High Life in New York: A series of letters to Mr. Zephariah Slick, Justice of the Peace, and Deacon of the church over to Weathersfield in the state of ConnecticutStephens, Ann S. (Ann Sophia)
General
High Life in New York: A series of letters to Mr. Zephariah Slick, Justice of the Peace, and Deacon of the church over to Weathersfield in the state of Connecticut
Stephens, Ann S. (Ann Sophia)
New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Gaully! didn't my blood bile, I could a knocked the stuck up leetle
varmint into a cocked hat, but Susan she looked sort of scared, and, sez
she,
"Call and see me, Mr. Slick, at my boarding-house: I shall be _so_ glad
to talk over old times." The tears bust right into her blue eyes as she
spoke, and she looked so humsick I raly felt for her.
"What time shall I call?" sez I, a follering her to the glass door.
"I haint a minit that I can call my own till arter eight o'clock at
night," sez she; "but if you'll call some evening I shall be glad to see
you."
"I shall sartinly come," sez I, and arter shaking hands with her agin I
went out of the store and hum to my office, a feeling purty considerably
humsick and with more ginuine human natur bilin up in my heart than I'd
felt since I cum to York.
Your loving son,
JONATHAN SLICK.
* * * * *
LETTER XV.
Jonathan visits the Milliner girl--Reflections about her situation.
DEAR PAR:
I couldn't seem to rest easy till I went to see Susan. She boarded in a
sort of a gloomy house eenamost up to Dry-dock. I knocked away at the
door with my knuckles ever so long afore I could make any body hear.
By-am-by Susan come to the door herself, and she took me up a pair of
stairs, kivered with rag carpeting, into a leetle stived up room with a
stove in it. Two leetle squalling brats were a playing on the floor, and
a harnsome woman, but not over nice in her fixings, sot in one corner, a
sewing on a round-about. Susan she was dressed up jest as she was in the
milliner's store; she looked peaked and eenamost tuckered out, but the
minit I'd got seated, she took hold with the woman and begun to sew away
for dear life.
"You seem to be rather industrious," sez I.
She smiled sort of mournful, and sez she, so low I couldn't but jest
ketch the words,
"I'm obliged to be or starve."
Think sez I, there's something that aint right here, and with that I
begun to talk about the prices of the work, till I found out that with
all her hard trying, it was more than she could du to arn a decent
living. I begun to talk about hum and the time when I used to lend her
my mittens when she was a leetle gal and her fingers were cold; but all
I could do she wouldn't chirk up, but the other woman she got rale
sociable and told me lots of stories about milliners and sewing girls,
and as I was going hum I took it into my head that I'd write some on 'em
out for the Express.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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