The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
I hope that our landlady's daughter is not so badly off, after all.
That young man from another city, who made the remark which you
remember about Boston State-house and Boston folks, has appeared at our
table repeatedly of late, and has seemed to me rather attentive to this
young lady. Only last evening I saw him leaning over her while she was
playing the accordion,--indeed, I undertook to join them in a song, and
got as far as "Come rest in this boo-oo," when, my voice getting
tremulous, I turned off, as one steps out of a procession, and left the
basso and soprano to finish it. I see no reason why this young woman
should not be a very proper match for a man that laughs about Boston
State-house. He can't be very particular.
The young fellow whom I have so often mentioned was a little free in
his remarks, but very good-natured.--Sorry to have you go,--he
said.--Schoolma'am made a mistake not to wait for me. Haven't taken
anything but mournin' fruit at breakfast since I heard of
it.--_Mourning fruit,_--said I,--what's that?--Huckleberries and
blackberries,--said he;--couldn't eat in colors, raspberries, currants,
and such, after a solemn thing like this happening.--The conceit seemed
to please the young fellow. If you will believe it, when we came down
to breakfast the next morning, he had carried it out as follows. You
know those odious little "saäs-plates" that figure so largely at
boarding-houses, and especially at taverns, into which a strenuous
attendant female trowels little dabs, sombre of tint and heterogeneous
of composition, which it makes you feel homesick to look at, and into
which you poke the elastic coppery teaspoon with the air of a cat
dipping her foot into a wash-tub,--(not that I mean to say anything
against them, for, when they are of tinted porcelain or starry
many-faceted crystal, and hold clean bright berries, or pale virgin
honey, or "lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon," and the teaspoon is of
white silver, with the Tower-stamp, solid, but not brutally heavy,--as
people in the green stage of millionism will have them,--I can dally
with their amber semi-fluids or glossy spherules without a
shiver,)--you know these small, deep dishes, I say. When we came down
the next morning, each of these (two only excepted) was covered with a
broad leaf. On lifting this, each boarder found a small heap of solemn
black huckleberries. But one of those plates held red currants, and was
covered with a red rose; the other held white currants, and was covered
with a white rose. There was a laugh at this at first, and then a short
silence, and I noticed that her lip trembled, and the old gentleman
opposite was in trouble to get at his bandanna handkerchief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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