I knew the sloop and cargo wasn't mine, but that gal had got into my head, and I didn't seem to know right from wrong. I forgot Judy White and all the gals on arth for the time being. The feller kept a singing out and a knocking on 'em off, but I didn't hear nobody bid, so I s'posed they did it by winking. They tell me that's the fashion at the big York vendues. At the very tip eend of the batch, he up and said he'd got the best one yet for the young men to bid on, a gal jest eighteen, and then he run on with a lot of soft sodder about her, but I can't write what he said, I was in such a twitteration. Think sez I, it's Fanny Elssler as sure as a gun, and I'll be darn'd if any of them chaps out-wink me, so I got up and bent for'ard clear over the cushion, and the way I snapped my eyewinkers at the auctioneer was awful savage I can tell you.
"No more bids," sez he, a histing his fist, "no more bids,—going!" Here I winked like all natur. "Going." I snapped my eyes till they a'most struck fire, and I stuck out my fist to arms length and my breath seemed to stop short, I was so dreadful eager. "Gone!" sez the chap, a stepping back and a lifting his hand as if he didn't care if I shook to death, and then he made a bow to the folks in ginral, and sez he,
"Yours with one eye out."
I sallied back and clapped my hand to my eye, for at first I thought mebby it was out, I'd winked so etarnal arnest: but there it was, safe and sound, and some etarnal wall-eyed coot had got that harnsome critter away from me. At first I was mad enough to bite a tenpenny nail in tu without chawing; then I began to feel dreadful wamblecropped, and eenamost boo-hooed out a crying. In the eend I made up my mind that it was a mean cheat, and that I'd have the gal in spite of all the one-eyed fellers in all creation; "for," sez I, "it aint the natur of things that a critter could wink with one eye as fast as I could with both winkers under full steam," so I jest made up my mind to look out the auctioneer, and stick up for my rights.
There was another play, but I felt so down in the mouth that I up and went right straight off in sarch of that auctioneer, but nobody seemed to understand who I wanted, till, arter wandering around like a cat in a strange garret ever so long, I asked the man at the door; and he said the chap had gone hum, but that he'd be there agin to-morrow night.
"Wal," sez I, "I'll come and see him agin, and he'll find out I aint to be imposed upon if I am from the country."
With that I went back to the Astor House box, jest in time to see Fanny Elssler, the critter I'd been bidding off, out on the stage agin.
There she was, all dressed out in yaller silk, with heaps on heaps of the black shiney lace a streaming over it, a hopping about and twistifying round like a love-sick yaller-hammer hankering arter a mate. She had a rattle-box on each hand, and she gin a rattle at every new twist, and sometimes it was rattle, rattle, rattle, as swift as lightning, and then twist, twist, twist; now her head eenamost bumped agin the floor, and the hump on her back stuck up higher than ever; then her arms went curlecueing over her head, and the rattle-boxes gin out a whole hail-storm of noises, and then she'd stick her arms out at full length and sidle off, dragging her feet along kind of easy, till I raly didn't know what she was a doing, till I looked on the piece of paper the man gin me, and saw that she was a doing up a Cachuca; but if it wasn't dancing, it sartinly was fust cousin to it, or I aint a judge of cat-fish. But then who knows but Cachuca is French for dancing? I don't! any how, she sartinly cachukied it off like all natur, and no mistake.
By-am-by she give her foot a flirt out and her arms a flourish upwards, and off she was a going like a trout with a fish-hook in his mouth; but the folks begun to holler and yell, and take on so, that she had to cum back whether or no.