Humorous stories; Valets -- Fiction; Washington (State) -- Fiction
“Why, up at Mis’ Kenner’s, where we was having a little party:
frankfurters and sauerkraut and beer. My stars! but that steak looks
good. I’m feeling better already.” His food was before him, and he
attacked it with no end of spirit.
“Tell me quite all about it,” I amiably suggested, and after a
moment’s hurried devotion to the steak, he slowed up a bit to talk.
“Well, listen here, now. The Judge says to me when Eddie Pierce comes,
‘Sour-dough,’ he says, ‘look in at Mis’ Kenner’s this afternoon if you
got nothing else on; I fancy it will repay you.’ Just like that.
‘Well,’ I says, ‘all right, Judge, I fancy I will. I fancy I ain’t got
anything else on,’ I says. ‘And I’m always glad to go there,’ I says,
because no matter what they’re always saying about this here Bohemian
stuff, Kate Kenner is one good scout, take it from me. So in a little
while I slicked up some and went on around to her house. Then hitched
outside I seen Eddie Pierce’s hack, and I says, ‘My lands! that’s a
funny thing,’ I says. ‘I thought the Judge was going to haul this here
piano guy out to the Jackson place where he could while away the
tejum, like Jackson said, and now it looks as if they was here. Or
mebbe it’s just Eddie himself that has fancied to look in, not having
anything else on.’
“Well, so anyway I go up on the stoop and knock, and when I get in the
parlour there the piano guy is and the Judge and Eddie Pierce, too,
Eddie helping the Jap around with frankfurters and sauerkraut and beer
and one thing and another.
“Besides them was about a dozen of Mis’ Kenner’s own particular
friends, all of ‘em good scouts, let me tell you, and everybody
laughing and gassing back and forth and cutting up and having a good
time all around. Well, so as soon as they seen me, everybody says,
‘Oh, here comes Sour-dough--good old Sour-dough!’ and all like that,
and they introduced me to the piano guy, who gets up to shake hands
with me and spills his beer off the chair arm on to the wife of Eddie
Fosdick in the Farmers’ and Merchants’ National, and so I sat down and
et with ‘em and had a few steins of beer, and everybody had a good
time all around.”
The wonderful man appeared to believe that he had told me quite all of
interest concerning this monstrous festivity. He surveyed the
mutilated remnant of his steak and said: “I guess Clarice might as
well fry me a few eggs. I’m feeling a lot better.” I directed that
this be done, musing upon the dreadful menu he had recited and
recalling the exquisite finish of the collation I myself had prepared.
Sausages, to be sure, have their place, and beer as well, but
sauerkraut I have never been able to regard as an at all possible food
for persons that really matter. Germans, to be sure!
Discreetly I renewed my inquiry: “I dare say the Honourable George was
in good form?” I suggested.
“Well, he et a lot. Him and the piano guy was bragging which could eat
the most sausages.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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