Opening the text

Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

General

Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

American literature

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, shoving up his spectacles, and
sucking his lips over his white teeth to keep them in place, “ladies
and gentlemen, young men and maidens, raley I’m obleeged to Mr. Means
fer this honor,” and the Squire took both hands and turned the top
of his head round several inches. Then he adjusted his spectacles.
Whether he was obliged to Mr. Means for the honor of being compared
to a donkey, was not clear. “I feel in the inmost compartments of my
animal spirits a most happyfying sense of the success and futility of
all my endeavors to sarve the people of Flat Creek deestrick, and the
people of Tomkins township, in my weak way and manner.” This burst of
eloquence was delivered with a constrained air and an apparent sense
of danger that he, Squire Hawkins, might fall to pieces in his weak
way and manner, and of the success and futility (especially the latter)
of all attempts at reconstruction. For by this time the ghastly pupil
of the left eye, which was black, was looking away round to the left
while the little blue one on the right twinkled cheerfully toward the
front. The front teeth would drop down so that the Squire’s mouth was
kept nearly closed, and his words whistled through.

“I feel as if I could be grandiloquent on this interesting occasion,”
twisting his scalp round, “but raley I must forego any such exertions.
It is spelling you want. Spelling is the corner-stone, the grand,
underlying subterfuge of a good eddication. I put the spellin’-book
prepared by the great Daniel Webster alongside the Bible. I do raley.
The man who got up, who compounded this little work of inextricable
valoo was a benufactor to the whole human race or any other.” Here
the spectacles fell off. The Squire replaced them in some confusion,
gave the top of his head another twist, and felt for his glass eye,
while poor Shocky stared in wonder, and Betsy Short rolled from side
to side at the point of death from the effort to suppress her giggle.
Mrs. Means and the other old ladies looked the applause they could not
speak.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

General

Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

American literature

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, shoving up his spectacles, and
sucking his lips over his white teeth to keep them in place, “ladies
and gentlemen, young men and maidens, raley I’m obleeged to Mr. Means
fer this honor,” and the Squire took both hands and turned the top
of his head round several inches. Then he adjusted his spectacles.
Whether he was obliged to Mr. Means for the honor of being compared
to a donkey, was not clear. “I feel in the inmost compartments of my
animal spirits a most happyfying sense of the success and futility of
all my endeavors to sarve the people of Flat Creek deestrick, and the
people of Tomkins township, in my weak way and manner.” This burst of
eloquence was delivered with a constrained air and an apparent sense
of danger that he, Squire Hawkins, might fall to pieces in his weak
way and manner, and of the success and futility (especially the latter)
of all attempts at reconstruction. For by this time the ghastly pupil
of the left eye, which was black, was looking away round to the left
while the little blue one on the right twinkled cheerfully toward the
front. The front teeth would drop down so that the Squire’s mouth was
kept nearly closed, and his words whistled through.

“I feel as if I could be grandiloquent on this interesting occasion,”
twisting his scalp round, “but raley I must forego any such exertions.
It is spelling you want. Spelling is the corner-stone, the grand,
underlying subterfuge of a good eddication. I put the spellin’-book
prepared by the great Daniel Webster alongside the Bible. I do raley.
The man who got up, who compounded this little work of inextricable
valoo was a benufactor to the whole human race or any other.” Here
the spectacles fell off. The Squire replaced them in some confusion,
gave the top of his head another twist, and felt for his glass eye,
while poor Shocky stared in wonder, and Betsy Short rolled from side
to side at the point of death from the effort to suppress her giggle.
Mrs. Means and the other old ladies looked the applause they could not
speak.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

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