Sweet Cicely | Page 8

know but she's in the right ont.
But as I said, when her child wus about four years old, Cicely took a
turn, and begun to get all worked up and excited by turns a worryin'
about the boy. She'd talk about it a sight to me, and I hearn it from
others.
She rousted up out of her deathly weakness and heartbroken, stunted
calm, --for such it seemed to be for the first two or three years after her
husband's death. She seemed to make an effort almost like that of a
dead man throwin' off the icy stupor of death, and risin' up with
numbed limbs, and shakin' off the death-robes, and livin' agin. She
rousted up with jest such a effort, so it seemed, for the boy's sake.
She must live for the boy; she must work for the boy; she must try to
throw some safeguards around his future. What could she do to help
him? That wus the question that was a hantin' her soul.
It wus jest like death for her to face the curius gaze of the world again;
for, like a wounded animal, she had wanted to crawl away, and hide her
cruel woe and disgrace in some sheltered spot, away from the sharp-sot
eyes of the babblin' world.
But she endured it. She came out of her quiet home, where her heart
had bled in secret; she came out into society again; and she did every
thing she could, in her gentle, quiet way. She joined temperance
societies,-- helped push 'em forward with her money and her influence.
With other white-souled wimmen, gentle and refined as she was, she
went into rough bar-rooms, and knelt on their floors, and prayed what
her sad heart wus full of,--for pity and mercy for her boy, and other
mothers' boys,--prayed with that fellowship of suffering that made her
sweet voice as pathetic as tears, and patheticker, so I have been told.
But one thing hurt her influence dretfully, and almost broke her own
heart. Paul had left a very large property, but it wus all in the hands of
an executor until the boy wus of age. He wus to give Cicely a liberal, a
very liberal, sum every year, but wus to manage the property jest as he

thought best.
He wus a good business man, and one that meant to do middlin' near
right, but wus close for a bargain, and sot, awful sot. And though he
wus dretful polite, and made a stiddy practice right along of callin'
wimmen "angels," still he would not brook a woman's interference.
Wall, he could get such big rents for drinkin'-saloons, that four of
Cicely's buildings wus rented for that purpose; and there wus one
billiard-room. And what made it worse for Cicely seemin'ly, it wus her
own property, that she brought to Paul when she wus married, that wus
invested in these buildings. At that time they wus rented for dry-goods
stores, and groceries. But the business of the manufactories had
increased greatly; and there wus three times the population now there
wus when she went there to live, and more saloons wus needed; and
these buildings wus handy; and the executer had big prices offered to
him, and he would rent 'em as he wanted to. And then, he wus
something of a statesman; and he felt, as many business men did, that
they wus fairly sufferin' for more saloons to enrich the government.
Why, out of every hundred dollars that them poor laboring-men had
earned so hardly, and paid into the saloons for that which, of course,
wus ruinous to themselves and families, and, of course, rendered them
incapable of all labor for a great deal of the time,--why, out of that
hundred dollars, as many as 2 cents would go to the government to
enrich it.
Of course, the government had to use them 2 cents right off towards
buyin' tight-jackets to confine the madmen the whiskey had made, and
poorhouse- doors for the idiots it had breeded, to lean up aginst, and
buryin' the paupers, and buyin' ropes to hang the murderers it had
created.
But still, in some strange way, too deep, fur too deep, for a woman's
mind to comprehend, it wus dretful profitable to the government.
Now, if them poor laborin'-men had paid that 2 cents of theirn to the
government themselves, in the first place, in direct taxation, why, that

wouldn't have been statesmanship. That is a deep study, and has a great
many curius performances, and it has to perform.
[Illustration: UNCLE SAM ENRICHING THE GOVERNMENT.]
Cicely tried her very best to get the executor to change in this one
matter; but she couldn't move him the width of a horse-hair, and he a
smilin' all the