Says he, “I am very partial to those old songs you have mentioned.”
Says I “They can’t be bettered.”
Before I could say another word, that poor crazy thing begun agin, to yell, and pound and screech, and I says to him,
“Poor thing! couldn’t there be somethin’ done for her? If her mind can’t be restored, can’t she get help for Mr. Vitus’es dance?”
And then he explained it to me, he said she wasn’t crazy, and didn’t have Mr. Vitus’es dance. He said she was a very fashionable young lady and it was a opera she was singin’.
“A operation,” says I sithin’ “I should think as much! I should think it was a operation! It is a operation I don’t want to see or hear agin.” And says I anxiously, “Is it as hard on everybody as it is on her? Does everybody have the operation as hard as she has got it?”
He kinder smiled, and turned it off by sayin’ “It is the opera of Fra Diovole.”
“Brother Devel,” says the conceited little chap with the waxed end moustache.
“‘The Operation of the——’” on account of my connection with the M. E. church, says I, “I will call it David.” But they both knew what I meant. “The operation of the—the David. I should think as much.”
And I don’t know as I was ever more thankful than I was when I reflected how my pious M. E. parents had taught me how to shun that place of awful torment where the——David makes it his home. For a minute these feelin’s of thankfulness swallered these other emotions almost down. But then as I took another thought, it madded me to think that likely folks should be tormented by it on earth. And I says to the little feller with the waxed end moustache,