Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor Volume I Part 4

Her father--grandpapa! forgive This erring lip its smiles-- Vowed she would make the finest girl Within a hundred miles.

He sent her to a stylish school; 'Twas in her thirteenth June; And with her, as the rules required, "Two towels and a spoon."

They braced my aunt against a board, To make her straight and tall; They laced her up, they starved her down, To make her light and small; They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins-- O never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins.

So, when my precious aunt was done, My grandsire brought her back (By daylight, lest some rabid youth Might follow on the track); "Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook Some powder in his pan, "What could this lovely creature do Against a desperate man!"

Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche, Nor bandit cavalcade Tore from the trembling father's arms His all-accomplished maid.

For her how happy had it been!

And Heaven had spared to me To see one sad, ungathered rose On my ancestral tree.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

N. P. WILLIS

MISS ALBINA McLUSH

I have a pa.s.sion for fat women. If there is anything I hate in life, it is what dainty people call a _spirituelle_. Motion--rapid motion--a smart, quick, squirrel-like step, a pert, voluble tone--in short, a lively girl--is my exquisite horror! I would as lief have a _diable pet.i.t_ dancing his infernal hornpipe on my cerebellum as to be in the room with one. I have tried before now to school myself into liking these parched peas of humanity. I have followed them with my eyes, and attended to their rattle till I was as crazy as a fly in a drum. I have danced with them, and romped with them in the country, and periled the salvation of my "white tights" by sitting near them at supper. I swear off from this moment. I do. I won't--no--hang me if ever I show another small, lively, _spry_ woman a civility.

Albina McLush is divine. She is like the description of the Persian beauty by Hafiz: "Her heart is full of pa.s.sion and her eyes are full of sleep." She is the sister of Lurly McLush, my old college chum, who, as early as his soph.o.m.ore year, was chosen president of the _Dolce far niente_ Society--no member of which was ever known to be surprised at anything--(the college law of rising before breakfast excepted). Lurly introduced me to his sister one day, as he was lying upon a heap of turnips, leaning on his elbow with his head in his hand, in a green lane in the suburbs. He had driven over a stump, and been tossed out of his gig, and I came up just as he was wondering how in the D----l's name he got there! Albina sat quietly in the gig, and when I was presented, requested me, with a delicious drawl, to say nothing about the adventure--it would be so troublesome to relate it to everybody! I loved her from that moment. Miss McLush was tall, and her shape, of its kind, was perfect. It was not a _fleshy_ one exactly, but she was large and full. Her skin was clear, fine-grained and transparent; her temples and forehead perfectly rounded and polished, and her lips and chin swelling into a ripe and tempting pout, like the cleft of a bursted apricot. And then her eyes--large, liquid and sleepy--they languished beneath their long black fringes as if they had no business with daylight--like two magnificent dreams, surprised in their jet embryos by some bird-nesting cherub. Oh! it was lovely to look into them!

She sat, usually, upon a _fauteuil_, with her large, full arm embedded in the cushion, sometimes for hours without stirring. I have seen the wind lift the ma.s.ses of dark hair from her shoulders when it seemed like the coming to life of a marble Hebe--she had been motionless so long.

She was a model for a G.o.ddess of sleep as she sat with her eyes half closed, lifting up their superb lids slowly as you spoke to her, and dropping them again with the deliberate motion of a cloud, when she had murmured out her syllable of a.s.sent. Her figure, in a sitting posture, presented a gentle declivity from the curve of her neck to the instep of the small round foot lying on its side upon the ottoman. I remember a fellow's bringing her a plate of fruit one evening. He was one of your lively men--a horrid monster, all right angles and activity. Having never been accustomed to hold her own plate, she had not well extricated her whole fingers from her handkerchief before he set it down in her lap. As it began to slide slowly toward her feet, her hand relapsed into the muslin folds, and she fixed her eye upon it with a kind of indolent surprise, drooping her lids gradually till, as the fruit scattered over the ottoman, they closed entirely, and a liquid jet line was alone visible through the heavy lashes. There was an imperial indifference in it worthy of Juno.

Miss McLush rarely walks. When she does, it is with the deliberate majesty of a Dido. Her small, plump feet melt to the ground like snowflakes; and her figure sways to the indolent motion of her limbs with a glorious grace and yieldingness quite indescribable. She was idling slowly up the Mall one evening just at twilight, with a servant at a short distance behind her, who, to while away the time between his steps, was employing himself in throwing stones at the cows feeding upon the Common. A gentleman, with a natural admiration for her splendid person, addressed her. He might have done a more eccentric thing.

Without troubling herself to look at him, she turned to her servant and requested him, with a yawn of desperate ennui, to knock that fellow down! John obeyed his orders; and, as his mistress resumed her lounge, picked up a new handful of pebbles, and tossing one at the nearest cow, loitered lazily after.

Such supreme indolence was irresistible. I gave in--I--who never before could summon energy to sigh--I--to whom a declaration was but a synonym for perspiration--I--who had only thought of love as a nervous complaint, and of women but to pray for a good deliverance--I--yes--I--knocked under. Albina McLush! Thou wert too exquisitely lazy. Human sensibilities cannot hold out forever.

I found her one morning sipping her coffee at twelve, with her eyes wide open. She was just from the bath, and her complexion had a soft, dewy transparency, like the cheek of Venus rising from the sea. It was the hour, Lurly had told me, when she would be at the trouble of thinking.

She put away with her dimpled forefinger, as I entered, a cl.u.s.ter of rich curls that had fallen over her face, and nodded to me like a water-lily swaying to the wind when its cup is full of rain.

