Samantha at Saratoga by Marietta Holley (online e book reader TXT) 📕

forth; to and fro, to and fro. I didn’t enjoy it so much as some did, though for a few minutes at a time I looked upon it as a sort of a recreation, some like a circus, only more wilder.

But some folks enjoyed it dretfully. Yes, they set a great deal on piazzas at Saratoga. And when I say set on ’em, I mean they set a great store on ’em, and they set on ’em a great deal. Some folks set on ’em so much, that I called them setters. Real likely creeters they are too, some on ’em, and handsome; some pious, sober ones, some sort a gay. Some not married at all, and some married a good deal, and when I say a good deal I meen, they have had various companions and lost ’em.

Now there wuz one woman that I liked quite well.

She had had 4 husbands countin’ in the present one. She wuz a good lookin’ woman and had seen trouble. It stands to reeson she had with 4 husbands. Good land!

She showed me one day a ring she wore. She had took the weddin’ rings of her 4 pardners and had ’em all run together, and the initials of their first names carved inside on it. Her first husband’s name wuz Franklin, her next two wuz Orville and Obed, and her last and livin’ one Lyman. Wall, she meant well, but she never see what would be the end on’t and how it would read till she had got their initials all carved out on it.

She wuz dretfully worked up about it, but I see that it wuz right. For nobody but a fool would want to run all these recollections and memories together, all the different essociations and emotions, that must cluster round each of them rings. The idee of runnin’ ’em all together with the livin’ one! It wuz ectin’ like a fool and it seemed fairly providential that their names run in jest that way.

Why, if I had had 2 husbands, or even 4, I should want to keep ’em apart - settin’ up in high chairs on different sides of my heart. Why, if I’d had 4, I’d have ’em to the different pints of the compass, east, west, north, south, as far apart from each other as my heart would admit of. Ketch me a lumpin’ in all the precious memories of my Josiah with them of any other man, bond or free, Jew or Genteel; no, and I’d refrain from tellin’ to the new one about the other ones.

No, when a pardner dies and you set out to take another one, bury the one that has gone right under his own high chair in your heart, don’t keep him up there a rattlin’ his bones before the eyes of the 2d, and angerin’ him, and agonizen’ your own heart. Bury him before you bring a new one into the same room.

And never! never! even in moments of the greatest anger, dig him up agin or even weep over his grave, before the new pardner. No; under the moonlight, and the stars, before God only, and your own soul, you may lay there in spirit on that grave, weep over it, keep the turf green. But not before any one else. And I wouldn’t advise you to go there alone any too often. I would advise you to spend your spare time ornementin’ the high chair where the new one sets, wreathin’ it round with whatever blossoms and trailin’ vines of tenderness and romance you have left over from the first great romance of life.

It would be better for you in the end.

I said some few of these little thoughts to the female mentioned; and I s’pose I impressed her dretfully, I s’pose I did. But I couldn’t stay to see the full effects on’t, for another female setter came up at that minute to talk with her, and my companion came up at that very minute to ask me to go a walkin’ with him up to the cemetery.

That is a very favorite place for Josiah Allen. He often used to tell the children when they wuz little, that if they wuz real good he would take ’em out on a walk to the grave-yard.

And when I first married to him, if I hadn’t broke it up, that would have been the only place of resort that he would have took me to Summers. But I broke it up after a while. Good land! there is times to go any where and times to stay away. I didn’t want to go a trailin’ up there every day or two; jest married too!

But to-day I felt willin’ to go. I had been a lookin’ so long at the crowd a fillin’ the streets full, and every one on ’em in motion, that I thought it would be sort a restful to go out to a place where they wuz still. And so after a short walk we came to the village that haint stirred by any commotion or alarm. Where the houses are roofed with green grass and daisies, and the white stun doors don’t open to let in trouble or joy, and where the inhabitants don’t ride out in the afternoon.

Wall, if I should tell the truth which I am fur from not wantin’ to do, I should say that at first sight, it wuz rather of a bleak, lonesome lookin’ spot, kinder wild and desolate lookin’. But as we went further along in it, we came to some little nooks and sheltered paths and spots, that seemed more collected together and pleasant. There wuz some big high stuns and monuments, and some little ones but not one so low that it hadn’t cast a high, dark shadow over somebody’s life.

There wuz one in the shape of a big see shell. I s’pose some mariner lay under that, who loved the sea. Or mebby it wuz put up by some one who had the odd fancy that put a shell to your ear you will hear a whisperin’ in it of a land fur away, fur away. Not fur from this wuz a stun put up over a young engineer who had been killed instantly by his engine. There wuz a picture of the locomotive scraped out on the stun, and in the cab of the engine wuz his photograph, and these lines wuz underneath:

My engine now lies still and cold,
No water does her boiler hold;
The wood supplies its flames no more,
My days of usefulness are o’er.

