But I explained it to him, that by windin’ a piller-case, or somethin’ round the top of his head, the hat would fit on, jest as you would fix a small cork into a big bottle.
So that bein’ arrainged, my next thought was for my own hat, and I thought mournfully as I examined it, mine would be as much too small as his was too big; it was an old one of Tirzah Ann’s, it was pure white, but it was small for _her_, and nobody could have got me even to have tried it onto my head, for love or money. But in such a nature as J. Allen’s wife’s, _principle_ is all in all.
And as I looked in the glass and see how awfully I looked in it, a feelin’ of grandeur--self sacrificin’ nobility and patrotism swelled up in me, and made my face look redder than ever, I am naturally very fresh colored. And I felt that for the sake of Horace and principle, I could endure the burnin’ sun, and mebby the scoffs and sneers of Jonesville, they bein’ most all on the side of Grant. I took a old white silk bunnet linin’ of mine, and put a new bindin’ round the edge, it bein’ formally bound with pink. And then after readin’ a chapter in Fox’es Book of Martyrs--a soul stirrin’ chapter, concernin’ them that was biled in oil and baked on gridirens for principle--I sallied out to get a feather to put onto it.
We hadn’t no white feathers by us, and I shouldn’t have felt like runnin’ Josiah into any extra expense to buy one, if there had been a feather store in the door yard. But our old rooster “Hail the Day,” as Thomas Jefferson calls him, had the most curlin’est, and foamin’est tail feathers you ever see, white as snow. And inspired by the most pure and noble and lofty sentiments that can animate the human breast, I chased up that old rooster for nigh onto half an hour. At last I cornered him behind the barn, and as I held him tight to my breast, and pulled out by main strength two long slim feathers, that quirled and waved in a invitin’ manner, I says to him,
“This is hard for you, old Hail the Day. But you are not the rooster I take you to be, you are not like your mistress, if you are not willin’ to suffer in the cause of Right.”
He flopped his wings, when I let him go, and crowed nobly. I fixed the feathers in and we set out. But I was more scairt than hurt in the line of scoffs. As we went into Jonesville not a scoff did I see--not a single scoff. No! they all smiled as they looked at us, they see the power of principle, and they was proud of us. Some of ’em laughed, they admired us so.