American fiction -- 19th century; Short stories; Western stories
That she had grimly enjoyed their ignorance of her position
they did not doubt. “Why, I remember onct when I was sorter bullyraggin'
her about mixin' up my duds with Doc Simmons's, and sendin' me Whiskey
Dick's old rags, she turned round sudden with a kind of screech, and ran
out into the brush. I reckoned, at the time, that it was either 'drink'
or feelin's, and could hev kicked myself for being sassy to the
old woman, but I know now that all this time that air critter--that
barrownet's daughter-in-law--was just laughin' herself into fits in the
brush! No, sir, she played this yer camp for all it was worth, year in
and out, and we just gave ourselves away like speckled idiots! and now
she's lyin' out thar in the bone yard, and keeps on p'intin' the joke,
and a-roarin' at us in marble.”
Even the later citizens in Atherly felt an equal resentment against her,
but from different motives. That her drinking habits and her powerful
vocabulary were all the effect of her aristocratic alliance they never
doubted. And, although it brought the virtues of their own superior
republican sobriety into greater contrast, they felt a scandal at having
been tricked into attending this gilded funeral of dissipated rank.
Peter Atherly found himself unpopular in his own town. The sober who
drank from his free “Waterworks,” and the giddy ones who imbibed at
his “Gin Mill,” equally criticised him. He could not understand it; his
peculiar predilections had been accepted before, when they were mere
presumptions; why should they not NOW, when they were admitted facts?
He was conscious of no change in himself since the funeral! Yet the
criticism went on. Presently it took the milder but more contagious form
of ridicule. In his own hotel, built with his own money, and in his own
presence, he had heard a reckless frequenter of the bar-room decline
some proffered refreshment on the ground that “he only drank with his
titled relatives.” A local humorist, amidst the applause of an admiring
crowd at the post-office window, had openly accused the postmaster of
withholding letters to him from his only surviving brother, “the Dook of
Doncherknow.” “The ole dooky never onct missed the mail to let me
know wot's goin' on in me childhood's home,” remarked the humorist
plaintively; “and yer's this dod-blasted gov'ment mule of a postmaster
keepin' me letters back!” Letters with pretentious and gilded coats of
arms, taken from the decorated inner lining of cigar-boxes, were posted
to prominent citizens. The neighboring and unregenerated settlement of
Red Dog was more outrageous in its contribution. The Red Dog “Sentinel,”
in commenting on the death of “Haulbowline Tom,” a drunken English
man-o'-war's man, said: “It may not be generally known that our
regretted fellow citizen, while serving on H. M. S. Boxer, was secretly
married to Queen Kikalu of the Friendly Group; but, unlike some of
our prosperous neighbors, he never boasted of his royal alliance, and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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