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
By-am-by sich sights of the people, all dressed off as if they were a
going to a general training ball, kept a pouring in through the leetle
doors in the galleries till the seats were all chuck full; such a
glistening of harnsome eyes and feathers, and flowers, I never did see.
A purty leetle gal cum and sot close down by me, and now and then I took
a slanting squint at her; by hokey, she was a slick leetle critter, with
the consarnedest soft eyes I ever looked into.
I wonder what on arth is the reason that I can't sit down by a harnsome
gal, but my heart will begin to flounder about like a fish jest arter
he's hooked. Think, sez I, if there's any dancing a going on to-night,
darn me if I don't shin up to that gal for a partner. But, where on arth
the folks were a going tu find a place to dance in I couldn't make out,
for in the hull building there warn't room enough tu hang up a flax-seed
edgeways.
I was jest a going tu ask cousin John about it, when the fiddles pulled
up a minit, and all tu once that great picter give a twitch, and up it
went like a streak of chalk, into the ruff, or the Lord knows where. I
jumped right on eend, I was so struck with what I see.
Clear back where the curtain had been was a purty little garden, as
nat'ral as one of our onion patches. It was chuck full of trees and
flowers, and a snug leetle house stood on one side; clear back, jest
under the edge of the sky, lay the soft water, looking as blue and still
as could be. What to make on it I couldn't tell; it warn't like a
picter, and yet I couldn't think how on arth there could be room enough
tu have sich a place near the theatre. While I sot there a bending
for'ard with one of my yaller gloves pressed down on each knee, and
staring like a stuck pig with my mouth a leetle open, a lot of folks
dressed off in short jackets and trousers cut off at the knees, come a
dancing out of the house, and begun tu talk all at once, and chatter and
laugh together as chipper as a flock of birds. They seemed as happy as
clams in high water; and the fellers skipped and hung round the gals
like good fellers.
But the gals were dressed out too bad. I'll be darned if some of 'em
didn't make me feel streaked, their frocks were so short. They didn't
seem tu make no bones of showing their legs half-way tu their knees. I
swanny if I wasn't ashamed of the purty gal that sot by me. Think sez I,
if she don't blush and feel all overish I'm mistaken. Arter a while, I
give her a slantidicular squint, but she sot as still as a kitten, and
looking as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but was a staring right
straight at the garden without seeming to mind the gals' legs a bit more
than if they had been so many broom sticks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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