Sweet Cicely — or Josiah Allen as a Politician by Marietta Holley (the best books of all time .TXT) 📕
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- Author: Marietta Holley
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And I had jest this one answer, that I'd say over and over agin to her,—
“Cicely, you can pray! That is all that wimmen can do. And try to influence him right now. God can take care of the boy.”
“But I can't keep him with me always; and other influences will come, and beat mine down. And I have prayed, but God don't hear my prayer.”
And I'd say, calm and soothin', “How do you know, Cicely?”
And she says, “Why, how I prayed for help when my poor Paul went down to ruin, through the open door of a grog-shop! If the women of the land had it in their power to do what their hearts dictate,—what the poorest, lowest man has the right to do,—every saloon, every low grog-shop, would be closed.”
She said this to Josiah the mornin' after the lecture I speak of. He sot there, seemin'ly perusin' the almanac; but he spoke up then, and says,—
“You can't shet up human nater, Cicely: that will jump out any way. As the poet says, 'Nater will caper.'”
But Cicely went right on, with her eyes a shinin', and a red spot in her white cheeks that I didn't like to see.
“A thousand temptations that surround my boy now, could be removed, a thousand low influences changed into better, helpful ones. There are drunkards who long, who pray, to have temptations removed out of their way,—those who are trying to reform, and who dare not pass the door of a saloon, the very smell of the liquor crazing them with the desire for drink. They want help, they pray to be saved; and we who are praying to help them are powerless. What if, in the future, my boy should be like one of them,—weak, tempted, longing for help, and getting nothing but help towards vice and ruin? Haven't mothers a right to help those they love in every way,—by prayer, by influence, by legal right and might?”
“It would be a dangerous experiment, Cicely,” says Josiah, crossin' his right leg over his left, and turnin' the almanac to another month. “It seems to me sunthin' unwomanly, sunthin' aginst nater. It is turnin' the laws of nater right round. It is perilous to the domestic nature of wimmen.”
“I don't think so,” says I. “Don't you remember, Josiah Allen, how you worried about them hens that we carried to the fair? They wus so handsome, and such good layers, that I really wanted the influence of them hens to spread abroad. I wanted otherfolks to know about 'em, so's to have some like 'em. But you worried awfully. You wus so afraid that carryin' the hens into the turmoil of public life would have a tendency to keep 'em from wantin' to make nests and hatch chickens! But it didn't. Good land! one of 'em made a nest right there, in the coop to the fair, with the crowd a shoutin' round 'em, and laid two eggs. You can't break up nature's laws; they are laid too deep and strong for any hammer we can get holt of to touch 'em; all the nations and empires of the world can't move 'em round a notch.
“A true woman's deepest love and desire are for her home and her loved ones, and planted right in by the side of these two loves of hern is a deathless instinct and desire to protect and save them from danger.
“Good land! I never heard a old hen called out of her spear, and unhenly, because she would fly out at a hawk, and cackle loud, and cluck, and try to lead her chickens off into safety. And while the rooster is a steppin' high, and struttin' round, and lookin' surprised and injured, it is the old hen that saves the chickens, nine times out of ten.
“It is against the evil hawks,—men-hawks,—that are ready to settle down, and tear the young and innocent out of the home nest, that wimmen are tryin' to defend their children from. And men may talk about wimmen's gettin' too excited and zealous; but they don't cluck and cackle half so loud as the old hen does, or flutter round half so earnest and fierce.
“And the chicken-hawk hain't to be compared for danger to the men-hawks Cicely is tryin' to save her boy from. And I say it is domestic love in her to want to protect him, and tenderness, and nature, and grace, and—and—every thing.”
I wus wrought up, and felt deeply, and couldn't express half what I felt, and didn't much care if I couldn't. I wus so rousted up, I felt fairly reckless about carin' whether Josiah or anybody understood me or not. I knew the Lord understood me, and I knew what I felt in my own mind, and I didn't much care for any thing else. Wimmen do have such spells. They get fairly wore out a tryin' to express what they feel in their souls to a gain-sayin' world, and have that world yell out at 'em, “Unwomanly! unwomanly!” I say, Cicely wuzn't unwomanly. I say, that, from the very depths of her lovin' little soul, she wus pure womanly, affectionate, earnest, tender-hearted, good; and, if anybody tells me she wuzn't, I'll know the reason why.
But, while I wus a reveryin' this, my Josiah spoke out agin', and says,—
“Influence the world through your child, Cicely! influence him, and let him influence the world. Let him make the world better and purer by your influencein' it through him.”
