Samantha at the Worlds Fair | Page 7

after they left her, she too laid out to come on to Chicago, and

spend a few weeks.
He wuz a-layin' out to reconoiter round and find a good place for her to
board and take good care on her. He thought enough on her--yes,
indeed.
But, as he said, she wuz jest struck right down seemin'ly with her grief
at the loss of them two old folks.
You see, if your head has been a-restin' for some time on a piller, even
if it is a piller of stun, when it is drawed out sudden from under you,
your head jars down on the ground dretful heavy and hard.
And when you've been carryin' a burden for a long time, when it is took
sudden from you you have a giddy feelin', you feel light and faint and
wobblin'.
And then she loved 'em--she loved her poor old charges with a
daughter's love and with all the love a mother gives to a helpless baby,
with the pity added that gray hairs and toothless gums must amount to
added up over the sum of dimples and ivory and coral that makes up a
baby's beautiful helplessness.
And they wuz took from her dretful sudden. There wuz a sort of a
influenza prevailin' up round their way, and lots of strong healthy folks
suckumbed to it, and it struck onto these poor old feeble ones some like
simiters, and mowed 'em right down.
The old lady wuz took down first, and her great anxiety wuz--"That Pa
shouldn't know that she wuz so sick."
But before she died, "Pa" in another room wuz took with it, and passed
away a day before she did.
She worried all that mornin' about "Pa," and--"How bad he would feel
if he knew she wuz so sick!" But along late in the afternoon, when the
Winter sun wuz makin' a pale reflection on the wall through the south
winder, she looked up, and sez she--

"Why, there stands Pa right by my bed, and he wants me to git up and
go with him. And, Isabelle, I must go."
And she did.
[Illustration: "Why, there stands Pa, and he wants me to git up and go
with him."]
And Isabelle wuz left alone.
They wuz buried in one grave. And the funeral sermon, they say, wuz
enough to melt a stun, if there had been any stuns round where they
could hear it.
Isabelle didn't hear it (don't git the idee that I am a-wantin' to compare
her to a stun; no, fur from it). She wuz a-layin' to home on a bed, with
her sad eyes bent on nothin'ess and emptiness and utter desolation, so it
seemed to her.
But after a time she begun to pick up a little, judgin' from her letters to
her brother Krit. He had to leave her jest after the funeral on account of
his business; for, civil as it wuz, it had to be tended to.
CHAPTER II.
Wall, we all enjoyed havin' Christopher there the best that ever wuz.
For he wuz very agreeable, as well as oncommon smart, which two
qualities don't always go together, as has often been observed by others,
and I have seen for myself.
Wall, it wuzn't more than a week or so after Krit arrived and got there,
that another relation made his appearance in Jonesville.
It wuz of 'em on his side this time--not like Krit, half hisen and half
mine, but clear hisen. Clear Allen, with no Smith at all in the
admixture.
Proud enough wuz my pardner of him, and of himself too for bein' born

his cousin. (Though that wuz onbeknown to him at the time, and he ort
not to have gloried in it.)
But tickled wuz he when word come that Elnathan Allen, Esquire, of
Menlo Park, California, wuz a-comin' to Jonesville to visit his old
friends.
[Illustration: Tickled wuz he when word come.]
That man had begun life poor--poor as a snipe; sometimes I used to
handle that very word "Snipe" a-describin' Elnathan Allen's former
circumstances to Josiah, when he got too overbearin' about him.
For he had boasted to me about him for years, and years, and a woman
can't stand only jest about so much aggravatin' and treadin' on before
she will turn like a worm.
That is Bible about "The Worm," and must be believed.
What used to mad me the worst wuz when he would git to comparin'
Elnathan with one of 'em on my side who wuz shiftless. Good land!
'Zekiel Smith hain't the only man on earth who is ornary and no
account. Every pardner has 'em, more or less, on his side and on hern;
let not one pardner boast themselves over the other one; both have their
drawbacks.