I ask you free an’ final: Be ye goin’ ter marry me?”
An’ Mary Ann sez, tremblin’, yet anxious-like, “I be.”
Florence E. Pyatt.
THE DUTCHMAN’S SNAKE.
Near the town of Reading, in Berks County, Pennsylvania, there formerly lived a well-to-do Dutch farmer named Peter Van Riper. His only son was a strapping lad of seventeen, also named Peter, and upon old Peter and young Peter devolved the principal cares of the old man’s farm, now and then assisted by an ancient Dutchman named Jake Sweighoffer, who lived in the neighborhood, and went out to work by the day.
One warm day in haying time this trio were hard at work in a meadow near the farm-house, when suddenly Peter the elder dropped his scythe and called out:
“Oh! mine gracious, Peter! Peter!”
“What’s de matter, fader?” answered the son, straightening up and looking at his sire.