I never bought nothin' new for any of my feet, not even a shoe-string.
And the only new thing that I bought, anyway, wuz a new muslin night-cap
with a lace ruffle.
I bought that, and I spoze vanity and pride wuz to the bottom of it. I
feel my own shortcomin's, I feel 'em deep, and try to repent, every now
and then, I do.
But I did think in my own mind that in case of fire, and I knew that
Chicago wuz a great case for burnin' itself up--I thought in case of
fire in the night I wouldn't want to be ketched with a plain
sheep's-head night-cap on, which, though comfortable, and my choice for
stiddy wear, hain't beautiful.
And I thought if there wuz a fire, and I wuz to be depictered in the
newspapers as a-bein' rescued, I did feel a little pride in havin' a
becomin' night-cap on, and not bein' engraved with a sheep's head on.
Thinks'es I, the pictures in the newspapers are enough to bring on the
cold chills onto anybody, even if took bareheaded, and what--what would
be the horror of 'em took in a sheep's head!
There it wuz, there is my own weakness sot right down in black and
white. But, anyway, it only cost thirty-five cents, and there wuzn't
nothin' painful about it, like Josiah's shoes, nor protracted, like
Tirzah Ann's stockin's.
Wall, Ury and Philury moved in the day before, and Josiah and I left in
the very best of sperits and on the ten o'clock train, Maggie and Thomas
Jefferson and Krit a-meetin' us to the depot.
Maggie looked as pretty as a pink, if she didn't make no preperations.
She had on her plain waist, black silk, and a little black velvet
turban, and she had pinned a bunch of fresh rosies to her waist, and the
rosies wuzn't any pinker than her pretty cheeks and lips, and the dew
that had fell into them roses' hearts that night wuzn't any brighter
than her sweet gray eyes.
She makes a beautiful woman, Maggie Allen duz; and she ort to, to
correspond with her husband, for my boy, Thomas Jefferson, is a young
man of a thousand, and it is admitted that he is by all the
Jonesvillians--nearly every villian of 'em admits it.
Tirzah Ann and the babe wuz to the depot to see us off, and she said
that she should come on jest as soon as she got through with her
preperations.
But I felt dubersome about her comin' very soon, for she took out her
knittin' work (we had to wait quite a good while for the cars), and I
see that she hadn't got the first one only to the instep.
It is slow knittin'--shells are dretful slow anyway--and she wuz too
proud sperited to have 'em plain clam-shell pattern, which are bigger
and coarser; she had to have 'em oyster-shell pattern, in ridges.
Wall, as I say, I felt dubersome, but I spoke up cheerful on the
outside--
"If you git your stockin's done, Tirzah Ann, you must be sure and come."
And she said she would.
The way she said it wuz: "One, two, three, four, yes, mother; five, six,
seven, I will."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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