Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife Part 12

"Let it behave itself then!" sez Arvilly, "be converted and come out on the Lord's side to the help of the weak aginst the mighty!"

"The saloon," sez Elder Wessel dogmatically, "is the Poor Man's Club."

He wuz all rousted up by her hash talk and come out plainer than he had come. "The rich man has his club, and the saloon is the Poor Man's Club. He has a right to go there for a little recreation."

"Re-creation!" sez Arvilly. "If you think drinkin' pizen whiskey is re-creatin' a man, you're different from me."

"And me, too," sez I. "If you call it re-creatin' to go to the Poor Man's Club sober and sane," sez Arvilly, "and stagger home at midnight crazy drunk, I say he hain't no right to re-create himself that way; he re-creates himself from a good man and worthy member of society into a fiend, a burden and terror to his family and community. Now Elder White's idee of re-creatin' men is different; he believes in takin' bad men and re-creatin' 'em into good ones, and I wish that every minister on earth would go and do likewise."

"I know nothin' about Elder White," sez Elder Wessel hautily.

"He's our minister in Loontown," sez Arvilly. "He has his church open every night in the week for re-creatin' in the right way."

"I don't approve of that," sez Elder Wessel. "The church of the Most High is too sacred to use for such purposes."

"A minister said that once to Elder White," sez Arvilly, "and he answered 'em with that warm meller smile of hisen, 'Where are my boys and girls more welcome and safe than at home, and this is their Father's house,'" sez he.

"Using that holy place for recreation is very wrong," sez Elder Wessel.

Sez Arvilly, "I told you that he used it to re-create anew to goodness and strength. He has music, good books, innocent games of all kinds, bright light, warmth, cheerful society, good lectures, and an atmosphere of good helpful influences surroundin' 'em, and he has sandwiches and coffee served in what wuz the pastor's study, and which he uses now, Heaven knows, to study the big problem how a minister of the Most High can do the most good to his people."

"Coffee," sez Elder Wessel, "is all right in its place, but the common workman hankers after something stronger; he wants his beer or toddy, the gla.s.s that makes him forget his trouble for a time, and lifts him into another world."

"Well, I spoze the opium eater and cocaine fiend hanker after the fool paradise these drugs take 'em into, but that's no sign that they ort to destroy themselves with 'em."

"Coffee, too, is deleterious," sez Elder Wessel. "Some say that it is worse than whiskey."

I spoke up then; I am a good coffee maker, everybody admits, and I couldn't bear to hear Ernest White talked aginst, and I sez: "I never hearn of a workman drinkin' so much coffee that he wuz a danger to his family and the community, or so carried away with it that he spent his hull wages on it. Such talk is foolish and only meant to blind the eyes of justice and common sense. Elder White's Mutual Help Club, as he calls it, for he makes these folks think they help him, and mebby they do, is doin' sights of good, sights of it. Young folks who wuz well started towards the drunkard's path have been turned right round by it, and they save their wages and look like different men since they have left the Poor Man's Club, as you call it, and patronize hisen."

"And Elder White has showed," sez Arvilly, "by his example just what the Church of Christ could do if it wanted to, to save men from the evil of this present time and git 'em headed towards the Celestial City."

"Oh!" sez Elder Wessel, "I would no more use the church dedicated to the Most High in the way you speak of than I would use the communion cup to pa.s.s water in."

"If a man wuz dyin' of thirst, and that cup could be used to save him, don't you spoze the Lord would want it used for that, Elder Wessel?"

sez Arvilly.

"Oh, no! oh, no!" sez he: "give not that which is holy unto dogs; cast not your pearls before swine."

"That is jest what I have been preachin' to you," sez Arvilly. "Give not that which is holy, the best nater, and goodness of boys and men to the dogs, the brutes that lay in wait for 'em in whiskey laws. The G.o.d in man is murdered every 'lection day by professors of religion and ministers."

"Why--whyee," sez Elder Wessel, sinkin' back in his chair.

