Samantha at Saratoga | Page 6

world, and it makes me feel curius a good deal of the time as we go through it. But we have to make allowances for it, for the old world is on a tramp, too. It can't seem to stop a minute to oil up its old axeltrys -- it moves on, and takes us with it. It seems to be in a hurry.
Everything seems to be in a hurry here below. And some say Heaven is a place of continual sailin' round and goin' up and up all the time. But while risin' up and soarin' is a sweet thought to me, still sometimes I love to think that Heaven is a place where I can set down, and set for some time.
I told Josiah so (waked him up, for he wuz asleep), and he said he sot more store on the golden streets, and the wavin' palms, and the procession of angels. (And then he went to sleep agin.)
But I don't feel so. I'd love, as I say, to jest set down for quite a spell, and set there, to be kinder settled down and to home with them whose presence makes a home anywhere. I wouldn't give a cent to sail round unless I wuz made to know it wuz my duty to sail. Josiah wants to.
But, as I say, everybody is in a hurry. Husbands can't hardly find time to keep up a acquaintance with their wives. Fathers don't have no time to get up a intimate acquaintance with their children. Mothers are in such a hurry -- babys are in such a hurry -- that they can't scarcely find time to be born. And I declare for't, it seems sometimes as if folks don't want to take time to die.
The old folks at home wait with faithful, tired old eyes for the letter that don't come, for the busy son or daughter hasn't time to write it -- no, they are too busy a tearin' up the running vine of affection and home love, and a runnin' with it.
Yes, the hull nation is in a hurry to get somewhere else, to go on, it can't wait. It is a trampin' on over the Western slopes, a trampin' over red men, and black men, and some white men a hurryin' on to the West -- hurryin' on to the sea. And what then?
Is there a tide of restfulness a layin' before it? Some cool waters of repose where it will bathe its tired forward, and its stun-bruised feet, and set there for some time?
I don't s'pose so. I don't s'pose it is in its nater to. I s'pose it will look off longingly onto the far off somewhere that lays over the waters -- beyend the sunset.
JOSIAH ALLEN'S WIFE. NEW YORK, June, 1887.

I.
SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA.
The idee on't come to me one day about sundown, or a little before sundown. I wuz a settin' in calm peace, and a big rockin' chair covered with a handsome copperplate, a readin' what the Sammist sez about "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity." The words struck deep, and as I said, it was jest that very minute that the idee struck me about goin' to Saratoga. Why I should have had the idee at jest that minute, I can't tell, nor Josiah can't. We have talked about it sense.
But good land! such creeters as thoughts be never wuz, nor never will be. They will creep in, and round, and over anything, and get inside of your mind (entirely unbeknown to you) at any time. Curious, haint it? -- How you may try to hedge 'em out, and shet the doors and everything. But they will creep up into your mind, climb up and draw up their ladders, and there they will be, and stalk round independent as if they owned your hull head; curious!
Well, there the idee wuz -- I never knew nothin' about it, nor how it got there. But there it wuz, lookin' me right in the face of my soul, kinder pert and saucy, sayin', "You'd better go to Saratoga next summer; you and Josiah."
But I argued with it. Sez I, "What should we go to Saratoga for? None of the relations live there on my side, or on hison; why should we go?"
But still that idee kep' a hantin me; "You'd better go to Saratoga next summer, you and Josiah." And it whispered, "Mebby it will help Josiah's corns." (He is dretful troubled with corns.) And so the idee kep' a naggin' me, it nagged me for three days and three nights before I mentioned it to my Josiah. And when I did, he scorfed at the idee. He said, "The idee of water curing them dumb corns -- "
Sez I, "Josiah Allen, stranger things have been