"Sartinly," sez I; so I made another bow and cut stick down stairs into the open street. But if Miss Miles ever ketches me on her premises again, she'll ketch a weasel asleep. That Count may marry her—what there is left of her—and go to grass, for what I care.
Your loving son,
Jonathan Slick.
[LETTER IX.]
A New York Parvenu—Jonathan's Account of his Cousin Jason Slick, and how Jason was too lazy to work, and got rich on soft sodder—The dinner of a Connecticut Coaster—A New York Coat of Arms, lions couchant and levant—Yankee Ancestry—The way a Yankee speculates, and gets up States, Railroads and Banks, by soft sodder.
Dear Par:
It is eenamost twelve o'clock, jest arter New Years, and here I be as wide awake as a night hawk, and a feeling purty considerably rily in the upper story. So I believe it'll be about the best thing I can du tu clap down and tell you all about New Year's Day here in York.
But first I want tu tell you something about all the trials and troubles that I've had tu go through since I wrote my last letter—I don't believe there ever was a human critter so chased arter as I've been. They talk about Cherry street not being fashionable, but I'll be darned if I believe there's a more genteel street in the city. It's the folks that live in a place that make it genteel or not, and if Cherry street aint at the top of the mark afore many more weeks, it'll be because I move my office out on it, for there's no eend to the great shiny carriages that come down and stop afore my door, eenamost every hour in the day. It raly does look funny enough to see great pussey fellers, as big as the side of the house, a sitting in them things all bolstered up with cushions and kivered over with skins, like a baby shut up in a go-cart afore it begins tu run alone.
T'other day there was one of these fat chaps come into my office, and sot out tu make me believe that he was a sort of a relation of mine. I didn't feel jest right, for since I begun to print my letters in the Express it beats all natur how many relations, that I never heard on afore, have been a trying tu scrape an acquaintance with me. Wal, after a good deal of beating about the bush, this chap at last made out purty tolerably clear that he was a kind of a great toe cousin of our'n, and that he was born and brought up in Weathersfield. He come his soft sodder over me mighty smooth, and had a good deal to say about how much he thought of us all, and how fond he'd been of Sam and me. I wish you could a seen how he pussed out his mouth and breathed through his nose, and what a heap of pomposity he put on when he was a talking. He acted jest like our old turkey gobler, when he goes training the young turkeys round the barnyard, with his wings feathered out and his tail spread. Wal, arter talking all kinds of rigmarole for about an hour, he begun to tell how hard it was for a young man tu start in the world, and git along without somebody tu give him a push up the hill, and that it didn't make much odds how much genius a man had, or how smart he was, if he hadn't some rich and influential friend tu back him up.