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“Well,” sez she, “if you ever are a queen, a ruler of a kingdom, don’t let any other nation protect you. Protectin’,” sez she, “has been the ruin of more than one individual and nation.”
And I promised her that I would look out for it if I ever wuz a queen, but reminded her that there wuz times too when it came handy, and saved our necks to be protected, and then I finished, gracefully backin’ out of her presence. I like her first rate, and believe she is a likely woman; I believe she has been lied about, she jest the same as told me she had; if she wuz a woman that took in washin’s for a livin’ there wouldn’t have been so much said about her. Why, it is jest as easy for envious folks to run them high in position and try to demean ’em as it is to fall off a log.
115CHAPTER X
Some of the party felt that they couldn’t leave the islands without seein’ the great Kilauea and some didn’t care to go. I felt that I must see it and so did Arvilly, and Josiah looked on me as fondly and proudly as if I myself wuz a volcano and said, “If Samantha goes I shall.” Robert Strong wanted to go and so did Dorothy; Miss Meechim didn’t feel like going and offered to take care of Tommy with the help of Aronette. Elder Wessel wouldn’t go, for Lucia wuzn’t very well and he felt that she had better stay and rest at the tarven, and I spozed that Aronette and Lucia would have a pretty good time, for they always seemed to when they wuz together. Evangeline Noble was visiting some friends of hers on the island. There wuz a smart young English clergyman goin’ with us and a Scotchman, both good lookin’ and good actin’. The Scotchman wuz Sir Duncan Ramsey and didn’t act any more sot up than if he wuz a plain mister. He paid considerable attention to Dorothy, too, but Miss Meechim said that she didn’t worry about Dorothy at all since I would chaperone her, and Robert wuz going to protect her from any possible lover. Sez Miss Meechim:
“Robert knows that I would almost rather have that volcano burst forth its burning lava and wash her away on its bosom than to have her engulfed in that terrible state of matrimony from which I and mine have suffered so horribly.”
“Well,” sez I, “I can’t speak for you and yourn, but for me and ourn,” sez I, “no state under the heavens would be agreeable for me to live in if my beloved pardner wuzn’t in it too.”
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“Oh, well,” sez she, “exceptions prove the rule; your husband is congenial and good to you.”
“Oh, well,” sez I, “as to the daily acts and queer moves of pardners the least said the soonest mended, but Love is the great ruler; where he rules any state is blest, be it torrid or frigid.”
That evenin’ Arvilly and Elder Wessel had a argument about votin’ and other things. I knew I ort to be in my room packin’ my satchel bag, for we expected to be gone a week or ten days, but I did kinder want to hear how their talk come out. He said he didn’t vote; he said he thought it wuz a clergyman’s duty to set and judge of the right and wrong of actions, not take part in ’em.
And Arvilly says, “I always spozed the Almighty did that; I didn’t know as human men wuz obleeged to. I know he cursed them that dealt in strong drink, and blest them that gin even a cup of cold water to the little ones, which I spoze meant help to the poorest and lowest. And I guess that whatever your idees are about it, when you come to the judgment day you won’t set up there on the throne judgin’, but you’ll be down with the rest on us givin’ an account of how you’ve used your talents, your influence, and if you’ve wropped your mantilly of protection around thieves and murderers that you know the whiskey trade is made of; you’ll find that it will drop off there, and you will be judged accordin’ to your works. But mebby you’ll be made to see before you git there that you’re in the wrong on’t upholdin’ this evil.”
Arvilly’s axent wuz as sharp as any simeter, and it seemed to go right through Elder Wessel’s robe of complacency and self-esteem and rend it. He looked dretful bad, and I spoke up, meanin’ to pour a little ile on his woonds, and sayin’ what I thought, too. Sez I:
“Folks hain’t so guilty often as they are thoughtless; ministers and church people who don’t use their influence aginst this evil don’t realize what they’re doin’––they don’t think.”
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“They’re guilty if they don’t think,” sez Arvilly, “if they are blest with common sense. If I wuz walkin’ by a deep pond in broad daylight, and see a dozen little children sinking that I might save by a little effort, I wonder how many would believe me when I said that I see ’em drowndin’ but didn’t try to save ’em because I didn’t think. If I had ears and eyes and common sense, and could save ’em and didn’t, I wuz guilty of murder, and so the Lord would look at it and everybody else that knew anything.” And she looked at me some as if I didn’t know anything, jest because I intimated that ministers and church members didn’t want to do such wickedness, but didn’t think––Arvilly is hash. But I had to admit that she had some common sense on her side. Sez she agin:
“The Church of Christ could do anything it wanted to if it jined its forces, took holt as if it meant to do sunthin’, but as it is indifference folds its hands, self interest murders humanity, greed upholds intemperance, and all about us in Church and State are drink makers and drink takers, and heaven knows which of ’em will git to hell first!” Arvilly is dretful hash; when she gits rousted up her indignation is like lightnin’, and she don’t care where it strikes or who. It struck Elder Wessel hard.
“I should be afraid!” sez he, and his voice fairly trembled with indignation, “I should be afraid to talk of the Church of Christ as you do!”
“Let it behave itself then!” sez Arvilly, “be converted and come out on the Lord’s side to the help of the weak aginst the mighty!”
“The saloon,” sez Elder Wessel dogmatically, “is the Poor Man’s Club.” He wuz all rousted up by her hash talk and come out plainer than he had come. “The rich man has his club, and the saloon is the Poor Man’s Club. He has a right to go there for a little recreation.”
“Re-creation!” sez Arvilly. “If you think drinkin’ pizen whiskey is re-creatin’ a man, you’re different from me.”
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“And me, too,” sez I. “If you call it re-creatin’ to go to the Poor Man’s Club sober and sane,” sez Arvilly, “and stagger home at midnight crazy drunk, I say he hain’t no right to re-create himself that way; he re-creates himself from a good man and worthy member of society into a fiend, a burden and terror to his family and community. Now Elder White’s idee of re-creatin’ men is different; he believes in takin’ bad men and re-creatin’ ’em into good ones, and I wish that every minister on earth would go and do likewise.”
“I know nothin’ about Elder White,” sez Elder Wessel hautily.
“He’s our minister in Loontown,” sez Arvilly. “He has his church open every night in the week for re-creatin’ in the right way.”
“I don’t approve of that,” sez Elder Wessel. “The church of the Most High is too sacred to use for such purposes.”
“A minister said that once to Elder White,” sez Arvilly, “and he answered ’em with that warm meller smile of hisen, ‘Where are my boys and girls more welcome and safe than at home, and this is their Father’s house,’” sez he.
“Using that holy place for recreation is very wrong,” sez Elder Wessel.
Sez Arvilly, “I told you that he used it to re-create anew to goodness and strength. He has music, good books, innocent games of all kinds, bright light, warmth, cheerful society, good lectures, and an atmosphere of good helpful influences surroundin’ ’em, and he has sandwiches and coffee served in what wuz the pastor’s study, and which he uses now, Heaven knows, to study the big problem how a minister of the Most High can do the most good to his people.”
“Coffee,” sez Elder Wessel, “is all right in its place, but the common workman hankers after something stronger; he wants his beer or toddy, the glass that makes him forget his trouble for a time, and lifts him into another world.”
