corfed
at. But she stood ready to go agin and serve the govermunt as a nurse,
trying to heal the woonds caused by bullet and knife, and the ten-fold
worse woonds caused by our govermunt's pet wild beast it rents out
there to worry and kill its brave defenders. I looked forward with
warm anticipations to seein' her, for I sot store by her. She had
fixed over my gray alpacky as good as new, and made me a couple of
ginghams, and I thought more of havin' her with me than I did of her
work, and once when I wuz down with a crick in the back, and couldn't
stir, she come right there and stayed by me and did for me till the
creek dwindled down and disappeared. Her presence is some like the Bam
of Gilead, and her sweet face and gentle ways make her like an angel
in the sick room. Arvilly is more like a mustard plaster than Bam. But
everybody knows that mustard is splendid for drawin' attention to it;
if it draws as it ort to, mustard must and will attract and hold
attention. And I spoze there hain't no tellin' what good Arvilly has
done and mebby will do by her pungent and sharp tongue to draw
attention to wrongs and inspire efforts to ameliorate 'em. And the
same Lord made the Bam of Gilead and mustard, and they go well
together. When mustard has done its more painful work then the Bam
comes in and duz its work of healin' and consolin'. 'Tennyrate anybody
can see that they are both on 'em as earnest and sincere in wantin' to
do right as any human creeters can be, and are dretful well thought on
all over Jonesville and as fur out as Loontown and Zoar.

Some wimmen would have held a grudge aginst the man that murdered her
husband and not bore the sight of the one who loved and mourned him so
constant. But Arvilly had too much good horse sense for that; she
contends that neither of the men who wuz fightin' wuz much to blame.
She sez that if a sane, well man should go out and dig a deep pit to
catch men for so much a head, and cover it all over with green grass
and blossoms and put a band of music behind it to tempt men to walk
out on it, to say nothin' of a slidin' path leadin' down to it, all
soft with velvet and rosy with temptations, if a lot of hot-headed
youth and weak men and generous open-minded men who wuzn't lookin' for
anything wrong, should fall into it and be drownded for so much a
head, she sez the man who dug the pit and got so much apiece for the
men he led in and ruined would be more to blame than the victims, and