American essays -- 19th century; Short stories, American
Now I am in for it, with one of my unappeasable headaches. Don’t talk
to me of doctors; it is incurable as a love-fit; nothing on earth will
stop it; you may put that down in your memorandum-book. Now, I suppose
every body in the house to-day will put on their creakingest shoes; and
every body will go up and down stairs humming all the tunes they ever
heard, especially those I most dislike; and I suppose every thing that
is cooked in the kitchen will boil and stew over, and the odor will come
up to me; and I have _such_ a nose! And I suppose all the little boys in
the neighborhood, bless their little restless souls, will play duets on
tin-pans and tin-kettles; and I suppose every body who comes into my
room to ask me how I do, will squeak that horrid door, and _keep_
squeaking it; and I suppose that unhappy dog confined over in that
four-square-feet yard, will howl more deliriously than ever; and Mr.
Jones’s obnoxious blind will flap and bang till I am as crazy as an
omnibus-driver who has a baulky horse, and whose passengers are hopping
out behind without paying their fare; and I suppose some poor little
child will be running under the window every now and then, screaming
“Mother,” and whenever I hear that, I think somebody wants _me_; and
I’ve no doubt there will be “proof” to read to-day, and that that
pertinacious and stentorian rag-man will lumber past on his crazy old
cart, and insist on having some of my dry goods; and I feel it in my
bones that oysters and oranges, and tape, and blacking, and brooms, and
mats, and tin-ware, will settle and congregate on this side-walk, and
assert their respective claims to my notice, till the sight of an
undertaker would be a positive blessing.
Whack! how my head snaps! Don’t tell me any living woman ever had such a
headache before--because it will fill me with disgust. What o’clock is
it? “Twelve.” Merciful man! only twelve o’clock! I thought it was five.
How am I to get through the day, I would like to know, for this headache
won’t let up till sundown; it never does. “Read to me.” What’ll you
read? “Tom Moore!” as if I were not sick enough already! Moore! with his
nightingales, and bulbuls, and jessamines; and loves and doves, and
roses and poesies--till the introduction of an uneducated wildcat, or
the tearingest kind of a hyena in his everlasting gardens, would be an
untold relief. No--I hate Moore. Beside--he is the fellow who said,
“When away from the lips that we love, we’ll make love to the lips that
are near.” No wonder he was baptized _more_--carnivorous old profligate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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