No more.
To escape my own thoughts, I went over into a camp of New England chaps, yesterday, my boy, and one of the first high-privates my eyes rested on was Jed Smith, of Salsbury. He winked to the chaps lounging near him, when he noted my doleful look, and says he:
"You're mopish, comrade. Hez caliker proved deceitful?"
"No," says I, indifferently. "Calico rather shuns me, as a general thing, my Down-easter, on account of my plain speaking."
This startled him, my boy, as I expected it would, and says he:
"That's jest like the mock-modesty of the wimmin folks all the world over, and a body might think they had the hull supply and nothin' shorter; but I tell ye it's the heartiest sow that makes the least noise, and half this here modesty is all sham. Onct in a while these here awful modest critters git shook down a bit, I guess; and gheewhillikins! ef it don't do me good to see it. I recollect I was goin' down from Augusty some two years ago, in the old stage that Sammy Tompkins druv, and we had one of the she-critters aboard—and she was a scrouger, I tell ye! Bonnet red as a blaze, and stuck all over with stiff geeranium blows, a hump like a Hottentot gal, and sich ankles! but hold your horses, I'm gettin' ahead of time. We was awful crowded, and no mistake—piled right on top of each other, like so many layers of cabbage; and the way that gal squealed when we struck a rut, was a caution to screech owls. And she was takin' up her sheer of the coach, too, I guess; and kind of stretched her walkin' geer way under the seat in front of her, and out t'other side, just to brace herself agin the diffikilties of travel. It being pretty bad goin' down in them parts, she had on a pair of her brother's butes, and they was what she wouldn't have had seen if she'd knowed it. One of the fellers on the middle seat was Zeb Green—gone to glory some time ago—and when he spied them butes, he winked to me, and sung out:
"Gheewhillikins! who owns these ere big trotters?"
"Now, ye see, the she-critter was one of yer modest ones, and she wouldn't have owned up for the world, after that. Says she:
"'I guess they ain't mine.'
"Zeb see her game in a twinklin', and he was a tall one for a lark; so says he: