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
I was so allfired wrothy, that, without thinking on it, I histed my
boots agin one of the cushions, jest as it's nat'ral tu, when a feller's
so mad he can't help it, and left a purty considerable smooch of
blacking amongst the blue and white posies, that sot them off ruther
more than cousin Jase would like, I calculate.
Them carriages do cut dirt so soft and easy like a streak of greased
lightning, that there is no knowing how fast a feller gets along. It
didn't seem more than a half a jiffy when we drew up co-wallop right
afore Jase's house. Down got the two varmints in white topped stompers,
open went the door, and out I jumped.
I didn't have to ring at the silver knob, but the door swung open of
itself, or seemed tu, and in I poked, as independent as a clam in high
water, but not afore I'd ketched a squint at that shaller little Jemima,
a peaking out from behind the winder curtains to see who was coming with
me.
A chap took my hat and things in the entry way, and asked me what my
name was, sort of low, as if it was something I ought to be ashamed of;
and the minnit I told him, he went to the door of the keeping-room and
bawled out,
"Mr. Jonathan Slick."
I went in and there sot our Jase, in a great armed chair, as red and
pussy as a turkey-gobbler, jest afore Christmas. He got up and come
for'ard, but looked nation wamblecropped when he see that there wasn't
nobody with me. That wife of his'n cum up with her fat hands stuck out,
and asked how I was, and why Lord Morpeth didn't cum, and Jemima, she
stood a giggling worse than ever, and a tossing them yaller curls of
her'n about on her shoulders and cousined me off to kill.
I told Jase how Lord Morpeth had sarved me, but he didn't seem to mind
that, arter he found out that he was a coming by-am-by, so we sot down.
I took a sort of a survey of the premises. Now if there is anything that
makes me mad, it's to see a chap a selling off his harnsome things when
they git a little siled or out of fashion. I couldn't no more sell a
cheer or a table that any of my friends had eat off from, or sot on,
than I would strike my granny. Jest think how you'd feel to see grand
par Slick's arm'd chair sold at Vandue, or the chest o' drawers that
marm kept her "leetle things" in when I was a baby bought in by the
neighbors. It makes me feel wamblecropped only jest to think of it, and
yet there wasn't a single thing in the two great rooms that I went into
at Cousin Jase's, that had a place where it was the last time I was
there. Everything looked spick-span new, and I haint no doubt that the
hull house had been transmogrified and titivated up jest cause a Lord
was coming to eat dinner there. The carpets were a'most all red, with a
vine of pink and yaller a running crinkle-crankle all over 'em as if
somebody had been a scattering a hat full of butter-cups and meadow
pinks all over it, the whole consarn giving under your feet like a flat
meadow lot thick with a fall arter growth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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