P. “Sometimes I used to go to Quaker meetin’s with mistress, and there we’d set and look first at one and then at t’other; and bi’m’by somebody would up and say a word or two, and down he’d set, and then another, and down he’d set. Sometimes they was the stillest, and sometimes the noisiest meetin’s I ever see. One time, I remember, we went to hear a new Quaker preacher, and there was a mighty sight of folks there; and I guess we set still an hour, without hearin’ a word from anybody: and that ’ere feller was a waitin’ for his spirit, I s’pose; and, finally at last, an old woman gits up and squarks through her nose, and says she, “Oh! all you young gentlemen beware of them ’ere young ladies—Ahem!—Oh! all you young ladies beware of them ’ere young gentlemen—Ahem—Peneroyal tea is good for a cold!” ☜ and down she sat, and I roared right out, and I never was so tickled in all my life; and the rest on ’em looked as sober as setten’ hens:—but I couldn’t hold in, and I snorted out straight; and so mistress wouldn’t let me go agin. And now you are a Domine, and I wants to ask you if the Lord inspired her to git up, whether or no He didn’t forsake her soon arter she got up?”
A. “Why, Peter, you’ve made the same remark about her, that a famous historian makes about Charles Second, a wicked king of England. Some of the king’s friends said, the Grace of God brought him to the throne—this historian said, “if it brought him to the throne it forsook him very soon after he got there.”
A. “Did you have any fun holydays, Peter.”
P. “Oh! yis, I and John used to be ‘mazing thick, and always together, and always in mischief——One time, I recollect, when master was gone away, we cut up a curious dido; master had a calf that was dreadful gentle, and I and John takes him, and puts a rope round his neck, and pulls his nose through the fence, and drove it full of pins, and he blatted and blatted like murder, and finally mistress see us, and out she come, and makes us pull all the pins out, one by one, and let him go; she didn’t say much, but goes and cuts a parcel of sprouts, and I concluded she was a goin’ to tune us. But it come night, we went into the house, and she was mighty good, and says she, ‘come boys, I guess it’s about bed time;’ and so she hands us a couple of basins of samp and milk, and we eat it, and off to bed, a chucklin’, to think we’d got off as well as we had. But we’d no sooner got well to bed, and nicely kivered up, when I see a light comin’ up stairs, and mistress was a holdin’ the candle in one hand, and a bunch of sprouts in t’other; and she comes up to the bed, and says she, ‘boys do you sleep warm? I guess I’ll tuck you up a little warmer, and, at that, she off with every rag of bed clothes, and if she didn’t tune us, I miss my guess: and ‘now,’ says she, ‘John see that you be in better business next time, when your dad’s gone; and you nigger, you good for nothin little rascal, you make a pincushion of a calf’s nose agin, will ye?’ And I tell ye they set close, them ’ere sprouts.”
A. “Well, Peter, you were going to talk about holydays, and I shouldn’t think it much of a holyday to be ‘tuned with them sprouts.’”
P. “Oh! yis, Sir, we had great times every Christmas and New-Years; but we thought the most of Sain’t Valentine’s Day. The boys and gals of the whole neighborhood, used to git together, and carry on, and make fun, and sich like. We used to play pin a good deal, and I and John used to go snacks, and cheat like Sancho Panza; and there’s where we got the pins to stick in the calf’s nose, I was tellin’ you on. We used to have a good deal of fun sometimes in bilein eggs. Mistress would send us out to hunt eggs, and we’d find a nest of a dozen, likely, and only carry in three or four, and lay the rest by for holydays. Well, we used to bile eggs, as I was sayin’, and the boys would strike biled eggs together, and the one that didn’t get his egg broke should have t’other’s, for his’n was the best egg. Well, we got a contrivance, I and John did, that brought us a fine bunch of eggs. John’s uncle was down the country once, and he gin John a smooth marble egg: oh! ’twas a dreadful funny thing, and I guess he’s got it yit, if he’s a livin’—well, we kept this egg, year in, and year out, and we’d take it to the holydays, and break all the eggs there, and carry home a nice parcel, and have a good bunch to give away, and I guess as how the boys never found it out.”
A. “Why, you had as good times as you could ask for, it seems to me.”
P. “Oh! yis, Sir, I see many bright days, and, when I was a boy, I guess no feller had more fun than I did. And I mean, Domine, all through the book, to tell things jist as they was, and when I was frolicsome and happy I’ll say so, and when I was in distress, I’ll say so; for it seems to me, a book ought to tell things jist as they be. Well, I had got about to the end of my happy fun, for mistress, who was the best friend I had, was took sick, and I expected her to die—and sure ’nough she did die; and as I was kind ‘a superstitious, one night afore she died, I heard some strange noises, that scart me, and made me think ’em forerunners of mistress’ death; and for years and years them noises used to trouble me distressedly. Well, mistress had been a good woman, and died like a christian. When she thought she was a dyin’, she called up her husband to her bed-side, and took him by the hand, and says, ‘I am now goin’ to my God, and your God, and I want you to prepare to follow me to heaven,’ and says ‘farewell;’ she puts her arms round his neck and kisses him. Then she calls up her children, and says pretty much the same thing to them; and then me, and she puts her arms round all our necks, and kisses us all, and says ‘good bye dear children,’ and she fell back into the bed and died, without a struggle or a groan.
“Oh! how I cried when mistress died. She had been kind to me, and loved me, and it seemed I hadn’t any thing left in the world worth livin’ for; put it all together, I guess I cried more’n a week ’bout it, and nothin’ would pacify me. I loved mistress, and when I see her laid in the grave it broke my heart. I have never in all my life with all my sufferin’s had any affliction that broke me down as that did. I thought I should die: the world looked gloomy ‘round me, and I knew I had nothin’ to expect from master after she was gone, and I was left in the world friendless and alone. I had seen some, yis many, good days, and I don’t believe on arth there was a happier boy than Peter Wheeler; but when mistress closed her eyes in death, my sorrows begun; and oh! the tale of ’em will make your heart ache, afore I finish, for all my hopes, and all my fun, and all my happiness, was buried in mistress’ grave.”
A. “Well, Peter, I’m tired of writing, and suppose we adjourn till to-morrow.”