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It looked like a chance to stick Doc Bliven, and while I was hesitating, Mrs. Bliven whispered that there was a form for the ceremony in the instruction book. "I'll bet you the oysters for the crowd I can," I said. "You furnish the happy couple and I'll see that you furnish the oyster supper, too." "Any couple will do," said the doctor. "Come, Mollie, we may as well go through it again."
Now I come to people whose histories I know by the absorption of a lifetime's experience. I know that it was Mrs. Bliven's husband we always called her that, of course who expected to arrest the pair of them as they crossed the Dubuque ferry; and that I was made a cat's-paw in slipping her past her pursuers and saving Bliven from arrest.
Buckner Gowdy, Doctor Bliven, their associates, and others not yet mentioned will be found helping to make or mar the story all through the future; for an Iowa community was like a growing child in this, that its character in maturity was fixed by its beginnings.
When he said that we would have to get the vote of Doc Bliven, who was a member of the Board of Supervisors, I began to take notice. "Bliven always seemed to like you," said Roebuck. "We all kind of wish you'd see what you can do for us with him."
"I thought they had gone to Colorado," said the doctor. "They said they were leaving her behind," said Mrs. Bliven. "They said.... Do you say she's at your house? Who's with her?" "No one," said I. "She's alone. Hurry, Doctor: she needs you bad." "Just a minute," said he. "What seems to be the matter? Is she very bad?"
"I think I can get his vote," I said, after thinking it over for a while and as I thought of it, the Dubuque ferry in 1855, the arrest of Bliven in the queue of people waiting at the post-office, my smuggled passenger, and the uplift I felt as the Iowa prairie opened to my view as we drew out of the ravines to the top of the hills all this rolled over my memory.
We make our usual announcements: Married at the residence of J.T. Vandemark, Miss Rowena Fewkes to Mr. Magnus Thorkelson. It's a boy, standard weight. The ceremonies were presided over by Doctor Bliven, our genial disciple of Esculapias, and by Elder Thorndyke, each in his respective sphere of action. Great harmony marked the carrying out of these usually separate functions.
"It's a confinement case," said I. I had been thinking of the proper word all the way. "And she alone!" exclaimed Mrs. Bliven. "Hurry, Doctor! I'll get your instruments and medicine-case, and you can hitch up. You stay here, Jake. I want to speak to you." She ran up-stairs, and down again in a few seconds, with the cases, and wearing her bonnet and cloak.
Bliven into Iowa, as I have told it in this history. It hurt Bliven politically, but he kept on boosting me, and it was his electioneering, that I knew nothing about, that elected me justice of the peace; and it was Mrs. Bliven's urging that caused me to qualify by being sworn in though I couldn't see what she meant by her interest.
Doctor Bliven as a member of the County Board voted for the new township just as his wife said he would after I talked with her about it. N.V. Creede says that at this time I was threatened with political ability; but happily recovered.
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