Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

humiliation your reprehensible ignorance causes us. I will address this person in his mother tongue: 'Here, cospetto! corpo di Bacco ! Sacramento! Solferino !-Soap, you son of a gun !' Dan, if you would let us talk for you, you would never expose your ignorant vulgarity."

Even this fluent discharge of Italian did not bring the soap at once, but there was a good reason for it. There was not such an article about the establishment. It is my belief that there never had been. They had to send far up town, and to several different places, before they finally got it, so they said. We had to wait twenty or thirty minutes. The same thing had occurred the evening before at the hotel. I think I have divined the reason for this state of things at last. The English know how to travel comfortably, and they carry soap with them; other foreigners do not use the article.

At every hotel we stop at we always have to send out for soap, at the last moment, when we are grooming ourselves for dinner, and they put it in the bill along with the candles and other nonsense. In Marseilles they make half the fancy toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel, just as they have acquired an uncertain notion of clean shirts, and the peculiarities of the gorilla, and other curious matters. This reminds me of poor Blucher's note to the landlord in Paris::

"PARIS, le 7 Juillet.

"Monsieur le Landlord,-Sir: Pourquoi don't you mettez some savon in your bed-chambers? Est-ce que vous pensez I will steal it? La nuit passée you charged me pour deux chandelles when I only had one; hier vous avez charged me avec glace when I had none at all; tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other on me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice. Savon is a necessary de la vie to anybody but a Frenchman, et je l'aurai hors de cet hôtel or make trouble. You hear me. Allons.

"BLUCHER.'

I remonstrated against the sending of this note, because it was so mixed up that the landlord would never be able to make head or tail of it; but Blucher said he guessed the old man would read the French of it and average the rest.

Will Carleton.

[The author of "Farm Ballads" is not much known in England. He is a good type of purely Western humour and pathos, and has done his work as Burns did, "with team afield," as well as in the study and at the desk.]

BETSEY AND I ARE OUT.

DRAW up the papers, lawyer, and make 'em good and stout;
For things at home are crossways, and Betsey and I are out.
We, who have worked together, so long as man and wife,
Must pull in single harness for the rest of our natʼral life.

"What is the matter?" say you. I swan it's hard to tell!
Most of the years behind us we've passed by very well;
I have no other woman, she has no other man—
Only we've lived together as long as we ever can.

So I have talked with Betsey, and Betsey has talked with me,
And so we've agreed together that we can't never agree;
Not that we've catched each other in any terrible crime;
We've been a-gathering this for years, a little at a time.

There was a stock of temper, we both had for a start,
Although we never suspected 'twould take us two apart;
I had my various failings, bred in the flesh and bone;
And Betsey, like all good women, had a temper of her own.

The first thing I remember whereon we disagreed
Was something concerning heaven--a difference in our creed;
We arg'ed the thing at breakfast, we arg'ed the thing at tea,
And the more we arg'ed the question the more we didn't agree.

And the next that I remember was when we lost a cow;

She had kicked the bucket for certain, the question was only -How?

I held my own opinion, and Betsey another had;

And when we were done a-talkin', we both of us was mad.

And the next that I remember, it started in a joke;
But full for a week it lasted, and neither of us spoke.
And the next was when I scolded because she broke a bowl;
And she said I was mean and stingy, and hadn't any soul.

And so that bowl kept pourin' dissensions in our cup;
And so that blamed cow-critter was always a-comin' up;
And so that heaven we arg'ed no nearer to us got,

But it gave us a taste of somethin' a thousand times as hot.

And so the thing kept workin', and all the selfsame way;
Always somethin' to arg'e and somethin' sharp to say;
And down on us came the neighbors, a couple dozen strong,
And lent their kindest sarvice for to help the thing along.

And there has been days together-and many a weary week-
We was both of us cross and spunky, and both too proud to speak;
And I have been thinkin' and thinkin' the whole of the winter and fall,
If I can't live kind with a woman, why, then, I won't at all.

