Long years have o'er her flown;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp
That binds her virgin zone;
I know it hurts her—though she looks
As cheerful as she can;
Her waist is ampler than her life,
For life is but a span.
Her hair is almost gray;
Why will she train that winter curl
In such a spring-like way?
How can she lay her glasses down,
And say she reads as well,
When, through a double convex lens,
She just makes out to spell?
This erring lip its smiles—
Vowed she would make the finest girl
Within a hundred miles.
He sent her to a stylish school;
'Twas in her thirteenth June;
And with her, as the rules required,
"Two towels and a spoon."
To make her straight and tall;
They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small;
They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
They screwed it up with pins—
O never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins.
My grandsire brought her back
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth
Might follow on the track);
"Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook
Some powder in his pan,
"What could this lovely creature do
Against a desperate man!"
Nor bandit cavalcade
Tore from the trembling father's arms
His all-accomplished maid.
For her how happy had it been!
And Heaven had spared to me
To see one sad, ungathered rose
On my ancestral tree.
N. P. WILLIS
MISS ALBINA McLUSH
I have a passion for fat women. If there is anything I hate in life, it is what dainty people call a spirituelle. Motion—rapid motion—a smart, quick, squirrel-like step, a pert, voluble tone—in short, a lively girl—is my exquisite horror! I would as lief have a diable petit dancing his infernal hornpipe on my cerebellum as to be in the room with one. I have tried before now to school myself into liking these parched peas of humanity. I have followed them with my eyes, and attended to their rattle till I was as crazy as a fly in a drum. I have danced with them, and romped with them in the country, and periled the salvation of my "white tights" by sitting near them at supper. I swear off from this moment. I do. I won't—no—hang me if ever I show another small, lively, spry woman a civility.
Albina McLush is divine. She is like the description of the Persian beauty by Hafiz: "Her heart is full of passion and her eyes are full of sleep." She is the sister of Lurly McLush, my old college chum, who, as early as his sophomore year, was chosen president of the Dolce far niente Society—no member of which was ever known to be surprised at anything—(the college law of rising before breakfast excepted). Lurly introduced me to his sister one day, as he was lying upon a heap of turnips, leaning on his elbow with his head in his hand, in a green lane in the suburbs. He had driven over a stump, and been tossed out of his gig, and I came up just as he was wondering how in the D——l's name he got there! Albina sat quietly in the gig, and when I was presented, requested me, with a delicious drawl, to say nothing about the adventure—it would be so troublesome to relate it to everybody! I loved her from that moment. Miss McLush was tall, and her shape, of its kind, was perfect. It was not a fleshy one exactly, but she was large and full. Her skin was clear, fine-grained and transparent; her temples and forehead perfectly rounded and polished, and her lips and chin swelling into a ripe and tempting pout, like the cleft of a bursted apricot. And then her eyes—large, liquid and sleepy—they languished beneath their long black fringes as if they had no business with daylight—like two magnificent dreams, surprised in their jet embryos by some bird-nesting cherub. Oh! it was lovely to look into them!
She sat, usually, upon a fauteuil, with her large, full arm embedded in the cushion, sometimes for hours without stirring. I have seen the wind lift the masses of dark hair from her shoulders when it seemed like the coming to life of a marble Hebe—she had been motionless so long. She was a model for a goddess of sleep as she sat with her eyes half closed, lifting up their superb lids slowly as you spoke to her, and dropping them again with the deliberate motion of a cloud, when she had murmured out her syllable of assent. Her figure, in a sitting posture, presented a gentle declivity from the curve of her neck to the instep of the small round foot lying on its side upon the ottoman. I remember a fellow's bringing her a plate of fruit one evening. He was one of your lively men—a horrid monster, all right angles and activity. Having never been accustomed to hold her own plate, she had not well extricated her whole fingers from her handkerchief before he set it down in her lap. As it began to slide slowly toward her feet, her hand relapsed into the muslin folds, and she fixed her eye upon it with a kind of indolent surprise, drooping her lids gradually till, as the fruit scattered over the ottoman, they closed entirely, and a liquid jet line was alone visible through the heavy lashes. There was an imperial indifference in it worthy of Juno.
