Part 10 (1/2)

And I says, ”What did the conductor say?”

And he says, ”He didn't say nothin'. When he asked me for my fare, I told him I had a free pa.s.s, and I showed it to him. And he took it, and looked at it close, and took out his specks, and looked and looked at it for a number of minutes; and then he handed it back to me, and I put it into my pocket; and that wus all there was of it.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOOKING DUBERSOME.]

Says I, ”How did the conductor look when he was a readin' it?”

And he owned up that he looked dubersome. But, says he, ”I rode on it, and I told you that I could.”

”Wall,” says I, sithin', ”there is a great mystery about it.”

Says he, ”There hain't no mystery to me.”

And then I beset him agin to tell me what he thought the reason wus they give it to him.

And he said ”he thought it was because he was so smart.” Says he, ”I am a dumb smart feller, Samantha, though I never could make you see it as plain as I wanted to.” And then says he, a goin' on prouder and prouder every minute,-

”I am pretty-lookin'. I am what you might call a orniment to any car on the track. I kinder set a car off, and make 'em look respectable and dressy. And I'm what you might call a influential man, and I s'pose the railroad-men want to keep the right side of me. And they have took the right way to do it. I shall speak well of 'em as long as I can ride free. And, oh! what solid comfort I shall take, Samantha, a ridin' on that pa.s.s! I calculate to see the world now. And there is nothin' under the sun to hender you from goin' with me. As long as you are the wife of such a influential and popular man as I be, it don't look well for you to go a mopein' along afoot, or with the old mare. We will ride in the future on my free pa.s.s.”

”No,” says I. ”I sha'n't ride off on a mystery. I prefer a mare.”

Says he, for he wus that proud and excited that you couldn't stop him nohow,-

”It will be a dretful savin' of money, but that hain't what I think of the most. It is the honor they are a heapin' onto me. To think that they think so much of me, set such a store by me, and look up to me so, that they send me a free pa.s.s without my makin' a move to ask for it. Why, it shows plain, Samantha, that I am one of the first men of the age.”

And so he would go on from hour to hour, and from day to day; and I wus that dumbfoundered and wonderin' about it, that I couldn't for my life tell what to think of it. It worried me.

But from that day Josiah Allen rode on that pa.s.s, every chance he got. Why, he went to the Ohio on it, on a visit to his first wive's sister; and he went to Michigan on it, and to the South, and everywhere he could think of. Why, he fairly hunted up relations on it, and I told him so.

And after he got 'em hunted up, he'd take them onto that pa.s.s, and ride round with 'em on it.

And he told every one of 'em, he told everybody, that he thought as much agin of the honor as he did of the money. It showed that he wus thought so much of, not only in Jonesville, but the world at large.

Why, he took such solid comfort in it, that it did honestly seem as if he grew fat, he wus so puffed up by it, and proud. And some of the neighbors that he boasted so before, wus eat up with envy, and seemed mad to think he had come to such honor, and they hadn't. But the madder they acted, the tickleder he seemed, and more prouder, and high-headeder.

But I could not feel so. I felt that there wus sunthin' strange and curius about it. And it wus very, very seldom that Josiah could get me to ride on it. Though I did take a few short journeys on it, to please him. But I felt sort o' uneasy while I was a ridin' on it, same as you feel when you are goin' up-hill with a heavy load and a little horse. You kinder stand on your feet, and lean forward, as if your bein' oncomfortable, and standin' up, helped the horse some.

I had a good deal of that restless feelin', and oneasy. And as I told Josiah time and time again, ”that for stiddy ridin' I preferred a mare to a mystery.”

Wall, it run along for a year; and Josiah said he s'posed he'd have to write on, and get the pa.s.s renewed. As near as he could make out, it run out about the 4th day of April. So he wrote down to the head one in New- York village; and the answer came back by return mail, and wrote in plain writin' so we could read it.

It seemed there wus a mistake. It wuzn't a free pa.s.s, it wus a order for Josiah Allen to remove a pig-pen from his place on the railroad-track within three days.

There it wuz, a order to remove a nuisence; and Josiah Allen had been a ridin' on it for a year, with pride in his mean, and haughtiness in his demeanor.

Wall, I never see a man more mortified and cut up than Josiah Allen wuz. If he hadn't boasted so over its bein' gin to him on account of his bein' so smart and popular and etcetery, he wouldn't have felt so cut up. But as it was, it bowed down his bald head into the dust (allegory).

But he didn't stay bowed down for any length of time: truly, men are const.i.tuted in such a way that mortification don't show on 'em for any length of time.