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
"Wal," sez I, "I don't care if I du, though it comes kinder tough to
leave the stove this cold day." With that I tipped down my chair, and
took my feet off from the stove and went to the door. By gracious! but
he had a smasher of a coach standing there. It glistened and shone in
the sun like a house afire. A great strapping nigger sot on a kind of
double chair with a low narrer back, kivered over with fine brown
broadcloth, all fringed and tossled off like any thing--and a great bear
skin was hauled up over his legs, all scolloped off with red cloth and
stuck over with coons' tails. The horses beat all live critters I ever
did see; they were as black as crows, and I couldn't say which glistened
the most, their tarnal smooth coots, or the harness put over them. They
were all kivered over and sot out with silver. The horses had great
yaller roses stuck on the sides of their heads, like a gal when she's
dressed up for a party. My pussey cousin, he opened the door, and sez
he,
"Look a here, cousin, haint this purty well got up?"
I looked inside, and there was a leetle sort of a room about big enough
for cousin Beebe to put his swarry in, if he wanted to carry it about
with him. It was all lined off and stuck full of cushions, and tossled
and fringed like a curtained bed. Two great spotted skins lay tumbled up
in the bottom, and there were leetle glass doors with steps to them on
both sides; it raly was harnsome enough to make a feller's eyes feel
snow-blind.
"Wal," sez I, a looking at my pussey cousin; "this does about take the
shine off eenamost all the coaches that ever stopped to my office--and
there's been a grist on 'em, I can tell you, and some with tarnal
handsome ladies in them too."
"Yes," sez he, sort of interrupting what I was going to say; "but you
haint a looking at the coat of arms--that is what I want you to see."
"Wal," sez I, a giving the nigger a purty general survey, that sot back
of the horses dressed up in sort of regimentals, all finefied off with
buttons and yaller cloth; "The coat is well enough--I don't see much to
find fault with in it, though to own the truth, Captin Wolf, of the
Weathersfield Independent Company, had a training coat that beats it all
tu nothing. As for the critter's arms, niggers may be different to white
people in that way, but I don't see much odds--mebby you mean this other
chap's, and his are long enough, that's a fact."
With that I jest took a good squint at a great tall shote of a feller,
with arms like a pair of flails hung up arter threshing. He was a
standing up back of the coach, and a hanging on to a couple of great
tossels fastened to it, as independent as a monkey in a show. His coat
and trousers were just like the nigger's, and he had a great wide band
of gold stuff round his hat! my pussey cousin only shook his head when I
looked at the chap. The nigger twisted his neck round, and the tall
varmint stuck his'n up, and they begun to grin and tee hee at each other
over the coach.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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