The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics — John Shaqi
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Time enough, bless you! and the Sunday, any way, is _so_ long!
This Sunday morning, at ten o'clock, Dorcas has already been up and
dressed six hours. Everything having the remotest connection with
domestic duties has been finished and laid aside long ago, and she has
devoted the last two hours to solitary meditations, mostly of the kind
already mentioned.
In the great oven, since last night, has lain the Sunday supper of
baked pork-and-beans, Indian-pudding, and brown bread, all the
better the longer they bake, and all unfailing in their character
of excellence. In the square room, in the green arm-chair, sits the
Colonel, fast asleep.
Four hours ago, he fumed and fretted about barn and cow-house,
breakfasted, and had family-prayers. Since then, he has donned his
Sabbath array, both mental and bodily. Mentally, having dismissed the
cares of the week, he has strictly united himself with his body, and
gone to sleep. Bodily, he appears in a suit of hemlock-dyed, with
Matherman buttons, knee- and shoe-buckles of silver. His gray hair is
neatly composed in a queue, his full cheeks rest on his portly chest,
and the outward visibly harmonizes with the inward man. He
sleeps soundly now, purposing faithfully to keep awake during the
three-and-twenty heads of the minister's discourse. If he finds it
too much for him, he means to stand, as he often does. Sometimes he
partakes freely of the aromatic stimulants carried by his wife and
daughter as bouquets. The southernwood wakes him, and the green seeds
of the caraway get him well along through the sermon.
Mrs. Fox steps softly in, rustling in the same black taffeta she
always wears, and the same black silk bonnet,--worn just fifty-two
days in a year, and carefully pinned and boxed away for all the other
three hundred and thirteen.
As fashions did not come to Walton oftener than once in ten years,
it followed that apparel among the young people wore very much the
expression of individual taste, while among the elders it was wont to
assume the cast now irreverently designated by "fossil remains." And,
really, it did not much matter. Whatever our country-grandmothers were
admired and esteemed for, be sure it was not dress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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