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III. IN DIALECTLUKE(IN THE COLORADO PARK, 1873)
Wot`s that you`re readin`?--a novel? A novel!--well, darn my skin!
You a man grown and bearded and histin` such stuff ez that in--
Stuff about gals and their sweethearts! No wonder you`re thin ez a
knife.
Look at me--clar two hundred--and never read one in my life! That`s my opinion o` novels. And ez to their lyin` round here,
They belong to the Jedge`s daughter--the Jedge who came up last year
On account of his lungs and the mountains and the balsam o` pine and
fir;
And his daughter--well, she read novels, and that`s what`s the
matter with her. Yet she was sweet on the Jedge, and stuck by him day and night,
Alone in the cabin up `yer--till she grew like a ghost, all white.
She wus only a slip of a thing, ez light and ez up and away
Ez rifle smoke blown through the woods, but she wasn`t my kind--no
way! Speakin` o` gals, d`ye mind that house ez you rise the hill,
A mile and a half from White`s, and jist above Mattingly`s mill?
You do? Well now THAR`s a gal! What! you saw her? Oh, come now,
thar! quit!
She was only bedevlin` you boys, for to me she don`t cotton one bit. Now she`s what I call a gal--ez pretty and plump ez a quail;
Teeth ez white ez a hound`s, and they`d go through a ten-penny nail;
Eyes that kin snap like a cap. So she asked to know "whar I was hid?"
She did! Oh, it`s jist like her sass, for she`s peart ez a Katydid. But what was I talking of?--Oh! the Jedge and his daughter--she read
Novels the whole day long, and I reckon she read them abed;
And sometimes she read them out loud to the Jedge on the porch where
he sat,
And `twas how "Lord Augustus" said this, and how "Lady Blanche" she
said that. But the sickest of all that I heerd was a yarn thet they read `bout
a chap,
"Leather-stocking" by name, and a hunter chock full o` the greenest
o` sap;
And they asked me to hear, but I says, "Miss Mabel, not any for me;
When I likes I kin sling my own lies, and thet chap and I shouldn`t
agree." Yet somehow or other that gal allus said that I brought her to mind
Of folks about whom she had read, or suthin belike of thet kind,
And thar warn`t no end o` the names that she give me thet summer up
here--
"Robin Hood," "Leather-stocking" "Rob Roy,"--Oh, I tell you, the
critter was queer! And yet, ef she hadn`t been spiled, she was harmless enough in her
way;
She could jabber in French to her dad, and they said that she knew
how to play;
And she worked me that shot-pouch up thar, which the man doesn`t
live ez kin use;
And slippers--you see `em down `yer--ez would cradle an Injin`s
papoose. Yet along o` them novels, you see, she was wastin` and mopin` away,
And then she got shy with her tongue, and at last she had nothin` to
say;
And whenever I happened around, her face it was hid by a book,
And it warn`t till the day she left that she give me ez much ez a
look. And this was the way it was. It was night when I kem up here
To say to `em all "good-by," for I reckoned to go for deer
At "sun up" the day they left. So I shook `em all round by the hand,
`Cept Mabel, and she was sick, ez they give me to understand. But jist ez I passed the house next morning at dawn, some one,
Like a little waver o` mist got up on the hill with the sun;
Miss Mabel it was, alone--all wrapped in a mantle o` lace--
And she stood there straight in the road, with a touch o` the sun in
her face. And she looked me right in the eye--I`d seen suthin` like it before
When I hunted a wounded doe to the edge o` the Clear Lake Shore,
And I had my knee on its neck, and I jist was raisin` my knife,
When it give me a look like that, and--well, it got off with its life. "We are going to-day," she said, "and I thought I would say good-by
To you in your own house, Luke--these woods and the bright blue sky!
You`ve always been kind to us, Luke, and papa has found you still
As good as the air he breathes, and wholesome as Laurel Tree Hill. "And we`ll always think of you, Luke, as the thing we could not take
away,--
The balsam that dwells in the woods, the rainbow that lives in the
spray.
And you`ll sometimes think of ME, Luke, as you know you once used to
say,
A rifle smoke blown through the woods, a moment, but never to stay." And then we shook hands. She turned, but a-suddent she tottered and
fell,
And I caught her sharp by the waist, and held her a minit. Well,
It was only a minit, you know, thet ez cold and ez white she lay
Ez a snowflake here on my breast, and then--well, she melted away-- And was gone. . . . And thar are her books; but I says not any for me;
Good enough may be for some, but them and I mightn`t agree.
They spiled a decent gal ez might hev made some chap a wife,
And look at me!--clar two hundred--and never read one in my life!
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