"Jack," said a gentleman to an old negro, who was rather lazily engaged in clearing the snow from his premises, "Jack, my old boy, you don't get along with this job very fast."—"Why, master," replied Jack, scratching his wool, "pretty considerable for an old man, I guess; and I conceit myself, that I can clear more snow away in dese here short days, than the spryest nigga in the city could do in the longest summer day as ever was."
Mr. Russell once asked a nigger to call him early in the morning, because he wanted to go by the first boat. "At wat time, massa?" "At half-past three o'clock." "Half-pass tree o'clock?" "Yes, sir." The nigger, after grinning, departed; but immediately reappeared, saying: "Please, massa, don't forget to ring for me at tree o'clock in the morning, and I can be sure to wake you."
"Mr. Smith, you said you once officiated in a pulpit—do you mean by that that you preached?" "No, sir; I held the light for a man what did." "Ah; the court understood you differently. They supposed that the discourse came from you." "No, sir; I only throwed a light on it." "No levity, Mr. Smith. Crier, wipe your nose, and call on the next witness."
Mrs. Hopkins told me, that she heard Green's wife say, that John Glucks told her, that Fanny Hopkins heard the Widow Busham say, that Captain Weed's wife thought Colonel Hodgkins' sisters believed, that old Miss Quint reckoned that Mrs. Samuel Dunham had told Spoldin's wife that she heard John Fink's daughter say, that her mother told her, that old Miss Jenks heard Grandmother Cook declare, that it was an undoubted fact.
"Misther! Misther! what have you done?" said a little fellow with protruding eyes, to a greenhorn, who had just tied his horse to a spruce pole, as he thought, on the street. "Done!" said the fellow, "what do you mean? I haint been doin' nothin' as I knows on!" "Why, yeth you have, thir; you've hitched your hoth to the magnetic telegraph, and you'll be in Bothton in leth than two minutes, if you don't look out!" The man untied his horse with nervous anxiety, and, jumping into his wagon, drove hastily down the street.