But I didn’t, and I didn’t change the dress neither. Thinkses I, mebby it will have a good moral effect on them other old wimmen there. Thinkses I, when they see another woman melted and shortened and choked fur principle’s sake, mebby they will pause in their wild careers.
Wall, this wuz in November, and I wuz to have the dress, if it wuz a possible thing, by the middle of April, so’s to get it home in time to sew some lace in the neck. And so havin’ everything settled about goin’ I wuz calm in my frame most all the time, and so wuz my pardner.
And right here, let me insert this one word of wisdom for the special comfort of my sect and yet it is one that may well be laid to heart by the more opposite one. If your pardner gets restless and oneasy and middlin’ cross, as pardners will be anon, or even oftener—start them off on a tower. A tower will in 9 cases out of 10 lift ’em out of their oneasiness, their restlessness and their crossness.
_Why_ this is so I cannot tell, no more than I can explain other mysteries of creation, but I know it is so. I know they will come home more placider, more serener, and more settled-downer. Why I have known a short tower to Slab City or Loontown act like a charm on my pardner, when crossness wuz in his mean and snappishness wuz present with him. I have known him to set off with the mean of a lion and come back with the liniment of a lamb. Curious, haint it?
And jest the prospect of a tower ahead is a great help to a woman in rulin’ and keepin’ a pardner straight and right in his liniments and his acts. Somehow jest the thought of a tower sort a lifts him up in mind, and happifys him, and makes him easier to quell, and pardners _must_ be quelled at times, else there would be no livin’ with ’em. This is known to all wimmen companions and and men too. Great great is the mystery of pardners.
But to resoom and continue on. I was a settin’ one day, after it wuz all decided, and plans laid on; I wuz a settin’ by the fire a mendin’ one of Josiah’s socks. I wuz a settin’ there, as soft and pliable in my temper as the woosted I wuz a darnin’ ’em with, my Josiah at the same time a peacefelly sawin’ wood in the wood-house, when I heard a rap at the door and I riz up and opened it, and there stood two perfect strangers, females. I, with a perfect dignity and grace (and with the sock still in my left hand) asked ’em to set down, and consequently they sot. Then ensued a slight pause durin’ which my two gray eyes roamed over the females before me.