I acted well. (But then I spoze I do look remarkable young for one of my years, and I admired her good horse sense in seein’ it so plain.) But she looked real mauger, and I sez: 

“You look kinder beat out, Jane Olive, hain’t you well?”

Yes, she said she wuz well, but had so many cares that they wore on her.

“Why,” sez I, “you don’t try to do your housework alone, do you?”

No, she said she had ten servants.

So I knowed she didn’t have to do the heaviest of her work, but her face looked dretful tired and disappinted and I knowed it wuz caused by her efforts to git into fashionable society, for I’d hearn more about it since I come here, Miss Huff knowed a woman that lived neighbor to her, she said that in spite of all Sam Perkinses money and Jane Olive’s efforts she couldn’t git so fur into the circle of the first as she wanted to, though she had done everything a woman could do.

Went off summers where the first went and winters too.  When it wuz fashionable to go to springs and seasides she went and ocean trips and south and north, and when it wuz the fashion to go into the quiet country she come to Jonesville.

And now she wuz tryin’ a new skeem to git into the first, she got up a name for bein’ very charitable.  That took her in, or that is part way in, for her money went jest as fur and wuz jest as welcome to heathens and such as if it wuzn’t made out of pork.  It went jest as fur as the money that wuz handed down from four fathers or even five or six fathers who wuz small farmers and trappers in Manhattan years and years ago.  Her money went jest as fur as though it had descended onto her from the sale of the mink skins and cabbages of the grandpas of the 400.

Well, as I say, this did more than all her other efforts put together, and took her inside furder, for givin’ as much as she did they had to invite her to set down on the same charitable boards where these genteel females wuz settin’.  And when a passel of wimmen are settin’ down on one board they have to be more sociable and agreeable like, than if they wuz settin’ round on different piles of lumber.

So Jane Olive wuz highly tickled and gin money freely.  And now I don’t want it understood that Jane Olive done every mite of this work and gin every cent of money for the speech of people or to git on in fashionable life.  No, she wuz kinder good hearted and felt sorry for the afflicted.  Her motives wuz mebby about half and half, half goodness and half ambition, and that is I spoze a little worse than the average, though motives will git dretfully mixed up, evil is worse than Canada thistles to git mixed with good wheat.

When some good object rises up and our souls burn within us aginst wrong and injustice and bigotry and such, we may think in our wropped moments that our motives are all good.  But most always some little onworthy selfish motive will come sneakin’ in by some back door of the heart and wiggle its way along till it sets down right by the side of our highest whitest motives and stays there onbeknown to us.  It is a pity that it is so, but human nater is human nater and we are all on us queer, queer as dogs.  Once in awhile you’ll see some rare soul that seems as if all onworthy motives have been driv out by the angels of divine Purity and Endeavor, but they’re scurce, scurce as hen’s teeth.