Samantha at Saratoga [26]
will call it so. I've got a 4th cousin, Beulah Smith (my own age and unmarried up to date), and he always did and would call her Beuler. Truly in some things a pardner's influence and encouragement fails to accomplish the ends aimed at. Wall, it wuz after some words that I drew Josiah away from that seen of enchantment - or he me, I don't exactly know which way it wuz - and we wended onwards in our walk. The hull broad streets wuz full of folks, full as they could be, all on 'em perfect strangers to us and who knew what motives or weapons they wuz a carryin' with 'em; but we knew we wuz safe, Josiah and me did, for way up over all our heads, stood a big straight soldier, a volunteer volunteerin, to see to the hull crew on 'em below, a seein' that they behaved themselves. His age wuz seventy-seven as near as I could make out but he didn't look more'n half that. He had kep' his age remarkable. Wall, it wuz, if I remember right, jest about now that we see a glitterin' high up over our heads some writen in flame. I never see such brilliant writin, before nor don't know as I ever shall ag'in. And Josiah stopped stun still, and stood a lookin' perfectly dumfoundered at it. And finally he sez, "I'd give a dollar bill if I could write like that." I see he wuz deeply rousted up for 2 cents is as high as he usually goes in betted. I see he felt deep and I didn't blame him. Why," sez he, "jest imagine, Samantha, a hull letter wrote like that! how I'd love to send one back to Uncle Nate Gowdey. "How Uncle Nate's eyes would open, and he wouldn't want no spectacles nor nothin' to read it with, would he? I wonder if I could do it," sez he, a beginnin' to be all rousted up. But I sez, "Be calm," for so deep is my mind that I grasped the difficuties of the undertaken' at once. "How could yon send it, Josiah Allen? Where would you get a envelop? How could you get it into the mail bag?" Sez I, "When anybody would send a letter wrote like that, they would want to write it on sheets of lightnin', and fold it up in the envelopin' clouds of the skies, and it should be received by a kneelin' and reverent soul. Who is Uncle Nate that he should get it? He has not a reverent Soul and he has also rheumatiz in his legs." And then I thought, so quick and active is my mind when it gets to startin' off on a tower, I thought of what I had hearn a few days before, of how the secret had been learnt by somebody who lived right there in the village, of floatin' letters up at sea from one ship to another, sigualin' out in letters of flame - "Help! I'm a sinkin'!" or "Danger ahead! Look out!" And I thought what it must be to stand on a dusky night on a lone deck and see up on the broad, dark; lonesome sky above, a sudden message, a flash of vivid lightnin', takin' to itself the form of language. And I wondered to myself if in the future we should use the great pages of the night-sky to write messages from one city to another, or from sea to land, of danger and warnin'; and then I thought to myself, if souls clog-bound to earth are able to accomplish so much, who knows but the freed soul goin' outward and onward from height to height of wisdom may yet be able to signal down from the Safe Land messages of help and warnin' to the souls it loved below. The souls a sailin' and a driftin' through the dark night of despair - a dashin' along through fog and mist and darkness aginst rocks. What it would be to one kneelin' in the lonesome night watches by a grave, if the dark sky could grow luminous and he could read, - "Do not despair! I am alive! I love you!" Or, in the hour of the blackest temptation and dread, when the earth is hollow and the sky a black vault, and the only way of happiness on God's earth seems down the dangerous, beautiful way, God-forbidden, what would it be to have the empty vault lit up with "Danger ahead! We will help you! be patient a little longer!" Oh how fur my thoughts wuz a travellin', and at what a good jog, but not one trace did my companion see on my forward of these thoughts that wuz a passin' through my foretop: