"Wal," sez I, sort o' proud, "there needn't be no hurry about that are; but if I du print one, and it can't pay its own expenses and a leetle over, it may go tu grass!"
With that I bid Captin Doolittle good-bye, and made tracks for my office agin.
[LETTER X.]
New-Year's Calls—A real Yankee's New-Year's Treat of Dough-nuts and Cider—Jonathan's ideas of the real difference between a real lady's House and Furniture and the House of a stuck-up Parvenu—Jonathan's ideas of Love and Ladies.
Dear Par:
I made a leetle inquiry about how people did a New Year's Day, and found out that it was the fashion for the wimmen tu stand treat that day, to set out things, and invite everybody that come tu take a bite. So arly in the morning I put a clean white towel on the leetle table in my office. Then I went into the cubby house room, where I keep my new clothes and kindling wood, besides my tooth brush and sich things as I don't want to use every day, and I drew a quart mug of that outrageous good cider, that you sent me by Captin Doolittle. I guess I looked like live when I went out agin, with the mug brimming over in one hand, and the pillow-case stuffed full of dough-nuts, that marm sent me t'other day—besides the hunk of cheese, and the lot of baked sweet apples, tucked under t'other arm. I heaped up a pile of the dough-nuts on one corner of the table, and sot the apple-box on the other, an made room for the cheese and the cider in the middle; and it raly made me feel sort of bad because marm couldn't see how nice I'd fixed it all. Think sez I, there wont be many people in York that'll set a better treat afore their visiters than this I reckon, any how, and as marm aint here I'll stand treat to every body that comes in for her sake.
Wal, who should be the fust critter that come in but cousin John Beebe, tu see what I was a going tu du with myself all day. Arter I'd sot him a chair by the stove, I went up to the table, and sez I,
"Cousin John supposing we take a drink; it's an allfired cold day, and you look as if you couldn't stand it." My gracious, but didn't his eyes snap when he saw what I'd got. I mixed the cider up, purty hot with ginger, and then I sot it on the stove, and kept a stirring on it up with a little ivory thing that a purty gal sent me tu fold my letters with; it begun to foam and sparkle like anything; then I took a sip jest to try it, and handed the mug over to cousin John.
"Here," sez I, "take a swaller; it aint like the pesky stuff you give me when I eat dinner up to your house. Instid of kicking up a dust in your upper story, it goes tu the right spot tu once, and makes a feller feel prime all over in a giffy." I ruther seem to think that cousin John warn't much afeard of the mug anyhow; he gave a sneezer of a pull tu it, and then his eyes begun to glisten, and, sez he—