Warwick Woodlands: Things as they Were There Twenty Years AgoHerbert, Henry William
General
Warwick Woodlands: Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago
Herbert, Henry William
New York (State) -- Description and travel; Shooting
A broad-brimmed, low-crowned, and long-napped white hat, set forth
assuredly to the best advantage his rotund, rubicund, good-humored phiz;
a clean white handkerchief circled his sturdy neck, on the voluminous
folds of which reposed in placid dignity the mighty collops of his
double chin. A bright canary waistcoat of imported kerseymere, with vast
mother-of-pearl buttons, and a broad-skirted coat of bright blue cloth,
with glittering brass buttons half the size of dollars, covered his
upper man, while loose drab trousers of stout double-milled, and a pair
of well-blacked boots, completed his attire; so that he looked as
different an animal as possible, from the unwashed, uncombed, half-naked
creature he presented, when lounging in his bar-room in his every-day
apparel.
"Why, halloa, Guts!" cried Archer, as he entered, "you've broken out
here in a new place altogether."
"Now quit, you, callin' of me Guts," responded Tom, more testily than I
had ever heard him speak to Harry, whose every whim and frolic he seemed
religiously to venerate and humor; "a fellow doesn't want to have it
'Guts' here, and 'Guts' there, over half a county. Why, now, it was but
a week since, while 'lections was a goin' on, I got a letter from some
d--d chaps to Newburg--`Rouse about now, old Guts, you'll need it this
election?'"
"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted Harry and I almost simultaneously, delighted at
Tom's evident annoyance.
"Who wrote it, Tom?"
"That's what I'd jist give fifty dollars to know now," replied mine
host, clinching his mighty paw.
"Why, what would you do," said I, "if you did know?"
"Lick him, by George! Lick him, in the first place, till he was as nigh
dead as I daared lick him--and then I'd make him eat up every darned
line of it! But come, come--breakfast's ready; and while we're getting
through with it, Timothy and Jem Lyn will fix the pig-box, and make the
deer all right and tight for traveling!"
No sooner said than done--an ample meal was speedily despatched--and
when that worthy came in to announce all ready, for the saving of time,
master Timothy was accommodated with a seat at a side-table, which he
occupied with becoming dignity, abstaining, as it were, in consciousness
of his honorable promotion, from any of the quaint and curious
witticisms, in which he was wont to indulge; but manducating, with vast
energy, the various good things which were set before him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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