The clerk see that I was overcome by somethin’, and says he, “what is the matter?”
I couldn’t speak, but I pinted with my forefinger stiddy at that murdered woman. I guess I had pinted at her pretty nigh half a minute, when I found breath and says I, slowly turnin’ that extended finger at him, in so burnin’ indignant a way, that if it had been a spear, he would have hung dead on it.
“That is pretty doin’s in a Christian country!”
His face turned red as blood agin—and looked all swelled up, he was so mortified. And he murmured somethin’ about her “bein’ dumb,” or a “dummy” or somethin’—but I interrupted him—and says I,
“I guess you would be dumb yourself if your head was cut off.” Says I, in awful sarcastic tones,
“It would be pretty apt to make any body dumb.”
Then he explaned it to me. That it was a wooden figger, to hang thier dresses and mantillys on. And I cooled down and told him I would take a yard and 3 quarters of the calico, enough for a honorable apron.
Says he, “We don’t sell by retail in this room.”
I give that clerk then a piece of my mind. I asked him how many aprons he supposed Tirzah Ann and I stood in need of? I asked him if he supposed we was entirely destitute of aprons? And I asked him in a awful sarcastic tone if he had a idee that Josiah and Thomas Jefferson wore aprons? Says I, “any body would think you did.” Says I, turnin’ away awful dignified, “when I come agin I will come when Alexander is in the store himself.”