"Why, of course you will all make yourselves as agreeable as you can; there will be lots of harnsome wimmen there, and I haint the least doubt we shall have a pleasant party."
"A party!" sez I, "is Miss Beebe a going to have a party?"
"Certainly," sez he, a looking puzzled; "didn't you understand that by the card and the note?" I felt my heart rise up in my mouth, and I could have begun to dance on the stun walk. I do believe nothing on arth makes a feller feel so happy as to find out that somebody he can't help but like, but has been a thinking hard things about, don't desarve them. Cousin John kept a looking at me, and I begun to feel awful streaked, for it seemed to me as if he suspected all that I'd been a thinking agin his wife. Arter a minit, I up and took my hand out of my pocket, and I took hold of his'n, and, sez I—
"Cousin John, I've been making a darned fool of myself; I didn't know what this ere piece of pasteboard meant, and I"—
"Never mind, Cousin Jonathan," sez he, all of a sudden shaking my hand, "you know what it means now—so come up on Thursday. Now I think of it—you had better git a new suit of clothes; that blue coat and those shiny brass buttons did very well for Weathersfield; but here something a little more stylish will be better—supposing you go over to the Broadway tailors and let them fit you out."
"Not as you know on," sez I, a taking hold of the edge of my coat, and a dustin off the buttons with my red silk pocket handkercher. "The picter that they printed of me in the Express newspaper was taken in these clothes; and if you'd jest as livs, I'll keep 'em on."
Cousin John warn't to be put off so, and at last he cum his soft sodder over me, till I agreed to get another suit of clothes, New York cut, for parties and meetings. So we shook hands, and he turned and went back to his store agin, for he was a coming up to my office; and I jest turned into a narrer street, and took a short cut across to the Express Office. The Editors give me some money, for they aint no ways mean about paying me for what I write for their paper; and they put on the soft sodder purty strong about my letters. They said that everybody was a reading them and a trying to find out something about me, and that lots of young ladies had seen my picter and were a dying to git acquainted with me. I warn't much surprised at it. Arter putting the poetry into my letters so strong, I was sartin that all the gals would be a talking about me. Nothing takes with them like poetry. I had my eye teeth cut when I wrote that, I can tell you. I couldn't help but feel tickled to hear them praising me so; but somehow one gits used to being puffed up, and arter a little while a feller don't seem to care so much about it.
Wal, I pocketed the cash and went to the tailors' store; it was a plaguy harnsome place, and there were two or three spruce-looking chaps standing about; but they looked at me kinder slanting, as if they thought I didn't want to buy anything; and I could see one on them looking arnestly at my coat, as if he didn't like the fit on't. I declare I begun to get ashamed of the old blue, when I cum to see the harnsome coats and vests and trousers hanging around.
"Have you got any first rate superfine broadcloth coats and trousers to sell here?" sez I, a chinking the loose change in my trousers' pocket a leetle, jest to show them that I was as good as the city banks, and held out specie payments yit.
"Yes," sez one of the clerks, a bowing. "What color do you wish to look at?"