It was about a week after the Danks’es departure and exodus. It was a cool day for the time of the year, and very windy. And I was settin’ calm and peaceful, hullin’ some strawberries for dinner. For my companion, Josiah Allen, had gone to Jonesville, and I wanted to have dinner ready by the time of his arrival. But I had only jest got my potatoes pared and over the stove, when I heard the old mare and him drive into the barn-yard. He had come sooner than I looked for. But it didn’t excite me; I was prepared. For not knowin’ exactly the time of his arrival, I had made ready for any emergency. I had drawed the table out, and put the table-cloth on; and I felt at rest, and peaceful.

Let wimmen whose pardners are wont to rampage round and act, when they come in and find dinner only jest begun—let ’em not tell any wrong stories or exagerations or parables, let ’em not bandy words or argue, but let ’em, jest before he comes in, draw out the table and throw the table-cloth on, and everything will move on peaceful; their pardners will think dinner is most ready, and as they glance at that snowy table-cloth their wrath will leave ’em, and they will demean themselves like lambs.

I only tell what I have learnt from experience. And any little crumbs of wisdom and knowledge that I have gained by hard experience, and through tribulation, I am willin’ to share freely, without money and without price, with the female sect; I think so much of ’em, and wish ’em so well. Now jest this one little receipt,—this table-cloth performance,—would have been worth dollars and dollars to me if I had known it when I was first a pardner. But I never found it out till I had been married over thirteen years, and had been jawed accordingly, when I was belated and dinner wasn’t ready. Why no woman would have any idee of its value till they try it. Men are as likely creeters as the earth affords, if you only know how to get along with ’em. And wimmen has to try various ways and measures. I learnt this jest by tryin’ it as a experiment. I have tried a good many experiments—little harmless ones like this. Some of ’em work, and some don’t.

Wall, I sot there hullin’ my berries, and listenin’ to the wind, which was a roarin’ round the house. Seems as if I never heard it blow no harder. It blowed for all the world as if it had been kep’ in through sickness in its family, or sunthin’, and was out now for the first time, on a regular spree.

And though it didn’t come right out and sing ’em in plain words, yet it seemed to be a roarin’ it down the chimbley, and blowin’ it through the orchard and round the corners of the house, and whistlin’ it through the open buttery window—the song that other elevated and gay spirits indulge in, about bein’ fairly determined and sot to not go home till mornin’.

It blowed fearfully. But I was calm and peaceful, knowin’ the table-cloth was on, and Josiah would act first-rate. And then, when a tempest is a howlin’ and a actin’ out-doors, it seems as if I enjoy more than ever the safety and sweet repose and happiness of my own hearth-stun (which last is a poetical simely, our hearth not bein’ stun at all, but iron, with a nickel platin’ round it).

Wall, there I sot, feelin’ well and lookin’ well. I had combed my hair slick, and put on a clean gingham dress,—when Josiah Allen opened the door and walked in. He glanced at the table-cloth, and a calm, contented look settled upon his eye-brow, but he left the door open behind him as composed as if he had been born in a saw-mill; and says I:

“Josiah Allen, if there was a heavy fine to pay for shettin’ up doors, you wouldn’t never loose a cent of your property in that way.” And says I, clutchin’ my pan of strawberries with a firmer grip, for truly it was a movin’ and onstiddy, and my apron was a flutterin’ like a banner in the cold breeze: “If you don’t want me to blow away, Josiah Allen, shet up that door.”

“Oh shaw! Samantha. You won’t blow away; you are too hefty. It would take a hurrycane and a simon, too, to tackle you, and lift you.”

“Simon who?” says I, in cold axents, caused partly by my frigid emotions and the cool blast, and partly by his darin’ to say any man could take me up and carry me away.

“Oh! the simons they have on the desert. We hearn Thomas J. read about ’em. They’ll blow camels away, and everything.”

Says I dreamily: “Who’d have thought twenty years ago, to have heard that man a courtin’ me, and callin’ me a zephire and a pink posy and a angel, that he’d ever live to see the day he’d call me a camel.”

“I hain’t called you a camel. I only meant you was hefty, and camels was hefty, and it would take a simon or two to lift you round, either on you.”

“Wall,” says I, in frigid tones, “what I want to know is, are you a goin’ to shet that door?”

“Yes, I be, jest as quick as I change my clothes. I don’t want to fodder in these new briches.”

