Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife. Marietta Holley

The hard-hearted engine snorted and puffed, and we wuz off.

      20

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      As the snortin’ and skornful actin’ engine tore my body away from Jonesville, I sot nearly bathed in tears for some time till I wuz aware that little Tommy wuz weepin’ also, frightened I spoze by his grandma’s grief, and then I knew it wuz my duty to compose myself, and I summoned all my fortitude, put my handkerchief in my pocket, and give Tommy a cream cookey, which calmed his worst agony. I then recognized and passed the compliments of the day with Miss Meechim and Dorothy and pretty little Aronette, who wuz puttin’ away our wraps and doin’ all she could for the comfort of the hull of us. Seein’ my agitation, she took Tommy in her arms and told him some stories, good ones, I guess, for they made Tommy stop cryin’ and go to laughin’, specially as she punctuated the stories with some chocolate drops.

      Dorothy looked sweet as a rose and wuz as sweet. Miss Meechim come and sot down by me, but she seemed to me like a furiner; I wuz dwellin’ in a fur off realm Miss Meechim had never stepped her foot in, the realm of Wedded Love and Pardner Reminiscences. What did Miss Meechim know of that hallowed clime? What did she know of the grief that wrung my heart? Men wuz to her like shadders; her heart spoke another language.

      Thinkin’ that it would mebbe git my mind off a little from my idol, I asked her again about Robert Strong’s City of Justice; sez I, “It has run in my mind considerable since you spoke on’t; I don’t think I ever hearn the name of any place I liked so well, City of Justice! Why the name fairly 21 takes hold of my heart-strings,” sez I; “has he made well by his big manufactory?”

      “Why, yes, fairly well,” sez she, “but he has strange ideas. He says he don’t want to coin a big fortune out of other men’s sweat and brains. He wants to march on with the great army of toilers, and not be carried ahead of it on a down bed. He says he wants to feel that he is wronging no man by amassing wealth out of the half-paid labor of their best years, and that he is satisfied with an equal and reasonable share of the labor and capital invested. He has the best of men in his employ and they are all well paid and industrious; all well-to-do, able to live well, educate their children well, and have time for some culture and recreation for themselves and their families. I told him that his ideas were Utopian, but he says they have succeeded even better than he expected they would. But there will come a crash some time, I am sure. There must be rich and there must be poor in this world, or the Scriptures will not be fulfilled.”

      Sez I, “There ain’t no need to be such a vast army of poverty marching on to the almshouse and grave, if it wuzn’t for the dram-shop temptin’ poor human nater, and the greed of the world, and the cowardice and indifference of the Church of Christ. Enough money is squandered for stuff that degrades and destroys to feed and clothe all the hungry and naked children of the world.”

      “Oh,” sez Miss Meechim, “I don’t believe all this talk and clamor about prohibition. My people all drank genteelly, and though of course it was drink that led to the agony and divorces of three of my sisters, and my father’s first downfall, yet I have always considered that moderate drinking was genteel. Our family physician always drank genteel, and our clergyman always kept it in his wine cellar, and if people would only exert self control and drink genteel, there would be no danger.”

      “How duz Robert Strong feel about it?” sez I.

      “Oh, he is a fanatic on the subject; he won’t employ 22 a man who drinks at all. He says that the city he is founding is a City of Justice, and it is not just for one member of a family to do anything to endanger the safety and happiness of the rest; so on that ground alone he wouldn’t brook any drinking in his model city. There are no very rich ones there, and absolutely no poor ones; he is completely obliterating the barriers that always have, and I believe always should exist between the rich and the poor. Sez I, ‘Robert, you are sacrilegiously setting aside the Saviour’s words, “the poor ye shall always have with you.”’

      “And he said there was another verse that our Lord incorporated in his teachings and the whole of his life-work, that he was trying to carry out: ‘Do unto others as ye would have them to do unto you.’ He said that love and justice was the foundation and cap-stone of our Saviour’s life and work and he was trying in his weak way to carry them out in his own life and work. Robert talked well,” sez she, “and I must confess that to the outward eye his City of Justice is in a happy and flourishing condition, easy hours of work, happy faces of men, women and children as they work or play or study. It looks well, but as I always tell him, there is a weak spot in it somewhere.”

      “What duz he say to that?” sez I, dretful interested in the story.

      “Why, he says the only weak spot in it is his own incompetence and inability to carry out the Christ idea of love and justice as he wants to.”

      “I wish I could see that City of Justice,” sez I dreamily, for my mind’s eye seemed to look up to Robert Strong in reverence and admiration. “Well,” sez she, “I must say that it is a beautiful place; it is founded on a natural terrace that rises up from a broad, beautiful, green plain, flashing rivers run through the valley, and back of it rises the mountains.”

      “Like as the mountains are about Jerusalem,” sez I.

      “Yes, a beautiful clear stream rushes down the mountain 23 side from the melting snow on top, but warmed by the southern sun, as it flows through the fertile land, it is warm and sweet as it reaches Robert’s place. And Robert says,” continued Miss Meechim, “that that is just how old prejudices and injustices will melt like the cold snow and flow in a healing stream through the world. He talks well, Robert does. And oh, what a help he has been to me with Dorothy!”

      “What duz she say about it?” sez I.

      “She does not say so, but I believe she thinks as I do about the infeasibility as well as the intrinsic depravity of disproving the Scriptures.”

      “Well,” sez I, “Robert was right about the mission of our Lord being to extend justice and mercy, and bring the heart of the world into sweetness, light and love. His whole life was love, self-sacrifice and devotion, and I believe that Robert is in the right on’t.”

      “Oh, Robert is undoubtedly following his ideas of right, but they clash with mine,” sez Miss Meechim, shakin’ her head sadly, “and I think he will see his error in time.”

      Here Miss Meechim stopped abruptly to look apprehensively at a young man that I knew wuz a Jonesville husband and father of twins. He was lookin’ admirin’ly at Dorothy, and Miss Meechim went and sot down between ’em, and Tommy come and set with me agin.

      Tommy leaned up aginst me and looked out of the car window and sez kinder low to himself:

      “I wonner what makes the smoke roll and roll up so and feather out the sky, and I wonner what my papa and my mama is doin’ and what my grandpa will do––they will be so lonesome?” Oh, how his innocent words pierced my heart anew, and he begun to kinder whimper agin, and Aronette, good little creeter, come up and gin him an orange out of the lunch-basket she had.

      Well, we got to New York that evenin’ and I wuz glad to think that everybody wuz well there, or so as to git about, 24 for they wuz all there at the deepo, excep’ them that wuz in the street, but we got safe through the noise and confusion to a big, high tarven, with prices as high as its ruff and flagpole. Miss Meechim got for her and Dorothy what she called “sweet rooms,” three on ’em in a row, one for each on ’em and a little one for Aronette. But I d’no as they wuz any sweeter than mine, though mine cost less and wuz on the back of the house where it wuzn’t so noisy. Tommy and I occupied one room; he had a little cot-bed made up for him.

      Indeed, I groaned out as I sot me down in a big chair, if he wuz here, the pardner of my youth and middle age, no room Miss Meechim ever looked on wuz so sweet as this would be. But alas! he wuz fur