As I said I never set much store by Shakespeare Bobbet, but truly everybody has their strong pints; there was quavers put in there into them “Oh’s” that never can be put in agin by anybody. Even Josiah lay motionless listenin’ to ’em in a kind of awe. Jest then we heard Thomas Jefferson speakin’ out of the winder overhead.
“My musical young friend, haven’t you languished enough for one night? Because if you have, father and mother and I, bein’ kept awake by other serenaders the forepart of the night, will love to excuse you, will thank you for your labers in our behalf, and love to bid you good evenin’, Tirzah Ann bein’ fast asleep in the other end of the house. But don’t let me hurry you Shakespeare, my dear young friend, if you haint languished enough, you keep right on languishin’. I hope I haint hard hearted enough to deny a young man and neighbor the privilege of languishin’.”
I heard a sound of footsteps under the winder, followed seemin’ly instantaneously by the rattlin’ of the board fence at the extremity of the garden. Judgin’ from the sound, he must have got over the ground at a rate seldom equaled and never outdone.
A button was found under the winder in the mornin’, lost off we suppose by the impassioned beats of a too ardent heart, and a too vehement pair of lungs, exercised too much by the boldness and variety of the quavers durin’ the last tune. That button and a few locks of Malta fur, is all we have left to remind us of our sufferin’s.
4th OF JULY IN JONESVILLE.
A few days before the 4th Betsey Bobbet come into oure house in the mornin’ and says she,
“Have you heard the news?”