urse, Robert
did it to please me and from principle. I taught him early self-denial
and the pleasures of martyrdom. Of course, I never expected he would
carry my teachings to such an extent as he has in his business life. I
did not mean it to extend to worldly matters; I meant it to be more
what the Bible calls 'the workings of the spirit.' But he will
doubtless feel different as he gets older. And, oh, he is such a help
to me with Dorothy. Now, on this trip he knows my fears, and how
sedulously I have guarded Dorothy from the tender passion, and it wuz
just like him to put his own desires in the background and go with us
to help protect her."

"How did you git such dretful fears of marriage?" sez I. "Men are
tryin' lots of times, and it takes considerable religion to git along
with one without jawin' more or less. But, after all, I d'no what I
should do without my pardner--I think the world on him, and have loved
to think I could put out my hand any time and be stayed and comforted
by his presence. I should feel dretful lost and wobblin' without him,"
sez I, with a deep sithe, "though I well know his sect's shortcomin's.
But I never felt towards 'em as you do, even in my most maddest times,
when Josiah had been the tryinest and most provokinest."

"Well," sez she, "my father spent all my mother's money on horse-racin',
save a few thousand which he had invested for her, and she felt wuz
safe, but he took that to run away with a bally girl, and squandered it
all on her and died on the town. My eldest sister's husband beat her
with a poker, and throwed her out of a three-story front in San
Francisco, and she landin' on a syringea tree wuz saved to git a
divorce from him and also from her second and third husbands for
cruelty, after which she gave up matrimony and opened a boarding-house,
bitter in spirit, but a good calculator. I lived with her when a young
girl, and imbibed her dislike for matrimony, which wuz helped further
by sad experiences of my own, which is needless to particularize. (I
hearn afterwards that she had three disappointments runnin', bein'
humbly and poor in purse.)

"And now," sez she, "I am as well grounded against matrimony as any
woman can be, and my whole energies are aimed on teaching Dorothy the
same belief I hold."

"Well," sez I, "your folks have suffered dretful from men and I don't
wonder you feel as you do. But what I am a goin' to do to be separated
from my husband durin' this voyage