Samantha at the St. Louis ExpositionHolley, Marietta
General
Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition
Holley, Marietta
Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : Saint Louis, Mo.) -- Fiction
They moved to a big city where Sam got a chance to travel for a grocery
store, and Jane Olive opened a inteligence office, where for an ample
consideration she furnished incompetent help to distracted housekeepers,
receivin' pay from both victims, and they laid up money fast. Then he
went into pork and first we knew Sam wuz a very rich man, lived in great
style, kep' his carriage, but wuz awful mean, so we heard, hadn't no
morals at all to speak on so fur as wimmen wuz concerned, and we had
hearn that Jane Olive not bein' over and above happy in marriage, and
forgittin' to all appearance she had ever dickered with mistress and
maid, wuz tryin' her best to work her way in among the aristockracy, she
wuz dretful ambitious and so wuz Sam, they wanted to go with the first.
She did everything she could to foller their example, she dressed up in
satin and diamonds and trailed 'round to theatres and operas and hung
over dry goods counters, and kep' her maid and coachman and butler, or
that's what folks say, I don't even know what a butler is expected to
do, or Josiah don't. "Butler," sez I when I hearn on't, "I can't imagine
what a butler duz."
And Josiah sez, "A coachman is to coach, and a waiter is to wait, and a
butler must be to buttle."
Sez I, "Buttle what? Or who? Or when?" But he couldn't tell. Well, Sam
he did everything to git into the first and be fashionable, he embezzled
a lot, broke down two or three times with enormous profit to himself,
spent his money like water, wuz jest as mean as he could be, went over
to Europe now and then, did everything he could do to be fashionable and
act like a man of the world, and finally he led astray a little girl
that lived with 'em, a motherless little girl they had took, pretty as a
pink too, and affectionate dispositioned. Jane Olive turned her
outdoors, of course, when she found it out. It wuz in the fall of the
year, and the night before Christmas the girl with her baby in her arms
jumped into the river and wuz drownded.
Her father had some spunk and took Sam up, but he wuz always sly and
looked ahead, and he proved that she wuz a day or two older than the age
of consent, and he got let off triumphant and her father had to pay the
cost, besides the funeral expenses, and grave stun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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