Samantha at Saratoga [22]
risin', if it is made proper." But she said she preferred a occupation that wuz risin', and noble, and that made a man necessary and helpful to the masses. And I sez agin -- "Good land! the masses have got to eat. And I guess you starve the masses a spell and they'll think that good bread is as necessary and helpful to 'em as anything can be. And as fer its bein' a risin' occupation, why," sez I, "it is stiddy risen' -- risin' in the mornin,' and risin' at night, and all night, both hop and milk emptin's. Why," sez I, "I never see a occupation so risin' as his'n is, both milk and hop." But she wouldn't seem to give in and encourage him much only by spells. And then Abram didn't take the right way with her. I see he wuz a goin' just the wrong way to win a woman's love. For his love, his great honest love for her made him abject, he groveled at her feet, loved to grovel. I told him, for he confided in me from the first on't and bewailed her coldness to me, I told him to sprout up and act as if he had some will of his own and some independent life of his own. Sez I, "Any woman that sees a man a layin' around under her feet will be tempted to step on him," sez I. "I don't see how she can help it, if she calcerlates to get round any, and walk." Sez I, "Sprout up and be somebody. She is a good little creeter, but no better than you are, Abram; be a man." And he would try to be. I could see him try. But one of her soft little glances, specially if it wuz kind and tender to him, es it wuz a good deal of the time, why it would just overthrow him ag'in. He would collapse and become nothin' ag'in, before her. Why I have hearn him sing that old him, a lookin' right at Ardelia stiddy: "Oh to be nothin', nothin'!" And thinks I to myself, "if this keeps on, you are in a fairway to git your wish." He wuz a good singer, a beartone, and she a secent. They loved to sing together. They needed some air, but then they got along without it; and it sounded quite well, though rather low and deep. Wall, it run along for weeks and weeks, he with his hopes a risin' up sometimes like his yeast and then bein' pounded down ag'in like his bread, under the hard knuckles of a woman's capricious cruelty. For I must say that she did, for sech a soft littte creeter, have cold and cruel ways to Abram. (But I s'pose it wuz when she got to thinkin' about the Prince, or some other genteel lover.) But her real feelin's would break out once in a while, and lift him up to the 3d heaven of happiness and then he'd have to totter and fall down ag'in. Abram Gee had a hard time on't. I pitied him from nearly the bottom of my heart. But I still kep' a thinkin' it would turn out well in the end. For it wuz jest about this time that I happened to find this poetry in a book where she had, I s'posed, left it. And I read 'em, almost entirely unbeknown to myself. It wuz wrote in a dreatful blind way but I recognized it at once. I looked right through it, and see what she wuz a writin' about though many wouldn't, it wuz wrote in sech a deep style. "STANZAS ON BREAD; "or "A LAY OF A BROKEN HEART. "Oh Bread, dear Bread, that seemest to us so cold, Oft'times concealed thee within, may be a sting! Sweet buried hopes may in thy crust be rolled; A sad, burnt crust of deepest suffering. "There are some griefs the female soul don't tell, And she may weep, and she may wretched be; Though she may like the name of Abram well And she may not like dislike the name of G , "Oh Fel Ambition, how thou lurest us on, How by thy high, bold torch we're stridin' led: Thou lurest us up, cold mountain top upon, And seated by us there, thou scoffest at bread. "Thou lookest down, Ambition, on the ovens brim; Thou brookest not a word of him save with contumalee: And yet, wert thou afar, how sweet to set by him And cut low slices of sweet joy with G , "Oh! Fel Ambition,