I rose with dignity,—or as much dignity as I could lay holt of, half bent, tryin’ to keep five or six quarts of strawberries from spillin’ all over the floor,—and went and shet the door myself, which I might have known enough to done in the first place, and saved time and breath. For shettin’ up doors is a accomplishment that Josiah Allen never will master. I have tutored him up on lots of things since we was married, but in this branch of education he has been too much for me. Experiments have been vain; I have about gin up.

In the course of ten or fifteen minutes, Josiah come out of the bedroom lookin’ as pleasant and peaceful as you please, with his hands in his pantaloons pockets, seemin’ly searchin’ their remotest depths, and says he in a off-hand, careless way:

“I’ll be hanged if there hain’t a letter for you, Samantha.”

“How many weeks have you carried it ’round, Josiah Allen?” says I. “It would scare me if you should give me a letter before you had carried it round in your pockets a month or so.”

“Oh! I guess I only got this two or three days ago. I meant to handed it to you the first thing when I got home. But I hain’t had on these old breeches sence that day I went to mill.”

“Three weeks ago to-day,” says I, in almost frosty axents, as I opened my letter.

“Wall,” says Josiah cheerfully, as he hunted round in the bedroom for his old hat, “I knew it wuzn’t long, anyway.”

I glanced my gray eye down the letter, and says I in agitated tones:

“Come out here, Josiah Allen, and let me look at you, and wither you! She that was Alzina Ann Allen is comin’ here a visatin’. She wrote me three weeks ahead, so’s to have me prepared. And here she is liable to come in on us any minute, now, and find us all unprepared.” Says I, “I wouldn’t have had it happen for a ten-cent bill to had one of the relation on your side come and ketch me in such a condition. There the curtains are all down in the spare room. Bill Danks fell and dragged ’em down onto the floor under him, and mussed ’em all up, and I washed ’em yesterday, and they hain’t ironed. And the carpet in the settin’-room up to mend, where he fell onto it with a lighted candle in his hand and sot it afire. And not a mite of fruit-cake in the house, and she a comin’ here to-day. I am mortified most to death, Josiah Allen. And if you had give me that letter, I should have hired help and got everything done. I should think your conscience would smart like a burn, if you have got a conscience, Josiah Allen.”

“Wall, less have a little sunthin’ to eat, Samantha, and I’ll help round.”

“Help! What’ll you do, Josiah Allen?”

“Oh! I’ll do the barn chores, and help all I can. I guess you’d better cook a little of that canned sammen I got to Jonesville.”

Says I coldly, “I believe, Josiah Allen, if you was on your way to the gallus, you’d make ’em stop and get vittles for you—meat vittles, if you could.”

I didn’t say nothin’ more, for, as the greatest poets have sung, “the least said, the soonest mended.” But I rose, and with outward calmness opened the can of salmon, and jest as I put that over the stove, with some sweet cream and butter, if you’ll believe it, that very minute she that was Alzina Ann Allen drove right up to the door, and come in. You could have knocked me down with a hen’s feather (as it were), my feelin’s was such; but I concealed ’em as well as I could, and advanced to the door, and says I:

“How do you do, Miss Rickerson?” She is married to Bildad Rickerson, old Dan Rickerson’s oldest boy.

She is a tall, bony woman, light-complected, sandy-haired, and with big, light-blue eyes. I hadn’t seen her for nineteen years, but she seemed dretful tickled to see me, and says she:

“You look younger, Samantha, than you did the first time I ever seen you.”

“Oh, no!” says I, “that can’t be, Alzina Ann, for that is in the neighberhood of thirty years ago.”

Says she, “It is true as I live and breathe, you look younger and handsomer than I ever see you look.”

I didn’t believe it, but I thought it wouldn’t look well to dispute her any more; so I let it go; and mebby she thought she had convinced me that I did look younger than I did when I was eighteen or twenty. But I only said “That I didn’t feel so young any way. I had spells of feelin’ mauger.”

She took off her things, or “wrappers,” as Tirzah Ann says it is more genteel to call ’em. She was dressed up awful slick, and Josiah helped the driver bring in her trunk. And I told her jest how mortified I wuz about Josiah’s forgettin’ her letter, and her ketchin’ me unprepared. But good land! she told me that “she never in her hull life see a house in such beautiful order as mine was, and she had seen thousands and thousands of different houses.”

Says I, “I feel worked up and almost mortified about my settin’-room carpet bein’ up.”