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“Well, I spoze the opium eater and cocaine fiend hanker after the fool paradise these drugs take ’em into, but that’s no sign that they ort to destroy themselves with ’em.”
“Coffee, too, is deleterious,” sez Elder Wessel. “Some say that it is worse than whiskey.”
I spoke up then; I am a good coffee maker, everybody admits, and I couldn’t bear to hear Ernest White talked aginst, and I sez: “I never hearn of a workman drinkin’ so much coffee that he wuz a danger to his family and the community, or so carried away with it that he spent his hull wages on it. Such talk is foolish and only meant to blind the eyes of justice and common sense. Elder White’s Mutual Help Club, as he calls it, for he makes these folks think they help him, and mebby they do, is doin’ sights of good, sights of it. Young folks who wuz well started towards the drunkard’s path have been turned right round by it, and they save their wages and look like different men since they have left the Poor Man’s Club, as you call it, and patronize hisen.”
“And Elder White has showed,” sez Arvilly, “by his example just what the Church of Christ could do if it wanted to, to save men from the evil of this present time and git ’em headed towards the Celestial City.”
“Oh!” sez Elder Wessel, “I would no more use the church dedicated to the Most High in the way you speak of than I would use the communion cup to pass water in.”
“If a man wuz dyin’ of thirst, and that cup could be used to save him, don’t you spoze the Lord would want it used for that, Elder Wessel?” sez Arvilly.
“Oh, no! oh, no!” sez he: “give not that which is holy unto dogs; cast not your pearls before swine.”
“That is jest what I have been preachin’ to you,” sez Arvilly. “Give not that which is holy, the best nater, and goodness of boys and men to the dogs, the brutes that lay in wait for ’em in whiskey laws. The God in man is murdered120every ’lection day by professors of religion and ministers.”
“Why––whyee,” sez Elder Wessel, sinkin’ back in his chair.
“Yes,” sez the dantless Arvilly, “I mean jest what I say; them that refuse to vote and help in the matter are jest as guilty as license voters; they are consentin’ to the crucifixion of Christ in man. And the poor drunkards are not the only ones they help nail to the cross. The innocent life and happiness of wimmen and children these wicked laws lift up on the cross of agony, and their hearts’ blood cries to heaven for judgment on them that might have helped ’em and would not. The Church of Christ is responsible for this crime,” sez Arvilly, “for there is not an evil on earth that could stand before the combined strength of a united church.”
Sez Elder Wessel, gittin’ back considerable dignity (her hash talk madded him awfully), sez he, “I simply see things in another light from what you do.”
“He that is not for me is against me,” sez Arvilly.
Sez the Elder in a dogmatic axent, real doggy it wuz, “I say again, the saloon is the Poor Man’s Club.”
And I sez dreamily, “Talkin’ of a club as a club, a club in the hands of a drunken man, strikin’ at and destroyin’ all the safety and happiness of a home, yes,” sez I, “it is such a club.”
“Yes,” sez Arvilly, “if poundin’ his wife to jelly, and his children to deformity and death, is a Poor Man’s Club, the saloon is one.”
Sez he agin, “Rich men have their clubs to which they may go, and drink all they choose––carouse, do as they please, and why not poor men, too?” he added.
And I sez, “Grantin’ that rich men do drink and carouse at their clubs, as I don’t know whether they do or not, two wrongs never made one right, and the liquor couldn’t hurt ’em so much, for they can buy it pure, and the poor man’s121drink is pizen by adulteration, makin’ a more dangerous drunk, ruinin’ their health and makin’ ’em spilin’ for fights and bloodshed. The rich man can stay all night at his club, or if he goes home the decorous butler or vally can tend to him and protect his family if need be; he won’t stagger in at midnight to a comfortless room, where his wife and little ones are herded in cold and starvation and are alone and at his mercy, and the rich man’s carouse at his club won’t keep his wife and children hungry for a week.”
Bein’ driv out of that position Elder Wessel tried a new tact: “The poor man has just as much right to the social enjoyment they git out of their saloon as you have, madam, to your afternoon teas and church socials.”
“What hinders the poor man from ’tendin’ socials?” sez Arvilly, spiritedly. “They are always bein’ teased to, and anyway I never knew tea to make anybody crazy drunk.”
“The poor man,” sez Elder Wessel in his most dictorial way, all of Arvilly’s talk havin’ slipped offen him like rain water offen a brass horn, “the poor man, after he has worked hard all day, and has nothing to go home to but a room full of cryin’ children, discomfort, squalor and a complaining wife, is justified in my opinion to go to the only bright, happy place he knows of, the saloon.”
But I sez, bein’ such a case for justice, “How is it with the wife who has worked hard all day in the home of discomfort and squalor, her work being rendered ten times harder and more nerve destroying than her husband’s by the care of the cryin’ children, how would it be for them, who are equally responsible for the marriage and the children, to take holt together and make the children happier and the home less full of discomfort?”
“Yes,” sez Arvilly, “is it goin’ to make the home less full of discomfort to have him reel home at midnight and dash the hungry cryin’ baby aginst the wall and put out its feeble life, and mebby kill the complainin’ wife too?”
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“Oh, those are extreme cases and uncommon,” sez Elder Wessel.
“Not oncommon at all,” sez Arvilly. “If you read the daily papers you will see such things as this, the direct work of the saloon, are continually occurring, too common in fact to attract much attention.”
He couldn’t deny this, for he knew that we read the papers jest the same as he did, and the fact that he couldn’t deny it seemed to kinder tire him, and he sez, getting up:
“I guess I will go and smoke a cigar.” And he went. And I went up to my room, too, to pack my satchel bag, for we expected to start the very next mornin’ and to be gone about a week or ten days.
Well, the steamer took us to Hilo, and the panorama that swep’ by us on that steamer can’t never be reproduced by any camera or kodak; the sapphire blue water, the hills standing like mountains of beaten gold and velvety green verdure, and beyond the soft blue and purple mountain ranges, agin deep clefts and cliffs of richest colored rocks with feathery white waterfalls floating down on ’em like a veil, anon pleasant landscapes, sugar cane plantations, picturesque houses, windmills, orchards, dancing brooks and broad green fields. No dissolvin’ view wuz ever so entrancin’, but like all others it had to dissolve.
We reached Hilo the second day and we all went to a comfortable tarven, and the next mornin’ bright and early we sot off on the stage for the volcano over, I state, and state it fearlessly, the most beautiful road that wuz ever built towards any volcano or anything else. Why, I’ve thought that the road between Jonesville and Loontown wuz beautiful and easy travellin’. Old Hagadone is path-master and vain of the road, and calls the men out twice a year to pay poll taxes and such by workin’ it. Sugar maples, elder bushes, and shuemakes, and wild grapes and ivy run along the side of the stun wall, makin’ it, I always had thought, on-approachable in beauty. But, good land! if old Hagadone123had seen that road he would have turned green as grass with envy.
