The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) by Marshall P. Wilder (web based ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Marshall P. Wilder
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The homely household-ways lead through beds of spices[Pg 622] and orchards of pomegranates. The daily toil among your parsnips and carrots is plucking May violets with the dew upon them to meet the eyes you love upon their first awaking. In the burden and heat of the day you hear the rustling of summer showers and the whispering of summer winds. Everything is lifted up from the plane of labor to the plane of love, and a glory spans your life. With your friend, speech and silence are one; for a communion mysterious and intangible reaches across from heart to heart. The many dig and delve in your nature with fruitless toil to find the spring of living water: he only raises his wand, and, obedient to the hidden power, it bends at once to your secret. Your friendship, though independent of language, gives to it life and light. The mystic spirit stirs even in commonplaces, and the merest question is an endearment. You are quiet because your heart is over-full. You talk because it is pleasant, not because you have anything to say. You weary of terms that are already love-laden, and you go out into the highways and hedges, and gather up the rough, wild, wilful words, heavy with the hatreds of men, and fill them to the brim with honey-dew. All things great and small, grand or humble, you press into your service, force them to do soldier's duty, and your banner over them is love.
With such a friendship, presence alone is happiness; nor is absence wholly void,—for memories, and hopes, and pleasing fancies, sparkle through the hours, and you know the sunshine will come back.
For such friendship one is grateful. No matter that it comes unsought, and comes not for the seeking. You do not discuss the reasonableness of your gratitude. You only know that your whole being bows with humility and utter thankfulness to him who thus crowns you monarch of all realms.[Pg 623]
And the kingdom is everlasting. A weak love dies weakly with the occasion that gave it birth; but such friendship is born of the gods, and immortal. Clouds and darkness may sweep around it, but within the cloud the glory lives undimmed. Death has no power over it. Time can not diminish, nor even dishonor annul it. Its direction may have been earthly, but itself is divine. You go back into your solitudes: all is silent as aforetime, but you can not forget that a Voice once resounded there. A Presence filled the valleys and gilded the mountain-tops,—breathed upon the plains, and they sprang up in lilies and roses,—flashed upon the waters, and they flowed to spheral melody,—swept through the forests, and they, too, trembled into song. And though now the warmth has faded out, though the ruddy tints and amber clearness have paled to ashen hues, though the murmuring melodies are dead, and forest, vale, and hill look hard and angular in the sharp air, you know that it is not death. The fire is unquenched beneath. You go your way not disconsolate. There needs but the Victorious Voice. At the touch of the prince's lips, life shall rise again and be perfected forevermore.[Pg 624]
PONCHUS PILUT BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY1st a Slave, an' now he's free.
Slaves wuz on'y ist before
The War wuz—an' ain't no more.
An' comes here—sometimes he does.
He shocks corn an' shucks it.—An'
He makes hominy "by han'!"—
Tied up in a piller-slip:
Pa says, when Ma cooked it, "MY!
This-here's gooder'n you buy!"
An' he says most funny things!
Ponchus calls a dish a "deesh"—
Yes, an' he calls fishes "feesh"!
He says, "'Skuse me—'deed you mus'!—
Ponchus know good manners, Miss.—
He aint eat wher' White-folks is!"
[Pg 625]
Wher' he's workin'—roun' about.—
Wunst he et his dinner, spread
In our ole wheel-borry-bed.
His right name,—an' done fergot
What his sho'-nuff name is now—
An' don' matter none nohow!"
When our butcherin's to do,
An' scalds hogs—an' says "Take care
'Bout it, er you'll set the hair!"
He he'ps 'Lindy rendur lard;
An', wite in the fire there, he
Roast' a pig-tail wunst fer me.—
Rung, down town, an' he says "Well!—
Hear dat! Lan' o' Canaan, Son,
Aint dat bell say 'Pig-tail done!'
Go call Son!—
Tell dat
Chile dat
Pig-tail done!'"
[Pg 626] THE WOLF AT SUSAN'S DOOR BY ANNE WARNER
"Well, Lucy has got Hiram!"
There was such a strong inflection of triumphant joy in Miss Clegg's voice as she called the momentous news to her friend that it would have been at once—and most truthfully—surmised that the getting of Hiram had been a more than slight labor.
Mrs. Lathrop was waiting by the fence, impatience written with a wandering reflection all over the serenity of her every-day expression. Susan only waited to lay aside her bonnet and mitts and then hastened to the fence herself.
"Mrs. Lathrop, you never saw nor heard the like of this weddin' day in all your own days to be or to come, and I don't suppose there ever will be anything like it again, for Lucy Dill didn't cut no figger in her own weddin' a-tall,—the whole thing was Gran'ma Mullins first, last and forever hereafter. I tell you it looked once or twice as if it wouldn't be a earthly possibility to marry Hiram away from his mother, and now that it's all over people can't do anything but say as after all Lucy ought to consider herself very lucky as things turned out, for if things hadn't turned out as they did turn out I don't believe anything on earth could have unhooked that son, and I'm willin' to swear that anywhere to any one.