But she held up both hands—they was white as snow, and all covered with rings—and says she, “If there is one thing that I love to see more than another it is to see a settin’-room carpet up, it gives such a sort of a free, noble look to a room.”

Says I, “The curtains are down in the spare bedroom, and I am almost entirely out of cookin’.”

Says she, “If I had my way, I never would have a curtain up to a window. The sky always looks so pure and innocent somehow. It is so beautiful to set and look up into the calm heavens, with no worldly obstructions between, such as curtains. It is so sweet to sit in your chair, and knit tattin’, and commune with holy nature. And cookin’,” says she, with a look of complete disgust on her face, “why I fairly despise cookin’. What’s the use of it?” says she, with a sweet smile.

“Why,” says I, reasonably, “if it wasn’t for cookin’ vittles and eatin’ em, I guess we shouldn’t stand it a great while, none of us.”

I didn’t really like the way she went on. Never, never, through my hull life, was I praised up by anybody as I was by her durin’ the three days that she stayed with us. She praised everything fur beyond what they would bear.

I believe in praisin’ things that will stand praisin’. Nothin’ does any one more good than appreciation. Honest admiration, sympathy, and good-will put into words are more inspirin’ and stimulatin’ than tongue can tell. They are truly refreshin’. I think as a rule we New Englanders are too cold in our means. Mebby it is settin’ on Plymouth Rock so much, or leanin’ up against Bunker Hill Monument; or mebby we took it from our old Puriten four-fathers, and mebby them four old men ketched cold in their demeaniers from settin’ under the chilly blue light of their old laws, or took the trait from the savages. Any way, we are too undemonstrative and reticent (them are very hefty words, and it is seldom indeed that I harness up a span of such a size to carry my idees.

As a general thing I don’t have idees so hefty but what I can draw ’em along with considerable small words. And I prefer ’em always, as bein’ easier reined in, and held up, and governed. Why, I have seen such awful big words harnessed in front of such weak little idees that they run away with ’em, kicked in the harness, got all tangled up, and made a perfect wrack and ruin of the little idee. Hence, I am cautious, and if I owned droves of ’em, I should be on the safe side, and handle ’em careful and not drive ’em hardly any. But these two I have heard Thomas J. use in jest this place, and hain’t a doubt but they are safe and stiddy as any ever was of their size.)

Thomas J. said, and I believe, that we are too bashful, or shy, or sunthin’, too afraid of expressin’ our hearty appreciation, the honest, friendly admiration and regard we entertain for our friends. But if my friends like me, or my work, I want ’em to tell me of it, to give me the help, and encouragement, and insperation this knowledge will bring. A few sympathetic, cheerin’ words and a warm smile and hand-clasp will do more good than to wait and cut the praise on marble, when the heart they would have cheered and lightened is beyond the touch of joy or pain. I think it is not only silly, but unchristian, to be so afraid of tellin’ our friends frankly how pleasant and admirable we think them, if we do think so. But let us not lie. Let us not praise what won’t stand praisin’. Now when Alzina Ann Rickerson told me that I was as pretty as any wax doll she ever see in her life—and if my intellect and Shakespeare’s intellect was laid side by side, Shakespeare’s would look weak and shiftless compared with mine—and when she said that my old winter bunnet that I had wore on and off for thirteen years was the most genteel and fashionable, and the loveliest piece of millionary she ever sot her eyes on, she was goin’ too fur. Why, that old bunnet wouldn’t hardly hold together to stand her praisin’. And she praised up everything. She flattered Kellup Cobb so, when he happened to come in there one mornin’, that it skairt him most to death.

He had been up by on his father’s business, and as he come along back he stopped the hearse and come in to see when Kitty was a comin’ back, and to see if he could borrow Josiah’s stun-bolt that afternoon to draw some stuns. He was goin’ to wait till Josiah come back from the factory to see about it, but Alzina Ann praised him up so, and looked so admiringly at him, that he dassent. As a general thing I think Kellup is afraider than he need to be of doin’ hurt and gettin’ wimmen in love with him, but now I’ll be hanged if I blame him for thinkin’ he was doin’ damage. Why, she praised him up to the very skies.

She pretended to think that his hair and whiskers and eyebrows was the natural color. They was a sort of a greenish color that mornin’—he had been a tamperin’ with ’em agin, and tryin’ experements. He had been a usin’ smartweed and sage, as I found out afterwards, and they bein’ yellow before, the two colors together made ’em a sort of a dark bottle-green—made him look as curious as a dog, and curiouser than any dog I ever laid eyes on.