Imagine a wide road, smooth as glass, cut right out of a glowing tropical forest with a almost onimagined splendor, that I spoze was meant to be onseen by mortal eyes, risin’ up on each side on’t. Why, I’ve been as proud as a peacock of my little hibiscus growin’ in grandma Allen’s old teapot, and when that blowed out one little blow I called the neighbors in to witness the gorgeous sight. Imagine a hibiscus tree, as big as one of our biggest maples, fairly burnin’ all over with the gorgeous blossoms, and bananas with their great glossy leaves, and lantannas. Wuzn’t I proud of my lantanna growin’ in Ma Smith’s blue sugar bowl? I thought it wuz a lovely sight when it had three blows on it at one time. But imagine milds and milds of ’em risin’ up thirty feet on each side of the road, and little spindlin’ palms, that we envy if growin’ two feet high, growin’ here to a hundred feet or more, and begonias and geraniums growin’ up into tall trees and of every color, tuberoses and magnolias loadin’ the air with fragance, the glossy green of the ohia tree with the iaia vine climbing and racing over it all, mingled in with tamarind and oranges and bamboo, and oleanders with their delicious pink and white blossoms. Sez I: “Do you remember my little oleander growin’ in a sap bucket, Josiah? Did you ever think of seein’ ’em growin’ fifty feet high? What a priceless treasure one would be in Jonesville.”
And he whispered back real voyalent: “Don’t think, Samantha, of gittin’ me to lug one of them fifty-foot trees all the way hum. I’ve broke my back for years luggin’ round your old oleander in a tub, but never will I tackle one of them trees,” and he looked up defiantly into the glossy boughs overhead.
“I hain’t asked you to, Josiah, but,” sez I dreamily: “I would love to git some slips of them fuchia and begonia trees, and that jasmine,” sez I, pintin’ up to the emerald waves of foliage enriched by them I have named, and as many other124glowin’ with perfume and beauty as there are stars in the heavens, or so it seemed to me. Sez I: “What a show I could make in Jonesville with ’em.” Sez I: “What would Miss Bobbett and Sister Henzy say if they could see ’em?” And I pinted up at a gigantick trumpet creeper and convolvuli, festooned along the boughs of a giant geranium and hanging down its banner of bloom.
“They’d say, let well enough alone. I tell you I can’t break up my trip diggin’ dirt and tendin’ to a lot of houseplants from Dan to Beersheba.”
“We’re not goin’ to Dan,” sez I, “and if we wuz a man might meet Dan doin’ worse than pleasin’ his pardner. Look at that jasmine,” sez I. “Is that much like that little slip of Sister Bobbett’s growin’ in a tea-cup? And see! oh, do see, Josiah, them night bloomin’ ceriuses! Oh, take it on a moonlight night, the walls of fragrant green on either side, and them lovely blows, hundreds and thousands of ’em shinin’ out like stars of whiteness, full of the odor of Paradise. Oh, what a sight, Josiah Allen, for us to see!”
And he sez, “Don’t git any idee, Samantha, of you and me comin’ way back here by moonlight, for we can’t do it. The road is thirty milds long, and if we tried it we shouldn’t git here till they had done blowin’.”
“I hain’t no idee of tryin’ it, Josiah, I wuz only revellin’ in the idee of what the glory of the sight must be.”
“Well,” sez he, “I am revellin’ in the idee of havin’ a good meat dinner if we ever git to Hilo.” And he added with a sarcastick smile, “Don’t that make you think of poker? High, low––all it wants is Jack and the Game.”
I gin him a stern look and sez, “Some knowledge is demeanin’ to a perfessor.” And he acted puggicky and didn’t say another word for a mild or so. But I sot calm and looked away into the entrancin’ seen. And all the time we wuz rollin’ on towards the volcano.
Robert and Dorothy seemed to be enjoying the seen as much as I did, and Arvilly wuz tryin’ to canvass the Scotchman.125The Englishman had already bought the “Twin Crimes,” and so she wuz as happy as she ever would be, I spozed.
Well, after that long enchantin’ ride through Paradise, at last we reached the place we wuz bound for and put up to the Volcano House, from which a good view of the volcano is seen at night, but nothin’ to what it is to stand on its shores. Well, I will pass over all intervenin’ incidents, some as the lava duz when it gits started, and draw the curtain on us agin as we stood in front of that awful, majestic, dretful, sublime, unapproachable, devilish, glorious––a thousand times glorious––and not to be forgot till death, sight. Tongue can’t utter words to describe it; the pen hain’t made, the egg hain’t laid to hatch out the soarin’ eagle whose feathers could be wrought into a pen fittin’ to describe that seen. Why, I have thought when the mash got to burnin’ down to the lake it wuz a grand sight; Jonesvillians have driv milds to see it. I have seen upwards of ten acres of the mash burnin’ over at one time, and felt awestruck, and so did Sister Bobbett, for we went down together once with our pardners on a buckboard. But, sez I to myself almost instinctively:
“What if Sister Bobbett wuz here? What would she say?”
Imagine a great lake of fire instead of water, waves of burning lava dashing up onto its shores, bustin’ way up in the air at times, towerin’ pillers of flame, swishin’ and swashin’, fire and flames, and brimstun for all I know. What––what wuz goin’ on way down in the depths below if this wuz the seen outside? So wildly I questioned my heart and Josiah. “Oh, Josiah!” sez I, “what––what a sight! Did I ever expect to witness such a seen? No, oh no,” I sez. “What do you spoze is goin’ on inside of that great roarin’, blazin’ monster?” Sez he, “I know what’s goin’ on inside of me; I know I am jest starvin’, faintin’ away fur want of food.”
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“Well,” sez I soothin’ly, “when we get back to the Volcano House I will ask for some bread and milk for you.”
“Bread and milk!” sez he bitterly. “I want pork and beans, and ham, and biled greens, and chicken pie and Injun puddin’!”
“Well, well,” sez I, “be calm. Do jest see them great waves and fields of lava, milds and milds of ’em, once jest melted fire, rollin’ on and rollin’ on––what a sight!” sez I. On one side wuz a sort of a high terrace, over which the fiery flames had fell and hardened into solid waves lookin’ some as our Niagara would look if her flowin’ waters should suddenly harden as they flowed. I pinted it out to Arvilly, who wuz by my side. Sez I, “Do look at that! It seems as if Nater had jest hung up that stupendous sheet there and writ on it the word Glory! Unapproachable glory and magesty!”
Sez Arvilly dreamily, “If I could jest dig out in that smooth lava the words, ‘The Twin Crimes of America––Intemperance and Greed,’ and train the volcano to run blazin’ fire into the mould, what a advertisement that would be for my book, or for the ‘Wild, Wicked and Warlike Deeds of Man.’ It would help the sale of both on ’em tremendously.”
And I sez, “Don’t try to train no volcanos, Arvilly; you would find them worse to handle than any man you ever tackled.”
“Well,” sez she dreamily, “I believe it could be done.”
Robert Strong and Dorothy stood clost together, he a-protectin’ her, as I spozed. ’Tennyrate he seemed dretful careful where she stepped and how and when, and she looked up real confidin’ and sweet into his face, and then, awestruck and wonder smit, down into the burnin’ lake below. The Englishman and Scotchman had gone on a little nigher to it, with the guide. Hale-mau-mau (House of Endless Fire), well did the natives name it. Well, it wuz long before we tore ourselves from the sublime seen, and I dremp127of it all night. I see Josiah bore from me on the lava flood, and then agin I wuz swep’ from him and dashed up on a billow of flame, and visey versey, versey visey. I had a dretful night, and got up twice and looked out of the winder on the grand spectacle. But towards mornin’ I had a beautiful vision: my pardner and me wuz bore back to Jonesville, and sot in our own door yard under a spreadin’ geranium tree, and Sister Bobbett stood admirin’ly before me with a tea-cup in her hand, beggin’ for a slip from the immense branches. It wuz a sweet dream, and I waked up refreshed.
