Ever sense I had married to Josiah Allen, I had heerd of Uncle Zebulin Coffin, what a good man he was. Every time Josiah would git low spirited and kinder back slid in his mind, he would groan out, “Oh, if I could only be as good as Uncle Zebulin is!”
And when he would be in this deprested state, if he and I would laugh out kinder hearty at sunthin’ the childern said or done, he would mutter:
“Oh Samantha, what would Uncle Zebulin say if he should hear us laugh! I don’t believe we shall ever get to be so good as he is in this world.”
“What has he done so awful good?” I would say.
“Why,” says Josiah, “Uncle Zebulin haint laughed in over forty years. You don’t have no idee what a good man he is.”
“That don’t raise him 7 cents in my estimation,” says I. “What else has he done so uncommon good?”
“Oh,” says Josiah. “I don’t know of anything in particular. But you never see so good a man as he is. He’s made a regular pattern of himself. He never smiles, and he would sooner cut off anybody’s head than to joke with ’em; and he is so quick to see if anybody else does wrong. He’ll make anybody feel so wicked, when they are with him; they’ll see so plain how much better he is than they be. He is so uncommon good, that I never could bear to stay there; I realized his goodness so much, and see my own wickedness so plain. A dretful good man, Uncle Zebulin is, dretful.”
I knew when we sot out for the Sentinal that we should go within a few miles of him; we had got to go right through Loon Town, where his letters was sent to. (Josiah had helped him to money to pay up a mortgage, and they had wrote back and forth about it.) I beset Josiah to stop and visit him, not that I had such a awful high opinion of him, but I wanted to go more out of curiosity, a sort of a circus feelin’; but Josiah hung back, and I says to him:
“Anybody would think Josiah Allen, that after praisin’ up a Uncle Zebulin day and night for goin’ on twenty years, a man would be willin’ to let his lawful pardner git a glimpse on him;” but Josiah hung back, and says he:
“He is so tarnal good, Samantha, you haint no idee how powerful uncomfortable and unsatisfactory he makes wickeder folks feel.” But I says cheerfully:
“If he is so dretful good as you say, he wont be likely to hurt us, and I don’t go for comfort, I go in a sort of a menagery way; and also,” I added with dignity, “as a P. A. and a P. I.”