Samantha at Saratoga [67]
to keep 'em apart - settin' up in high chairs on different sides of my heart. Why, if I'd had 4, I'd have 'em to the different pints of the compass, east, west, north, south, as far apart from each other as my heart would admit of. Ketch me a lumpin' in all the precious memories of my Josiah with them of any other man, bond or free, Jew or Genteel; no, and I'd refrain from tellin' to the new one about the other ones. No, when a pardner dies and you set out to take another one, bury the one that has gone right under his own high chair in your heart, don't keep him up there a rattlin' his bones before the eyes of the 2d, and angerin' him, and agonizen' your own heart. Bury him before you bring a new one into the same room. And never! never! even in moments of the greatest anger, dig him up agin or even weep over his grave, before the new pardner. No; under the moonlight, and the stars, before God only, and your own soul, you may lay there in spirit on that grave, weep over it, keep the turf green. But not before any one else. And I wouldn't advise you to go there alone any too often. I would advise you to spend your spare time ornementin' the high chair where the new one sets, wreathin' it round with whatever blossoms and trailin' vines of tenderness and romance you have left over from the first great romance of life. It would be better for you in the end. I said some few of these little thoughts to the female mentioned; and I s'pose I impressed her dretfully, I s'pose I did. But I couldn't stay to see the full effects on't, for another female setter came up at that minute to talk with her, and my companion came up at that very minute to ask me to go a walkin' with him up to the cemetery. That is a very favorite place for Josiah Allen. He often used to tell the children when they wuz little, that if they wuz real good he would take 'em out on a walk to the grave-yard. And when I first married to him, if I hadn't broke it up, that would have been the only place of resort that he would have took me to Summers. But I broke it up after a while. Good land! there is times to go any where and times to stay away. I didn't want to go a trailin' up there every day or two; jest married too! But to-day I felt willin' to go. I had been a lookin' so long at the crowd a fillin' the streets full, and every one on 'em in motion, that I thought it would be sort a restful to go out to a place where they wuz still. And so after a short walk we came to the village that haint stirred by any commotion or alarm. Where the houses are roofed with green grass and daisies, and the white stun doors don't open to let in trouble or joy, and where the inhabitants don't ride out in the afternoon. Wall, if I should tell the truth which I am fur from not wantin' to do, I should say that at first sight, it wuz rather of a bleak, lonesome lookin' spot, kinder wild and desolate lookin'. But as we went further along in it, we came to some little nooks and sheltered paths and spots, that seemed more collected together and pleasant. There wuz some big high stuns and monuments, and some little ones but not one so low that it hadn't cast a high, dark shadow over somebody's life. There wuz one in the shape of a big see shell. I s'pose some mariner lay under that, who loved the sea. Or mebby it wuz put up by some one who had the odd fancy that put a shell to your ear you will hear a whisperin' in it of a land fur away, fur away. Not fur from this wuz a stun put up over a young engineer who had been killed instantly by his engine. There wuz a picture of the locomotive scraped out on the stun, and in the cab of the engine wuz his photograph, and these lines wuz underneath: My engine now lies still and cold, No water does her boiler hold; The wood supplies its flames no more, My days of usefulness are o'er. We wended our way in and out of the silent streets for quite a spell, and then we went and sot down on the broad piazza of the sort of chapel and green-house that stood not fur from the entrance. And while