Petticoats followed, by saying that he breakfasts on Protestant babies;
drinks whiskey punch out of a Protestant clergyman's skull; has an
abducted Protestant virgin to black his boots; fifty-seven Protestant
widows to dig his potatoes and hoe corn; and that he rolls ten-pins
every afternoon with the heads of Protestant orphan children.
Irishman indignantly denied all--said the country is going to the old
Knick, and some fine morning we shall wake up, and find that the Pope,
unable longer to endure our perverseness, has sunk us all forty miles
deeper than ancient Sodom; said that his Holiness can send us all to
perdition by one wink of his left eye; that he is the head of the Church
on Earth; has all power to save or otherwise; could get us all out of
Purgatory, and send us all "kitin' into Heaven," by wagging his little
finger; that he could, like a Joshua No. 2, make the sun and moon stand
still; make the planets dance an astronomical rigadoon; cause the hills
and mountains to execute a mighty geological jig, while old ocean should
beat the time against the blue vault of Heaven and applauding Angels
encore the huge saltations.
Gabe said he didn't believe the yarn. Petticoats remarked something
about the Star Spangled Banner being always right side up.
Irishman proceeded to describe the future home of the happy in another
world, as a place where there shall be plenty of potatoes, no end of
shillelahs, oceans of genuine whiskey; and where no Know-Nothing Yankee
shall be allowed to come and kick up a plug muss.
At the word Know-Nothing, there was a great sensation. Symptoms of a
free fight rapidly developed into an uncivil war. Petticoats got mixed
up with the crowd, and presently emerged rather the worse for wear,
barefooted, bareheaded, hair down, nose injured by collision, eye in
mourning, mouth bloody, and her whole appearance reminding me of "a
goose or goslin--stuffed." (I forgot who penned this apposite quotation,
and asked Bull Dogge, who, being excited by the fray, angrily asserted
that it is by "Nero or some other old fogy"--is it?)
Irishman was taken away by seven policemen, on his national carriage,
a wheelbarrow. Gabriel came out unhurt, save that his elegant features
were somewhat marred by the finger nails of Petticoats. Perceiving that
the fun was over, I turned to go, leaving the self-elected Angel
Gabriel, straddle of a hydrant, edifying the passers-by, by alternately
sounding notes of victory upon his horn, and crowing like an overgrown
Shanghae.
XIV.
Disappointed Love.
Although in the course of my western peregrinations I had frequently met
with attractive-looking damsels, there was always some blemish on their
personal beauty, which though perhaps slight in many cases, made their
charms fall short of that exalted standard desirable in the fairer part
of mankind. Being unusually fastidious in my taste it is not to be
wondered at, that previous to last Wednesday night, I had never been in
love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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