“Oh cars that bearest us on; oh cars that run
If backward thou didst go, we should not near
The place we started for at break of sun;
The place we love, with love devout, sincere.
“Oh! snortin’ Engine, didst thou not so snort
Thou wouldst not start, and lo! we see—
Our sorrows’ hidden griefs, they do not come for nort
They start the Locomotive, Life, with screechin’ agony
“Oh passengers that wail, and dread the screech,
Wail not; but lift eyes o’er the chimney top
As they bend over the Locomotive; beach
Thy hopes on fairer shores, a sweeter crop.”
After I had read it and handed it back to her, she sez, “Don’t you think I improve on the melody and rhythm of my poetry? I take this little stick with me now wherever I go, and measure my lines by it. They are jest of a length, I am very particular; you know you advised me to be.”
“Yes,” sez I mechaniklly, “but I didn’t mean jest that.” Sez I, “the poetry I wuz a thinkin’ on, is measured by the soul, the enraptured throb of heart and brain; it don’t need takin’ a stick to it. Howsumever,” sez I, for I see she looked sort a disapinted, “howsumever, if you have measured ’em, they are probable about the same length: it is a good sound stick, I haint no doubt;” and I kinder sithed.
And she sez, “What do you think of the first verse? Haint that verse as true as fate, or sadness, or anything else you know of?”
“Oh yes,” sez I candidly, “yes; if the cars run backwards we shouldn’t go on; that is true as anything can be. But if I wuz in your place, Ardelia,” sez I, “I wouldn’t write any more to-day. It is a kind of muggy damp day. It is a awfully bad day for poetry to-day. And,” sez I, to get her mind offen it, “Have you seen anything of my companion’s specks?”
And that took her mind offen poetry and she went a huntin’ for ’em, on the seat and under the seat. She hunted truly high and low and at last she found ’em on my pardner’s foretop, the last place any of us thought of lookin’. And she never said another word about poetry, or any other trouble, nor I nuther.
Chapter V.
WE ARRIVE AT SARATOGA.
We arrived at Saratoga jest as sunset with a middlin’ gorgeous dress on wuz a walkin’ down the west and a biddin’ us and the earth good-bye. There wuz every color you could think on almost, in her gown and some stars a shinin’ through the floatin’ drapery and a half moon restin’ up on her cloudy foretop like a beautiful orniment.
(I s’pose mebby it is proper to describe sunset in this way on goin’ to such a dressy place, though it haint my style to do so, I don’t love to describe sunset as a female and don’t, much of the time, but I love to see things correspond.)