Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
I didn't know whether the warm sun of his love could melt the snow and
frozen hail or not--the sun duz melt such things--and I knew love wuz
the greatest thing in the world. Well, I had to leave the event to
Providence, and wuz willin' to; but yet, after a woman duz leave
things to the Most High to do, she loves to put in her oar and help
things along; mebby that is the way of Providence--who knows? But
'tennyrate I gin another blind hint to her before we left the
conversation.
Sez I, "Ernest White is doin' the Lord's work if ever a man did, and I
can't think it is the Lord's will that whilst he's doin' it he ort to
eat such bread as he has to--milk emtin's and sour at that, to say
nothin' of fried stuff that a anaconda couldn't digest. He deserves a
sweet, love-guarded home, and to be tended to by a woman that he
loves--one who could inspire him and help him on in the heavenly way
he's treading alone and lonesome." Her cheeks did turn pink then, and
her eyes looked like deep blue pools in which stars wuz shinin', but
she didn't say anything, and Robert Strong resoomed his talk with her
about her hospital work. And before she left he gin her a big check to
use for her patients; I don't know exactly how big it wuz, but it went
up into the hundreds, anyway; and Dorothy gin her one, too, for I see
her write it; Miss Meechim gin her her blessin' and more'n a dozen
tracts, which mebby will set well on the patients, if administered
cautious. I myself gin her the receipt for the best mustard poultice
that ever drawed, and two pairs of clouded blue-and-white wool socks I
had knit on the way, and though it wuz a warm country she said they
would come handy when her patients had chills.
There wuz two young American girls at the hotel, and they happened to
come into the parlor while we wuz talkin' and they sent a big
present to the hospital. I guess they wuz real well off and good
dispositioned. They wuz travellin' alone and seemed to be havin' a
real good time. One on 'em wuz sunthin' of a invalid, but wuz
outdoors all day, I spoze tryin' to git well. They minded their
own bizness and didn't do any hurt so fur as I could see, but
Elder Wessel couldn't bear 'em. Sez he to me one day:
"I spoze they represent the new young woman?"
He said it real skornful, and Arvilly, who wuz present, took him up
real snappish. "Well, what of it? What have they done?" If that poor
man had said that black wuz black and white wuz white, Arvilly would
found fault with it.
"I don't object to what they have done," sez he, "so much as to what
they are. Young American women know too much." And Arvilly sez with a
meanin' glance at him, "That is sunthin' that everybody don't have to
stand."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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