm; and it would ease our poor, anxious hearts some, to make the effort, even if it proved useless. No one can have a deeper interest in the children's welfare than their mothers. ”

“ I must teach her the path of virtue and happiness. If I do not, who will? For though there are plenty to make laws, and to vote, little Samantha Joe has but one grandpa on her mother's side.
And then, I have sights of cares. The Methodist church is to be kep' up: I am one of the pillows of the church, and sometimes it rests heavy on me. Sometimes I have to manage every way to get the preacher's salary. I am school-trustee: I have to grapple with the deestrict every spring and fall. The teachers are high-headed, the parents always dissatisfied, and the children act like the Old Harry. ”

“ How dare I leave my barn in confusion, and, by my disorderly doin's, run the risk of my wive's bein' so disgusted with my want of neatness and shiftlessness, as to cause her to get dissatisfied with home and husband, and wander off into paths of dissipation and vice? ”

“ The beauty and the clamor of life will go on without us. You see, we hain't needed so much as we in our egotism think we are. The world will get along without us, while we rest in peace.
But until then we have got to move along: we can't set down anywhere, and set there. No: if we want to be fore mothers and fore fathers, we mustn't set still: we must give the babies a chance to be fore mothers and fore fathers too. It wouldn't be right to keep the babies from bein' ancestors. ”

“ I couldn't seem to get the right sense of it. “I can't understand it, Josiah. We heard a good deal about free trade, but I can't believe that is it.”
“Wall, it is, jest that. Free trade is one of the prerequisits of a senator. Why, what would a man want to be a senator for, if they couldn't make by it?”
“Don't you love your country, Josiah Allen?”
“Yes, I do: but I don't love her so well as I do myself; it hain't nateral I should.” ”

“ You are all buildin' houses to-day that you think are more endurin'. But what you build to-day—hopes built upon worldly wealth, worldly fame, household affection, political success—ah I will they not pass away like the green moss houses down in the woods back of the old schoolhouse? ”

“ The men denied the first right of manhood, to protect the ones they loved. Deprived legally of purity and honor, and all the rights of commonest humanity—worn with unpaid toil, beaten, whipped, tortured, dispised and rejected of men. ”

“ I feel that I must keep entirely out of political matters, and that I cannot be induced to be path-master, or President, or even United-States senator. I have not got the constitution to stand it. I don't feel well a good deal of the time. My liver is out of order, I am liable to have the ganders any minute, I am bilious, am troubled with rheumatiz and colic, my blood don't circulate proper, I have got a weak back, and lumbago, and biles. And I hain't a bit well. ”