Miss McLush rarely walks. When she does, it is with the deliberate majesty of a Dido. Her small, plump feet melt to the ground like snowflakes; and her figure sways to the indolent motion of her limbs with a glorious grace and yieldingness quite indescribable. She was idling slowly up the Mall one evening just at twilight, with a servant at a short distance behind her, who, to while away the time between his steps, was employing himself in throwing stones at the cows feeding upon the Common. A gentleman, with a natural admiration for her splendid person, addressed her. He might have done a more eccentric thing. Without troubling herself to look at him, she turned to her servant and requested him, with a yawn of desperate ennui, to knock that fellow down! John obeyed his orders; and, as his mistress resumed her lounge, picked up a new handful of pebbles, and tossing one at the nearest cow, loitered lazily after.
Such supreme indolence was irresistible. I gave in—I—who never before could summon energy to sigh—I—to whom a declaration was but a synonym for perspiration—I—who had only thought of love as a nervous complaint, and of women but to pray for a good deliverance—I—yes—I—knocked under. Albina McLush! Thou wert too exquisitely lazy. Human sensibilities cannot hold out forever.
I found her one morning sipping her coffee at twelve, with her eyes wide open. She was just from the bath, and her complexion had a soft, dewy transparency, like the cheek of Venus rising from the sea. It was the hour, Lurly had told me, when she would be at the trouble of thinking. She put away with her dimpled forefinger, as I entered, a cluster of rich curls that had fallen over her face, and nodded to me like a water-lily swaying to the wind when its cup is full of rain.
"Lady Albina," said I, in my softest tone, "how are you?"
"Bettina," said she, addressing her maid in a voice as clouded and rich as the south wind on an Æolian, "how am I to-day?"
The conversation fell into short sentences. The dialogue became a monologue. I entered upon my declaration. With the assistance of Bettina, who supplied her mistress with cologne, I kept her attention alive through the incipient circumstances. Symptoms were soon told. I came to the avowal. Her hand lay reposing on the arm of the sofa, half buried in a muslin foulard. I took it up and pressed the cool soft fingers to my lips—unforbidden. I rose and looked into her eyes for confirmation. Delicious creature! she was asleep!
I never have had courage to renew the subject. Miss McLush seems to have forgotten it altogether. Upon reflection, too, I'm convinced she would not survive the excitement of the ceremony—unless, indeed, she should sleep between the responses and the prayer. I am still devoted, however, and if there should come a war or an earthquake, or if the millennium should commence, as is expected in 18——, or if anything happens that can keep her waking so long, I shall deliver a declaration, abbreviated for me by a scholar-friend of mine, which, he warrants, may be articulated in fifteen minutes—without fatigue.
A SMACK IN SCHOOL
'Mid Berkshire's hills, one winter's day,
Was humming with its wonted noise
Of threescore mingled girls and boys;
Some few upon their tasks intent,
But more on furtive mischief bent.
The while the master's downward look
Was fastened on a copy-book;
When suddenly, behind his back,
Rose sharp and clear a rousing smack!
As 'twere a battery of bliss
Let off in one tremendous kiss!
"What's that?" the startled master cries;
"That, thir," a little imp replies,
"Wath William Willith, if you pleathe——
I thaw him kith Thuthanna Peathe!"
With frown to make a statue thrill,
The master thundered, "Hither, Will!"
Like wretch o'ertaken in his track,
With stolen chattels on his back,
Will hung his head in fear and shame,
And to the awful presence came——
A great, green, bashful simpleton,
The butt of all good-natured fun.
With smile suppressed, and birch upraised,
The thunderer faltered—"I'm amazed
That you, my biggest pupil, should
Be guilty of an act so rude!
Before the whole set school to boot——
What evil genius put you to't?"
"'Twas she herself, sir," sobbed the lad;
"I did not mean to be so bad;
But when Susannah shook her curls,
And whispered, I was 'fraid of girls
And dursn't kiss a baby's doll,
I couldn't stand it, sir, at all,
But up and kissed her on the spot!
