The Abandoned Farmers: His Humorous Account of a Retreat from the City to the FarmCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
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The Abandoned Farmers: His Humorous Account of a Retreat from the City to the Farm
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Farms -- Recreational use -- United States -- Fiction; Humorous stories
When they felt that they needed bathing they also felt that they needed
privacy. I sometimes think that my family must have been descended from
Susanna. She was a Biblical lady and so did not have any last name,
but you probably recall her from the circumstance of her having been
surprised while bathing by two snoopy elders. Whenever one of the Old
Masters ran out of other subjects to paint, he would paint a picture of
Susanna and the elders. In no two of their pictures did she look alike,
but in all of them that I've ever seen she looked embarrassed. Yes,
I dare say Susanna was our direct ancestress. Like practically all
Southern families, ours is a very old family and I've always been led
to believe that we go back a long way. True, I've never heard the Old
Testament mentioned in this connection, but in view of the fact of our
family being such an old or Southern family I reckon it is but fair to
presume that we go back fully that far if not farther.
Indeed I have been told that in my infancy a friend of the family, a man
who had delved rather into archeology, on calling one day remarked that
I had a head shaped exactly like a cuneiform Chaldean brick. It was
years later, however, before my parents learned what a cuneiform
Chaldean brick looked like and by that time the person who had paid me
the compliment was dead and it was too late to take offense at him. And
anyhow, in the meantime the contour of my skull had so altered that it
was now possible for me to wear a regular child's hat bought out of
a store. I point out the circumstance merely as possible collateral
evidence showing semiprehistoric hereditary influences to corroborate
the more or less direct evidence that as a family we antedate nearly
all--if not all--of these Northern families by going back into the very
dawn of civilization. I have a great aunt who rather specializes in
genealogies and especially our own genealogy and the next time I see her
I mean to ask her to consult the authorities and find out whether
there is a strain of the Susanna blood in our stock. If she confirms my
present belief that there is I shall be very glad to let everybody know
about it in an appendix to the next edition of this work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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