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
Jest afore I got up tu the great four-story house where Miss Miles
lives, I begun to feel sort of anxious agin. Think sez I, what on arth
shall I say tu her when I du get there? So I kept a thinking over a
capital leetle speech that I meant tu make. I'd read in story-books
about lovers that always went down on their knees when they talked soft
sodder to sich stuck-up gals as Miss Miles; but tu save my life, I
couldn't make up my mouth to it; the gal must be something more than
common flesh and blood that would ever bring Jonathan Slick on his
marrow bones, I'm thinking; so if she calculates that I'm a going to
make such a mean coot of myself as that, why she may go to grass for
what I care.
Besides, sez I tu myself, how on arth would I kneel down in these
new-fashioned trousers, if I wanted tu ever so much; when arter putting
one thing and another together, I made up my mind that kneeling down tu
the gals must have gone out of fashion here in York when the chaps give
up wearing them trousers puffed in at the waistbands. This kinder made
my mind easy on that point; so I went on thinking over what I should say
tu Miss Miles when I got tu her house.
Now it ain't no ways hard to make first-rate speeches up in a feller's
head, when he's a going tu see a gal that he's a beginning tu take a
shine arter; but somehow the worst on it all is, a chap al'ers forgets
every word on it when he comes where the gal is.
I begun to grow awful uneasy jest afore I got to the house, and my heart
sot to beating in my bosom, like the pestle in an old fashioned samp
mortar. It seemed to me as if somebody was a looking arter me, and as if
they knew that I was going a courting in broad daylight, which was
enough to make any decent chap look sheepish that had never thought of
making up to the gals only on a Sunday night arter dark, when these
things seem to come nat'ral.
Wal, when I got agin the house, I took a squint up to the winders, for I
thought mebby Miss Miles would be a looking out; but there warn't nobody
to be seen, so I went up the wide marble steps, that looked as white as
snow, with a great chunk of marble a curling down each side on 'em, and
there I stood stock still, for my heart floundered about so that it
eenamost choked me, and if I'd been hung I couldn't a got up pluck to
pull the silver knob and make somebody come and let me in; for all the
York people keep their doors fastened in the day time, so that if a
feller's in ever so much of a hurry, he's got to stand out doors till a
nigger comes to let him in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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