from
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter XVII.
It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn't seen
no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style.
It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with
a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in town.
There warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but heaps of parlors
in towns has beds in them. There was a big fireplace that was bricked
on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water
on them and scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes they wash them
over with red water-paint that they call Spanish-brown, same as they do
in town. They had big brass dog-irons that could hold up a sawlog. There
was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town
painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the
middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging behind
it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of
these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape,
she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got tuckered
out. They wouldn't took any money for her.
Well,
there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out
of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots was
a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you
pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look
different nor interested. They squeaked through underneath. There was
a couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out behind those things.
On the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery
basket that bad apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in
it, which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is,
but they warn't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped
off and showed the white chalk, or whatever it was, underneath.
This
table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and blue
spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It come all
the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books, too, piled
up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a big family
Bible full of pictures. One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left
his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then.
The statements was interesting, but tough. Another was Friendship's Offering,
full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn't read the poetry. An other
was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another was Dr. Gunn's Family Medicine,
which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. There
was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. And there was nice split-bottom
chairs, and perfectly sound, too -not bagged down in the middle and busted,
like an old basket.
They
had pictures hung on the wallsmainly
Washingtons and Lafayettes, and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called
"Signing the Declaration." There was some that they called crayons, which
one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only
fifteen years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before
-blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress,
belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle
of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil,
and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black
slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on
her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down
her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the
picture it said "Shall I Never See Thee More Alas." Another one was a
young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head,
and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying
into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other
hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "I Shall Never
Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas." There was one where a young lady was
at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks;
and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax showing
on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against
her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou
Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow
seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always
give me the fan-tods. Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid
out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she
had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that with her disposition
she was having a better time in the graveyard. She was at work on what
they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and
every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done,
but she never got the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in a long
white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with
her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears
running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast,
and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards
the moon -and the idea was to see which pair would look best, and then
scratch out all the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died before
she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head
of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers
on it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain. The young woman in
the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms
it made her look too spidery, seemed to me.
This
young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries
and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the Presbyterian
Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head. It was very
good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name of Stephen
Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded:
ODE
TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D
And
did young Stephen sicken,
And
did young Stephen die?
And did the sad hearts
thicken,
And did the mourners cry?
No;
such was not the fate of
Young Stephen Dowling Bots;
Though sad hearts round
him thickened,
'Twas not from sickness'
shots.
No
whooping-cough did rack his frame,
Nor measles drear with
spots;
Not these impaired the
sacred name
Of Stephen Dowling Bots.
Despised
love struck not with woe
That head of curly knots,
Nor stomach troubles laid
him low,
Young Stephen Dowling Bots.
O
no. Then list with tearful eye,
Whilst I his fate do tell.
His soul did from this
cold world fly
By falling down a well.
They got him out and emptied
him;
Alas it was too late;
His spirit was gone for
to sport aloft
In the realms of the good
and great.
If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen,there
ain't no telling what she could a done by and by. Buck said she could
rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have to stop to think.
He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't find anything
to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down another one,
and go ahead. She warn't particular; she could write about anything you
choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful. Every time a
man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with
her "tribute" before he was cold. She called them tributes. The neighbors
said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the undertaker -the
undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung
fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was Whistler. She warn't
ever the same after that; she never complained, but she kinder pined away
and did not live long. Poor thing, many's the time I made myself go up
to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrap-book
and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured
on her a little. I liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't
going to let anything come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about
all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that
there warn't nobody to make some about her now she was gone; so I tried
to sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go
somehow. They kept Emmeline's room trim and nice, and all the things fixed
in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody
ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room herself, though there
was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible
there mostly.
Well,
as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on the
windows: white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines all
down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little old
piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever so
lovely as to hear the young ladies sing "The Last Link is Broken" and
play "The Battle of Prague" on it. The walls of all the rooms was plastered,
and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was whitewashed
on the outside.
It
was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and
floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day,
and it was a cool, comfortable place.Nothing couldn't be better. And warn't
the cooking good, and just bushels of it too!
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by
Mark Twain
(1835-1910)
from The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter XVII.
the letter t
Something else (this-a-way)
Something or other (that-a-way)
Out of the Woods
"Wedgwood"
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