Children -- Fiction; Elves -- Fiction; Kentucky -- Fiction; Magic -- Fiction; Pride and vanity -- Fiction
As you have already anticipated, these little notions were gifts for
dear remembrance sake from the loved ones they had left so far behind
them and whom they were to meet no more for long, long years--perhaps,
forever. Precious relics, which the lonely young pair took out, from
time to time, to look at them; when, with a smile and a tear, they would
tell of the sweet recollections, which this lock of hair, or that piece
of chinaware, this book or that old picture was conjuring up from out
the lights and shadows of such days as no land but brave old
Virginia--happy old Virginia--ever knew.
Now, in this same pack, along with these odds and ends of dear
remembrance, there chanced to be an old show bill, which Jervis and
Elster had brought along with the rest just to keep them in mind of the
happy, happy day, when they two had united their hearts and fortunes for
life. On that self-same day they had gone to the show, which was blazed
by this self-same show bill; and the occasion made their bridal tour as
complete a thing of its kind as nothing short of a centennial could make
in these latter days do for the like excursions. On the show bill, in a
variety of fancy colors, such as we sometimes see in pictures of Daniel
in the den of lions, and the like, were the representations of the
animals which were to be seen at the show; and more, you may be sure,
than were seen there on that day, or ever had been seen in the land, or
ever shall be seen in the world, unless, indeed, what African travelers
tell us, backed by Barnum and the man in the moon, should some day turn
out to be true. To lend their rustic home a more genteel and civilized
appearance, as well as to keep them in mind of the
ever-to-be-remembered day just mentioned, Elster had tacked the show
bill to the rough log wall of their best room, and against this, for a
background, had hung their only looking-glass, with a comb case on one
side and Jervis' jolly-faced silver watch on the other; while crowning
the glass was a bunch of magnificent eagle feathers--a trophy of her
husband's skill as a marksman.
Now, these pictures, flashy, extravagant and out of all nature, though
they might seem to our age of chromo, crayon, perfection, had for this
many a day been the delight of Sprigg's young eyes. But the one that
charmed his fancy more than all the others was that of an Indian boy,
apparently about his own age, riding a Shetland pony at a dashing
gallop, with the right foot tip-toe on his charger's back, the left
amusing itself in the air, the left hand holding the bridle-reins, the
right hand flourishing aloft a savage little tomahawk. In the browband
of the pony's bridle was stuck the staff of a small red flag, while the
gallant young horseman himself was rigged out in leggins and hunting
shirt of the fairest of buckskin, trimmed with the blackest of bearskin,
a hat of gay feathers upon his head, and upon his feet a magnificent
pair of red moccasins.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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