“Thinks I to myself, my pretty little may-flower, in this everlastin’ progressive nation of ourn, where the wheel of fortune never stops turning day or night, and them that’s at the top one minute are down in the dirt the next, you may say, “‘I want to know’ before you die, and be very glad to change your tune, and say, ‘Thank heaven I do know!’”
“Is that a joke of yours,” said the doctor, “about the young girl’s geology, or is it really a fact?”
“Fact, I assure you,” said I. “And to prove it I’ll tell you a story about a Female College that will show you what pains we take to spoil our young ladies to home. Miss Liddy Adams, who was proprietor and ‘dentess (presidentess) of a Female College to Onionville, was a relation of mother’s, and I knew her when she was quite a young shoat of a thing to Slickville. I shall never forget a flight into Egypt I caused once in her establishment. When I returned from the embassy, I stopped a day in Onionville, near her university—for that was the name she gave hern; and thinks I, I will just call and look in on Lid for old acquaintance’ sake, and see how she is figuring it out in life. Well, I raps away with the knocker as loud as possible, as much as to say, Make haste, for there is somebody here, when a tall spare gall with a vinegar face opened the door just wide enough to show her profile, and hide her back gear, and stood to hear what I had to say. I never see so spare a gall since I was raised. Pharaoh’s lean kine warn’t the smallest part of a circumstance to her. She was so thin, she actilly seemed as if she would have to lean agin the wall to support herself when she scolded, and I had to look twice at her before I could see her at all, for I warn’t sure she warn’t her own shadow.”
“Good gracious!” said the doctor, “what a description! but go on.”
“‘Is the mistress to home?’ said I.
“‘I have no mistress,’ said she.
“‘I didn’t say you had,’ sais I, ‘for I knew you hadn’t afore you spoke.’
“‘How did you know that?’ said she.
“‘Because,’ sais I, ‘seein’ so handsome a lady as you, I thought you was one of the professors; and then I thought you must be the mistress herself, and was a thinking how likely she had grow’d since I seed her last. Are you one of the class-teachers?’
“It bothered her; she didn’t know whether it was impudence or admiration; but when a woman arbitrates on a case she is interested in, she always gives an award in her own favour.