Yes, I will have to lead the horse fur back to hitch it on properly to the wagon of my history, or mebby it would be more proper, under the circumstances, to say how fur I must row my little personal life-boat back to hitch it onto the great steamer of my statement, in order that there shall be direct smooth sailin’ and no meanderin’.
Wall, with the first paddle of my verbal row-boat, I would state—
(And into how many little still side coves and seemin’ly wind-locked ways my little life-boat must sail on her way back to be jined to the great steamer, and how I must stay in ’em for some time! It can’t be helped.)
Yes, it must have been pretty nigh three years ago that we had our first letter from P. Martyn Smythe.
He is my second cousin on my own side. And he sot out from Spoonville (a neighborin’ hamlet) years ago with lots of ambition and pluck and energy, and about one dollar and seventy-five cents in money.
Uncle Philander, his father, had a big family, and died leavin’ him nothin’ but his good example and some old spectacles and a cane.
He wuz brung up by his Uncle Martin, a good-natered creeter, but onfaculized and shiftless.
Young Martin never loved to be hampered, and after he got old enough to help his uncle, he didn’t want to be hampered with him, so he packed up his little knapsack and sot out to seek his fortune, and he prospered beyend any tellin’, bought some mines, and railroads, and things, and at last come back East and settled down in a neighborin’ city, and then got rid of several things that he found hamperin’ to him. Amongst ’em wuz his old name—now he calls it “Smythe.”
Yes, he got rid of the good, reliable old Smith name, that has stood by so many human bein’s even unto the end. And he got rid, too, of his conscience, the biggest heft of it, and his poor relations.
For why, indeed, should a Bill or a Tom Smith claim relationship with a P. Martyn Smythe?