Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/319

 both sides full of little groups of the relations; we wuz about the last ones there, owin' to most all the rest havin' come on the cars or the stage from Zoar and Loontown.

Uncle Submit Allen and Aunt Patience and their three daughters and their children, and Tamer's brother's folks and her Uncle Preserved, and Aunt Priscilla and Aunt Nancy John and Aunt Nancy Joe, widders of the old twins, John and Joseph Allen, and Uncle Ichabod Allen, poor creeter! he had lost his wife, but he kep' his old maid girl to keep house for him; yes, Huldy wuz there, too, takin' first rate care of her Pa; Cousin Joel and his wife and Marii, she is a kind of a widder, that is, her husband, Jotham Allen, left her a year ago this comin' fall, run away with Elam Snyderses widder and a three-year-old colt that belonged to Marii, and, as I told her, I should mourn some for the colt, but should consider it wuz a colt well lost to git red of Jotham. A poor, whifflin' creeter, drinkin' and behavin', and had ever sence they wuz married. Marii is a good deal better off without him, and she begins to think so, too; she is a tailoress and gits good wages and don't have to have her heart and mind on a strain all the time.

Why, sometimes I think it is easier to settle down and be real onhappy than it is to be between and betwixt, and not know what roll you will be called to play the next minute. If you know you are onhappy you can set down and mourn and give your hull time to it as it were, and not strain your mind, not knowin' what you are goin' to do next.

But to resoom. These relations I have named all pressed forwards in the stoop to greet me; after Tamer and Anna and Jack, bless him! had met us with a hearty