128CHAPTER XI
Well, one week later we found ourselves agin on the boundless deep, the broad Pacific, bound for the Philippines. How fur off from Jonesville did I seem as I thought on’t, but Love journeyed with me, and Duty. Tommy wuz gittin’ fat and rosy, his cough grew better every day, and he looked and acted like a different child.
This wuz to be a longer voyage than we had took. We layed out to stop to the Philippines first, and so on to China and Japan. It beats all how soon you settle down and seem to feel as if the great ship you are embarked on is the world, and the little corner you occupy your home, specially if you have a devoted pardner with you to share your corner, for Love can make a home anywhere. Arvilly got a number of new subscribers and made friends amongst the passengers, but Elder Wessel avoided her. And he didn’t seem to like Sister Evangeline. I told him what I had seen and hearn, for it seemed to me like a olive branch bore into our dark, rainy world by a dove of Paradise. But he scoffed at it; he said that it wuz all imagination. But I sez: “It hain’t imagination that the poor woman wuz dyin’ and Sister Evangeline saved her.” And he said that wuz a coincidence, and I said that it wuz a pity there wuzn’t more such coincidences. And he didn’t answer me at all. He wuz settin’ up on his creed with his legs hangin’ off, and he sot straight, no danger of his gittin’ off and goin’ down amongst the poor steerage passengers and helpin’ ’em. He thought he wuz a eminent Christian, but in my opinion he might have been converted over agin without doin’ him any harm.
Well, the big world we wuz inhabitin’ moved on over129the calm waters. Josiah read a good deal, settin’ in the library with Tommy on his knee. And I read some myself, but took considerable comfort studyin’ the different passengers, some as if they wuz books with different bindin’s, some gilt and gay, some dull and solid and some sombry, but each with different readin’ inside.
And stiddy and swift, onheedin’ any of our feelin’s or fears, the great ship ploughed on, takin’ us towards that wuz comin’ to meet us onbeknown to us. Miss Meechim kep’ up pretty well, keepin’ a good lookout on Dorothy, but restin’ her mind on Robert Strong’s protection, and Robert and Dorothy seemed to enjoy themselves better and better all the time, singing together, and walking up and down the deck for hours on pleasant days and matchless nights lit with the brilliant light of moon and star, and Southern Cross, and I didn’t know what other light might be shinin’ on ’em onbeknown to Miss Meechim, but mistrusted by me.
Elder Wessel, when we wuz with Lucia, didn’t seem to want anything else on earth. She wuz a pretty girl, but I could see that she wuz very romantic; she had read sights of novels, and wuz lookin’ out for some prince in disguise to ride up on a white charger to carry her off and share his throne. But I could see that if the right influences wuz throwd around her she had the makin’ of a noble woman in her, and I hoped she would grow up a good, helpful woman. She had a great influence over Aronette, whose nater wuz more yieldin’ and gentle, and I didn’t altogether approve of their intimacy, but considered that it would be broke off pretty quick, as they would part for good and all when we got to China. You may wonder why I worried about Aronette; well, the reason wuz, I loved her, jest as everybody else did who knew her well. She wuz a darling girl, always sweet tempered, always trying to help somebody; Dorothy loved her just as much as though she wuz her sister and would have treated her exactly like one if it hadn’t been for Miss Meechim. She loved Aronette herself,130and showed her love by her goodness, buying her everything she needed and didn’t need, but she wuz so hauty naturally that she insisted on Aronette’s keepin’ her place, as she said. And she was so sweet dispositioned and humble sperited she didn’t want to do any different. Well, I spoze Miss Meechim wuz right; if Aronette wuz Dorothy’s maid it wuzn’t to be expected that she would take her visitin’ with her, and it wuz Aronette’s delight to wait on Dorothy as devotedly as if no ties of love bound their young hearts together. Robert Strong liked and respected her, I spoze mebby on Dorothy’s account, and Tommy adored her; why, even Josiah felt towards her, he said, some as if she wuz Tirzah Ann growed young agin.
Arvilly’s heart she won completely by makin’ her a bag to carry the “Twin Crimes” in. It wuz made of handsome black silk, worked all round in pink silk in a handsome pattern, and she had worked on one side in big letters, “The Twin Crimes of America, Intemperance and Greed.”
Arvilly almost cried with joy when she gin it to her, and sez to me, “That Aronette is the best girl in the hull world and the sweetest. Look at that embroidery,” sez she, holdin’ up the handsome bag before my eyes, “you can see that as fur as you can see me; that bag alone is enough to sell the book, and I wuz jest wearin’ out the agent’s copy. There hain’t anything in the world I wouldn’t do for that girl.” Yes, we all loved her dearly, and a dozen times a day we would say to each other what should we ever do without Aronette.
Josiah wuz seasick some, but not nigh so bad as he thought, and Tommy kept well and happy all the time, and wonnered and wonnered at everything and seemed to take comfort in it, and he would set in his little chair on deck and talk to Carabi for hours, and I d’no whether Carabi wuz enjoyin’ the trip or not; I didn’t seem to have any way of knowin’. One day Tommy and I wuz lookin’ off on the131broad blue waters and we see approachin’ what looked like a boat with its tiny sail set. It looked so like a boat set out from fairyland that instinctively I thought of Carabi, but a passenger standin’ by said that it wuz a Nautilus, and afterwards we see lots of ’em. And the Southern Cross bent over us nights as if to uphold our souls with the thought that our heavenly gardeen would take care on us. And some nights the sea wuz lit up with phosphorescent light into a seen of glory that I can’t describe and hain’t goin’ to let Josiah try to; I hain’t a goin’ to have that man made light of, and Shakespeare couldn’t do justice to it. Low down over our heads the heavens leaned, the glassy waters aspired upward in sparks of flame. The south wind whispered soft, strange secrets to us, sweeping up from the misty horizon. Our souls listened––but shaw! I said I wuzn’t goin’ to try to describe the glory and I hain’t.
And the ship sailed on. One evenin’ there wuz another steamer sighted, most everybody wuz on deck. Sister Evangeline wuz down takin’ care of that poor woman and child and the fever patients; Tommy wuz asleep; Josiah wuz readin’ the old newspaper he had wropped his clothes in, and which he had treasured fondly. He wuz readin’ the advertisements, Help Wanted and such. I asked him what good them advertisements would do him ten thousand milds from hum, but he said no knowin’ what might happen and anything in the paper wuz good readin’.
That man’s blind adherence to party has caused me many a forebodin’, it is a menace to good government and public safety, and I have told him so. Well, I santered down into the cabin and there I found Elder Wessel all alone. He had jest been readin’ a powerful editorial that coincided with his views exactly, and he leaned back and put a thumb in each arm-hole of his vest and sez:
“What a glorious work the United States is doin’ here in the Philippines.”
And I sez, “Yes, that is so, the United States is doin’ a132great and noble work in educating and civilizing the natives, if it wuzn’t for the one great mistake she is making and duz make wherever she plants her banner in a new country amongst a new people.
“Side by side with her schoolhouses and churches that are trying to lift humanity heavenward the American Saloon is found lowering humanity and undoing the work these ministers and teachers have so faithfully tried to do.”