I know—boo—hoo—I ought to not,
But, somehow, from her looks—boo—hoo——
I thought she kind o' wished me to!"
A RENDITION
Two old British sailors were talking over their shore experience. One had been to a cathedral and had heard some very fine music, and was descanting particularly upon an anthem which gave him much pleasure. His shipmate listened for awhile, and then said:
"I say, Bill, what's a hanthem?"
"What," replied Bill, "do you mean to say you don't know what a hanthem is?"
"Not me."
"Well, then, I'll tell yer. If I was to tell yer, 'Ere, Bill, give me that 'andspike,' that wouldn't be a hanthem;' but was I to say, 'Bill, Bill, giv, giv, give me, give me that, Bill, give me, give me that hand, handspike, hand, handspike, spike, spike, spike, ah-men, ahmen. Bill, givemethat-handspike, spike, ahmen!' why, that would be a hanthem."
B. P. SHILLABER ("Mrs. Partington")
FANCY DISEASES
"Diseases is very various," said Mrs. Partington, as she returned from a street-door conversation with Doctor Bolus. "The Doctor tells me that poor old Mrs. Haze has got two buckles on her lungs! It is dreadful to think of, I declare. The diseases is so various! One way we hear of people's dying of hermitage of the lungs; another way, of the brown creatures; here they tell us of the elementary canal being out of order, and there about tonsors of the throat; here we hear of neurology in the head, there, of an embargo; one side of us we hear of men being killed by getting a pound of tough beef in the sarcofagus, and there another kills himself by discovering his jocular vein. Things change so that I declare I don't know how to subscribe for any diseases nowadays. New names and new nostrils takes the place of the old, and I might as well throw my old herb-bag away."
Fifteen minutes afterward Isaac had that herb-bag for a target, and broke three squares of glass in the cellar window in trying to hit it, before the old lady knew what he was about. She didn't mean exactly what she said.
BAILED OUT
"So, our neighbour, Mr. Guzzle, has been arranged at the bar for drunkardice," said Mrs. Partington; and she sighed as she thought of his wife and children at home, with the cold weather close at hand, and the searching winds intruding through the chinks in the windows, and waving the tattered curtain like a banner, where the little ones stood shivering by the faint embers. "God forgive him, and pity them!" said she, in a tone of voice tremulous with emotion.
"But he was bailed out," said Ike, who had devoured the residue of the paragraph, and laid the paper in a pan of liquid custard that the dame was preparing for Thanksgiving, and sat swinging the oven door to and fro as if to fan the fire that crackled and blazed within.
"Bailed out, was he?" said she; "well, I should think it would have been cheaper to have pumped him out, for, when our cellar was filled, arter the city fathers had degraded the street, we had to have it pumped out, though there wasn't half so much in it as he has swilled down."
She paused and reached up on the high shelves of the closet for her pie plates, while Ike busied himself in tasting the various preparations. The dame thought that was the smallest quart of sweet cider she had ever seen.
SEEKING A COMET
It was with an anxious feeling that Mrs. Partington, having smoked her specs, directed her gaze toward the western sky, in quest of the tailless comet of 1850.
"I can't see it," said she; and a shade of vexation was perceptible in the tone of her voice. "I don't think much of this explanatory system," continued she, "that they praise so, where the stars are mixed up so that I can't tell Jew Peter from Satan, nor the consternation of the Great Bear from the man in the moon. 'Tis all dark to me. I don't believe there is any comet at all. Who ever heard of a comet without a tail, I should like to know? It isn't natural; but the printers will make a tale for it fast enough, for they are always getting up comical stories."
With a complaint about the falling dew, and a slight murmur of disappointment, the dame disappeared behind a deal door like the moon behind a cloud.
