Sweet Cicely — or Josiah Allen as a PoliticianHolley, Marietta
Religion
Sweet Cicely — or Josiah Allen as a Politician
Holley, Marietta
Methodist Church (U.S.) -- Fiction; Temperance and religion -- Fiction; Women -- Suffrage -- Fiction
I don't s'pose it makes much difference about our bodies, anyway; they
are only wrappers for the soul: the real, person is within. But then,
you know, you get sort o' attached to your own body, yourself, you know,
if you have lived with yourself any length of time, as we have, a good
many of us.
You may not be handsome, but you sort o' like your own looks, after all.
Your eyes have a sort of a good look to you. Your hands are soft and
white; and they are your own too, which makes 'em nearer to you; they
have done sights for you, and you can't help likin' 'em. And your mouth
looks sort o' agreable and natural to you.
You don't really like to see the dimpled, soft hands change into an
older person's hands; you kinder hate to change the face for an older,
more care-worn face; you get sick of lookin'-glasses.
And sometimes you feel a sort of a homesick longin' for your old
self--for the bright, eager face that looked back to you from the old
lookin'-glass on summer mornin's, when the winder was open out into the
orchard, and the May birds was singin' amidst the apple-blows. The red
lips parted with a happy smile; the bright, laughin' eyes, sort o' soft
too, and wistful--wishful for the good that mebby come to you, and mebby
didn't, but which the glowin' face was sure of, on that spring morning
with the May birds singin' outside, and the May birds singin' inside.
[Illustration: A MAY MORNING.]
Time may have brought you somethin' better--better than you dreamed of
on that summer mornin'. But it is different, anyhow; and you can't help
gettin' kinder homesick, longin', wantin' that pretty young face again,
wantin' the heart back again that went with it.
Wall, I s'pose we shall have it back--sometime. I s'pose we shall get
back our lost youth in the place where we first got it. And it is all
right, anyway.
We must move on. You see, Time won't stop to argue with us, or dicker;
and our settin' down, and coaxin' him to stop a minute, and whet his
scythe, and give us a chance to get round the swath he cuts, won't
ammount to nothin' only wastin' our breath. His scythe is one that don't
need any grindstun, and his swath is one that must be cut.
No! Time won't lean up aginst fence corners, and wipe his brow on a
bandanna, and hang round. He jest moves right on--up and down, up and
down. On each side of us the ripe blades fall, and the flowers; and
pretty soon the swath will come right towards us, the grass-blades will
fall nearer and nearer--a turn of the gleamin' scythe, and we, too, will
be gone. The sunlight will rest on the turf where our shadows were, and
one blade of grass will be missed out of that broad harvest-field more
than we will be, when a few short years have rolled by.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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