Excerpt
LEAVING HOME.
I HAVE made up my mind. Having put my hand to the plough, it isn't in me to back out of a duty when duty and one's own wishes sail amicably in the same canoe. I am going to give myself up to the good of mankind and the dissemination of great moral ideas.
Selected by the Society of Infinite Progress as its travelling missionary, with power to spread the most transcendental of New England ideas throughout the world, I shall take up my cross and go forth.
The evening after the Society had crowned me with this honor, I asked Aunt Kesiah and Uncle Ben Frost, who have been working the farm on shares ever since my father died, if they could not make out to do without me for some months, or weeks, or years, just as duty or my own feelings took a notion to stay.
Aunt Kesiah sat right down in the rocking-chair, and looked straight in my face for a whole minute without speaking.
"What," says she at last, "going away from home at your age—a female woman all alone in the world! You and the Society just take my breath away, Phœmie. Where on arth are you a going to?"
"Well," says I, "it seems to be my duty to seek a field where there is the most sin and iniquity a going on, where dishonesty rides rampagnatious as a roaring lion, and fashion flaunts herself like a peacock with moons in every tail feather. First of all, the field of my duty lies in York, that Babylon of cities."
"But whose a going to bear the expenses?" says Uncle Ben, who always was 'cute as a miser about money matters. "Duty is sumtimes rayther expensive."
"The Society," answers I. "The members are a picking up produce now, I shan't go empty-handed on my mission. All the members are wide awake about that. Crops have been first-rate."
"Yes," says Uncle Ben, "I give in there."
"And hens never laid better since chickens were hatched," continued I.
"Jes' so," says Aunt Kesiah, "if the pesky creturs wouldn't run off and hide their nests."
"Hams are plenty, smoked beef ditto, to say nothing of dried apples. I mean to sell everything at a profit and settle accounts with the Society."
"I reckon you'll get cut short; up to this time there has bin lots of talking in that Society. When it comes to giving—but never mind—we shall see!"
"There, there, Benjamin, don't you go to pouring cold water on our Phœmie's missionary work. She is sot on going, so let her go."
"Is she sot?" says Uncle Ben, looking at me sort of anxious.
"Yes," says I, "my face is turned to the mark of the prize of the high calling."
"Jes' so," says Uncle Ben, "got your hand on the prow with a hard grip? That being the fact, old woman, the best thing is for you to lend a helping hand and send her off comfortably. She can try anyhow, though I have a notion that the world has got to be so wicked since the war, that one female woman—"
"Girl!" says I.
"Well, girl—may fall short of regenerating the hull of it all to once. Still there is no knowing what any one can do till they try."
"When do you lay out to start?" says Aunt Kesiah, all in a flutter....