GOING TO CALIFORNIA
"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Partington sorrowfully, "how much a man will bear, and how far he will go, to get the soddered dross, as Parson Martin called it when he refused the beggar a sixpence for fear it might lead him into extravagance! Everybody is going to California and Chagrin arter gold. Cousin Jones and the three Smiths have gone; and Mr. Chip, the carpenter, has left his wife and seven children and a blessed old mother-in-law, to seek his fortin, too. This is the strangest yet, and I don't see how he could have done it; it looks so ongrateful to treat Heaven's blessings so lightly. But there, we are told that the love of money is the root of all evil, and how true it is! for they are now rooting arter it, like pigs arter ground-nuts. Why, it is a perfect money mania among everybody!"
And she shook her head doubtingly, as she pensively watched a small mug of cider, with an apple in it, simmering by the winter fire. She was somewhat fond of a drink made in this way.
MRS. PARTINGTON IN COURT
"I took my knitting-work and went up into the gallery," said Mrs. Partington, the day after visiting one of the city courts; "I went up into the gallery, and after I had adjusted my specs, I looked down into the room, but I couldn't see any courting going on. An old gentleman seemed to be asking a good many impertinent questions—just like some old folks—and people were sitting around making minutes of the conversation. I don't see how they made out what was said, for they all told different stories. How much easier it would be to get along if they were all made to tell the same story! What a sight of trouble it would save the lawyers! The case, as they call it, was given to the jury, but I couldn't see it, and a gentleman with a long pole was made to swear that he'd keep an eye on 'em, and see that they didn't run away with it. Bimeby in they came again, and they said somebody was guilty of something, who had just said he was innocent, and didn't know nothing about it no more than the little baby that had never subsistence. I come away soon afterward; but I couldn't help thinking how trying it must be to sit there all day, shut out from the blessed air!"
Apropos of Superintendent Andrews's reported objection to the singing of the "Recessional" in the Chicago public schools on the ground that the atheists might be offended, the Chicago Post says:
For the benefit of our skittish friends, the atheists, and in order not to deprive the public-school children of the literary beauties of certain poems that may be classed by Doctor Andrews as "hymns," we venture to suggest this compromise, taking a few lines in illustration from our National anthem:
sake of argument that there is a God—to Thee,
Author of liberty—with apologies to our friends,
the atheists—
know.
purely hypothetical——
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE;
Or, the Wonderful "One-hoss Shay"
A Logical Story
That was built in such a logical way,
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it—ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits——
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Georgius Secundus was then alive——
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.
There is always somewhere a weakest spot——
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace—lurking still,
Find it somewhere you must and will——
Above or below, or within or without——
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
That a chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out.
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou")
He would build one shay to beat the taown
'N' the keounty, 'n' all the kentry raoun';
It should be so built that it couldn' break daown:
—"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;
'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,
Is only jest
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke——
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees,
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum"——
Last of its timber—they couldn't sell 'em,
Never an ax had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin, too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he "put her through"——
"There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!"
She was a wonder and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and Deaconess dropped away,
Children and grandchildren—where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake day!
The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten——
"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came——
Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrived,
And then come fifty, and fifty-five.
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it—You're welcome—No extra charge.)
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn't be—for the Deacon's art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn't a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whipple-tree neither less nor more,
And the back crossbar as strong as the fore,
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
"Huddup!" said the parson—Off went they.
The parson was working his Sunday's text——
Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
At what the—Moses—was coming next.
Close by the meet'n' house on the hill.
—First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill——
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half-past nine by the meet'n'-house clock——
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
—What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once——
All at once, and nothing first——
Just as bubbles do when they burst.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.
A certain learned professor in New York has a wife and family, but, professor-like, his thoughts are always with his books.
One evening his wife, who had been out for some hours, returned to find the house remarkably quiet. She had left the children playing about, but now they were nowhere to be seen.
She demanded to be told what had become of them, and the professor explained that, as they had made a good deal of noise, he had put them to bed without waiting for her or calling a maid.
"I hope they gave you no trouble," she said.
"No," replied the professor, "with the exception of the one in the cot here. He objected a good deal to my undressing him and putting him to bed."
The wife went to inspect the cot.
"Why," she exclaimed, "that's little Johnny Green, from next door."
FIVE LIVES
That twinkled on a leaf by a pool in the sun.
