but crushed bones and flesh and vitals, that is just crowdin' down your insides into a state o' disease and deformity, torturin' your heart down so's the blood can't circulate, and your lungs so's you can't breathe, it is nothin' but slow murder anyway, and if I ever take it into my head to kill myself, Alminy Hagidone, I haint a goin' to do it in a way of perfect torture and torment to me, I'd ruther be drownded."She quailed, and I sez, "I am one that is goin' to take good long breaths to the very last." She see I wuz like iron aginst the idee of bein' drawed in, and tapered, and she desisted.I s'pose I did look skairful.But she seemed still to cling to the idee of low necks and trains, and she sez sort a rebukingly:
"You ortn't to go to Saratoga if you haint willin' to do as the rest do.I spose," sez she dreamily, "the streets are full of wimmen a walkin' up and down with long trains a hangin' down and sweepin' the streets, and ev'ry one on 'em with low necks and short sleeves, and all on 'em a flirting with some man""Truly," sez I, "if that is so, that is why the idee come to me.
I am needed there.I have a high mission to perform about.But Idon't believe it is so."
"Then you won't have it made with a long train?" sez she, a holdin'
up a breadth of the alpacky in front of me, to measure the skirt.
"No mom!" sez I, and there wuz both dignity and deep resolve in that "mom." It wuz as firm and stern principled a "mom" as I ever see, though I say it that shouldn't.And I see it skairt her.
She measured off the breadths kinder trembly, and seemed so anxious to pacify me that she got it a leetle shorter in the back than it wuz in the front.And (for the same reason) it fairly clicked me in the neck it wuz so high, and the sleeves wuz that long that I told Josiah Allen (in confidence) I was tempted to knit some loops across the bottom of 'em and wear 'em for mits.
But I didn't, and I didn't change the dress neither.Thinkses I, mebby it will have a good moral effect on them other old wimmen there.Thinkses I, when they see another woman melted and shortened and choked fur principle's sake, mebby they will pause in their wild careers.
Wall, this wuz in November, and I wuz to have the dress, if it wuz a possible thing, by the middle of April, so's to get it home in time to sew some lace in the neck.And so havin' everything settled about goin' I wuz calm in my frame most all the time, and so wuz my pardner.
And right here, let me insert this one word of wisdom for the special comfort of my sect and yet it is one that may well be laid to heart by the more opposite one.If your pardner gets restless and oneasy and middlin' cross, as pardners will be anon, or even oftener -- start them off on a tower.A tower will in 9 cases out of 10 lift 'em out of their oneasiness, their restlessness and their crossness.
Why this is so I cannot tell, no more than I can explain other mysteries of creation, but I know it is so.I know they will come home more placider, more serener, and more settled-downer.Why Ihave known a short tower to Slab City or Loontown act like a charm on my pardner, when crossness wuz in his mean and snappishness wuz present with him.I have known him to set off with the mean of a lion and come back with the liniment of a lamb.Curious, haint it?
And jest the prospect of a tower ahead is a great help to a woman in rulin' and keepin' a pardner straight and right in his liniments and his acts.Somehow jest the thought of a tower sort a lifts him up in mind, and happifys him, and makes him easier to quell, and pardners must be quelled at times, else there would be no livin' with 'em.This is known to all wimmen companions and and men too.Great great is the mystery of pardners.
