RAMBLINGS.
BY MOSE SKINNER.
MR. PUNCHINELLO: I infer that you never visited Slunkville, Vermont. Still, it is not strange, for many very estimable people have not done so, and still they are happy.
It is a very quiet hamlet. More quiet, if possible, than BOOTH'S HAMLET.
I am sojourning here for the summer. Communing with Nature, I believe they call it. I can commune here for five dollars a week and no extra charge for retiring pensively to a babbling brook, and reading MILTON or BYRON, though when my poetic soul hankers most, I prefer Bacon.
I take it fried, about an inch thick, with plenty of ham fat.
I went to hear Parson SLOWBOY last Sunday, on the Coolie question. He handled it without gloves, and, it being very warm, without stockings also. It's a very exciting question just now, almost as exciting as the question, "What'll you take?" and I must say, that, even in the heat of argument, he talked Cool-ie.
The Parson is very zealous, but rather illiterate. During a fervent exhortation he prayed that, "all the undiscovered and uninhabited isles of the sea might become converted," and on another occasion he began with,--"Oh, Lord, thou art a merciful sinner."
But he means well, and that is everything. A man knocked me down once, and stamped on my head several times. But he meant well because he thought I was another fellow. He apologised so politely that I actually felt cheap because he hadn't done it a little more.
But I'm afraid we shall lose Parson SLOWBOY. He's had a call. He hates to go, but he says it's his duty; the call is so loud.
It is two hundred dollars louder than his present salary.
The Lyceum Committee held their annual meeting last week. They are in a flourishing condition, having recently embellished their front door-step with a new and elegant scraper of unique design; and purchased four superb spittoons for the use of the committee. The President announced, amid great cheering, that they would probably open the fall campaign with eleven dollars in the treasury. The course will open with a debate on the question: "Are sardines wholesome when ripened in the shade?"----
She who was among us one short year ago, with her winning smile and gentle simplicity of manner, is now no more. The grass grows green o'er her last resting place, while he who crushed her young life is far away among his dissolute companions.
LUCY JONES was indeed a lovely maiden. The tear rises unbidden to my eye, as I recall her in the artlessness of her maiden beauty, hanging her feet into the mill-pond, or chewing the strings of her sun-bonnet. And when the stagecoach came in she would stand with her apron full of horse-chestnuts, and heave 'em at the passengers.
But the tempter came, and from that time she began to droop.
She continued to droop till she couldn't get any drooper.
And, with the gentle breath of June wafting sweet perfume from a wealth of new-born roses, they laid her away.
And the undertaker's bill was seven dollars and forty-five cents.
Her old man's constitution was never robust, and this was too much.
"I don't complain at the seven dollars," said he, in a voice broken by emotion, "but ain't the forty-five cents rather crowding the mourners?"
This undertaker is an awful lazy man. The neighbors say he was born with his hands in his pockets, and they go so far as to say that 'twould have been a good thing for his wife and family if he'd been still born. But I think this is going too far.
I don't think he ever got over the death of his brother, about a year ago. It was very sudden. Without thinking what he was doing, he sat down on a keg of powder with a lighted pipe in his mouth, and we have no authentic information of his whereabouts since.
The neighbors heard him when he went off, and, amusements being scarce in that section, they proposed to regale themselves with an inquest.
Twenty active boys volunteered to scour the neighborhood in search of a piece of the unfortunate man. Nineteen came back empty-handed.
The twentieth brought a button-hole, and over this the inquest was held.
His brother never took on much, but I know he felt it, for he always calculated to have that pipe when JOHN died. It was rather rough, if you examine it critically.
P.S. What'll you charge to publish a little editorial in your paper, saying that I am as genial and polished a gentleman as you ever met, and 'twould be perfectly safe to lend me any amount? I want it for circulation among new acquaintances.