The Wit and Humor of America Volume II Part 14

BRIGGS--Egg, large clock, jar of gold-fish, rabbit and empty barrel.

HOSTESS--I have the egg.

BRIGGS (_much annoyed_)--I particularly wanted the gold-fish, the clock and the barrel.

(_Guests grow restless._)

Hostess--Couldn't you do a trick while we are waiting--one with the egg-beater and turnip?

BRIGGS--No; I don't know one.

HOSTESS--Couldn't you make up one?

BRIGGS (_icily_)--Certainly not.

(_Gloom descends over the company, until the Poor Relative arrives, staggering under the clothes-horse._)

CHORUS OF MEN GUESTS--Let me help you!

(_Improvised screen is finally arranged._ Briggs _performs "parlor magic" for an hour. Guests, fidget, yawn and commence to drop away, one by one._)

GUEST (_to Hostess_)--Really, we must tear ourselves away. Such a delightful evening!--not a dull moment. And your punch--heavenly! Do ask us again. Good night.

HOSTESS--Thank you so much! So good of you to come.

ANOTHER GUEST--Yes, we must go. I've had a perfectly dear time.

HOSTESS--So sorry you must go. So good of you to come. Good night.

IN THE DRESSING-ROOM

CHORUS OF GUESTS--Wasn't it awful?--Such low people!--Why did we ever come--Parvenue!

ELOCUTIONIST--I was all right, wasn't I, mama? You noticed they never clapped a bit until I'd walked the whole length of the room to my chair.

It just showed how wrought up they were. You nearly mixed me up, though, prompting me in the wrong place; I--

HOSTESS (_throwing herself on sofa as door closes on last guest_)--Well, I'm completely done up! (_To Poor Relative_)--Maria, run up to my room, and get my red worsted bed-slippers. I can't stand these satin tortures a minute longer. Entertaining is an awful strain. It's so hard trying not to say the wrong thing at the right place. But, then, it certainly went off beautifully. I could tell every one had such a good time!

COMIN' THU

BY ANNE VIRGINIA CULBERTSON

Yer's a sinner comin' thu, Crowd roun', bre'ren, sisters, too, Sing wid all yo' might an' main, He'p de sinner out er pain, He's comin', comin' thu.

He bin "seekin'" dis long time, He'p him cas' de foe behime, Clap yo' han's an' sing an' shout, He'p him cas' de debil out, Le's wra.s.sel him right thu.

Tu'rr side de Gate er Sin, Year him kickin' ter git in, Putt up prayers wid might an' main, Dat he doesn' kick in vain, Y'all kin pray him thu.

Heart a-bus'in' fer de right, Debil hol'in' to him tight, Year him swish dat forked tail, See de sinner-man turn pale, Come on an' he'p him thu.

Sinner hangin' 'bove de pit, By a hya'r strotch over hit, Debil hol' one eend an' shake, Y'all kin see de sinner quake, Quick, he'p dis man come thu.

Seize de ropes, now, ev'y man, He'p de gospel s.h.i.+p ter lan', One long pull an' one gre't shout, Hallelu! We got him out, De sinner done come thu!

AUNT DINAH'S KITCHEN

BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Like a certain cla.s.s of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly scorned logic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in intuitive certainty; and here she was perfectly impregnable. No possible amount of talent, or authority, or explanation could ever make her believe that any other way was better than her own, or that the course she had pursued in the smallest matter could be in the least modified. This had been a conceded point with her old mistress, Marie's mother; and "Miss Marie," as Dinah always called her young mistress, even after her marriage, found it easier to submit than contend; and so Dinah had ruled supreme. This was the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of that diplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner with the utmost inflexibility as to measure.

Dinah was the mistress of the whole art and mystery of excuse-making, in all its branches. Indeed, it was an axiom with her that the cook can do no wrong, and a cook in a Southern kitchen finds abundance of heads and shoulders on which to lay off every sin and frailty, so as to maintain her own immaculateness entire. If any part of the dinner was a failure, there were fifty indisputably good reasons for it, and it was the fault, undeniably, of fifty other people, whom Dinah berated with unsparing zeal.

