Monstrous, aeriform, phantoms sublime, Come leer at me, and Cadmian teeth my soul gnaw, Through chiliasms of time; Transcendentaly and remorslessly gnaw; By what agency? Is it a law?
Perish the vacueus in huge immensities; Hurl the broad thunder-bolt of feeling free, The vision dies; So lulls the bellowing surf, upon the mystic sea, Is it indeed so? Alas! Oh me.
“How this sweet poem appeals to tender hearts,” says Betsey as she concluded it.
“How it appeals to tender heads,” says I almost coldly, measurin’ out my cinnamon in a big spoon.
“Josiah Allen’s wife, has not your soul never sailed on that mystical sea he so sweetly depictures?”
“Not an inch,” says I firmly, “not an inch.”
“Have you not never been haunted by sorrowful phantoms you would fain bury in oblivion’s sea?”
“Not once,” says I “not a phantom,” and says I as I measured out my raisons and English currants, “if folks would work as I do, from mornin’ till night and earn thier honest bread by the sweat of thier eyebrows, they wouldn’t be tore so much by phantoms as they be; it is your shiftless creeters that are always bein’ gored by phantoms, and havin’ ’em leer at ’em,” says I with my spectacles bent keenly on her, “Why don’t they leer at me Betsey Bobbet?”
“Because you are intellectually blind, you cannot see.”
“I see enough,” says I, “I see more’n I want to a good deal of the time.” In a dignified silence, I then chopped my raisons impressively and Betsey started for home.
The celebration was held in Josiah’s sugar bush, and I meant to be on the ground in good season, for when I have jobs I dread, I am for takin’ ’em by the forelock and grapplin’ with ’em at once. But as I was bakin’ my last plum puddin’ and chicken pie, the folks begun to stream by, I hadn’t no idee thier could be so many folks scairt up in Jonesville. I thought to myself, I wonder if they’d flock out so to a prayer-meetin’. But they kep’ a comin’, all kind of folks, in all kinds of vehicles, from a 6 horse team, down to peacible lookin’ men and wimmen drawin’ baby wagons, with two babies in most of ’em.
There was a stagin’ built in most the middle of the grove for the leadin’ men of Jonesville, and some board seats all round it for the folks to set on. As Josiah owned the ground, he was invited to set upon the stagin’.