I inquired for my cousin Bildad Smith of Coney Island and told him I wuz goin’ there. Sez I, “You know Bildad’s wife is runnin’ down.” Which wuzn’t a lie, but on the very edge on’t, for what did I care for her enjoyment of poor health? And he said he wuz goin’ down there in his delivery auto to carry ’em some fresh butter and eggs and he would take me. I thought it wuzn’t a chance to refuse. Bildad runs a eatin’ house on Coney Island.
So I sot off with Deacon Gansy, and after goin’ through Chaos and Destruction on lower New York streets, and Williamsburg bridge, and acrost it, for all the folks in New York and 218 Brooklyn wuz there that day—and after passin’ through crowded, hustlin’, bustlin’ streets, we found ourselves anon on the broad beautiful Ocean Avenue smooth as glass and as broad as from our house to hern that was Submit Tewksbury’s and I guess wider. Bordered on each side with four rows of noble trees with paths between ’em. The deacon said there wuz over ’leven thousand trees along that avenue, and I didn’t dispute him.
He got real talkative and kinder bragged on how much money he wuz makin’, said he’d bought a place up in Harlem, and sez he, “I’ve got another auto for pleasure drivin’.”
Sez I, “Is it pleasure to drive a car through such crowded places as we’ve been through to-day?”
And he said it wuz, if folks wouldn’t act mean. Sez he, “Last Sunday I took my wife out in the country and a old man in a buggy kep’ right in front of me and wouldn’t turn out, and I had to squeeze through between him and the ditch.”
“Did you git through safe?” sez I.
“Yes, I did, but I had to bend my mud guard right up agin his hoss’s side and scraped the skin raw, and raked its collar off.”
“What did the old man say?” sez I. 219
“I never heard such language out of the mouth of man, and of course as a deacon I couldn’t listen to such profanity, so I hurried right away.”
“Hadn’t you ort to return the hoss collar, Deacon?”