Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition Part 21

Josiah said, "That wuz different, a war between nations wuz planned ahead, it wuzn't murder."

"But," sez I, "if John Jones had planned killin' his man he would git hung the sooner."

"Well," sez Josiah, "great national quarrels has to be settled some way.

Nations wouldn't go to war unless they wuz aggravated."

Sez I, "John Jones wuz aggravated. Murders hain't generally planned or committed in cla.s.s meetin's, and love feasts."

"Well," sez Josiah, scratchin' his head, "it is different."

But I sez, "How different, Josiah, they are both murders."

Sez Josiah, "I guess I'll go down to Grandpa Huff's room and borry the World." But I kep' thinkin' on't after he left about war and what it wuz. Rivers of human blood flowin' through ruined countries, follered by the horrible specters of pestilence, disease and famine, moral and financial ruin. Acres and acres of graves filled with forms once full of throbbing life and hope and dreams of future happiness, cut down like gra.s.s before the mower. Wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts see the sun of their life's joy go down in blackness, their heaven of love and happiness changed into a h.e.l.l of misery by somebody's quarrel, somebody's greed and ambition. How many of the common soldiers who make up the great body of the army know or care about the right or wrong of their cause. They go into the fight like dumb-driven cattle, suffer and die and make their loved ones die a hundred deaths jest because they are hired to do it, hired to murder their fellow men, jest as you would hire a man to cut down a grove of underbrush. They go out to this wholesale slaughter to kill or be killed, to meet all the black awful influences that foller the armies, go gayly to the sound of bugle and drum.

It is the common people who bleed and die, it is the hearts of the common people that are wrung; it is their wives and orphan children who have to struggle along and strive and die, or live and suffer by this cause.

And who can tell the moral, physical and financial ruin, the sickenin' and terrible effects of evil habits formed there, the sin and woe that like a black cloud follers the army? The recordin' angel himself can't do the sum till the day of judgment, not till then can he add up the broad, ever-widenin' effects of evil and sorrow that follers a great war and that shall go on and on till time shall be no more.

Calm judicial eyes lookin' back at this problem from the happy days when Peace and Love shall rule the world, from the era when Courts of Arbitration will settle national differences, will look back on the b.l.o.o.d.y G.o.dless warfare of to-day with more horrow than we do on the oncivilized doin's of our savage ancestors.

It is strange, hain't it, to think eighteen centuries of Christian teaching hain't wiped the blood stains off the face of the earth, as it would like to? Yes, indeed! our Lord's words are luminous with Charity, Peace and Love. But the vengeful black clouds of war sweep up between the nations and the Sermon on the Mount and hides its words so they can't, or don't heed 'em.

And I d'no what's goin' to be done. I guess them that don't believe in war must keep on givin' in their testimony, keep peggin' away at Public Opinion and constant droppin' will wear away stun.

But to resoom backwards. We stayed so long in j.a.pan that I couldn't devote so much time to France as I wanted to, for they too had a fine display. The most beautiful exhibit we saw was the reproduction of the Grand Trienon, the favorite home of Napoleon, brought from all appearances from Versailles with its famous garden and sot down here in St. Louis.

There is a big central pavilion and on each side wings, each terminating in a pavilion joined by tall marble columns. The ruff is surrounded by a bal.u.s.trade ornamented by vases and beautiful statutes. The same bal.u.s.trade extends the hull length of the building below, five hundred and thirty-four feet.

And below it stretches the beautiful garden, terraces, lake, fountains, statutes, rare flowers, shrubs and trees. Winding walks in which the great Conqueror might have walked with his brain teemin' with ambitious plans. I didn't want to leave the garden it was so beautiful, but time wuz pa.s.sin' and we went inside and went through room after room, each one seemin'ly more beautiful than the one we had seen last. The picture-room wuz specially beautiful filled as it is with treasures of French art. And all the rooms wuz gorgeous with tapestries, elaborate carving, sculpture, painting, the most exquisite decorations of all kinds showing what a beauty and pleasure-loving race can gather about it of beauty and grandeur if it sets out to.