And so I have talked with Betsey, and Betsey has talked with me,
And we have agreed together that we can't never agree;
And what is hers shall be hers, and what is mine shall be mine;
And I'll put it in the agreement, and take it to her to sign.

Write on the paper, lawyer-the very first paragraph-
Of all the farm and live-stock that she shall have her half;
For she has helped to earn it, through many a weary day,
And it's nothing more than justice that Betsey has her pay.

Give her the house and homestead-a man can thrive and roam;
But women are skeery critters, unless they have a home;
And I have always determined, and never failed to say,
That Betsey should never want a home if I was taken away.

There is a little hard money that's drawin' tol'rable pay :
A couple of hundred dollars laid by for a rainy day;

Safe in the hands of good men, and easy to get at ;
Put in another clause there, and give her half of that.

Yes, I see you smile, Sir, at my givin' her so much;
Yes, divorce is cheap, Sir, but I take no stock in such ;
True and fair I married her, when she was blithe and young ;
And Betsey was al'ays good to me, exceptin' with her tongue.

Once, when I was young as you, and not so smart, perhaps,
For me she mittened a lawyer, and several other chaps ;
And all of them was flustered, and fairly taken down,
And I for a time was counted the luckiest man in town.

Once when I had a fever-I won't forget it soon-
I was hot as a basted turkey and crazy as a loon;

Never an hour went by me when she was out of sight-
She nursed me true and tender, and stuck to me day and night

And if ever a house was tidy, and ever a kitchen clean,
Her house and kitchen was tidy as any I ever seen;
And I don't complain of Betsey, or any of her acts,
Exceptin' when we've quarrelled, and told each other facts.

So draw up the paper, lawyer, and I'll go home to-night,
And read the agreement to her, and see if it's all right;
And then, in the mornin', I'll sell to a tradin' man I know,

And kiss the child that was left to us, and out in the world I'll go.

And one thing put in the paper, that first to me didn't occur :

That when I am dead at last she'll bring me back to her;
And lay me under the maples I planted years ago,
When she and I was happy before we quarrelled so.

And when she dies I wish that she would be laid by me,
And, lyin' together in silence, perhaps we will agree;
And, if ever we meet in heaven, I wouldn't think it queer
If we loved each other the better because we quarrelled here.

B

HOW BETSEY AND I MADE UP.

GIVE us your hand, Mr. Lawyer: how do you do to-day?
You drew up that paper-I s'pose you want your pay.
Don't cut down your figures; make it an X or a V;
For that 'ere written agreement was just the makin' of me.

Goin' home that evenin' I tell you I was blue,

Thinkin' of all my troubles, and what I was goin' to do;

And if my hosses hadn't been the steadiest team alive,

They'd 've tipped me over, certain, for I couldn't see where to drive.

No-for I was labourin' under a heavy load;

No-for I was travellin' an entirely different road;

For I was a-tracin' over the path of our lives ag'in,

And seein' where we missed the way, and where we might have been.

And many a corner we'd turned that just to a quarrel led,

When I ought to 've held my temper; and driven straight ahead; And the more I thought it over the more these memories came, And the more I struck the opinion that I was the most to blame.

And things I had long forgotten kept risin' in my mind,

Of little matters betwixt us, where Betsey was good and kind : And these things flashed all through me, as you know things some

times will

When a feller's alone in the darkness, and everything is still.

"But," says I, "we're too far along to take another track,
And when I put my hand to the plow I do not oft turn back;
And 'tain't an uncommon thing now for couples to smash in two;"
And so I set my teeth together, and vowed I'd see it through.

When I come in sight o' the house 'twas some'at in the night,
And just as I turned a hill-top I see the kitchen light;
Which often a han'some pictur' to a hungry person makes,
But it don't interest a feller much that's goin' to pull up stakes.

« ZurückWeiter »