XXVI. DOWN-EAST CURIOSITY.[16]
Reading edition
XXVI. DOWN-EAST CURIOSITY.[16]
On my voyage up the North River, I was seated in the cabin reading a newspaper, when I observed an odd-looking individual reading over my shoulder. I looked up in his face, when the fellow, with his hands in his pocket, and not in the least disconcerted at being caught in so impertinent and unmannerly an act, exclaimed:
“Any news in particular?”
“No, Sir; will you accept the paper?”
“Oh no! can’t; ain’t got time. It’s the first time I’ve been up this river, and I want to be looking reound. How can they take a fellow up this river for a dollar and found. They can’t dew it. It’s a take-in.”
“How is that?”
“Why they charge one dollar to take you in, and when you git up to Albany, you’ve got to pay another dollar to git eout. Got this place all fixed up so. Sophy’s all reound tew. I never use Sophy’s myself, but once courted a gal by that name, and it looks a kind o’ natural to see Sophy’s reound; and them stuffed-bottom chairs eout there. I thought I’d set deown on ’em; by thunder, I jumped up three feet. Oh, I’ll be darned if I didn’t think I was sitting down on somebody’s baby. You see I chaw tobacco; grandfather chawed, and father he chawed, and mother, she—eh—no, she didn’t she snuffed, so you see I have to keep running up to expectorate—as our doctor says, overboard. I expect I shall have to go again in about a minute.”
“You need not take that trouble, Sir,” said I “here are spittoons.”
“Spittoons! Oh yes, I know’d what them was for, but they’ve got ’em brightened up so, I didn’t like to nasty ’em. I went to the the-ater to see you t’other night. Didn’t you see me? I sot right in front of you.”
“No, Sir, I did not.”
“Wal, I don’t suppose you could; there was a hull lot of fellers there. I got jammed in. I had on a striped vest, the fronts were new, but the backs being made of cotton, sometimes will give eout. By golly, I got tew laughing, so away went the back, slitted right up to the collar. I was a little the tornest critter you ever did see.”
“I am very sorry for your misfortune,” I remarked.
“Oh, you needn’t fret abeout it, stranger. I shouldn’t a wore it much more nor three weeks longer, any how. You see I never wear my best clothes to sich places, ’cause it kind a rips them eout a leetle. I had a bet abeout you. Some feller said you was born on Long Island. I told him you wasn’t, you was born down-east.”
“You were right, Sir, I was born in one of the Eastern States.”
“There, I know’d you was, ’cause I know’d you couldn’t get along so well as you did, if you wasn’t born deown that way somewhere. Have you been in Massachusetts?”
“Yes, Sir,” I said.
“Been in the State of Maine?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Been in New Hampshire?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Ah! Maybe you was born there? They’ve got a good many Hills.”
“No, Sir, I was not.”
“Wal, you might have been. Ever been in Vermont?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You know old Zeke Hill?”
“No, Sir.”
“Nor I nuther, but I’ve hearn tell there was such a feller, didn’t know but you might have known him tew.”
“Have you ever been in Connecticut?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Ever been in Rhode Island? that little bit of a thing in there.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Have you ever been in Boston?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Having thus obtained nothing very satisfactory from me, in relation to my birth-place, he commenced asking me if I had been to the Capital of this State, and then the other, until he had got through the whole of them; he then, to my astonishment, commenced with the country towns, doubtless with the hope of hitting at last upon the one in which I was born. Getting a little out of patience, I said:
“I presume, Sir, you wish to ascertain where I was born?”
“Wal, yes, I shouldn’t mind knowing, if you have no objection to tell, and if you had told me before, you would have saved me a darned sight of trouble.”
“Well,” I said, “I was born in Boston, in the year 1809, on the 8th day of October, at six o’clock in the morning.”
“At six o’clock, eh?”
“At six o’clock precisely, down in Water Street.”
“Dew tell. But, stranger, dew you remember the number of the house?”