Frivolities, Especially Addressed to Those Who Are Tired of Being Serious — John Shaqi
Frivolities, Especially Addressed to Those Who Are Tired of Being SeriousMarsh, Richard
General
Frivolities, Especially Addressed to Those Who Are Tired of Being Serious
Marsh, Richard
Fiction; Humorous stories, English; Short stories, English
"Well I got on pretty well, considerin', so long as the people didn't
come too fast. But I tell you, if you're not used to pins, they're
more difficult to manage than you might think. You never know where
you're driving of them. I know that, what with the 'eat and the 'aste,
some being all of a flurry, I drove more of them into my 'ands than I
quite liked. And I soon saw that that there box of pins wouldn't never
last me long, seein' as how I bent three out of every two, so as I
couldn't use 'em--not to speak of others I dropped and couldn't stop
to find.
"But, as I was a-sayin', I got on somehow, and I daresay I should have
got on, somehow, to the end, if it hadn't been that I was fresh from
the country. Of course, I didn't know what gentlefolk wear, and one
'at was like another 'at to me--and that was where I was deceived. One
gent fair took me aback. He came in with a 'igh top-'at on his 'ead,
and when he took it off he put one end against his chest and he gave
it a sort of a shove, and he squashed it as flat as my 'and. I tell
you, I stared. I thought he'd been having a drop to drink, and had
busted his brand new 'at for a sort of a joke. But he seemed to be
sober enough, so far as I could see, and he didn't seem to mind
what he'd done to his 'at, not a little bit. Presently another gent
came alone, and he done the same to his top-'at. Then another, and
another--in fact, a whole crowd of them. And there was me,
a-perspiring like one o'clock, with Perkins's breeches a-coming undone
where his old woman had caught 'em up at the back, a-standing in the
middle of a lot of squashed 'igh 'ats, what was lying all over the
place. So I began to see that there was more in the nature of a 'igh
'at than I'd supposed.
"Bless you! there wasn't nearly room for all the things that these
gents kept a-handing me, and unless I took to standin' on 'em, I
didn't see what I was to do. So when there came a sort of a lull like
I looks round to see how I could make a bit of room. 'Alf them gents
hadn't squashed in their 'igh 'ats, like the other gents 'ad done, and
I sees at once as how they were takin' up more than their fair share
of space. So I makes up my mind to squash 'em for 'em, and I sets
about a-doin' it. I takes up a 'igh 'at what a old gent had just
a-give me--a beautiful shiny one it was--and I sets it against my
stomach and I starts a-'eavin'. I'd no idea it'd be so 'ard. Them
other gents had seemed to squash theirs easy, but this 'ere one took
some shovin'. And, when it did go, it went all lop-sided like. I had
to sit on it before it'd lie down flat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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