Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor — John Shaqi
Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor
General
Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor
American wit and humor
On a low, sandy mound far down on the Cape rises a tall slate stone,
with fitting emblems and epitaphs as follows:
"Here lies Judy and John
That lovely pair,
John was killed by a whale,
And Judy sleeps here."
--Sketches of New England.
Danforth Marble
THE HOOSIER AND THE SALT-PILE
"I'm sorry," says Dan, as he knocked the ashes from his regalia, as
he sat in a small crowd over a glass of sherry at Florence's, New
York, one evening. "I'm sorry that the stages are disappearing so
rapidly; I never enjoyed traveling so well as in the slow coaches.
I've made a good many passages over the Alleghanies, and across Ohio,
from Cleveland to Columbus and Cincinnati, all over the South, down
East, and up North, in stages, and I generally had a good time.
"When I passed over from Cleveland to Cincinnati, the last time, in a
stage, I met a queer crowd--such a _corps_, such a time you never did
see; I never was better amused in my life. We had a good team--
spanking horses, fine coaches, and one of them _drivers_ you read of.
Well, there was nine 'insiders,' and I don't believe there ever was a
stageful of Christians ever started before so chuck full of music.
"There was a beautiful young lady going to one of the Cincinnati
academies; next to her sat a Jew peddler--for Cowes and a market;
wedging him in was a dandy blackleg, with jewelry and chains around
his breast and neck--enough to hang him. There was myself and an old
gentleman with large spectacles, gold-headed cane, and a jolly,
soldiering-iron-looking nose; by him was a circus rider whose breath
was enough to breed yaller fever and could be felt just as easy as
cotton velvet! A cross old woman came next, and whose _look_ would
have given any reasonable man the double-breasted blues before
breakfast; alongside of her was a rale backwoods preacher, with the
biggest and ugliest mouth ever got up since the flood. He was flanked
by the low comedian of the party, an Indiana Hoosier, 'gwine down to
Orleans to get an army contract' to supply the forces then in Mexico
with beef.
"We rolled along for some time; nobody seemed inclined to 'open.' The
old aunty sot bolt upright, looking crab-apples and persimmons at the
Hoosier and the preacher; the young lady dropped the green curtain of
her bonnet over her pretty face, and leaned back in her seat, to nod
and dream over japonicas and jumbles, pantalettes and poetry; the old
gentleman, proprietor of the Bardolph 'nose,' looked out at the
'corduroy' and swashes; the gambler fell off into a doze, and the
circus covey followed suit, leaving the preacher and me _vis-a-vis_
and saying nothing to nobody. 'Indiany,' he stuck his mug out at the
window and criticized the cattle we now and then passed. I was
wishing somebody would give the conversation a start, when 'Indiany'
made a break:
"'This ain't no great stock country,' says he to the old gentleman
with the cane.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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