“No attention paid to rumatiz, or meal times, or corns.”
I looked coldly at him, and he hastened to add with a deep groan, “Oh, what hain’t we been through, in verse or out on’t—what hain’t we been through! two old folks snaked through Europe by a Martin and Fashion; no attention paid to rumatiz, or meal times, or corns, or anything, and one of them dum old fools,” sez he impressively, and in a kind of a rhymin’ axent, “wuz born in Jonesville—‘fair Jonesville on the Lyme.’”
I wuz born myself pretty nigh the town of Lyme, jest over the line, but I wouldn’t contend.
Sez he, “I could make up hull books of poetry on our tower better than hisen, enough sight.”
“No you can’t, Josiah,” sez I; “jest think of them beautiful messages he sent back to them distant friends of hisen; it hain’t in you to write like that.”
“Wall, it is in me, mom; and messages! Gracious Peter! couldn’t I send messages back? Couldn’t I send heart-breakin’ messages to the children, and Ury, and Philury, and Deacon Henzy, and Uncle Sime Bentley, and the rest of the meetin’-house bretheren—couldn’t I send word to ’em—
“When they meet and crowd around
The horse-block by the meetin’-house, that dear old talkin’ ground?
“Couldn’t I warn the hull caboodle on ’em to stay where they be, in that beautiful, beautiful place; to never traipse a million milds from home on a tower? Let ’em hear my dyin’ words to stay where they be. Oh, what volumes I could say to them companions and friends if I could git holt of their ears once! I wouldn’t want ’em to think I wuz rambelous and back slid—no, I would want ’em to know I felt like sayin’ in these last hours that—