I guess he didn’t hear me, but ’tennyrate he went right on: “Oh, yes, oh, yes, our Christian nation goes to these benighted islands, carrying Christianity and civilization in its hand. Of course they may not ever come up to the hite of our own perfect, matchless civilization, but they will approach it, they will approach it.”
Sez Arvilly: “Our nation won’t come up to them in years and years, if it ever duz!”
He jumped as if he had been shot; he thought we wuz alone, and sez: “Why––why, Sister Arvilly––you must admit these savages are behind us in knowledge.”
“So much the worse for us; the sin of ignorance is goin’ to be winked at, but if we know better we ort to do better.” Elder Wessel wuz stunted, but he murmured instinctively sunthin’ about our carryin’ the Bible and the knowledge of heaven to ’em.
Arvilly snapped out: “What good will that do if we carry private hells to burn ’em up before they die? A pretty help that is! What is the use of teachin’ ’em about heaven if our civilization makes sure the first thing it duz to keep ’em out of it, for no drunkard shall inherit heaven. What’s the use of gittin’ ’em to hankerin’ after sunthin’ they can’t have.”
The Elder wuz almost paralyzed, but he murmured instinctively sunthin’ about our duty to the poor naked heathen hanging like monkeys from the tree tops, like animals even in their recreation. And Arvilly bein’ so rousted up and beyend reasonable reason, sez: “That’s their bizness about not bein’ clothed, and anyway it is jest as the Lord133started the human race out in the Garden of Eden, and they do wear enough to cover their nakedness, and that’s more than some of our fashionable wimmen do, and ’tennyrate they don’t suffer so much as our wimmen do with their torturin’ tight shoes and steel instruments of agony bound round their waists, compressin’ their vital organs into a mass of deformity.”
Elder Wessel wuz so browbeat that he kinder got offen his subject, and with a dazed look he murmured sunthin’ about “the wicked religion of Cuba when the Americans took it––the Papal indulgences, the cruel bull fights, the national recreations––you could always tell the low state of a nation’s civilization by the brutish recreations they indulged in.”
Sez Arvilly, in a loud, mad axent, “Talk about brutal amusements, why they ort to send missionaries to America to reform us as fur up in decency as to use animals to fight fur our recreation instead of human bein’s. Bulls hain’t spozed to have immortal souls, and think how America pays two men made in the image of God so much an hour––high wages, too––to beat and pound and maim and kill each other for the amusement of a congregation of Christian men and wimmen, who set and applaud and howl with delight when a more cruel blow than common fells one on ’em to the earth. And then our newspapers fight it all over for the enjoyment of the family fireside, for the wimmen and children and invalids, mebby, that couldn’t take in the rare treat at first sight. Every blow, every cruel bruise that wuz made in the suffering flesh reproduced for Sunday reading. And if one of the fighters is killed and his mangled body taken out of the fighting ring forever, taken home to his wife and children with the comfortin’ peticulars that he wuz killed for the amusement of men and wimmen, most on ’em church members, and all citizens of our Christian republic by special license of the government, why then the newspapers, which are the exponents of our civilization and the teachers of our134youth, have a splendid time relating the ghastly story under staring headlines. After all this, talk to me about our country’s dastin to have the face to reform any other country’s amusement. Our prize fights that our nation gives licenses for its people to enjoy are as much worse than bull fights, in view of America’s professions of goodness, as it would be for an angel to fly down ’lection day amongst a drunken crowd and git drunk as a fool, and stagger round and act with her wings dirty and a-floppin’.”
Elder Wessel wuz took completely back, I could see, by Arvilly’s eloquence, and I wuz myself. The sharp-toothed harrow of grief had turned up new furrows in her soul, in which strange plants growed. And before Elder Wessel could speak she went on a-thinkin’ back about sunthin’ he’d said.
“Indulgences to sin! If I granted licenses for all kinds of sin for money, as our nation duz, I wouldn’t talk about Papal indulgences. See how wimmen are used––embruted, insulted, ground beneath the heel of lust and ruin by these same license laws.”
“But, Sister Arvilly,” sez he, “I was reading only this morning a sermon upon how much our civilization had to do in lifting women into the high place they occupy to-day.”
“High place!” sez Arvilly, and I fairly trembled in my shoes to hear her axent. “Wimmen occupy a dretful high place. I can tell you jest the place she occupies. You have been told of it often enough; you ort to know it, but don’t seem to. A woman occupies the same bench with lunatics, idiots and criminals, only hern is enough sight harder under legal licenses and taxation laws.”
“But,” sez the Elder, “the courtesy with which women are treated, the politeness, the deference–––”
“If you wuz kicked out of your meetin’ house, Elder Wessel, would it make any difference to you whether the shue you wuz kicked with wuz patent leather or cowhide?135The important thing to you would be that you wuz layin’ on the ground outside, and the door locked behind you.”
Sez Elder Wessel, “That is a strong metafor, Sister Arvilly. I had never looked at it in that light before.”
“I presume so,” sez she. “The very reason why there are so many cryin’ abuses to-day is because good men spend their strength in writin’ eloquent sermons aginst sin, and lettin’ it alone, instead of grapplin’ with it at the ballot box. Our Lord took a whip and scourged the money changers out of the temple. And that is what ministers ort to do, and have got to do, if the world is saved from its sins––scourge the money changers who sell purity and honor, true religion and goodness for money.
“Satan don’t care how much ministers talk about temperance and goodness and morality in the pulpit to a lot of wimmen and children that the congregations are made up of mostly, or how many essays are writ about it, tied with blue ribbin. But when ministers and church members take hold on it as Ernest White has and attacks it at the ballot box, and defends and reinforces the right and left flank with all the spiritual and material and legal forces he can muster, why then Satan feels his throne tremble under him and he shakes in his shues.”
But before Elder Wessel could frame a reply Josiah come in with the news that the steamer had approached and brung mail to the passengers. And we all hurried up to see what we had got.
Well, the steamer wuz passin’ away like ships in the night, but I found that I had several letters from home. The children wuz gettin’ well. Philury and Ury well and doin’ well. And one letter wuz from Cousin John Richard, that blessed creeter! who, it will be remembered, went to Africa as a missionary to help the colony of freedmen to a knowledge of the true freedom in Christ Jesus. Only two idees that blessed creeter ever seemed to have: first, what his duty wuz, and, second, to do it. His letter run as follows:
136
“Dear Cousin: Here in the far off tropics where I thought to live and die with the people I have loved and given my life to help, the Lord has wonderfully blessed our labors. The Colony is prospering as I never expected to see it. The people are beginning to see that a true republic can only exist by governing one’s own self, that in the hands of each individual is the destiny of the nation. We are a peaceful people, greatly helped under the Lord by the fact that not a saloon blackens the pure air of Victor.
“How can the crazed brain of a drunken man help a nation only to weaken and destroy? How can children born under the curse of drink be otherwise than a burden and curse to the public weal? How can a righteous ruler handle this menace to freedom and purity save to stamp it beneath his feet? As we have no saloons in Victor, so we have no almshouses or prisons, the few poor and wrongdoers being cared for by private individuals, remunerated by public tax.