And France shows off well also in manufactures, electricity, machinery, transportation, etc. All together this is the best exhibit she has ever made, and she has reason to be proud on't.

England makes a good show in products and processes in every Exposition building. In the Palace of Varied Industries she gives a model of one of her charming country houses, a model indeed of comfort and luxury.

Her national pavilion is built of red brick and stone and is a reproduction of the Orangery, a building two hundred years old. It wuz Queen Ann's favorite home, and I didn't blame Ann a mite for lovin' it. As I walked through the beautiful and stately rooms I thought I would have loved to neighbor with Ann and spend some time with her.

The gardens outside are so beautiful you don't want to leave 'em, shaded avenues, terraces, flower beds, yew and box shrubs trained into shapes of lions and big birds. Josiah wuz entranced here, and as he stood lost in admiration of them green animals growin' right out of the ground, he sez:

"My first job in Jonesville is cut out, Samantha."

As first chaperone I looked at him tenderly and sez, "Don't jar your mind too much, Josiah, don't dwell on tuckerin' things."

"But," sez he, pintin' to the green form of the lion growin' right out of the ground, "do you see what a impressive and n.o.ble figger the old mair is goin' to cut when Ury and I sculp her out of the pig-nose apple tree? We can do it by odd jobs, and the apples hain't good for nothin' anyway."

But I sez, "You can't prune apple trees into figgers, Josiah, it takes different trees, and that is too big anyway."

"That's a woman's way of talkin'; I want her in heroic size, she's worthy on't. I expect," he went on, "the road will be jest lined with Jonesvillians, and we'l see 'em hangin' over the orchard fence lookin' on and admirin' the beautiful statter, I think I can see her now, head up, tail out, mane a flutterin'-you'll see, Samantha."

"Oh, dear!" sez I, "I expect I will see more than I want to."

But goin' on a little furder we see what put such vain and onpractical idees out of his head. We wandered into a spot where there wuz old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers, such as grow in the green meadows and hedges of old England, and there wuz some old wimmen wrinkled and gray, poorly clad, lookin' at them daisies and cow-slips and laughin' and cryin' over 'em.

They wuz fur from the old home and the summer time of youth and love, a half century of years and dreary wastes of sea and land lay between 'em, but these cow-slip blows and daisies took them back to their youth and the sunny fields they wandered in with the young lover whose eyes wuz as blue as the English violets, while their own cheeks wuz as rosy as the thorn flowers.

When the hull world lay hid in a rosy mist, and they wuz the centre of it, and life wuz new, and hope and happiness gilded the future, and the Fairy land of America wuz beckonin' to 'em out of the rosy mist.

Fifty years of dusty, smoky tenement life, hard work, child-birth, rearing children, toil, disappointment, pain-where wuz they? They had all gone. They wuz eighteen agin; they wuz pickin' the rosy blooms in the dear home land, and love wuz whisperin' to 'em that they wuz sweeter than the flowers.

I took out my snowy handkerchief and almost cried myself, the tears just run down my face, and Josiah blowed his nose on his bandanna, and I believe furtively wiped his eyes. But men never love to betray such sentimental emotion, and most immegiately he asked me in a gruff tone for a fried cake, and I handed him one absently and as one who dreams, and we went on and met the girls at the rondevoo appointed.

I'd had my supper and wuz restin' in my room, Molly and Blandina had gone for a walk accompanied by Billy Huff, and Josiah had gone down to set with grandpa Huff a spell, when Aunt Tryphena come in and said a lady wuz there to see me; I asked her who it wuz, and she said:

"I don't know, but guess it is some 'big bug trash,' 'tennyrate she come in a antymobile that stands to the door without hitchin'."

I knowed in a minute it wuz Jane Olive Perkins and told her to bring her up to my room. And she entered with more than her usual gus.h.i.+n' warmth of manner, and told me the first thing that I grew better and younger lookin' every year.

