Kilo : being the love story of Eliph' Hewlitt, book agentButler, Ellis Parker
General
Kilo : being the love story of Eliph' Hewlitt, book agent
Butler, Ellis Parker
Book industries and trade -- Fiction; Love stories
“I hain't no notion how ever Doc got started believin' things, but mebby
he got in with a bad lot at the doctor school he went to. Doc told me
hisself they cut up dead folks. Anyhow, he come back from Chicago
a regular atheist; but that was before I knowed him. He lived up at
Clarence, and he didn't come to Kilo 'til about ten years after that,
and he'd got pretty well along by then, and had got right handy at
believin' things.
“Well, when Doc come to Kilo pa had jist died an' ma an' me had to take
in boarders to git along; so Doc come to our house to board. That's how
Doc an' me got to know each other. I was about as old as Doc, and we
wasn't either of us very chickenish, but I thought Doc was the finest
man I'd ever saw, an' exceptin' what I'm tellin' you, I ain't ever had
cause to change my mind.
“I'd never sa so many books as Doc brought--more'n we've got now. I
burned a lot when we got married--Tom Paine and Bob Ingersoll, and all I
wasn't sure was orthodoxy. Why, we had more books than we've got in
the Kilo Sunday School Lib'ry. 'Specially Shakespeare books, some
Shakespeare writ hisself, an' some that was writ about him. Doc was real
took up with Shakespeare them days.
“'Most all his spare time Doc put in readin' them Shakespeare books, and
sometime he'd git a new one. One day he come home mad. I ain't seen Doc
real mad but twice, but he was mad that day and no mistake. He'd got a
new book, an' he set down to read it as soon as he got in the house; but
every couple of pages he'd slap it shut and walk up an' down, growlin'
to hisself. Oh, but he was riled! That night I heard him stampin' up
an' down his room, mad as a wet hen, and by and by I heard that book
go rattlin' out of the window and plunk down in the radish bed. So next
morning I went out and got it, 'cause I liked Doc purty well by then,
and it made me sorry to see sich a nice, quiet man carry on so.
“I couldn't make head nor tail of the book, nor see why it riled Doc
up so. It was jist another Shakespeare book, only this one said that it
wasn't Shakespeare, but some one else, that wrote the Shakespeare books.
I thought Doc was real foolish to git so mad about it, but I had no idea
how much Doc had took it to heart.
“Well, I do run on terribul when I git started, don't I? An' them supper
dishes waitin' to be washed! But I guess it won't hurt them to stand a
bit. You see, when Doc begun to take a likin' for me, the poor feller
started in to talk about what he believed in. Most fellers does. First
he begun about greenbacks. He was the only Greenbacker in Kilo; but that
was jist politercal stuff, and while I'm a good Republican, like pa was,
I didn't see that it would hurt if my husband did think other than what
I did on that, so long as he wasn't a saloon Democrat. That was when
they was havin' the prohibition fight in Ioway, you know. But when Doc
begun lettin' out hints that he didn't think much of goin' to church, I
was real sorry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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