"Yes," sez the dantless Arvilly, "I mean jest what I say; them that refuse to vote and help in the matter are jest as guilty as license voters; they are consentin' to the crucifixion of Christ in man. And the poor drunkards are not the only ones they help nail to the cross.

The innocent life and happiness of wimmen and children these wicked laws lift up on the cross of agony, and their hearts' blood cries to heaven for judgment on them that might have helped 'em and would not.

The Church of Christ is responsible for this crime," sez Arvilly, "for there is not an evil on earth that could stand before the combined strength of a united church."

Sez Elder Wessel, gittin' back considerable dignity (her hash talk madded him awfully), sez he, "I simply see things in another light from what you do."

"He that is not for me is against me," sez Arvilly.

Sez the Elder in a dogmatic axent, real doggy it wuz, "I say again, the saloon is the Poor Man's Club."

And I sez dreamily, "Talkin' of a club as a club, a club in the hands of a drunken man, strikin' at and destroyin' all the safety and happiness of a home, yes," sez I, "it is such a club."

"Yes," sez Arvilly, "if poundin' his wife to jelly, and his children to deformity and death, is a Poor Man's Club, the saloon is one."

Sez he agin, "Rich men have their clubs to which they may go, and drink all they choose--carouse, do as they please, and why not poor men, too?" he added.

And I sez, "Grantin' that rich men do drink and carouse at their clubs, as I don't know whether they do or not, two wrongs never made one right, and the liquor couldn't hurt 'em so much, for they can buy it pure, and the poor man's drink is pizen by adulteration, makin' a more dangerous drunk, ruinin' their health and makin' 'em spilin' for fights and bloodshed. The rich man can stay all night at his club, or if he goes home the decorous butler or vally can tend to him and protect his family if need be; he won't stagger in at midnight to a comfortless room, where his wife and little ones are herded in cold and starvation and are alone and at his mercy, and the rich man's carouse at his club won't keep his wife and children hungry for a week."

Bein' driv out of that position Elder Wessel tried a new tact: "The poor man has just as much right to the social enjoyment they git out of their saloon as you have, madam, to your afternoon teas and church socials."

"What hinders the poor man from 'tendin' socials?" sez Arvilly, spiritedly. "They are always bein' teased to, and anyway I never knew tea to make anybody crazy drunk."

"The poor man," sez Elder Wessel in his most dictorial way, all of Arvilly's talk havin' slipped offen him like rain water offen a bra.s.s horn, "the poor man, after he has worked hard all day, and has nothing to go home to but a room full of cryin' children, discomfort, squalor and a complaining wife, is justified in my opinion to go to the only bright, happy place he knows of, the saloon."

But I sez, bein' such a case for justice, "How is it with the wife who has worked hard all day in the home of discomfort and squalor, her work being rendered ten times harder and more nerve destroying than her husband's by the care of the cryin' children, how would it be for them, who are equally responsible for the marriage and the children, to take holt together and make the children happier and the home less full of discomfort?"

"Yes," sez Arvilly, "is it goin' to make the home less full of discomfort to have him reel home at midnight and dash the hungry cryin' baby aginst the wall and put out its feeble life, and mebby kill the complainin' wife too?"

"Oh, those are extreme cases and uncommon," sez Elder Wessel.

"Not oncommon at all," sez Arvilly. "If you read the daily papers you will see such things as this, the direct work of the saloon, are continually occurring, too common in fact to attract much attention."

He couldn't deny this, for he knew that we read the papers jest the same as he did, and the fact that he couldn't deny it seemed to kinder tire him, and he sez, getting up:

"I guess I will go and smoke a cigar." And he went. And I went up to my room, too, to pack my satchel bag, for we expected to start the very next mornin' and to be gone about a week or ten days.

Well, the steamer took us to Hilo, and the panorama that swep' by us on that steamer can't never be reproduced by any camera or kodak; the sapphire blue water, the hills standing like mountains of beaten gold and velvety green verdure, and beyond the soft blue and purple mountain ranges, agin deep clefts and cliffs of richest colored rocks with feathery white waterfalls floating down on 'em like a veil, anon pleasant landscapes, sugar cane plantations, picturesque houses, windmills, orchards, dancing brooks and broad green fields. No dissolvin' view wuz ever so entrancin', but like all others it had to dissolve.

