Tirzah Ann's summer trip, and other sketchesHolley, Marietta
General
Tirzah Ann's summer trip, and other sketches
Holley, Marietta
American fiction -- 19th century
It was a black and white lawn, with big, even checks. The skirt was
gathered in full all round, and it was made plain waist. It sot pretty
well, only it drawed in acrost the chest. (She made it herself and cut
it too narrer.) She had a shawl with a palm-leaf border, that she had
when she married Doodle; and a Leghorn bonnet that she wore on the
same occasion. It came over her face considerable, and had a bunch of
artifishel flowers on each side of her face. Her veil was made out of an
old white lace cape of her’n, but the edgin’ round it was new—four cents
a yard, for she told me so. And she had a pair of new white gloves, No.
7, purchased with a view to their shrinkin’ in the future, and a white
cotton handkerchief. But she told me (in strict confidence,) that she
had got a black pocket to her dress, and she had on a new pair of black
elastic garters. Says she, “I cannot forget Doodle. I never can forget
that dear man.” I knew she couldn’t.
Solemen seemed to use her pretty middlin’ well, only I could see that he
felt above her feerfully. He acted dretful domineerin’, and seemed to
feel very, very haughty toward wimmin. He looked down on us awfully as a
race, and said we should both probably get hurt before we left the ground.
He and Josiah went out to look at some cattle for a few moments, and the
widder, bein’ very talkative, told me all about her courtships. I says to
her:
“Widder, I believe you mean well, but how under the sun could you marry a
man six weeks after his wife died?”
“Wall,” says she, “Solemen said that the corpse wouldn’t be no deader
than it was then, if he waited three or four months, as some men did.”
“And,” says she, “he asked me to have him in a dretful handsome way,”
says she. “‘The Children of the Abbey,’ or ‘Thadeus of Warsaw,’ nor none
of ’em, couldn’t have done it up in any more romantic and foamin’ way.”
Says she, “The way on’t wus, I had been to see his housekeeper, and he
was bringin’ me home, and I wus a praisin’ up his wagon and horses—a new
double wagon with a spring seat,—and all of a suddent he spoke out, in a
real ardent and lover like tone:
“‘Widder Doodle! if you will be my bride, the wagon is your’n, and the
mares,’ says he. ‘Widder, I throw myself onto your feet, and I throw the
wagon, and the mares, and with them I throw eighty-five acres of good
land, fourteen cows, five calves, four three-year-olds and a yearlin’; a
dwellin’-house, a new horse-barn, and myself. I throw ’em all onto your
feet, and there we lay on ’em.’
“He waited for me to answer. And it flustrated me so, that I says, ‘O,
Doodle! Doodle! if you wus alive you would tell me what to do to do
right!’
“And that,” she said, “seemed to mad him; his forehead all wrinkled up,
and he looked as black and hard as a stove-pipe. And he yelled out that
he ‘didn’t want to hear nothin’ about no Doodle, and he wouldn’t, nuther.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account