ORGUSTUS is a ethereal cuss. The twins was bildin' cob-houses in a corner of the kitchin'.
It'll cost some postage-stamps to raise this fam'ly, and yet it 'ud go hard with the old man to lose any lamb of the flock.
An old bachelor is a poor critter. He may have hearn the skylark or (what's nearly the same thing) MISS KELLOGG and CARLOTTY PATTI sing; he may have hearn OLE BULL fiddle, and all the DODWORTHS toot, an' yet he don't know nothin' about music—the real, ginuine thing—the music of the laughter of happy, well-fed children! And you may ax the father of sich children home to dinner, feelin werry sure there'll be no spoons missin' when he goes away. Sich fathers never drop tin five-cent pieces into the contribution box, nor palm shoe-pegs off onto blind hosses for oats, nor skedaddle to British sile when their country's in danger—nor do anything which is really mean. I don't mean to intimate that the old bachelor is up to little games of this sort—not at all—but I repeat, he's a poor critter. He don't live here; only stays. He ought to 'pologize on behalf of his parients, for bein' here at all. The happy marrid man dies in good stile at home, surrounded by his weeping wife and children. The old bachelor don't die at all—he sort of rots away, like a pollywog's tail. . . . .
My townsmen were sort o' demoralized. There was a evident desine to ewade the Draft, as I obsarved with sorrer, and patritism was below Par—and MAR, too. [A jew desprit.] I hadn't no sooner sot down on the piazzy of the tavoun than I saw sixteen solitary hossmen, ridin' four abreast, wendin' their way up the street.
"What's them? Is it cavilry?"
"That," said the landlord, "is the stage. Sixteen able-bodied citizens has literally bo't the stage line 'tween here and Scotsburg. That's them. They're Stage-drivers. Stage- drivers is exempt!"
I saw that each stage-driver carried a letter in his left hand.
"The mail is hevy, to-day," said the landlord. "Gin'rally they don't have more'n half a dozen letters 'tween 'em. To- day they're got one a piece! Bile my lights and liver!"
"And the passengers?"
"There ain't any, skacely, now-days," said the landlord, "and what few ther is very much prefer to walk, the roads is so rough."