But it was very seldom that there was any failure in Dinah's last results. Though her mode of doing everything was peculiarly meandering and circuitous, and without any sort of calculation as to time and place,--though her kitchen generally looked as if it had been arranged by a hurricane blowing through it, and she had about as many places for each cooking utensil as there were days in the year,--yet, if one could have patience to wait her own good time, up would come her dinner in perfect order, and in a style of preparation with which an epicure could find no fault.

It was now the season of incipient preparation for dinner. Dinah, who required large intervals of reflection and repose, and was studious of ease in all her arrangements, was seated on the kitchen floor, smoking a short, stumpy pipe, to which she was much addicted, and which she always kindled up, as a sort of censer, whenever she felt the need of an inspiration in her arrangements. It was Dinah's mode of invoking the domestic Muses.

Seated around her were various members of that rising race with which a Southern household abounds, engaged in sh.e.l.ling peas, peeling potatoes, picking pin-feathers out of fowls, and other preparatory arrangements, Dinah every once in a while interrupting her meditations to give a poke, or a rap on the head, to some of the young operators, with the pudding-stick that lay by her side. In fact, Dinah ruled over the woolly heads of the younger members with a rod of iron, and seemed to consider them born for no earthly purpose but to "save her steps," as she phrased it. It was the spirit of the system under which she had grown up, and she carried it out to its full extent.

Miss Ophelia, after pa.s.sing on her reformatory tour through all the other parts of the establishment, now entered the kitchen. Dinah had heard, from various sources, what was going on, and resolved to stand on defensive and conservative ground,--mentally determined to oppose and ignore every new measure, without any actual and observable contest.

The kitchen was a large, brick-floored apartment, with a great old-fas.h.i.+oned fireplace stretching along one side of it,--an arrangement which St. Clair had vainly tried to persuade Dinah to exchange for the convenience of a modern cook-stove. Not she. No p.u.s.s.eyite, or conservative of any school, was ever more inflexibly attached to time-honored inconveniences than Dinah.

When St. Clair had first returned from the North, impressed with the system and order of his uncle's kitchen arrangements, he had largely provided his own with an array of cupboards, drawers, and various apparatus, to induce systematic regulation, under the sanguine illusion that it would be of any possible a.s.sistance to Dinah in her arrangements. He might as well have provided them for a squirrel or a magpie. The more drawers and closets there were, the more hiding-holes could Dinah make for the accommodation of old rags, hair-combs, old shoes, ribbons, cast-off artificial flowers, and other articles of _vertu_, wherein her soul delighted.

When Miss Ophelia entered the kitchen, Dinah did not rise, but smoked on in sublime tranquillity, regarding her movements obliquely out of the corner of her eye, but apparently intent only on the operations around her.

Miss Ophelia commenced opening a set of drawers.

"What is this drawer for, Dinah?" she said.

"It's handy for 'most anything, missis," said Dinah. So it appeared to be. From the variety it contained Miss Ophelia pulled out first a fine damask table-cloth stained with blood, having evidently been used to envelop some raw meat.

"What's this, Dinah? You don't wrap up meat in your mistress's best table-cloth?"

"Oh, Lor', missis, no; the towels was all a-missin', so I just did it. I laid it out to wash that ar; that's why I put it thar."

"s.h.i.+r'less!" said Miss Ophelia to herself, proceeding to tumble over the drawer, where she found a nutmeg-grater and two or three nutmegs, a Methodist hymn-book, a couple of soiled Madras handkerchiefs, some yarn and knitting-work, a paper of tobacco and a pipe, a few crackers, one or two gilded china saucers with some pomade in them, one or two thin old shoes, a piece of flannel carefully pinned up enclosing some small white onions, several damask table-napkins, some coa.r.s.e crash towels, some twine and darning-needles, and several broken papers, from which sundry sweet herbs were sifting into the drawer.

"Where do you keep your nutmegs, Dinah?" said Miss Ophelia, with the air of one who "prayed for patience."