Thinks I, as I trudged back, here’s an end to thanksgiving. Well, to rights, Doctor Hosannah Eldrich, he’s a deacon of our church, and sings thro’ his nose a few. I declare, when I see him ridin’ up the lane I couldn’t help feelin’ like a thunderin’ calf; so I jist made excuse to split up some kindlin’, and left Hannah to give him the chapter and the varse. Our wood-house is short of a mile from the house; but I could hear the doctor’s haw-haw clear out there. So I dropped axe, and in I went. S’niver the Doctor see me he giv’ me a hunch.
“Ain’t yew a pretty considerable queer chap,” sez he, “to send for me on such a beautiful bizness as this?” With that he haw-haw’d agin; and my wife she laughed till she cried, jist to see the figer the Doctor cut, for he’s as long as the moral law, and couldn’t stand up for laughin’.
Then I laughed tu, till the house rung; luckily our nearest neighbour lives a half a mile off, and is stone deaf into the bargain. So I tipt the wink to Hannah, and tell’d Hosannah ’twas all a joke of our’n to send for him; (for I thought I should look corner ways and skwywoniky if he should tell the company about us nixt day. Besides, I know’d the Deacon liked a joke pretty well, even if he got rubbed sometimes). So, says I, “How did Hannah carry it out?” Consarn it, if he didn’t jump right into the trap.
“Capital! capital!” said he. “Botheration, if I didn’t think she was in raal arnest!”
| [10] | By W. L. McClintoch. |
VIII.
AUNT NABBY’S STEWED GOOSE.
It was my Aunt Nabby’s birthday, and she was bent upon having a stewed goose, stewed in onions, and with cabbage and salt pork to match.
“Pollijah,” said she to me, “ain’t we got a goose ’bout the farm?”
“No,” said I, “we eat the old gander at Christmas, and he was the last of the patriarchs.”