As I sot in my contracted corner of the aft fore-castle deck, and Night wuz lettin’ down, gradual, her starry mantilly over me and the seen, as erst it did over me as I sot in the sweet, restful door-yard at Jonesville. (Dear seen, shall I ever see thee agin?)
I will rehearse the facts that led to my takin’ this onpresidented step.
My pardner is asleep in his narrer bunk, or ruther on one of the shelves in our cell, that are cushioned, and on which our two forms nightly repose.
Asleep in his narrer bunk.
He is at rest. The waves are asleep, or pretty nigh asleep, the night winds are hushed, and all Nater seems to draw in her breath and wait for me as I tell the tale.
I will begin, as most fashionable novelists do, with a verse of poetry——
“Backward, turn backward (as fur as Jonesville), Oh Time, in thy flight—
Make me (a trusty, short-winded, female historian) jest for to-night.”
It wuz now goin’ on three years sence Uncle Philander Smith’s son, Philander Martin, named after his Pa and his Uncle Martin, writ a line to me announcin’ his advent into Jonesville. And in speakin’ of Philander I shall have to go back, kinder sideways, some distance into the past to describe him.