Why? indeed.
1 This is the passage to which Mr Slick referred in the conversation I had with him, related in Chapter I., entitled, “A Surprise.”
“Tam it,” said Peter, for we were so absorbed in listening to the music, we did not hear the approach of the boat, “ta ting is very coot, but it don’t stir up te blood, and make you feel like a man, as ta pipes do! Did she ever hear barris an tailler? Fan she has done with her brass cow-horn, she will give it to you. It can wake the tead, that air. When she was a piper poy to the fort, Captain Fraisher was killed by the fall of a tree, knocked as stiff as a gunparrel, and as silent too. We laid her out on the counter in one of the stores, and pefore we put her into the coffin the governor said: ‘Peter,’ said he, ‘she was always fond of barris an tailler, play it before we nail her up, come, seid suas (strike up).’
“Well, she gets the pipes and plays it hern ainsel, and the governor forgot his tears; and seized McPhee by the hand, and they danced; they couldn’t help it when that air was played, and what do you think? It prought Captain Fraisher to life. First she opened her eyes, and ten her mouth again wunst more. She did, upon my shoul.
“Says she, ‘Peter, play it faster, will you? More faster yet, you blackguard.’ And she tropt the pipes and ran away, and it was the first and last time Peter McDonald ever turned his pack on a friend. The doctor said it was a trance, but he was a sassanach and knew nothing about music; but it was the pipes prought the tead to. This is the air,” and he played it with such vigour he nearly grew black in the face.
“I believe it,” sais I; “it has brought me to also, it has made me a new man, and brought me back to life again. Let us land the moose.”
“Ted,” said Peter, “she is worth two ted men yet. There is only two teaths. Ted as te tevil, and ted drunk, and she ain’t neither; and if she were poth she would wake her up with tat tune, barris an tailler, as she tid Captain Fraisher, tat she will.”
“Now,” said I, “let us land the moose.”
[CHAPTER XI.]
A DAY ON THE LAKE.—PART II.
Peter’s horrid pipes knocked all the romance out of me. It took all the talk of dear old Minister (whose conversation was often like poetry without rhyme), till I was of age, to instil it into me. If it hadn’t been for him I should have been a mere practical man, exactly like our Connecticut folks, who have as much sentiment in them in a general way as an onion has of otter of roses. It’s lucky when it don’t predominate though, for when it does, it spoils the relish for the real business of life.