Dear Par:
Wal, arter writing that story about the Bowery Milliner, I begun to think York was a going to be rather too hot to hold me. All the boss milliners in York got into a tantrum and kicked up sich a darned rumpus that I raly begun to be afear'd that they'd cum down to my office in Cherry-street, and get up a fourth of July oration, or a she caucus, and girt me to death in a pair of them darned French corsets. But the peaked little working gals, they were eenamost tickled to death with that story, and there warn't no eend to the harnsome sweet critters that cum to my office a crying and yet half a smiling, to thank me for taking up on their side. One thing though made me feel bad enough. That etarnal leetle stuck up old maid got so allfired wrothy that she turned Susan Read out of her place, and cheated her out of some of her wages too. Darn her it makes me gritty only jest to think on it. But she'd better look out, I can tell her; for if I take her up agin, consarn me if I don't use her up till she aint bigger than the tip eend of a pine stick whittled down to nothing.
Wal, as the spring come on I began to git peaked, and every morning felt sort of wamblecropped in my stomach when I woke up. I s'pose it was cause I couldn't git pork and dandelines and prime fresh young onions right out of the arth, as I used tu to hum. The editors of the Express, they wanted me to take an emetic, but I told 'em I couldn't think of sich a thing, it was agin natur. I looked sort of solemn, jest as I always do when they use any of them French words that I don't understand, and made up my mind to look in Boyer's Dictionary, and find out the meaning of emetic the fust thing arter I got hum.
"Wal," sez they, "if you don't like that, Mr. Slick, s'posing you take a trip to the Seat of Gineral Government, and see how them Loco Foco chaps are a carrying on there, it'll answer all the same."
"Wal," sez I, arter thinking it all over in arnest, "it seems to me as if I was kinder hankering arter the green trees and the grass and cows, and the wind that comes straight down from heaven, where you can breathe it out on your own hook, and not take it second hand, as we do in York. I raly think I should feel like a new critter if I could only go hum a spell and weed the young onions." With that I begun to think about the humsted, and how it was gitting towards planting time; and think sez I, par 'll miss me about these times, and marm too, for she wont have any body to do her milking when it rains, nor to bring water and du up all the leetle chores that I al'rs did for her. Then I seemed to see our orchard all a leaving out thick and kivered over with apple blows; and it seemed tu me as if I was a setting on the stun wall, jest as I used to when I was a leetle shaver, a looking how fast the grass grew and a wondering how long it would be afore green apple time. There was the well-crotch and the pole, and the bucket a hanging to it, as plain as day, and the peach tree that grows by it chuck full of pink blows. There was you a gitting out the oxen to go to ploughing, and there was marm out in the meadow at the back door, a picking plantin leaves for greens, with her old sun bonnet on, and a tin pail to put the greens in.
Oh dear, how humsick I did feel! I could a boo-hooed right out, if it would a done any good, when I sort of come tu, and found out that I was setting in the Express office, with nothing but picters of that old critter, Gineral Harrison, and a heap of newspapers scattered every which way over the floor, to look at.
"Wal," sez the Editor, sez he, "Mr. Slick, what do you think about it? you raly ought to go to Washington, to see the President and the lions."
I put one leg over t'other, and winked my eyelids for fear he'd see how near I come to crying; and arter a leetle while, sez I—
"I haint no kind of doubt that that are Washington is a smasher of a city; but somehow, if you'd jest as livs, I'd a leetle ruther go hum."