Eliab.
I s’pose it was jest at this very minute that the washbowl flew and struck old Bobbet in the small of the back, and crumpled him right down; he was sort o’ bent over the accordeon. They didn’t play the accordeon all the time they was singin’, as I have been told, but between the verses; jest after they would sing “Eliab,” they would play a few notes sort o’ lively.
It was Josiah’s idee, as I heard afterwards, their takin’ the accordeon. They couldn’t one of ’em play a tune, or anything that sounded like a tune, but he insisted it would look more stylish to have some instrument, and so they took that old accordeon that used to belong to Shakespeare Bobbet.
They had planned it all out, and had boasted that they had got up something in their own heads that hadn’t never been heerd of in Jonesville. And well they might say so, well they might.
Wall, there wasn’t one of them 8 old fellers that was good for anything for the next 4 weeks. Eliab’s folks try to make the best of it. They say now that Eliab always did, when he was first rousted up out of a sound sleep, act kinder lost and crazy. They tell that now to kind o’ smooth it over, but I think, and I always shall think, that he knew jest who he was a hittin’, and what he was a hittin’ ’em with. It was the glass soap-dish that struck old Dagget’s nose. And I wish you could have seen that nose for the next 3 weeks. It used to be a Roman, but after that night it didn’t look much like a Roman.
Eliab’s boots was the very best of leather, and they had a new-fashioned kind of heels, some sort o’ metal or other, and Cornelius Cook says they hit as powerful as any cannon balls would; he goes lame yet. You know the shin-bone is one of the tenderest bones in the hull body to be hit aginst.
It was the bootjack that hit the Editor of the Augur’ses head. His wife was skairt most to death about him, and she says to me—she had come over to see if she could get some wormwood—and she says:
“He never will get over that bootjack in the world, I don’t believe. His head is swelled up as big as two heads ought to be.”
And says I: “It always happens so, don’t it, that the weakest spot is the one that always gets hit?”
I was sorry for her as I could be. And I gin her the wormwood, and recommended her to use about half and half smartweed. Says I: “Smartweed is good for the outside of his head, and if it strikes in it won’t hurt him none.”