To the naked eye they lived invisible;
Specks, for a world of whom the empty shell
Of a mustard-seed had been a hollow sky.
And, shrinking all his mind within, he thought:
"Tradition, handed down for hours and hours,
Tells that our globe, this quivering crystal world,
Is slowly dying. What if, seconds hence
When I am very old, yon shimmering doom
Comes drawing down and down, till all things end?"
Then with a wizen smirk he proudly felt
No other mote of God had ever gained
Such giant grasp of universal truth.
And long and slim of mind; and thus he mused:
"Oh, vast, unfathomable monad-souls!
Made in the image"—a hoarse frog croaks from the pool,
"Hark! 'twas some god, voicing his glorious thought
In thunder music. Yea, we hear their voice,
And we may guess their minds from ours, their work.
Some taste they have like ours, some tendency
To wriggle about, and munch a trace of scum."
He floated up on a pin-point bubble of gas
That burst, pricked by the air, and he was gone.
A positivist; and he knew positively;
"There was no world beyond this certain drop.
Prove me another! Let the dreamers dream
Of their faint gleams, and noises from without,
And higher and lower; life is life enough."
Then swaggering half a hair's breadth hungrily,
He seized upon an atom of bug, and fed.
And with a shrill voice ecstatic thus he sang:
"Oh, little female monad's lips!
Oh, little female monad's eyes!
Ah, the little, little, female, female monad!"
The last was a strong-minded monadess,
Who dashed amid the infusoria,
Danced high and low, and wildly spun and dove,
Till the dizzy others held their breath to see.
Æonian moments had gone wheeling by,
The burning drop had shrunk with fearful speed:
A glistening film—'twas gone; the leaf was dry.
The little ghost of an inaudible squeak
Was lost to the frog that goggled from his stone;
Who, at the huge, slow tread of a thoughtful ox
Coming to drink, stirred sideways fatly, plunged,
Launched backward twice, and all the pool was still.
JAMES T. FIELDS
THE OWL-CRITIC
A Lesson to Fault-finders
The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop;
The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading
The Daily, the Herald, the Post, little heeding
The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;
Not one raised a head or even made a suggestion;
And the barber kept on shaving.
Cried the youth, with a frown,
"How wrong the whole thing is,
How preposterous each wing is,
How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is—
In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis!
I make no apology;
I've learned owl-eology.
I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections,
And cannot be blinded to any deflections
Arising from unskilful fingers that fail
To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.
Mister Brown! Mister Brown!
Do take that bird down,
Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!"
And the barber kept on shaving.
And other night fowls,
And I tell you
What I know to be true:
An owl cannot roost
With his limbs so unloosed;
No owl in this world
Ever had his claws curled,
Ever had his legs slanted,
Ever had his bill canted,
Ever had his neck screwed
Into that attitude.
He can't do it, because
'Tis against all bird-laws
Anatomy teaches,
Ornithology preaches
An owl has a toe
That can't turn out so!
I've made the white owl my study for years,
And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!
Mister Brown, I'm amazed
You should be so gone crazed
As to put up a bird
In that posture absurd!
To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;
The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!"
And the barber kept on shaving.
I'm filled with surprise
Taxidermists should pass
Off on you such poor glass;
So unnatural they seem
They'd make Audubon scream,
And John Burroughs laugh
To encounter such chaff.
Do take that bird down;
Have him stuffed again, Brown!"
And the barber kept on shaving.
I would stuff in the dark
An owl better than that;
I could make an old hat
Look more like an owl
Than that horrid fowl,
Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.
In fact, about him there's not one natural feather."
The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic
(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,
And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:
"Your learning's at fault this time, anyway;
Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray.
I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good-day!"
And the barber kept on shaving.