“So greatly has the Lord prospered us that I felt I was needed elsewhere more than here; I felt that America instead of Africa needed the help of teachers of the Most High. Tidings have reached me from the Philippines that made me think it was my duty to go there. Into these islands, inhabited, as has been said, by people ‘half devil, half child,’ has been introduced the worst crime of America, the drink evil, the worst demon outside the bottomless pit, making of sane, good men brutes and demons, a danger to themselves and the whole community.
“It is hard to believe that a Christian civilization, a Christian ruler, should send regiments of bright young boys so far from all the deterring influences of home and home life; send those who were the light of happy homes, the idols of fond hearts, to face the dreadful climate, the savage warfare, to colonize the graveyards in the sodden earth, to be thrown into the worst evils of war, to face danger and death, and with all this provided by the government that should protect137them this dreadful temptation to ensnare their boyish wills and lead them into captivity.
“Then I could not leave Victor, but now that I can I feel that God is calling me to go there to preach the gospel of Christ, to fight this mighty foe, Intemperance, to preach the gospel of sane and clean living and thinking. Knowing from my experience here in Victor, had I no other knowledge of it, how that blessed gospel of love is the only true liberty. For what advantage is liberty of the body when the soul, the weak will, is bound in the most galling of chains?
“America is doing a great work in educating and helping this country, and were it not for this evil I go to combat, its work would be blessed of God and man.
“So, as I said, I sail to-morrow for the Philippines with three of my native converts, good Christians, willing to die, if need be, for their faith.”
This letter had been written more than a month, so long had it been comin’ to me, and I wuz tickled enough to think that when we got to the Philippines we should see Cousin John Richard.
138CHAPTER XII
The shore of Manila looked dretful low and flat as we come up to it some as old Shelmadine’s land lays along the lake shore. So you’d think that if it rained hard and raised the water a inch it would overflow it. And the houses looked dretful low and squatty, mebby it wuz on account of earthquakes they built ’em so. Josiah thought it wuz so they could shingle ’em standin’ on the ground. I inclined to the earthquakes.
Our boat wuz small enough to go over the surf and up the Pasig River. The water didn’t look very clean, and on it wuz floatin’ what looked like little cabbage heads. Josiah thought they wuz, and sez he real excited:
“Thank fortin if they have cabbages to throw away here I shall be likely to git a good biled dinner, and mebby a biled puddin’ with lemon sass.”
But they wuzn’t cabbages, they wuz some kind of a water plant that growed right there in the water. As we sailed along some queer lookin’ boats, lookin’ some like corn houses standin’ on end, bulged out towards us from the shore. They said they wuz cargo lighters to onload ships, and mebby they wuz. And one peculiarity I see that I despised. The natives all seemed to wear their shirts over their pantaloons, hangin’ loose, and some on ’em didn’t have on any pantaloons, jest the shirt, and some not even that, jest a sash or so tied round about ’em.
I despised the sight and sez to Josiah: “They might do as much as Adam did anyway; they might wear some leaves round ’em, there is plenty of fig trees here I spoze.”
And he sez: “I have been thinkin’ that it is a crackin’139good idee to wear the shirt over the pantaloons; it would be cool and look all right after we got used to it; the bottom of the shirt could be ruffled or trimmed with tattin or red braid, and they would look as dressy agin as I’ve always wore ’em.”
I looked daggers at him out of my eyes and sez: “What won’t you take it into your head to do next, Josiah Allen?”
But our attention wuz drawed off by Arvilly, who approached us. She looked skornfully at the costoom of the natives, and I hearn her say to herself: “Not much chance to canvass here.” But even as she spoke her eye fell hopefully on the opposite shore, like a good book agent scanning the earth and heavens for a possible subscriber.
Miss Meechim, who had come on deck with Dorothy and Robert, looked benignantly at the natives and sez: “The poor ye shall always have with you,” and she put her hand in the little bag that she always wore at her side and said: “I wonder if I have got a copy of that blessed tract with me, ‘The Naked Sinner Clothed and in His Right Mind.’”
But Robert sez to her: “They wouldn’t thank you for clothes, Aunt Albina; you will have to wait until we reach New York; some of the naked there would be gladly covered up from the snow and storms.”
“Oh, don’t compare our own blessed land with this heathen clime.”
“But,” sez Robert, “the warm breezes here bring only joy and comfort to that sinner’s naked limbs, and the sin of ignorance may be forgiven. But the shivering sinners, crouching on the cold stone doorsteps, hearing dimly through their benumbed senses prayers and thanksgivings to the Most High for mercies they have no part in, why that is quite a different matter.”
Aronette wuz standing a little ways apart, talking with a young man. He wuz payin’ her compliments, I knew, for there wuz a pink flush on her pretty face, and his eyes had140admiration in them. I didn’t like his looks at all; he looked dissipated and kinder mean, and I thought I would warn her aginst him when I got a good chance. Lucia Wessel, too, wuz holding her young charge by the hand, but her attention wuz all drawed off by another young chap that I’d seen with her a number of times, and I didn’t like his looks; he had the same sort of a dissipated look that the other young man had, but I see by the expression of Lucia’s innocent eyes that she didn’t share in my opinion; she looked as if she wuz fairly wropped up in him. I wondered what Elder Wessel would have said if he could have seen that look. But he wuz in blissful ignorance. He thought her bosom wuz composed of a equal mixture of snow and crystal, through which he could read every thought and emotion as soon as they wuz engraved on it. He thought there was no characters written there as yet by any manly hand save his own writ in characters of fatherly and daughterly love. He wuz holdin’ forth to Arvilly, and she with her nose turned up as fur as nater would let it go, wuz listenin’ because he wouldn’t let her git away. I thought by her expression he wuz praisin’ the license laws, for on no other subject wuz he so eloquent, and on no other did Arvilly’s nose turn up to such a hite.
Dorothy and Tommy wondered what those strange trees were that grew on the shore in front, and Robert Strong hastened to their side to help them to such information as he had on the subject. And he had knowledge on almost every subject under the heavens, so it seemed to me.
Well, anon or a little after, we found ourselves on shore and I wuz glad to feel terry firmy under my feet once more. Lots of times on board ship the terry wuz so fur from the firmy that the solid land felt good under the soles of our shoes. Yes, indeed! And though for some time tables and chairs, and even beds and bureaus had a way of advancin’ up towards us and then retreatin’ away from us over and141over, yet as I say terry wuz considerable more firmy than the deck had been.
Well, it wuzn’t long before we found ourselves at a comfortable hotel, not too comfortable, but decently so; and in the fulness of time we wuz seated at the table partaking of food which, though it didn’t taste like my good Jonesville vittles, still I could eat and be thankful for. Josiah whispered to me:
“Onions and garlicks and peppers; I never could bear any on ’em, and here I be filled up with ’em; there hain’t a single dish on this table but what’s full of ’em. Oh, Samantha!” sez he pitifully, “if I could only eat one of your good dinnerses or supperses agin’ it seems as if I would be willin’ to die.”
And I whispered back to him to be calm. Sez I, “Do be reasonable; it ain’t logic or religion to expect to be to home and travellin’ abroad at the same time.”
He see it wuzn’t and subsided with a low groan, and begun to nibble agin’ on his food, but his looks wuz mournful, and if I could I would have put on a apron willin’ly and gone down into the kitchen and cooked him a good square meal, but I knew it wouldn’t be thought on, so I kep’ calm.
