United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
“That’s where the fightin’ finished,” observed the boy, pointing to a
big mark on the map. “That’s Malvern Hill there, and here--down where
the river takes the big bend--that’s Harrison’s Landing, where the
army’s movin’ to. See them seven rings? Them are the battles, one each
day, as our men forced their way down through the Chickahominy swamps,
beginnin’ up in the corner with Beaver Dam Creek. If the map was a
little higher it ’ud show the Pamunkey, where they started from. My
uncle says that the whole mistake was in ever abandoning the Pamunkey.”
“Pa-monkey or Ma-monkey,” said Newton Shull, gloomily, “it wouldn’t be
no comfort to me to see it, even on a map. It’s jest taken and busted me
and my business here clean as a whistle. We ain’t paid expenses two
days in a week sence Marseny went. Here I’ve got now so ’t I kin take a
plain, everyday sort o’ picture jest about as well as he did--a little
streakid sometimes, perhaps, and more or less pinholes--but still pretty
middlin’ fair on an average, and then, darn my buttons if they don’t
all stop comin’. It positively don’t seem to me as if there was a single
human bein’ in Dearborn County that ’ud have his picture took as a
gift. All they want now is to have enlargements thrown up from little
likenesses of their men folks that have been killed, and them I don’t
know how to do no more’n a babe unborn.”
“You knew well enough how to make that stere-opticon slide,” remarked
the boy with severity.
“Yes,” mused Mr. Shull, “that darned thing--that made a peck o’ trouble,
didn’t it? I dunno what on earth possessed me; I kind o’ seemed to git
the notion o’ doin’ it into my head all to once ’t, and somehow I never
dreamt of its rilin’ Marseny so; you couldn’t tell that a man ’ud be
so blamed touchy as all that, could you?--and I dunno, like as not he’d
’a’ enlisted anyhow. But I do wish he’d showed me how to make them
pesky enlargements afore he went. If I’d only seen him do one, even
once, I could ’a’ picked the thing up, but I never did. It’s just my
luck!”
“Say,” said the boy, looking up with a sudden thought, “do you know what
my mother heard yesterday? It’s all over the place that before Marseny
left he went to Squire Schermerhorn’s and made his will, and left
everything he’s got to the Parmalee girl, in case he gits killed. So, if
anything happens she’d be your partner, wouldn’t she?”
Newton Shull stared with surprise. “Well, now, that beats creation,” he
said, after a little. “Somehow you know that never occurred to me, and
yet, of course, that ’ud be jest his style.”
“Yes, sir,” repeated the other, “they say he’s left her every identical
thing.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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