But I kinder waved the idee off and told her, I didn't feel so young as I did twenty or thirty years ago.

I acted well. (But then I spoze I do look remarkable young for one of my years, and I admired her good horse sense in seein' it so plain.) But she looked real mauger, and I sez:

"You look kinder beat out, Jane Olive, hain't you well?"

Yes, she said she wuz well, but had so many cares that they wore on her.

"Why," sez I, "you don't try to do your housework alone, do you?"

No, she said she had ten servants.

So I knowed she didn't have to do the heaviest of her work, but her face looked dretful tired and disappinted and I knowed it wuz caused by her efforts to git into fas.h.i.+onable society, for I'd hearn more about it since I come here, Miss Huff knowed a woman that lived neighbor to her, she said that in spite of all Sam Perkinses money and Jane Olive's efforts she couldn't git so fur into the circle of the first as she wanted to, though she had done everything a woman could do.

Went off summers where the first went and winters too. When it wuz fas.h.i.+onable to go to springs and seasides she went and ocean trips and south and north, and when it wuz the fas.h.i.+on to go into the quiet country she come to Jonesville.

And now she wuz tryin' a new skeem to git into the first, she got up a name for bein' very charitable. That took her in, or that is part way in, for her money went jest as fur and wuz jest as welcome to heathens and such as if it wuzn't made out of pork. It went jest as fur as the money that wuz handed down from four fathers or even five or six fathers who wuz small farmers and trappers in Manhattan years and years ago. Her money went jest as fur as though it had descended onto her from the sale of the mink skins and cabbages of the grandpas of the 400.

Well, as I say, this did more than all her other efforts put together, and took her inside furder, for givin' as much as she did they had to invite her to set down on the same charitable boards where these genteel females wuz settin'. And when a pa.s.sel of wimmen are settin' down on one board they have to be more sociable and agreeable like, than if they wuz settin' round on different piles of lumber.

So Jane Olive wuz highly tickled and gin money freely. And now I don't want it understood that Jane Olive done every mite of this work and gin every cent of money for the speech of people or to git on in fas.h.i.+onable life. No, she wuz kinder good hearted and felt sorry for the afflicted. Her motives wuz mebby about half and half, half goodness and half ambition, and that is I spoze a little worse than the average, though motives will git dretfully mixed up, evil is worse than Canada thistles to git mixed with good wheat.

When some good object rises up and our souls burn within us aginst wrong and injustice and bigotry and such, we may think in our wropped moments that our motives are all good. But most always some little onworthy selfish motive will come sneakin' in by some back door of the heart and wiggle its way along till it sets down right by the side of our highest whitest motives and stays there onbeknown to us. It is a pity that it is so, but human nater is human nater and we are all on us queer, queer as dogs. Once in awhile you'll see some rare soul that seems as if all onworthy motives have been driv out by the angels of divine Purity and Endeavor, but they're scurce, scurce as hen's teeth.

Jane Olive wuz highly tickled with her success, and then, as is the way of human creeters, when she'd done well she wanted to do better. She wanted to outdo the other females settin' on the boards with her, she wanted her board to tip higher than theirn, so she took it into her head to build a Home for Fallen Wimmen in that end of the city where she lived. She said that there wuz sights and sights of wimmen that had fallen round there, and sights that wuz fallin', and I spozed there wuz. I spozed that anywhere that Sam Perkins lived there would be apt to be, and she took the idee of buildin' a home for 'em, it wuz a first rate thought, but in my opinion it didn't go fur enough, it didn't cover the hull ground.

Well, Jane Olive had gin of her own money ten thousand dollars and had raised nine thousand more, twenty thousand would build it, and she wuz collectin' round even in St. Louis when she met anybody she thought would give; she knowed how the welfare of humanity, specially female humanity, lay down on my heart, therefore she tackled me.

CHAPTER XIV.