Samantha at Saratoga [62]
That she loved still, though another race wuz a bathin' their weary forwards in the tide. And I wondered as I looked down on it, whether the great heart of the water wuz constant; if it ever heaved up into deep sithes a thinkin' of the one who had passed away, of them who once rested lightly on her bosem, bathed their dark forwards and read the meanin' of the heavens, in the moon and stars reflected there. I don't know as she remembered 'em, and Josiah don't. But I know as we stood there, a lookin' down on her, the lake seemed to give a sort of a sithe and a shiver kind a run over her, not a cold shiver exactly, but a sort of a shinin', glorified shiver. I see it a comin' from way out on the lake and it swept and sort a shivered on clean to the shore and melted away there at our feet. Mebby it wuz a sort o' sithe, and mebby agin it wuzn't. I guess it felt that it wuz all right, that a fairer race had brought fairer customs and habits of thoughts, and the change wuz not a bad one. I guess she looked forward to the time when a still grander race should look down into her shinin' face, a race of free men, and free wimmen; sons and daughters of God, who should hold their birthright so grandly and nobly that they will look back upon the people of to-day, as we look back upon the dark sons and daughters of the forest, in pity and dolor. I guess she thought it wuz all right. Any way she acted as if she did. She looked real sort o' serene and calm as we left her, and sort o' prophetic too, and glowin'. Wall, we went by a long first rate lookin' sort of a tarven, I guess. It wuz a kind of a dark red color, and dretfully flowered off in wood - red wood. And there we see standin' near the house, a great big round sort of a buildin', and my Josiah sez, "There! that is a buildin' I like the looks on. That is a barn I like; built perfectly round. That is sunthin' uneek. I'll have a barn like that if I live. I fairly love that barn." And he stopped the horse stun still to look at it. And I sez in sort o' cool tones, not entirely cold, but coolish: "What under the sun do you want with a round barn? And you don't need another one." "Wall, I don't exactly need it, Samantha, but it would be a comfert to me to own one. I should dearly love a round barn." And he went on pensively, - "I wonder how much it would cost. I wouldn't have it quite so big as this is. I'd have it for a horse barn, Samantha. It would look so fashionable, and genteel. Think what it would be, Samantha, to keep our old mair in a round barn, why the mair would renew her age." "She wouldn't pay no attention to it," sez I. "She knows too much." And I added in cooler, more dignifieder tones, but dretful meanin' ones, "The old mair, Josiah Allen, don't run after every new fancy she hears on. She don't try to be fashionable, and she haint high-headed, except," sez I, reasenably, "when you check her up too much." "Wall," sez he, "I am bound to make some enquiries. Hello!" says he to a bystander a comin' by. "Have you any idee what such a barn as that would cost? A little smaller one, I don't need so big a one. How many feet of lumber do you s'pose it would take for it? I ask you," sez he, "as between man and man." I nudged him there, for as I have said, I didn't believe then, and I don't believe now, that he or any other man ever knew or mistrusted what they meant by that term "as between man and man." I think it sounds kind o' flat, and I always oppose Josiah's usin' it; he loves it. Wall, the man broke out a' laughin' and sez he, "That haint a barn, that is a tree." "A tree!" sez I, a sort o' cranin' my neck forward in deep amaze. And what exclamation Josiah Allen made, I will not be coaxed into revealin'; no, it is better not. But suffice it to say that after a long explanation my companion at last gin in that the man wuz a tellin' the truth, and it wuz the lower part of a tree-trunk, that growed once near the Yo Semity valley of California. Good land! good land! Josiah drove on quick after the man explained it, he felt meachin', but I didn't notice