"Lady Albina," said I, in my softest tone, "how are you?"

"Bettina," said she, addressing her maid in a voice as clouded and rich as the south wind on an aeolian, "how am I to-day?"

The conversation fell into short sentences. The dialogue became a monologue. I entered upon my declaration. With the a.s.sistance of Bettina, who supplied her mistress with cologne, I kept her attention alive through the incipient circ.u.mstances. Symptoms were soon told. I came to the avowal. Her hand lay reposing on the arm of the sofa, half buried in a muslin _foulard_. I took it up and pressed the cool soft fingers to my lips--unforbidden. I rose and looked into her eyes for confirmation. Delicious creature! she was asleep!

I never have had courage to renew the subject. Miss McLush seems to have forgotten it altogether. Upon reflection, too, I'm convinced she would not survive the excitement of the ceremony--unless, indeed, she should sleep between the responses and the prayer. I am still devoted, however, and if there should come a war or an earthquake, or if the millennium should commence, as is expected in 18----, or if anything happens that can keep her waking so long, I shall deliver a declaration, abbreviated for me by a scholar-friend of mine, which, he warrants, may be articulated in fifteen minutes--without fatigue.

A SMACK IN SCHOOL

A district school, not far away, 'Mid Berkshire's hills, one winter's day, Was humming with its wonted noise Of threescore mingled girls and boys; Some few upon their tasks intent, But more on furtive mischief bent.

The while the master's downward look Was fastened on a copy-book; When suddenly, behind his back, Rose sharp and clear a rousing smack!

As 'twere a battery of bliss Let off in one tremendous kiss!

"What's that?" the startled master cries; "That, thir," a little imp replies, "Wath William Willith, if you pleathe---- I thaw him kith Thuthanna Peathe!"

With frown to make a statue thrill, The master thundered, "Hither, Will!"

Like wretch o'ertaken in his track, With stolen chattels on his back, Will hung his head in fear and shame, And to the awful presence came---- A great, green, bashful simpleton, The b.u.t.t of all good-natured fun.

With smile suppressed, and birch upraised, The thunderer faltered--"I'm amazed That you, my biggest pupil, should Be guilty of an act so rude!

Before the whole set school to boot---- What evil genius put you to't?"

"'Twas she herself, sir," sobbed the lad; "I did not mean to be so bad; But when Susannah shook her curls, And whispered, I was 'fraid of girls And dursn't kiss a baby's doll, I couldn't stand it, sir, at all, But up and kissed her on the spot!

I know--boo--hoo--I ought to not, But, somehow, from her looks--boo--hoo---- I thought she kind o' wished me to!"

WILLIAM PITT PALMER.

A RENDITION

Two old British sailors were talking over their sh.o.r.e experience. One had been to a cathedral and had heard some very fine music, and was descanting particularly upon an anthem which gave him much pleasure. His shipmate listened for awhile, and then said:

"I say, Bill, what's a hanthem?"

"What," replied Bill, "do you mean to say you don't know what a hanthem is?"

"Not me."

"Well, then, I'll tell yer. If I was to tell yer, 'Ere, Bill, give me that 'andspike,' that wouldn't be a hanthem;' but was I to say, 'Bill, Bill, giv, giv, give me, give me that, Bill, give me, give me that hand, handspike, hand, handspike, spike, spike, spike, ah-men, ahmen. Bill, givemethat-handspike, spike, ahmen!' why, that would be a hanthem."

B. P. SHILLABER ("Mrs. Partington")

FANCY DISEASES

"Diseases is very various," said Mrs. Partington, as she returned from a street-door conversation with Doctor Bolus. "The Doctor tells me that poor old Mrs. Haze has got two buckles on her lungs! It is dreadful to think of, I declare. The diseases is so various! One way we hear of people's dying of hermitage of the lungs; another way, of the brown creatures; here they tell us of the elementary ca.n.a.l being out of order, and there about tonsors of the throat; here we hear of neurology in the head, there, of an embargo; one side of us we hear of men being killed by getting a pound of tough beef in the sarcof.a.gus, and there another kills himself by discovering his jocular vein. Things change so that I declare I don't know how to subscribe for any diseases nowadays. New names and new nostrils takes the place of the old, and I might as well throw my old herb-bag away."

Fifteen minutes afterward Isaac had that herb-bag for a target, and broke three squares of gla.s.s in the cellar window in trying to hit it, before the old lady knew what he was about. She didn't mean exactly what she said.

BAILED OUT

"So, our neighbour, Mr. Guzzle, has been arranged at the bar for drunkardice," said Mrs. Partington; and she sighed as she thought of his wife and children at home, with the cold weather close at hand, and the searching winds intruding through the c.h.i.n.ks in the windows, and waving the tattered curtain like a banner, where the little ones stood shivering by the faint embers. "G.o.d forgive him, and pity them!" said she, in a tone of voice tremulous with emotion.

"But he was bailed out," said Ike, who had devoured the residue of the paragraph, and laid the paper in a pan of liquid custard that the dame was preparing for Thanksgiving, and sat swinging the oven door to and fro as if to fan the fire that crackled and blazed within.

"Bailed out, was he?" said she; "well, I should think it would have been cheaper to have pumped him out, for, when our cellar was filled, arter the city fathers had degraded the street, we had to have it pumped out, though there wasn't half so much in it as he has swilled down."

She paused and reached up on the high shelves of the closet for her pie plates, while Ike busied himself in tasting the various preparations.

The dame thought that was the smallest quart of sweet cider she had ever seen.

SEEKING A COMET