Briggs's folks's' buried two children
with 'em laaest week. Th' old Doctor, he'd h' ker'd 'em threugh. Struck
in 'n' p'dooeed mot'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.
Pages:
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290