This New Year's day here in York is sartainly as good as a show,—such lots of gals as a feller sees, and such lots of good living; but give me a Thanksgiving dinner yit afore a York New Year's,—a good turkey with plenty of gravy and tatur. I swanny, how I wish I'd been a eatin them things instead of this heap of tarnal cake and sugar things. I shan't feel right agin in a month, I'm sure on it.
I guess you Weathersfield tee totalists would a stared some tu see how the young chaps begun tu make fence along the stun side-walks towards night; some on 'em were purty well over the bay I can tell you. I went to see lots of women and gals, and cousin Mary amongst the rest, and arter I got back to my office I couldn't get one wink of sleep. My head was chuck full of gals all night,—such a whirring and burring as there was in my upper story you never did know on,—every time I shet my eyes the office seemed chuck full of purty gals and feathers and gold and decanters, cut glass, till it seemed as if I would go crazy a thinking over all I'd done; but the last thing that got into my brain jest afore I dropped to sleep, was the real lady and my pussey cousin's stuck up wife.
But I can't stop to write you on all my dreams that night. I don't think doughnuts or sugar candies set well on the stomach, and I don't think seeing so many gals sets well on my head. There is a terrible all over-ish sort of a feeling in a young feller when he's been cruising among the gals all day, and comes hum and cuddles up in bed at night. When he gits one gal stuck fast in his head and his heart, as I had Judy White, he's as quiet as a kitten, and his head's a sort a settled; but arter he's been a roving over the world as I am a doing, his natur gits ruther rily, and there's nothing that sticks in it except the dregs, the pure essence sifting out all through.
Getting in love is somewhat like getting drunk, the more a feller loves the more he wants tu,—and when the heart gits a going, pitty pat, pitty pat, there is such a swell, that it busts up all the strings, so that it can't hold the ginuine grit at all. When Judy White fust took hold a my arm I give the coat sleeve a rale hearty smack, where her hand had lain, and that coat I raly did love better than any other I ever had on; but I never think the better of my yaller gloves for shaking the hands of all the gals in York. I've only got Miss Miles out of my head, to git a thousand new shinin faces in. Lord knows what'll become of me, Par, if I go on to be bedivilled arter the women, as I have been this new year's day. When a feller is made any thing on by 'em he must have been brought up under good preaching in Weathersfield to stand it here in York. I feel as if I shouldn't be good for much afore long, myself, the way I am going on, but to skoot up and down Broadway like that ere Count, and to hang round gals' winders with fifes, and bassoons, and drums, and gitars at night.
I can't look full into a purty gal's face all a flashing so, without being kind a dazzled and scorched. It warms me up in this cold weather, and kindles such a touse in my heart, that the blood runs through it as hot as if it had scooted through a steamboat pipe. And then the allfired critters have so many sly ways of coming over a feller, that I don't think much of a man who can see their purty mouths tremble, and not feel his tremble tu. If they sidle up, I can't help sidling too if I died; and when them black eyes fall flash on me, I wilt right down under 'em as cut grass in Weathersfield on a hot summer day. It is natur all this, and I can't help it no how.
But you know, Par, I was brought up under good preaching, and I go now to Dr. Spring's meeting always as straight as Sunday comes round, and twice a day. If wimmin do snarl up a feller's heart strings, though, they keep him out of other scrapes, anybody will tell you that. A man that is in love a leetle is not always a running into rum-holes, and other such places. He don't go a gambling, and isn't a sneakin round nights.
Love, according to my notion on it, is a good anchor for us on this 'ere voyage of life!—it brings us up so all a standing when we put on too much sail. It puts me in mind, now I think on it, of our cruise through Hell Gate in Captin Doolittle's sloop; for jest as the tide and the wind was a carrying us on the rocks, we dropt anchor and kept off. I look on the uses of women purty much as I look on the freshet that in the spring brings down the Connecticut the rale rich soil for the meadows in Weathersfield. They make a great deal of splutter and fuss in their spring-time, with their rustles and their ribbons, and their fooleries, I know; but when they light on a feller for good, they are the rale onion patches of his existence. Put us together, and the soil will grow anything; but keep us apart, and we are his thistles and nettles.
Your loving son,
Jonathan Slick.