We wended our way in and out of the silent streets for quite a spell, and then we went and sot down on the broad piazza of the sort of chapel and green-house that stood not fur from the entrance. And while we sot there we see another inhabitent come there to the village to stay.

It wuz a long procession, fur it wuz a good man who had come. And many of his friends come with him jest as fur as they could: wife, children, and friends, they come with him jest as fur as they could, and then he had to leave ’em and go on alone. How weak love is, and how strong. It wuz too weak to hold him back, or go with him, though they would fain have done so. But it wuz strong enough to shadow the hull world with its blackness, blot out the sun and the stars, and scale the very mounts of heaven with its wild complaints and pleadin’s. A strange thing love is, haint it?

Wall, we sot there for quite a spell and my companion wantin’, I spose, to make me happy, took out a daily paper out of his pocket and went to readin’ the deaths to me. He always loves to read the deaths and marriages in a paper. He sez that is the literature that interests him. And then I s’pose he thought at such a time, it wuz highly appropriate. So I didn’t break it up till he began to read a long obituary piece about a child’s death; about its being cut down like a flower by a lightin’ stroke out of a cloudless sky, and about what a mysterious dispensation of Providence it wuz, etc., etc. And then there wuz a hull string of poetry dedicated to the heart-broken mother bewailin’ the mystery on’t, and wonderin’ why Providence should do such strange, onlookedfor things, etc., and etcetery, and so 4th.

And I spoke right up and sez, “That is a slander onto Providence and ort to be took as such by every lover of justice.”

Josiah wuz real horrified, he had been almost sheddin’ tears he wuz so affected by it; to think the little creeter should be torn away by a strange chance of Providence from a mother who worshipped her, and whose whole life and every thought wuz jest wrapped up in the child, and who never had thought nor cared for anything else only just the well bein’ of the child and wardin’ trouble off of her, for so the piece stated. And he sez in wild amaze, “What do you mean, Samantha? What makes you talk so?”

“Because,” sez I, “I know it is the truth. I know the hull story;” and then I went on and told it to him, and he agreed with me and felt jest as I did.

You see, the mother of the child wuz a perfect high flyer of fashion and she always wore dresses so tight, that she couldn’t get her hands up to her head to save her life, after her corset wuz on. Wall, she wuz out a walkin’ with the child one day, or rather toddlin’ along with it, on her high-heeled sboes. They wuz both dressed up perfectly beautiful, and made a most splendid show. Wall, they went into a store on their way to the park, and there wuz a big crowd there, and the mother and the little girl got into the very middle of the crowd. They say there wuz some new storks for sale that day, and some cattail flags, and so there wuz naturelly a big crowd of wimmen a buyin’ ’em, and cranes. And some way, while they stood there a heavy vase that stood up over the child’s head fell down and fell onto it, and hurt the child so, that it died from the effects of it.

The mother see the vase when it flrst begun to move, she could have reached up her hands and stiddied it, and kep’ it from fallin’, if she could have got ’em up, but with that corset on, the hull American continent might have tumbled onto the child’s head and she couldn’t have moved her arms up to keep it off; couldn’t have lifted her arms up over the child’s head to save her life. No, she couldn’t have kep’ one of the States off, nor nothin’. And then talk about her wardin’ trouble offen the child, why she couldn’t ward trouble off, nor nothin’ else with that corset on. She screemed, as she see it a comin’ down onto the head of her beloved little child, but that wuz all she could do. The child wuz wedged in by the throng of folks and couldn’t stir, and they wuz all engrossed in their own business which wuz pressin’, and very important, a buyin’ plates, and plaks, with bull-rushes, and cranes, and storks on ’em, so naturelly, they didn’t mind what wuz a goin’ on round ’em. And down it come!

And there it wuz put down in the paper, “A mysterious dispensation of Providence.” Providence slandered shamefully and I will say so with my last breath.

What are mothers made for if it haint to take care of the little ones God gives ’em. What right have they to contoggle themselves up in a way that they can see their children die before ’em, and they not able to put out a hand to save ’em. Why, a savage mother is better than this, a heathen one. And if I had my way, there would be a hull shipload of savages and heathens brought over here to teach and reform our too civilized wimmen. I’d bring ’em over this very summer.

Wall, we sot there on the stoop for quite a spell and then we wended our way down to the highway, and as we arrived there my companion proposed that we should take a carriage and go to the Toboggen slide. Sez I, “Not after where we have been today, Josiah Allen.”

And he sez, “Why not?”

And I sez, “It wouldn’t look well, after visitin’ the folks we have jest now.”

“Wall,” sez he, “they won’t speak