The Sugar Creek Highwayman
BY
Adela E. Orpen
An Englishwoman's adventure in Arkansas, issuing in a great surprise to all concerned.
When Mrs. Boyd returned from Arkansas, I, having myself spent a very uneventful summer at home, with only the slight excitement of a month at Margate, was most anxious to hear an account of her adventures. That she had had adventures out there on those wild plains of course I felt certain. It would be manifestly preposterous to go to Arkansas for three months, and come back without an adventure.
So, on the first day when Mrs. Boyd was to be "at home" after her return, I went to see her; and I found, already assembled in her cosy drawing-room, several other friends, impelled there, like myself, by curiosity to hear what she had to say, as well as by a desire to welcome her back.
"I was just asking Mrs. Boyd what she thought the most singular thing in America," said Miss Bascombe, by way of putting me au courant with the conversation after my greeting was over with our hostess.
"And I," replied Mrs. Boyd, "was just going to say I really did not know what was the one most curious thing in America, where most things seem curious, being different from here, you know. I suppose it is their strange whining speech which most strikes one at the outset. It is strong in New York, certainly, but when you get out West it is simply amazing. But then they thought my speech as curious as I did theirs. A good woman in Arkansas said I talked 'mighty crabbed like.' But a man who travelled in the next seat to me, across Southern Illinois, after talking with me for a long time, said, 'Wal, now, you dew talk purty tol'eble square for an Englishwoman. You h'aint said 'Hingland' nor 'Hameriky' onst since you sot there as I knows on!'"
Mrs. Boyd put on so droll a twang, and gave her words such a curious, downward jerk in speaking, that we all laughed, and felt we had a pretty fair idea of how the Illinois people talk at all events.
"Everybody is very friendly," continued Mrs. Boyd, "no matter what may be their station in life, nor what you may suppose to be yours. I remember in Cincinnati, where I stopped for a couple of days, the porter who got out my box for me saw it had some London and Liverpool labels on it, whereupon he said, with a pleasant smile, 'Wal, how's Eurôpe gettin' on, anyhow?' Fancy a Cannon Street porter making such a remark to a passenger! But it was quite simply said, without the faintest idea of impertinence. In fact, it is almost impossible to say that anybody is impertinent where you are all so absolutely on an equality."