“Why not use that influence now, myself? I have it here right in my heart, all that I could hope to teach to my boy, at the best. And why wait, and set my hopes of influencing the world through him, when a thousand things may happen to weaken that influence, and death and change may destroy it? Why, my one great fear and dread is, that my boy will be led away by other, stronger influences than mine,—the temptations that have overthrown so many other children of prayer—how dare I hope that my boy will withstand them? And death may claim him before he could bear my influence to the world. Why not use it now, myself, to help him, and other mothers' boys? If it is, as you say, an experiment, why not let mothers try it? It could not do any harm; and it would ease our poor, anxious hearts some, to make the effort, even if it proved useless. No one can have a deeper interest in the children's welfare than their mothers. Would they be apt to do any thing to harm them?”
And then I spoke up, entirely unbeknown to myself, and says,—
“Selfishness has had its way for years and years in politics, and now why not let unselfishness have it for a change? For, Josiah Allen,” says I firmly, “you know, and I know, that, if there is any unselfishness in this selfish world, it is in the heart of a mother.”
“It would be apt to be dangerous,” says Josiah, crossin' his left leg over his right one, and turnin' to a new month in the almanac. “It would most likely be apt to be.”
“Why?” says Cicely. “Why is it dangerous? Why is it wrong for a women to try to help them she would die for? Yes,” says she solemnly, “I would die for Paul any time if I knew it would smooth his pathway, make it easier for him to be a good man.”
“Wall, you see, Cicely,” says Josiah in a soft tone,—his love for her softenin' and smoothin' out his axent till it sounded almost foolish and meachin',—“you see, it would be dangerous for wimmen to vote, because votin' would be apt to lower wimmen in the opinion of us men and the public generally. In fact, it would be apt to lower wimmen down to mingle in a lower class. And it would gaul me dretfully,” says Josiah, turnin' to me, “to have our sweet Cicely lower herself into a lower grade of society: it would cut me like a knife.”
And then I spoke right up, for I can't stand too much foolishness at one time from man or woman; and I says,—
“I'd love to have you speak up, Josiah Allen, and tell me how wimmen would go to work to get any lower in the opinion of men; how they could get into any lower grade of society than they are minglin' with now. They are ranked now by the laws of the United States, and the will of men, with idiots, lunatics, and criminals. And how pretty it looks for you men to try to scare us, and make us think there is a lower class we could get into! There hain't any lower class that we can get into than the ones we are in now; and you know it, Josiah Allen. And you sha'n't scare Cicely by tryin' to make her think there is.”
He quailed. He knew there wuzn't. He knew he had said it to scare us, Cicely and me, and he felt considerable meachin' to think he had got found out in it. But he went on in ruther of a meek tone,—
“It would be apt to make talk, Cicely.”
“What do I care for talk?” says she. “What do I care for honor, or praise, or blame? I only want to try to save my boy.”
And she kep' right on with her tender, earnest voice, and her eyes a shinin' like stars,—
“Have I not a right to help him? Is he not my child? Did not God give me a right to him, when I went down into the darkness with God alone, and a soul was given into my hands? Did I not suffer for him? Have I not been blessed in him? Why, his little hands held me back from the gates of death. By all the rights of heavenliest joy and deepest agony—is he not mine? Have I not a right to help him in his future?
“Now I hold him in my arms, my flesh, my blood, my life. I hold him on my heart now: he is mine. I can shield him from danger: if he should fall into the flames, I could reach in after him, and die with him, or save him. God and man give me that right now: I do not have to ask for it.
“But in a few years he will go out from me, carrying my own life with him, my heart will go with him, to joy or to death. He will go out into dangers a thousand-fold worse than death,—dangers made respectable and legal,—and I can't help him.
“I his mother, who would die for him any hour—I must stand with my eyes open, but my hands bound, and see him rushing headlong into flames tenfold hotter than fire; see him on the brink of earthly and eternal ruin, and can't reach out my hand to hold him back. My boy! My own! Is it right? Is it just?”
And she got up, and walked the room back and forth, and says,—
“How can I bear the thought of it? How can I live and endure it? And how can I die, and leave the boy?”
And her eyes looked so big and bright, and that spot of red would look so bright on her white cheeks, that I would get skairt. And I'd try to sooth her down, and talk gentle to her. And I says,—
“All things are possible with God, and you must wait and hope.”
But she says, “What will hope do for me when my boy is lost? I want to save him now.”
It did beat all, as I told Josiah, out to one side, to see such hefty principles and emotions in such a little body. Why, she didn't weigh much over 90, if she did any.
And Josiah whispered back, “All women hain't like Cicely.”
And I says in the same low, deep tones, “All men hain't like George Washington! Now get me a pail of water.”
And he went out. But it did beat all, how that little thing, when she stood ready, seemin'ly, to tackle the nation—I've seen her jump up in a chair, afraid of a mice. The idee of anybody bein' afraid of a mice, and ready to tackle the Constitution!
And she'd
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