Your frend, ’til deth,
Jos. Jones.
LETTER VIII.
Pineville, March 28th, 1843.
Dear Sir,
I really owe you a apology for not writin’ to you so long; but the fact is, I’ve been too happy ever sense I was married, to think about writin’ or ennything else much. Besides I use to have time to write nites; but now my time is tuck up with so many things, receivin’ cumpany and payin’ visits, and goin’ to quiltens and partys of one kind another, that I haint no time for nothing; and as for writin’ letters, when my wife’s all the time lookin’ over my shoulder, pullin’ my ears, and tickelen me, and disputin’ bout my spellin’, it aint no kind of use to try. She’s gone over to mother’s this afternoon with her sisters, and her mother’s out in the gardin, lookin’ if the frost is killed the peas, so I thought I’d rite you a few lines jest to let you know how we was all cumin’ on.
We’s all pretty well, ’cept the old woman, who’s been in a monstrous flustration ’bout the comet, and the yeathquakes, and the harrycanes, and snowstorms, and sich things, for more’n a month, and I’ve had a most bominable sore throat, which I got lookin’ at the comet jest to please her; but Mary soon cured that with some sage tea and turpentime. I’m livin’ with Mary’s mother for the present; but that makes mother monstrous jealous, and to satisfy both the old wimin, Mary and me is gwine to housekeepin’ next fall to ourselves.
I don’t know what to make of the weather—the months is eather got mixed up and January’s swapped places with March this time, or that bominable grate big comet is got ’tween our yeath and the sun, and is soakin’ all the sunshine up in its everlastin’ big tail, which the newspapers say is more’n two thousand miles long. We planted sum corn most a month ago, but it’s all rotten or froze to deth; and if the weather don’t get no better I don’t know when we’ll plant enny more; and if cotton’s gwine clean down to nothing, I don’t mean to put a sead in the ground this year.
Old Miss Stallins reads the Bibel most all the time, and ses she’s jest as sure as she wants to be that sumthing’s gwine to turn up. She ses that comet’s sent to let us know the judgment day’s a cumin’, and these yeathquakes and harrycanes is signs that it ain’t far off. She’s all the time lookin’ out, and she’s got a grate big cow-bell fixed rite by her bed, so the least tetch will make it ring, so she can tell when the yeath-quake cums next time. T’other nite old Sooky, the cook, who’s ’bout as big as a cow, slipped up in the snow on the porch, and shuck the whole house and made the bell ring. The old woman jumped out of bed and lit a candle in a minit, and had us all up with her hollerin’ about the yeath-quake; and last nite, when it lightened so, I thought she’d die shore enuff. She sed t’other eend of the world was a fire, and we’d all be burnt into cracklins afore mornin—she shouted and clapped her hands, and prayed, and bid good-by to us all; and I do b’lieve if it hadn’t thundered as soon and as loud as it did, she would’ve kick’d the bucket shore enuff. Jest hearin’ so much about that dratted old Miller, has played the wild with the old woman’s senses. It’s a grate pity ther ain’t sum way to stop that old feller’s goins on. He ought to be put in the penetentiary for tryin’ to make people b’lieve he’s sich a monstrous sight smarter than the Lord ever intended him to be, that he can tell when the world’s gwine to cum to a eend. The Bibel ses that thing was to be kep a grate secret and nobody in heaven or yeath should know anything about it. Well, ain’t it most oudacious insurance, then, for him to cum and say he’s found it out—that he knows all about it? And if he did know it, he ought to have principle and good breedin’ enuff not to go and blab it all about, jest to scare fokes to deth. He ought to be brought to the eend of a rope jest for his meanness.