Guess th' old man's ailin' ag'in.
Winder's half-way open in the chamber,--should n' wonder 'f he was dead
and laid aout. Docterin' a'n't no use, when y' see th' winders open like
that. Wahl, money a'n't much to speak of to th' old man naow! He don'
want but tew cents,--'n' old Widah Peake, she knows what he wants them
for!"
Or again,--
"Measles raound pooty thick. Briggs's folks buried two children with 'em
lass' week. Th' of Doctor, he'd h' ker'd 'em threugh. Struck in 'n'
p'dooced mo't'f'cation,--so they say."
This is only meant as a sample of the kind of way they used to think or
talk, when the narrow sulky turned in at the gate of some house where
there was a visit to be made.
Oh, that narrow sulky! What hopes, what fears, what comfort, what
anguish, what despair, in the roll of its coming or its parting wheels!
In the spring, when the old people get the coughs which give them a few
shakes and their lives drop in pieces like the ashes of a burned thread
which have kept the threadlike shape until they were stirred,--in the hot
summer noons, when the strong man comes in from the fields, like the son
of the Shunamite, crying, "My head, my head,"--in the dying autumn days,
when youth and maiden lie fever-stricken in many a household,
still-faced, dull-eyed, dark-flushed, dry-lipped, low-muttering in their
daylight dreams, their fingers moving singly like those of slumbering
harpers,--in the dead winter, when the white plague of the North has
caged its wasted victims, shuddering as they think of the frozen soil
which must be quarried like rock to receive them, if their perpetual
convalescence should happen to be interfered with by any untoward
accident,--at every season, the narrow sulky rolled round freighted with
unmeasured burdens of joy and woe.
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