Maw's Vacation: The Story of a Human Being in the YellowstoneHough, Emerson
General
Maw's Vacation: The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone
Hough, Emerson
American wit and humor; Camping; Tourists; Yellowstone National Park
"So that's what it is," nodded Maw as I gave this information. "I
suppose it's just part of the funny things that happens back here. Such
things as a person does see on a vacation! Don't it beat all? Now I
caught Hattie walking off towards the electric light last night with a
young man that had specs and leather leggins like the officers has, and
I declare if she didn't tell me he was a perfessor of geology down at
Salt Lake or Omaha. Once I give a quarter for a tip to a man that
brought me some gasoline, and I declare if I didn't find out he teaches
law in a university somewheres! Then, they tell me that the young man
who peels potatoes in the kitchen back of our camp has only one more
year to get through Princeton--whoever Princeton is. I wish he was
through now, because he sings things.
"We're making quite a stay here in the park--longer than what we allowed
we would do, Paw and me. The girls seem to be having a sort of good time
here, one thing with another. You can't leave a girl alone anywheres
here, unless she's taken in by some perfessor or ranger or guide or cook
or chauffeur or something, who comes along and carries her off to show
her the bears or Old Faithful or Inspiration Point or something. Seems
to me like we've heard them words before, too--and then there's Lovers'
Leap and the Devil's Slide. We've even got them in Ioway, where the
hills is rough.
"Set down on the log here," said Maw, "and rest yourself, and I'll build
up the fire. Ain't it fine outdoors? I declare, I let out my corsets
four inches above and below, I breathe that much deeper here in the
mountains; and the air makes you feel so fine. What was I saying?--oh,
about my knitting. You see at home, when I get my work done, I knit or
crochet or embroider. Mary's baby is a right cute little thing, and I
like to sew or knit things anyways. But Joseph said to me: 'Now, Maw!
Now you forget it; we're going to have a vacation now, with no work at
all for no one at all, and all strings off. We're just going to have one
mighty good time,' says Joseph to me. At first, having nothing to do, I
felt right strange, but I'm getting used to it now, though I do think I
could knit comfortable while setting watching the geysers spout.
"I dunno how we happened to come out so far as this--we didn't allow to
spend over two hundred dollars, but I allow we've spent over five
hundred or six hundred dollars now. The funny thing is, Paw don't seem
to care. He always was aggressive. He just driv right on West till we
got here. He said his Paw traveled across all that country in a ox team,
and he allowed he could in a automobile. So we done it, and here we are.
I don't care if we don't get home till after harvest."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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