His face was indeed sad as he rendered these woful ballads and yet his
voice and manner were of the cheeriest, and I dare say he sang without
reference to their real tragedy. It was a school of American balladry
quite at variance with the cheerful optimism of those I had heard from
the Belknap-Jackson phonograph, where the persons are not dead at all
but are gayly calling upon one another to come on and do a folkdance,
or hear a band or crawl under--things of that sort. As Cousin Egbert
bent over a frying pan in which ham was cooking he crooned softly:
"In the hazel dell my Nellie's sleeping,
Nellie loved so long,
While my lonely, lonely watch I'm keeping,
Nellie lost and gone."
I could attribute his choice only to that natural perversity which
prompted him always to do the wrong thing, for surely this affecting
verse was not meant to be sung at such a moment.
Attempting to arise, I became aware that the two days' journey had
left me sadly lame and wayworn, also that my face was burned from the
sun and that I had been awakened too soon. Fortunately I had with me a
shilling jar of Ridley's Society Complexion Food, "the all-weather
wonder," which I applied to my face with cooling results, and I then
felt able to partake of a bit of the breakfast which Cousin Egbert now
brought to my bedside.
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