Letters of Major Jack Downing, of the Downingville MilitiaSmith, Seba
History
Letters of Major Jack Downing, of the Downingville Militia
Smith, Seba
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Caricatures and cartoons; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Humor
You allers contrive to git ahed of me after all."
The other day I got a letter from Jerushy Matilda, Deacon Jenkins'
darter, and Linkin was eenamost crazy to see how Chase's missionaries
cum on. So I sot down, Deacon Jenkins was thar too, and read it all to
Linkin, and I send it to you to print, jest as I promised. So here it
is in full. Jerushy is a proper smart gal, and I guess thar aint menny
of her age who can beat her:
BEAUFORT, S.C., March 25, 1862.
DEER UNCLE--I take my pen in hand to fulfil my promise to you. Now,
I'm goin to rite you the hull truth about things in this part of
the Lord's vinyard. I shall tell you some grate news, so you must
not tell par of it, for ef you do he'll rite hum about it, and then
it will soon be all over Downingville. I jest as live mar would
know it as not, but then she'll tell aunt Betsy Wiggles, and aunt
Betsy will go rite over to old Deliverance Grimes, and tell her,
and then Deliverance she'll put on her bonnet and start all over
town, and ef Jim Pendergrass gets hold of it he'll hector me to
death, for he's a rale pro-slavery Dimmycrat, and thinks that our
colored brethren and sisters are fit only for slaves. I can't deny
that I've been much disencurriged sence I've been here. You see
we've got a very queer set of gals and men here with us. Some of
'em are quite old gals, who haint been very lucky in life, and
naturally they feel kinder sour towards men in gineral. Some of 'em
have been schule marms for a good many years, and some have been
milliner gals. Two of 'em had a rale spat on the boat while we were
comin here. The way it happened was this: There is a spruce looking
old maid by the name of Priscilla Huggins, from Bosting, who is
very gifted in prayer, and she tuk a great notion to Elder
Sniffles, a young preacher, who is one of the piesest men I ever
see. She is quite an old gal, and there was another gal, a nice
looking and quite young gal, from York. Her name was Melissy Buggs.
One day Melissy giv Miss Huggins a terribel slap by tellin her that
she guessed she made believe being so pious jest to ketch Elder
Sniffles. When Miss Huggins heerd this, she sed something
unrespectful of milliner gals. "She didn't believe," she sed, "that
eny of 'em had religion, and what's more than that, they want eny
more respectable than they oughter be." When she sed that, Melissy
she jumped rite at her with both her hands, and ketched hold of her
har, and bless me, if she didn't pull nigh about all the har off
her hed, for it turned out it was false har and not genoine. When
Miss Huggins see her har on the floor, she turned as red as a beet,
and Melissy said she guessed her hart was jest as false as her har.
This made her redder yet, and jest at this point Elder Sniffles
came along. He cum up, and ses he, "My dear sis-ters, this is not
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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