“Well,” says she, “I mistrust you have got the very oh Lord.”
It was a Saturday mornin’ and Thomas Jefferson was to home, and he spoke up and said “that was a good desease, and he hoped it would prevail; he knew quite a number that he thought it would do ’em good to have it.”
She looked real shocked, but knew it was some of Thomas J.’s fun. There was one woman that would come in, in a calm, quiet way about 2 times a week, and say in a mild, collected tone,
“I can’t help that,” says she gently, but firmly, “There is tizick with it. And I think that is what ailed Josiah when he was sick.”
“Why,” says I, “that was the newraligy, the doctors said.”
“Doctors are liable to mistakes,” says she in the same firm but modest accents, “I have always thought it was the tizick. There are more folks that are tiziky than you think for, in this world. I am a master hand for knowin’ it when I see it.” She would then in an affectionate manner advise me to doctor for the tizick, and then she would gently depart.
There are 2 kinds of wimmen that go to see the sick. There’s them low voiced, still footed wimmen, that walks right in, and lays their hands on your hot foreheads so soothin’ like, that the pain gets ashamed of itself and sneaks off. I call ’em God’s angels. Spozen they haint got wings, I don’t care, I contend for it they are servin’ the Lord jest as much as if they was a standin’ up in a row, all feathered out, with a palm tree in one hand and a harp in the other.
So I told old Gowdey one cold winter day--(he is awful stingy, he has got a big wood lot--yet lets lots of poor families most freeze round him, in the winter time. He will pray for ’em by the hour, but it don’t seem to warm ’em up much)--he says to me,
“Oh! if I was only a angel! if I only had holt of the palm tree up yonder that is waitin’ for me.”
Says I, coolly, “if it is used right, I think good body maple goes a good ways toward makin’ a angel.”
As I say, I have had these angels in my room--some kinder slimmish ones, some, that would go nigh on to 2 hundred by the stellyards, I don’t care if they went 3 hundred quick, I should call ’em angels jest the same.
Then there is them wimmen that go to have a good time of it, they get kinder sick of stayin’ to home, and nothin’ happenin’. And so they take thier work, and flock in to visit the afflicted. I should think I had pretty near 25 a day of ’em, and each one started 25 different subjects. Wild, crazy subjects, most of ’em, such as fires, runaway matches, and whirlwinds; earthquakes, neighberhood fightin’, and butter that wouldn’t come; great tidal waves, railroad axidents, balky horses, and overskirts; man slaughter, politix, schism, and frizzled hair.