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
She is very obligin', and would always curchy and smile, and say “Yes'm”
whenever I asked her to do any thing. She always would, and always will,
I s'pose, do jest what you tell her to,--as near as she can; and she is
thought a good deal of.
Wall, she has liked Ury for some time--that has been plain to see: she
thought her eyes of him, and he of her. He has got eight or nine hundred
dollars laid up; and I thought it was well enough for 'em to marry if
they wanted to, and so I told Josiah the first time he come into the
house that forenoon.
And he said “he guessed our thinkin' about it wouldn't alter it much,
one way or the other.”
And I said “I s'posed not.” But says I, “I spoke out, because I feel
quite well about it. I like 'em both, and think they'll make a happy
couple: and to show my willin'ness still further, I mean to make a
weddin' for her; for she hain't got no mothers, and Miss Gowdy won't
have it there, for you know there has been such a hardness between 'em
about that grindstun. So I'll have it here, get a good supper, and have
'em married off respectable.”
He hung back a little at first, but I argued him down. Says I,--
“I have heerd you say, time and agin, that you liked 'em, and wanted 'em
to do well: now, what do good wishes ammount to, unless you are willin'
to back 'em up with good acts?” Says I, “I might say that I wished 'em
well and happy, and that would be only a small expendature of wind, that
wouldn't be no loss to me, and no petickuler help to them. But if I show
my good will towards 'em by stirrin' up fruit-cakes and bride-cake, and
pickin' chickens, and pressin' 'em, and makin' ice-cream and coffee
and sandwitches, and workin' myself completely tired out, a wishin'
'em well, why, then they can depend on it that I am sincere in my good
wishes.”
“Wall,” says Josiah, “if you wish me well, I wish you would get me a
little sunthin' to eat before I starve: it is past eleven o'clock.”
“The hand is on the pinter,” says I calmly. “But start a good fire, and
I will get dinner.”
So he did, and I did, and he never made no further objections to my
enterprise; and it was all understood that I should get their weddin'
supper, and they should start from here on their tower.
And I offered, as she and Miss Gowdy didn't agree, that she might come
back here, if she wanted to, and get some quiltin' done, and get ready
for housekeepin'. She was tickled enough with the idee, and said she
would help me enough to pay for her board. Ury's time wouldn't be out
till about a month later.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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