American literature -- Humor; American wit and humor
I feel very much as if I had just awakened out of a long sleep. I
attribute it to the fact that I have slept the greater part of the time
for the last two days and nights. On Wednesday, I sat up all night, in
Virginia, in order to be up early enough to take the five o'clock stage
on Thursday morning. I was on time. It was a great success. I had a
cheerful trip down to Carson, in company with that incessant talker,
Joseph T. Goodman. I never saw him flooded with such a flow of spirits
before. He restrained his conversation, though, until we had traveled
three or four miles, and were just crossing the divide between Silver
City and Spring Valley, when he thrust his head out of the dark stage,
and allowed a pallid light from the coach lamps to illuminate his
features for a moment, after which he returned to darkness again, and
sighed and said, "Damn it!" with some asperity. I asked him who he meant
it for, and he said, "The weather out there." As we approached Carson,
at about half past seven o'clock, he thrust his head out again, and
gazed earnestly in the direction of that city--after which he took it in
again, with his nose very much frosted. He propped the end of that organ
upon the end of his finger, and looked pensively upon it--which had the
effect of making him cross-eyed--and remarked, "O, damn it!" with great
bitterness. I asked him what was up this time, and he said, "The cold,
damp fog--it is worse than the weather." This was his last. He never
spoke again in my hearing. He went on over the mountains with a lady
fellow passenger from here. That will stop his chatter, you know, for he
seldom speaks in the presence of ladies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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