A CAUSE FOR THANKS
A country parson, in encountering a storm the past season in the voyage across the Atlantic, was reminded of the following: A clergyman was so unfortunate as to be caught in a severe gale in the voyage out. The water was exceedingly rough, and the ship persistently buried her nose in the sea. The rolling was constant, and at last the good man got thoroughly frightened. He believed they were destined for a watery grave. He asked the captain if he could not have prayers. The captain took him by the arm and led him down to the forecastle, where the tars were singing and swearing. "There," said he, "when you hear them swearing, you may know there is no danger." He went back feeling better, but the storm increased his alarm. Disconsolate and unassisted, he managed to stagger to the forecastle again. The ancient mariners were swearing as ever. "Mary," he said to his sympathetic wife, as he crawled into his berth after tacking across a wet deck, "Mary, thank God they're swearing yet."
JOHN HAY
LITTLE BREECHES
I never ain't had no show;
But I've got a middlin' tight grip, sir,
On the handful o' things I know.
I don't pan out on the prophets
And free-will and that sort of thing——
But I b'lieve in God and the angels,
Ever sence one night last spring.
And my little Gabe come along——
No four-year-old in the county
Could beat him for pretty and strong,
Peart and chipper and sassy,
Always ready to swear and fight——
And I'd larnt him to chaw terbacker
Jest to keep his milk-teeth white.
As I passed by Taggart's store;
I went in for a jug of molasses
And left the team at the door.
They scared at something and started——
I heard one little squall,
And hell-to-split over the prairie
Went team, Little Breeches and all.
I was almost froze with skeer;
But we rousted up some torches,
And sarched for 'em far and near.
At last we struck horses and wagon,
Snowed under a soft white mound,
Upsot, dead beat—but of little Gabe
Nor hide nor hair was found.
Of my fellow-critter's aid——
I jest flopped down on my marrow-bones,
Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed.
And me and Isrul Parr
Went off for some wood to a sheepfold
That he said was somewhar thar.
Where they shut up the lambs at night.
We looked in and seen them huddled thar,
So warm and sleepy and white;
And THAR sot Little Breeches, and chirped,
As peart as ever you see:
"I want a chaw of terbacker,
And that's what's the matter of me."
He could never have walked in that storm;
They jest scooped down and toted him
To whar it was safe and warm.
And bringing him to his own,
Is a derned sight better business
Than loafing around The Throne.
Artemus Ward, when in London, gave a children's party. One of John Bright's sons was invited, and returned home radiant. "Oh, papa," he explained, on being asked whether he had enjoyed himself, "indeed I did. And Mr. Browne gave me such a nice name for you, papa."
"What was that?"
"Why, he asked me how that gay and festive cuss, the governor, was!" replied the boy.
It was on a train going through Indiana. Among the passengers were a newly married couple, who made themselves known to such an extent that the occupants of the car commenced passing sarcastic remarks about them. The bride and groom stood the remarks for some time, but finally the latter, who was a man of tremendous size, broke out in the following language at his tormenters: "Yes, we're married—just married. We are going 160 miles farther, and I am going to 'spoon' all the way. If you don't like it, you can get out and walk. She's my violet and I'm her sheltering oak."
During the remainder of the journey they were left in peace.
HENRY W. SHAW ("Josh Billings")
NATRAL AND UNNATRAL ARISTOKRATS
Natur furnishes all the nobleman we hav.
She holds the pattent.
Pedigree haz no more to do in making a man aktually grater than he iz, than a pekok's feather in his hat haz in making him aktually taller.
This iz a hard phakt for some tew learn.
This mundane earth iz thik with male and femail ones who think they are grate bekause their ansesstor waz luckey in the sope or tobacco trade; and altho the sope haz run out sumtime since, they try tew phool themselves and other folks with the suds.
Sope-suds iz a prekarious bubble.
Thare ain't nothing so thin on the ribs az a sope-suds aristokrat.
When the world stands in need ov an aristokrat, natur pitches one into it, and furnishes him papers without enny flaw in them.
Aristokrasy kant be transmitted—natur sez so—in the papers.
Titles are a plan got up bi humans tew assist natur in promulgating aristokrasy.
Titles ain't ov enny more real use or necessity than dog collars are.
I hav seen dog collars that kost 3 dollars on dogs that wan't worth, in enny market, over 87½ cents.
This iz a grate waste of collar; and a grate damage tew the dog.
Natur don't put but one ingredient into her kind ov aristokrasy, and that iz virtew.