But oh, how Alzina Ann did praise ’em up. You’d have thought, to heard her go on, that she had all her hull life been longin’ to ketch a glimpse of jest such colored hair and whiskers. She said they looked so strikin’, and she never had seen anything like ’em in her life before, which last I don’t doubt at all. And then she would glance out at the hearse, and tell him he looked so noble and impressive on it, it give him such a lofty, majestic look, so becomin’ to his style. And then she would branch off again and praise up his looks.

Why, I don’t wonder a mite that Kellup thought he was ensnarin’ her affections and doin’ harm.

He follered me out onto the back stoop, where I was feedin’ a chicken that the old hen had forsook, and I was bringin’ up as a corset. He follered me out there, and whispered, with a anxious look, that he was goin’ to start for home that minute, that he dassent wait another minute to see Josiah about the stun-bolt; and, says he; with a awful anxious look:

“I am afraid I have done hurt as it is, but Heaven knows I didn’t mean to.”

I threw the corset another handful of dough, and told him, in a encouragin’ tone, that “I guessed he hadn’t done much harm.”

“Why,” says he, “don’t you s’pose I could see for myself what I was a doin’? She was a gettin’ head over heels in love with me. And,” says he, frownin’ and knittin’ up his eyebrows:

“What good will it do to have another married woman a droopin’ round after me?”

Says I, mechanically, as I put some fresh water on the corset’s dish:

“I thought you wanted to see Josiah about the stun-bolt, you said you needed it.”

“Yes, I need the stun-bolt, but I need a easy conscience more. I had ruther lug the stuns in my arms, and crack my back, and bruise my stomach, than crack the commandments and strain my principles. I see from her actions that I have got to leave at once, or no knowin’ what the consequences will be to her. I am afraid she will suffer now, suffer intensely. But what can a man do?” says he, frownin’ heavily. “They have got to go around some, and do errants. And if wimmen lay traps for ’em on every side, and make fools of themselves, what is a man to do? But I don’t want to do harm, Heaven knows I don’t.”

And he started for the gate almost on the run. And I was jest a goin’ in when Alzina Ann come out to the back door herself, and happenin’ to see the corset, she said “she should rather have it for a pet, and it was far handsomer and more valuable than any mockin’-bird, or canary, or parrot she ever laid eyes on.” And so she kep’ on in jest that way. And one mornin’ when she had been goin’ on dretfully that way, I took Josiah out one side and told him “I couldn’t bear to hear her go on so, and I believed there was sunthin’ wrong about it.”

“Oh, no,” says he, “she means every word she says. She is one of the loveliest creeters on earth. She is most a angel. Oh!” says he, dreamily, “What a sound mind she has got. How fur she can see into things.”

Says I, “I heard her a tellin’ you this mornin’ that you was one of the handsomest men she ever laid eyes on, and didn’t look a day over twenty-one.”

“Wall,” says he, with the doggy firmness of his sect, “she thinks so; she says jest exactly what she thinks.” And says he, in firm axents, “I am a good-lookin’ feller, Samantha—a crackin’ good-lookin’ chap; but I never could make you own up to it.”

I didn’t say nothin’, but my gray eye wandered up, and lighted on his bald head. It rested there searchin’ly and very coldly for a moment or two, and then says I sternly, “Bald heads and beauty don’t go together worth a cent. But you was always vain, Josiah Allen.”

Says he, “What if I wuz?” And says he, “She thinks different from what you do about my looks. She has got a keen eye in her head for beauty. She is very smart, very. And what she says, she means.”

“Wall,” says I, “I am glad you are so happy in your mind. But mark my words, you won’t always feel so neat about it, Josiah Allen, as you do now.”

Says he in a cross, surly way, “I guess I know what I do know.”

I hain’t a jealous hair in the hull of my foretop or back hair, but I thought to myself, I’d love to see Josiah Allen’s eyes opened; for I knew as well as I knew my name was Josiah Allen’s wife, that that woman didn’t think Josiah was so pretty and beautiful. But I didn’t see how I was goin’ to convince him, for he wouldn’t believe me when I told him she was a makin’ of it; and I knew she would stick to what she had said, and so there it was. But I held firm, and cooked good vittles, and done well by her.