“They were passin’ along through the market one day, and they saw Gil just a humpin’ himself showin’ off the apparatus to the market men. He was crankin’ and pumpin’ away, like a sailor when there’s fifteen feet of water in the hold and still rizin, and the chickens were a screamin’ and a scootin’ through the contrivance, close as if they were run on a string head ag’inst tail, and just a cloud of feathers hoverin’ around over it. Didn’t they fasten on to that Gil Bizby though? They snatched him up quicker than if he had been hoss-stealin’, and confiscated his plucker, and tucked an alfired heavy fine onto him besides.
“Meetin’ with such poor encouragement in that direction he went back to Sculleyville, and set out to invent a thunderin’ great machine for layin’ cobble-stones. That was just him all over; allers startin’ in to git up some outlandish lookin’ thing. This machine was a crusher and no gettin’ ‘round it. It was fearful enough to make a cow slip her cud, I’ll be shot if it wasn’t. It looked somethin’ like Noah’s ark set on wheels and filled with all kinds of machinery.
“He started in to experiment one moonlight night in front of the court house, but got the main belt crossed or somethin’, I disremember just what, and Jerusalem! in less than ten minutes he ran the whole population out to the foot-hills in thar night clothes. There wasn’t no stoppin’ the consarned thing. Poor Gil was knocked senseless at the first revolution, and nobody else knowed how to control it. It rolled the whole length of the square, tearin’ up the stones it had pounded down the day before and sendin’ of ’em buzzin’ over the village in all directions.
“No home was sacred, and no head was safe, as the poet has it. Poor old Mrs. Scooley lived just long enough to learn this, and no longer. She was goin’ once too often to git her pitcher filled at the corner grocery that night, and a stone took her in the small of the back as she was enterin’ the door, and it h’isted her clear over the counter on top of a barrel; it’s true as I’m tellin’ it to you. Poor old body; she was the pioneer female of the village too. The first woman to wash a shirt in Sculleyville. But arter all, the town wasn’t much loser by her passin’ away.
“She was a sort of panicky old critter anyhow, always scary about catchin’ the smallpox or any other prevailin’ disease that come around. The old village physician said he would ruther see the very old scratch makin’ towards him on the street than old Mrs. Scooley.
THE DOCTOR’S SCOURGE.
“Comin’ from church or market, as the case might be, she would fasten on to him like a wood-tick to a leaf, and he couldn’t git rid of her nohow. She would have him time her pulse right thar on the sidewalk; and be a shovin’ of her tongue out for his inspection. And she did have such an unlimited, wallopin’ great tongue too; it seemed when she was shovin’ all of it out, as though she was actewelly disgorgin’ her liver. It’s so, by Jingo! People would be a stoppin’ and standin’ thar, wonderin’ what was the matter with the old gal—that is, people that didn’t know her peculiarities; though most everybody in the village had seen her standin’ in that position so often, that they would be more surprised to see her with her tongue in her mouth than projectin’ out in the rain.
“The old Doctor used to be terribly annoyed. He would say, kind of hurriedly like, because he would be itchin’ to git away from her:
“‘Oh! you’re all right I reckon, Mrs. Scooley; but you had better be a gittin’ along home, and not stand too long in the cold air, with so much of your vital organs exposed to the weather; the result may be fearful if not fatal!’