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| WOT’S that you’re readin’?—a novel? A novel,—well, dern my skin! | |
| You a man grown and bearded and histin’ such stuff ez that in,— | |
| Stuff about gals and their sweethearts! No wonder you’re thin ez a knife. | |
| Look at me!—clar two hundred,—and never read one in my life! | |
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| That’s my opinion o’ novels. And ez to their lyin’ round here, | 5 |
| They belonged to the Jedge’s daughter,—the Jedge who came up last year | |
| On account of his lungs and the mountains and the balsam o’ pine and fir; | |
| And his daughter,—well, she read novels, and that’s what’s the matter with her. | |
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| Yet she allers was sweet on the Jedge, and she stuck by him day and night, | |
| Alone in the cabin up yer,—till she grew like a ghost, all white. | 10 |
| She wus only a slip of a thing, ez light and ez up and away | |
| Ez rifle-smoke blown through the woods, but she wasn’t my kind,—no way! | |
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| Speaking o’ gals, d’ye mind that house ez you rise the hill, | |
| A mile and a half from White’s, and jist above Mattingly’s mill? | |
| You do? Well now thar’s a gal! What, you saw her? Oh, come now, thar, quit! | 15 |
| She was only bedevilin’ you boys, for to me she don’t cotton one bit. | |
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| Now she’s what I call a gal,—ez pretty and plump ez a quail; | |
| Teeth ez white ez a hound’s and they’d go through a tenpenny nail; | |
| Eyes that kin snap like a cap. So she asked to know “whar I was hid.” | |
| She did! Oh, it’s jist like her sass, for she’s peart ez a Katy-did. | 20 |
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| But what was I talking of?—Oh, the Jedge and his daughter,—she read | |
| Novels the whole day long, and I reckon she read them abed, | |
| And sometimes she read them out loud to the Jedge on the porch where he sat, | |
| And ’t was how “Lord Augustus” said this, and how “Lady Blanche” she said that. | |
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| But the sickest of all that I heerd, was a yarn thet they read ’bout a chap, | 25 |
| “Leather-stocking” by name, and a hunter chock full o’ the greenest o’ sap; | |
| And they asked me to hear, but I says, “Miss Mabel, not any for me; | |
| When I likes I kin sling my own lies, and thet chap and I shouldn’t agree.” | |
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| Yet somehow or other she was always sayin’ I brought her to mind | |
| Of folks about whom she had read, or suthin belike of thet kind, | 30 |
| And thar warn’t no end o’ the names that she give me thet summer up there, | |
| “Robin Hood,” “Leather-stocking,” “Rob Roy,”—Oh, I tell you, the critter was queer. | |
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| And yet ef she hadn’t been spiled, she was harmless enough in her way. | |
| She could jabber in French to her dad, and they said that she knew how to play, | |
| And she worked me that shot-pouch up thar,—which the man doesn’t live ez kin use, | 35 |
| And slippers—you see ’em down yer—ez would cradle an Injin’s pappoose. | |
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| Yet along o’ them novels, you see she was wastin’ and mopin’ away, | |
| And then she got shy with her tongue, and at last she had nothin’ to say; | |
| And whenever I happened around, her face it was hid by a book, | |
| And it was n’t until she left that she give me ez much ez a look. | 40 |
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| And this was the way it was. It was night when I kem up here | |
| To say to ’em all “good by,” for I reckoned to go for deer | |
| At “sun up” the day they left. So I shook ’em all round by the hand, | |
| ’Cept Mabel, and she was sick, ez they give me to understand. | |
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| But jist ez I passed the house next morning at dawn, some one, | 45 |
| Like a little waver o’ mist, got up on the hill with the sun; | |
| Miss Mabel it was, all alone,—wrapped up in a mantle o’ lace,— | |
| And she stood there straight in the road, with a touch o’ the sun in her face. | |
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| And she looked me right in the eye,—I’d seen suthin like it before | |
| When I hunted a wounded doe to the edge o’ the Clear Lake shore, | 50 |
| And I had my knee on its neck, and jist was a raisin’ my knife | |
| When it give me a look like that, and—well, it got off with its life. | |
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| “We are going to-day,” she said, “and I thought I would say good-by | |
| To you in your own house, Luke,—these woods, and the bright blue sky! | |
| You ’ve always been kind to us, Luke, and papa has found you still | 55 |
| As good as the air he breathes, and wholesome as Laurel Tree Hill. | |
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| “And we’ll always think of you, Luke, as the thing we could not take away; | |
| The balsam that dwells in the woods, the rainbow that lives in the spray. | |
| And you’ll sometimes think of me, Luke, as you know you once used to say, | |
| A rifle-smoke blown through the woods, a moment, but never to stay.” | 60 |
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| And then we shook hands. She turned, but a-suddent she tottered and fell, | |
| And I caught her sharp by the waist, and held her a minit,—well, | |
| It was only a minit, you know, that ez cold and ez white she lay | |
| Ez a snow-flake here on my breast, and then—well, she melted away— | |
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| And was gone … And thar are her books; but I says not any for me, | 65 |
| Good enough may be for some, but them and I might n ’t agree. | |
| They spiled a decent gal ez might hev made some chap a wife, | |
| And look at me!—clar two hundred,—and never read one in my life! | |
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