Well, our bed wuz kinder queer. It wuz quite noble lookin’, four high posts with lace curtains looped up and mosquito nettin’ danglin’ down, and instead of springs a woven cane mattress stretched out lookin’ some like our cane seat chairs. How to git under that canopy and not let in a swarm of mosquitoes wuz what we didn’t know, but we did finally creep under and lay down. It wuz like layin’ on the barn floor, the cane mattress didn’t yield a mite, and Josiah’s low groans mingled with my sithes for quite a spell. Tommy wuz fast asleep in his little bed and so didn’t sense anything. Well, the tegus night passed away, happily I spoze for the attentive mosquitoes who shared the canopy with us, and mebby liked to sample foreign acquaintances,142but tegus for us, and we wuz glad when it wuz time to git up.
The first meal of the day wuz brought to our room; chocolate not over good, some bread and some eggs, almost raw, wuz what it consisted of. Josiah, who wanted some lamb chops, baked potatoes and coffee, wuz mad as a hen. “Heavens and earth!” sez he, “why I never sucked eggs when a boy; have I got to come to it in my old age? Raw eggs and chocklate you could cut with a knife. A few years of such food will leave you a widder, Samantha.”
“Well,” sez I, “do let’s make the best of it; when you’re in Rome do as the Romans do.”
“I shan’t suck eggs, for no Romans or for no Phillippine.”
“Eat ’em with your spoon,” sez I, “as you’d ort to.”
“Or with my knife,” sez he. “Did you see them officers last night to the table eatin’ sass with a knife? I should thought they’d cut their mouths open.”
“Well, it is their way here, Josiah. Let’s keep up and look forrerd to goin’ home; that’s the best fruit of travellin’ abroad anyway, unless it is seein’ Tommy so well and hearty.”
Josiah looked at his rosy face and didn’t complain another word. He jest worships Thomas Josiah. Well, after we eat this meal we went out walkin’, Josiah and I and Tommy, and I spoze Carabi went along, too, though we didn’t see him. But then what two folks ever did see each other? Why I never see Josiah, and Josiah never see me, not the real us.
Well, it wuz a strange, strange seen that wuz spread out before us; the place looked more’n half asleep, and as if it had been nappin’ for some time; the low odd lookin’ houses looked too as if they wuz in a sort of a dream or stupor. The American flag waved out here and there with a kind of a lazy bewildered floppin’, as if it wuz wonderin’ how under the sun it come to be there ten thousand milds from143Washington, D. C., and it wuz wonderin’ what on earth it floated out there in the first place for. But come to look at it clost you could see a kind of a determined and sot look in the Stars and Stripes that seemed to say, “Well, now I am here I hain’t goin’ to be driv out by no yeller grounded flags whatsumever.”
Some of the carriages that we met wuz queer lookin’, rough wooden two-wheeled carts, that looked as if they’d been made by hand that mornin’. Josiah said that he could go out into the woods with Ury and cut down a tree and make a better lookin’ wagon in half an hour, but I don’t spoze he could. Some on ’em wuz drawed by a buffalo, which filled Josiah with new idees about drivin’ one of our cows in the democrat.
Sez he: “Samantha, it would be real uneek to take you to meetin’ with old Line back or Brindle, and if the minister got dry in meetin’, and you know ministers do git awful dry sometimes, I could just go out and milk a tumbler full and pass it round to him.”
But I drawed his attention off; I couldn’t brook the idee of ridin’ after a cow and havin’ it bellerin’ round the meetin’ house. The native wimmen we met wuz some on ’em dressed American style, and some on ’em dressed in their own picturesque native costoom. It wuz sometimes quite pretty, and one not calculated to pinch the waist in. A thin waist, with immense flowing sleeves and embroidered chemise showing through the waist, a large handkerchief folded about the neck with ends crossed, a gay skirt with a train and a square of black cloth drawn tight around the body from waist to knees. Stockings are not worn very much, and the slippers are not much more than soles with little strips of leather going over the foot, and no heels. Anon we would meet some Chinamen, with eyes set in on a bias, and their hair hanging in two long tails down their backs; lots of them we see, then a priest would move slowly along, then a Spanish señora, then a sailor, then perhaps a native144dressed partly in European costoom lookin’ like a fright. The street cars are little things drawed by one horse, and the streets are badly paved when they’re paved at all.
There wuz some handsome houses in the residence portion of the city, but aside from the Cathedral there are few public buildings worth seeing. But one thing they have here always beautiful, and that is the luxuriant tropical vegetation, beautiful blossoming trees and shrubs, and the multitude of flowers, tall palms, bamboo, ebony, log-wood, mangoes, oranges, lemons, bread fruit, custard apples, and forty or fifty varieties of bananas, from little ones, not much more than a mouthful, to them eighteen or twenty inches long. Josiah enjoyed his walk, finding many things to emulate when he got back to Jonesville. Among ’em wuz the Chinamen’s hair; he thought it wuz a dressy way to comb a man’s hair, and he wondered dreamily how his would look if he let it grow out and braid it. But he said if he did, he should wear red ribbons on it, or baby blue. But I knew there wuz no danger of his hair ever stringin’ down his back, for I could, if danger pressed too near, cut it off durin’ his sleep, and would, too, even if it led to words.
Wall, Arvilly’s first work, after she had canvassed the hotel-keeper for the “Twin Crimes,” and as many of the guests as she could, wuz to find out if Waitstill wuz there. And sure enough she found her. She wuz in one of the hospitals and doin’ a good work, jest as she would anywhere she wuz put. She come to the hotel to see us as soon as she could, and Arvilly seemed to renew her age, having Waitstill with her agin. We writ to once to Cousin John Richard.
Robert Strong and Dorothy wuz dretful interested in Waitstill, I could see, and they asked a great many questions about her work in the hospital. And I see that Robert wuz only grounded in his convictions when Waitstill told him of the sickness the doctors and nurses had to contend with, and how largely it wuz caused by liquor drinking.145Hundreds of American saloons in Manila, so she said, and sez she, “How can the hospitals hope to undo the evils that these do to men’s souls and bodies?” Sez she, “You know what a fearful disease and crime breeder it is in a temperate climate, but it is tenfold worse here in this tropical land.”
She wuz anxious to hear all the news from Jonesville, and I willin’ly told her what Phila Ann had told me about Elder White, and the noble work he was doin’ in East Loontown, and I sez, “Missionary work is jest as necessary and jest as important and pleasin’ to God if done in Loontown as in the Antipithies.”
And she said she knew it. And I sez: “Elder White is working himself to death, and don’t have the comforts of life, to say nothin’ of the happiness he ort to.”
Waitstill didn’t say nothin’, but I fancied a faint pink flush stole up into her white cheeks, some like the color that flashes up onto a snowbank at sunset. Life wuz all snow and sunset to her, I could see, but I knowed that she wuz the one woman in the world for Ernest White, the ideal woman his soul had always worshipped, and found realized in Waitstill––poor little creeter!
I didn’t know whether the warm sun of his love could melt the snow and frozen hail or not––the sun duz melt such things––and I knew love wuz the greatest thing in the world. Well, I had to leave the event to Providence, and wuz willin’ to; but yet, after a woman duz leave things to the Most High to do, she loves to put in her oar and help things along; mebby that is the way of Providence––who knows? But ’tennyrate I gin another blind hint to her before we left the conversation.