She wets up the virtew, sumtimes, with a little pepper sass, just tew make it lively.
She sez that all other kinds are false; and i beleave natur.
I wish every man and woman on earth waz a bloated aristokrat—bloated with virtew.
Earthly manufaktured aristokrats are made principally out ov munny.
Forty years ago it took about 85 thousand dollars tew make a good-sized aristokrat, and innokulate his family with the same disseaze, but it takes now about 600 thousand tew throw the partys into fits.
Aristokrasy, like of the other bred stuffs, haz riz.
It don't take enny more virtew tew make an aristokrat now, nor clothes, than it did in the daze ov Abraham.
Virtew don't vary.
Virtew is the standard ov values.
Clothes ain't.
Titles ain't.
A man kan go barefoot and be virtewous, and be an aristokrat.
His brown-stun front waz a tub, and it want on end, at that.
Moneyed aristokrasy iz very good to liv on in the present hi kondishun ov kodphis and wearing apparel, provided yu see the munny, but if the munny kind of tires out and don't reach yu, and you don't git ennything but the aristokrasy, you hay got to diet, that's all.
I kno ov thousands who are now dieting on aristokrasy.
They say it tastes good.
I presume they lie without knowing it.
Not enny ov this sort ov aristokrasy for Joshua Billings.
I never should think ov mixing munny and aristokrasy together; i will take mine seperate, if yu pleze.
I don't never expekt tew be an aristokrat, nor an angel; i don't kno az i want tew be one.
I certainly should make a miserable angel.
I certainly never shall hav munny enuff tew make an aristokrat.
Raizing aristokrats iz a dredful poor bizzness; yu don't never git your seed back.
One democrat iz worth more tew the world than 60 thousand manufaktured aristokrats.
An Amerikan aristokrat iz the most ridikilus thing in market. They are generally ashamed ov their ansesstors; and, if they hav enny, and live long enuff, they generally hav cauze tew be ashamed ov their posterity.
I kno ov sevral familys in Amerika who are trieing tew liv on their aristokrasy. The money and branes giv out sumtime ago.
It iz hard skratching for them.
Yu kan warm up kold potatoze and liv on them, but yu kant warm up aristokratik pride and git even a smell.
Yu might az well undertake tew raze a krop ov korn in a deserted brikyard by manuring the ground heavy with tanbark.
Yung man, set down, and keep still—yu will hay plenty ov chances yet to make a phool ov yureself before yu die.
It is told of an old Baptist parson, famous in Virginia, that he once visited a plantation where the colored servant who met him at the gate asked which barn he would have his horse put in.
"Have you two barns?" asked the minister.
"Yes, sah," replied the servant; "dar's de old barn, and Mas'r Wales has jest built a new one."
"Where do you usually put the horses of clergymen who come to see your master?"
"Well, sah, if dey's Methodist or Baptist we gen'ally puts 'em in de ole barn, but if dey's 'Piscopals we puts 'em in the new one."
"Well, Bob, you can put my horse in the new barn; I'm a Baptist, but my horse is an Episcopalian."
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
THE YANKEE RECRUIT
Mister Buckinum, the follerin Billet was writ hum by a Yung feller of our town that wuz cussed fool enuff to goe a-trottin inter Miss Chiff arter a Drum and fife. It ain't Nater for a feller to let on that he's sick o' any bizness that he went intu off his own free will and a Cord, but I rather cal'late he's middlin tired o' voluntearin By this time. I bleeve yu may put dependunts on his statemence. For I never heered nothin bad on him let Alone his havin what Parson Wilbur cals a pongshong for cocktales, and ses it wuz a soshiashun of idees sot him agoin arter the Crootin Sargient cos he wore a cocktale onto his hat.
His Folks gin the letter to me and I shew it to parson Wilbur and he ses it oughter Bee printed, send It to mister Buckinum, ses he, i don't ollers agree with him, ses he, but by Time, ses he, I du like a feller that ain't a Feared.
I have intusspussed a Few refleckshuns hear and thair. We're kind o' prest with Hayin.
Ewers respecfly,