"Do you know, Mrs. Lathrop, that Gran'ma Mullins was so bad off last night as they had to put a mustard plaster onto her while Hiram went to see Lucy for the[Pg 627] last time, an' Mrs. Macy says as she never hear the beat o' her memory, for she says she'll take her Bible oath as Gran'ma Mullins told her what Hiram said and done every minute o' his life while he was gone to see Lucy Dill. And she cried, too, and took on the whole time she was talkin' an' said Heaven help her, for nobody else could, an' she just knowed Lucy'd get tired o' Hiram's story an' he can't be happy a whole day without he tells it, an' she's most sure Lucy won't like his singin' 'Marchin' Through Georgia' after the first month or two, an' it's the only tune as Hiram has ever really took to. Mrs. Macy says she soon found she couldn't do nothin' to stem the tide except to drink tea an' listen, so she drank an' listened till Hiram come home about eleven. Oh, my, but she says they had the time then! Gran'ma Mullins let him in herself, and just as soon as he was in she bu'st into floods of tears an' wouldn't let him loose under no consideration. She says Hiram managed to get his back to the wall for a brace 'cause Gran'ma Mullins nigh to upset him every fresh time as Lucy come over her, an' Mrs. Macy says she couldn't but wonder what the end was goin' to be when, toward midnight, Hiram just lost patience and dodged out under her arm and run up the ladder to the roof-room an' they couldn't get him to come down again. She says when Gran'ma Mullins realized as he wouldn't come down she most went mad over the notion of her only son's spendin' the Christmas Eve to his own weddin' sleepin' on the floor o' the attic and she wanted to poke the cot up to him but Mrs. Macy says she drew the line at cot-pokin' when the cot was all she'd have to sleep on herself, and in the end they poked quilts up, an' pillows an' doughnuts an' cider an' blankets, an' Hiram made a bed on the floor an' they all got to sleep about three o'clock.[Pg 628]
"Well, Mrs. Lathrop, what do you think? What do you think? They was so awful tired that none of 'em woke till Mrs. Sperrit come at eleven next day to take 'em to the weddin'! Mrs. Macy says she hopes she'll be put forward all her back-slidin's if she ever gets such a start again. She says when she peeked out between the blinds an' see Mrs. Sperrit's Sunday bonnet an' realized her own state she nearly had a fit. Mrs. Sperrit had to come in an' be explained to, an' the worst of it was as Hiram couldn't be woke nohow. He'd pulled the ladder up after him an' put the lid on the hole so's to feel safe, an' there he was snug as a bug in a rug an' where no human bein' could get at him. They hollered an' banged doors an' sharpened the carvin' knife an' poured grease on the stove an' did anything they could think of, but he never budged. Mrs. Macy says she never was so close beside herself in all her life before, for Gran'ma Mullins cried worse 'n ever each minute an' Hiram seemed like the very dead couldn't wake him.
"They was all hoppin' around half crazy when Mr. Sperrit come along on his way to the weddin' an' his wife run out an' told him what was the matter an' he come right in an' looked up at the matter. It didn't take long for him to unsettle Hiram, Mrs. Macy says. He got a sulphur candle an' tied it to a stick an' h'isted the lid with another stick, an' in less 'n two minutes they could all hear Hiram sneezin' an' comin' to. An' Mrs. Macy says when they hollered what time it was she wishes the whole town might have been there to see Hiram Mullins come down to earth. Mr. Sperrit didn't hardly have time to get out o' the way an' he didn't give his mother no show for one single grab,—he just bounced into his room and you could have heard him gettin' dressed on the far side o' the far bridge.[Pg 629]
"O' course, us at Lucy's didn't know anythin' a-tall about Mrs. Macy's troubles. We had our own, Heaven help us, an' they was enough, for the very first thing of all Mr. Dill caught his pocket on the corner of Mrs. Dill an' come within a ace of pullin' her off her easel. That would have been a pretty beginnin' to Lucy's weddin' day if her father had smashed her mother to bits, I guess, but it couldn't have made Lucy any worse; for I will say, Mrs. Lathrop, as I never see no one in all my born life act foolisher than Lucy Dill this day. First she'd laugh an' then she'd cry an' then she'd lose suthin' as we'd got to have to work with. An' when it come to dressin' her!—well, if she'd known as Hiram was sleepin' a sleep as next to knowed no wakin' she couldn't have put on more things wrong side out an' hind side before! She wasn't dressed till most every one was there an' I was gettin' pretty anxious, for Hiram wasn't there neither, an' the more fidgety people got the more they caught their corners on Mrs. Dill. I just saved her from Mr. Kimball, an' Amelia saw her goin' as a result o' Judge Fitch an' hardly had time for a jump. The minister himself was beginnin'
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