We reached Hilo the second day and we all went to a comfortable tarven, and the next mornin' bright and early we sot off on the stage for the volcano over, I state, and state it fearlessly, the most beautiful road that wuz ever built towards any volcano or anything else. Why, I've thought that the road between Jonesville and Loontown wuz beautiful and easy travellin'. Old Hagadone is path-master and vain of the road, and calls the men out twice a year to pay poll taxes and such by workin' it. Sugar maples, elder bushes, and shuemakes, and wild grapes and ivy run along the side of the stun wall, makin' it, I always had thought, on-approachable in beauty. But, good land! if old Hagadone had seen that road he would have turned green as gra.s.s with envy.

Imagine a wide road, smooth as gla.s.s, cut right out of a glowing tropical forest with a almost onimagined splendor, that I spoze was meant to be onseen by mortal eyes, risin' up on each side on't. Why, I've been as proud as a peac.o.c.k of my little hibiscus growin' in grandma Allen's old teapot, and when that blowed out one little blow I called the neighbors in to witness the gorgeous sight. Imagine a hibiscus tree, as big as one of our biggest maples, fairly burnin' all over with the gorgeous blossoms, and bananas with their great glossy leaves, and lantannas. Wuzn't I proud of my lantanna growin' in Ma Smith's blue sugar bowl? I thought it wuz a lovely sight when it had three blows on it at one time. But imagine milds and milds of 'em risin' up thirty feet on each side of the road, and little spindlin'

palms, that we envy if growin' two feet high, growin' here to a hundred feet or more, and begonias and geraniums growin' up into tall trees and of every color, tuberoses and magnolias loadin' the air with fragance, the glossy green of the ohia tree with the iaia vine climbing and racing over it all, mingled in with tamarind and oranges and bamboo, and oleanders with their delicious pink and white blossoms. Sez I: "Do you remember my little oleander growin' in a sap bucket, Josiah? Did you ever think of seein' 'em growin' fifty feet high? What a priceless treasure one would be in Jonesville."

And he whispered back real voyalent: "Don't think, Samantha, of gittin' me to lug one of them fifty-foot trees all the way hum. I've broke my back for years luggin' round your old oleander in a tub, but never will I tackle one of them trees," and he looked up defiantly into the glossy boughs overhead.

"I hain't asked you to, Josiah, but," sez I dreamily: "I would love to git some slips of them fuchia and begonia trees, and that jasmine,"

sez I, pintin' up to the emerald waves of foliage enriched by them I have named, and as many other glowin' with perfume and beauty as there are stars in the heavens, or so it seemed to me. Sez I: "What a show I could make in Jonesville with 'em." Sez I: "What would Miss Bobbett and Sister Henzy say if they could see 'em?" And I pinted up at a gigantick trumpet creeper and convolvuli, festooned along the boughs of a giant geranium and hanging down its banner of bloom.

"They'd say, let well enough alone. I tell you I can't break up my trip diggin' dirt and tendin' to a lot of houseplants from Dan to Beersheba."

"We're not goin' to Dan," sez I, "and if we wuz a man might meet Dan doin' worse than pleasin' his pardner. Look at that jasmine," sez I.

"Is that much like that little slip of Sister Bobbett's growin' in a tea-cup? And see! oh, do see, Josiah, them night bloomin' ceriuses!

Oh, take it on a moonlight night, the walls of fragrant green on either side, and them lovely blows, hundreds and thousands of 'em s.h.i.+nin' out like stars of whiteness, full of the odor of Paradise. Oh, what a sight, Josiah Allen, for us to see!"

And he sez, "Don't git any idee, Samantha, of you and me comin' way back here by moonlight, for we can't do it. The road is thirty milds long, and if we tried it we shouldn't git here till they had done blowin'."

"I hain't no idee of tryin' it, Josiah, I wuz only revellin' in the idee of what the glory of the sight must be."