Sez I, “Ernest White is doin’ the Lord’s work if ever a man did, and I can’t think it is the Lord’s will that whilst he’s doin’ it he ort to eat such bread as he has to––milk emtin’s and sour at that, to say nothin’ of fried stuff that a anaconda couldn’t digest. He deserves a sweet, love-guarded146home, and to be tended to by a woman that he loves––one who could inspire him and help him on in the heavenly way he’s treading alone and lonesome.” Her cheeks did turn pink then, and her eyes looked like deep blue pools in which stars wuz shinin’, but she didn’t say anything, and Robert Strong resoomed his talk with her about her hospital work. And before she left he gin her a big check to use for her patients; I don’t know exactly how big it wuz, but it went up into the hundreds, anyway; and Dorothy gin her one, too, for I see her write it; Miss Meechim gin her her blessin’ and more’n a dozen tracts, which mebby will set well on the patients, if administered cautious. I myself gin her the receipt for the best mustard poultice that ever drawed, and two pairs of clouded blue-and-white wool socks I had knit on the way, and though it wuz a warm country she said they would come handy when her patients had chills.
There wuz two young American girls at the hotel, and they happened to come into the parlor while we wuz talkin’ and they sent a big present to the hospital. I guess they wuz real well off and good dispositioned. They wuz travellin’ alone and seemed to be havin’ a real good time. One on ’em wuz sunthin’ of a invalid, but wuz outdoors all day, I spoze tryin’ to git well. They minded their own bizness and didn’t do any hurt so fur as I could see, but Elder Wessel couldn’t bear ’em. Sez he to me one day:
“I spoze they represent the new young woman?”
He said it real skornful, and Arvilly, who wuz present, took him up real snappish. “Well, what of it? What have they done?” If that poor man had said that black wuz black and white wuz white, Arvilly would found fault with it.
“I don’t object to what they have done,” sez he, “so much as to what they are. Young American women know too much.” And Arvilly sez with a meanin’ glance at him, “That is sunthin’ that everybody don’t have to stand.”
She might just as well have called him a fool, her axent wuz such. Arvilly is too hash. Sez he: “Now my Lucia is147different. She knows nothing about sin and wickedness, and I got this position for her, so that as soon as she left the convent she was placed directly in the care of this good woman and her little innocent child. What does she know of sin or sorrow, or worldliness or vanity?”
“Or danger?” sez I meanin’ly. “If she always has some one at her side to guard her, her perfect ignorance and innocence is a charm, but how would it be in the hour of danger and temptation? Why should anybody fear being burned if they had no knowledge of fire?”
“Oh,” sez he, “her divine innocence is her safeguard. Evil would retire abashed before the timid glance of her pure eyes.”
“I hope so,” sez I dryly. “I hope so. But I never knew the whiteness of its wool to help a lamb if a wolfdog got after it. But mebby it will in her case,” sez I reasonably. “I don’t want to break up your happiness,” sez I.
“You cannot,” sez he dogmatically. “You cannot. I have brought up my Lucia in the only right way for a young girl to be brought up. She has been completely separated from young people of the opposite sex; she knows nothing of fashionable flirting and folly. And when I see such abnormal creatures as the New Girl, as they call her, I am horrified, shocked beyond words at the spectacle of their brazen independence and what they call their freedom, their comradeship with the opposite sex, their fearlessness and boldness and frankness with gentlemen, talking with them really as if they were of the same sex as themselves. As I see this I thank God my Lucia is different.”
Well, she wuz a pretty little thing, with eyes as innocent and timid as a young fawn’s that had never been outside its green covert in the great wilderness. But I knew that under her baby looks and baby ways wuz a woman’s heart; a woman’s emotions and impulses would roust up when the time come and the sun of love shone down on her. Why, Nater had layed down laws before Elder Wessel did; he148couldn’t keep her from thinkin’ about her future mate; she would let her mind dwell on some one if it wuz only the man in the moon. And I knew the world wuz full of bad men as well as good men. How would it be with her if thrown with a wolf in sheep’s clothing? If guarded and sheltered, all right, but if onguarded and onwarned and thrown into temptation and danger, I felt that trouble wuz ahead for Lucia Wessel. But I knew it wuz no use for me to hist up a danger flag in front of her, for her father wouldn’t let me. But I felt dubersome about her, dretful dubersome. She and Aronette had formed a real girl attachment for each other, and some way I didn’t like the idee on’t, but don’t know as I could have told why.
Well, we didn’t lay out to stay long in Manila, but we did stay long enough so Dorothy and Miss Meechim and Robert Strong went round and see the different islands. They went to Illollo and wuz gone for three days, Aronette stayin’ with me at the tarven, and Dorothy told me when she got back how beautiful the journey wuz. The water wuz like glass, the sunrise and sunset marvellous, thickly wooded shores on either side filled with oncounted wealth. Great forests of sandal-wood, enough to build houses of, and how we treasure little snips on’t in fan sticks. Mahogany trees enough to build barns and cow stables on, and how we gloat over a old clock case or lamp stand made on’t. She said that Illollo wuz like most old Spanish towns, dretful old lookin’ and kinder run down. The natives dressed like others she had seen, but spoke a different language. They went to the American general’s headquarters some two milds off. A hundred varieties of palm trees grow along the road and every sort of tropical tree. The natives wuz all dark complected, but some good lookin’, most all bareheaded or else with a gay turban and knives stuck in the sashes of their gay tunics.
One day whilst the party wuz gone Tommy and I wuz takin’ a little walk; Josiah couldn’t go, he had got hold of a149New York paper of three weeks before, and was readin’ it through from title page to Lost and Found column. We wandered into a little cross street lined on each side with little shops with the shopkeepers squattin’ in the door, and outside the native wives and children. Everything under the sun almost wuz to be found in these shops, and we had wandered along for quite a good ways lookin’ at the curious things, and still more curious people, when we met Aronette and Lucia, accompanied by the two young men I had seen with ’em on the boat; they wuz on the stoop of one of the old business buildin’s, gigglin’ and laughin’ like a bevy of swallers round the eaves of a Jonesville barn.
But, as I said before, I didn’t like the looks of the young men, and on Aronette’s return I told her so, feelin’ I wuz in a measure responsible for her safety whilst her mistress wuz away. Aronette wuz combin’ Tommy’s hair and curlin’ it over her finger as I talked to her, which made me feel some mean to attact her whilst in my service, but Duty’s apron string fluttered down before me and I stiddied myself on it as I spoke real good warnin’ words to her.
Sez I, “My dear, I didn’t like the looks of the young men I saw you walkin’ with to-night.” Sez I, “I saw them two young men coming out of a saloon not a half hour before, and” sez I, “they look to me dissipated and mean. They drink; I know by their looks they do.”
And she sez, “Oh, dear madam, I only went out to take the air a little while. You know I care for nobody in this country. My heart is in old Normandie,” sez she, the tears welling up to the blue well of her eyes. “My heart is with my Pierre, but,” sez she, kinder tossin’ her head, not a high toss, only a little vain pretty motion of a pretty, thoughtless girl, some like a bluebird in the spring of the year, “if a young man insists on paying you a little attention what can a poor little girl do? The days are long when one is young and her own Pierre so far away, and, dear madam, Lucia was with me.”