Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete by Marietta Holley (booksvooks .TXT) 📕

Howsumever, I done well by 'em. Josiah killed a fat turkey, and I baked it, and done other things for their comfort, and we had quite a good time. Cephas wuz ruther flowery and enthusiastick, and his mouth and voice wuz ruther large, but he meant well, I should judge, and we had quite a good time.

She wuz very freckled, and a second-day Baptist by perswasion, and wuz piecin' up a crazy bedquilt. She went a-visitin' a good deal, and got pieces of the women's dresses where she visited for blocks. So it wuz quite a savin' bedquilt, and very good-lookin', considerin'.

But to resoom and continue on. Cephas'ses folks made us promise on our two sacred honors, Josiah's honor and mine, that we would pay back the visit, for, as Cephas said, “for relatives to live so clost to each other, and not to visit back and forth, wuz a burnin' shame and a disgrace.” And Josiah promised that we would go right away after sugerin'.

We wouldn't promise on the New Testament, as Cephas wanted us to (he is dretful enthusiastick); but we gin good plain promises that we would go, and laid out to keep our two words.

Wall, we got there onexpected, as they had come onto us. And we found 'em plunged into trouble. Their only child, a girl, who had married a young lawyer of Loontown, had jest lost her husband with the typus, and they wuz a-makin' preparations for the funeral when we got there. She and her husband had come on a visit, and he wuz took down bed-sick there and died.

I told 'em I felt like death to think I had descended down onto 'em at such a time.

But Cephas said he wuz jest dispatchin' a messenger for us when we arrove, for, he said, “in a time of trouble, then wuz the time, if ever, that a man wanted his near relations clost to him.”

And he said “we had took a load offen him by appearin' jest as we did, for there would have been some delay in gettin' us there, if the messenger had been dispatched.”

He said “that mornin' he had felt so bad that he wanted to die—it seemed as if there wuzn't nothin' left for him to live for; but now he felt that he had sunthin' to live for, now his relatives wuz gathered round him.”

Josiah shed tears to hear Cephas go on. I myself didn't weep none, but I wuz glad if we could be any comfort to 'em, and told 'em so.

And I told Sally Ann, that wuz Cephas'ses wife, that I would do anything I could to help 'em. And she said everything wuz a-bein' done that wuz necessary. She didn't know of but one thing that wuz likely to be overlooked and neglected, and that wuz the crazy bedquilt. She said “she would love to have that finished to throw over a lounge in the settin'-room, that wuz frayed out on the edges, and if I felt like it, it would be a great relief to her to have me take it right offen her hands and finish it.”

So I took out my thimble and needle (I always carry such necessaries with me, in a huzzy made expressly for that purpose), and I sot down and went to piecin' up. There wuz seventeen blocks to piece up, each one crazy as a loon to look at, and it wuz all to set together.

She had the pieces, for she had been off on a visitin' tower the week before, and collected of 'em.

So I sot in quiet and the big chair in the settin'-room, and pieced up, and see the preparations goin' on round us.

I found that Cephas'ses folks lived in a house big and showy-lookin', but not so solid and firm as I had seen.

It wuz one of the houses, outside and inside, where more pains had been took with the porticos and ornaments than with the underpinnin'.

It had a showy and kind of a shaky look. And I found that that extended to Cephas'ses business arrangements. Amongst the other ornaments of his buildin's wuz mortgages, quite a lot of'em, and of almost every variety. He had gin his only child, S. Annie (she wuz named after her mother, Sally Ann, but spelt it this way), he had gin S. Annie a showy education, a showy weddin', and a showy settin'-out. But she had had the good luck to marry a sensible man, though poor.