Then he touched his hat and we and the colored Tom moved along. I was
bursting to drop just one little remark to my companion, but I held in
and waited. Tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous great apartment,
and then said, with many bows and a perfect affluence of smiles:
“Now, is dey anything you want, sah? Case you kin have jes’ anything you
wants. It don’t make no difference what it is.”
“Can I have some hot water and a tumbler at nine to-night-blazing hot?”
I asked. “You know about the right temperature for a hot Scotch punch?”
“Yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it; I’ll get it myself.”
“Good! Now, that lamp is hung too high. Can I have a big coach candle
fixed up just at the head of my bed, so that I can read comfortably?”
“Yes, sah, you kin; I’ll fix her up myself, an’ I’ll fix her so she’ll
burn all night. Yes, sah; an’ you can jes’ call for anything you want,
and dish yer whole railroad’ll be turned wrong end up an’ inside out for
to get it for you. Dat’s so.” And he disappeared.
Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my armholes, smiled a
smile on my companion, and said, gently:
“Well, what do you say now?”
My companion was not in the humor to respond, and didn’t. The next
moment that smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door,
and this speech followed:
“Laws bless you, sah, I knowed you in a minute. I told de conductah so.
Laws! I knowed you de minute I sot eyes on you.”
“Is that so, my boy?” (Handing him a quadruple fee.) “Who am I?”
“Jenuel McClellan,” and he disappeared again.
My companion said, vinegarishly, “Well, well! what do you say now?”
Right there comes in the marvellous coincidence I mentioned a while ago
–viz., I was speechless, and that is my condition now. Perceive it?
CATS AND CANDY
The following address was delivered at a social meeting of
literary men in New York in 1874:
When I was fourteen I was living with my parents, who were very poor–and
correspondently honest. We had a youth living with us by the name of Jim
Wolfe. He was an excellent fellow, seventeen years old, and very
diffident. He and I slept together–virtuously; and one bitter winter’s
night a cousin Mary–she’s married now and gone–gave what they call a
candy-pulling in those days in the West, and they took the saucers of hot
candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort of old bower that
came from the eaves–it was a sort of an ell then, all covered with
vines–to cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were all sitting
there. In the mean time we were gone to bed. We were not invited to
attend this party; we were too young.
The young ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, and Jim and I were
in bed. There was about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell, and
our windows looked out on it; and it was frozen hard. A couple of tom-
cats–it is possible one might have been of the opposite sex–were
assembled on the chimney in the middle of this ell, and they were
growling at a fearful rate, and switching their tails about and going on,
and we couldn’t sleep at all.
Finally Jim said, “For two cents I’d go out and snake them cats off that
chimney.” So I said, “Of course you would.” He said, “Well, I would;
I have a mighty good notion to do it.” Says I, “Of course you have;
certainly you have, you have a great notion to do it.” I hoped he might
try it, but I was afraid he wouldn’t.
Finally I did get his ambition up, and he raised the window and climbed
out on the icy roof, with nothing on but his socks and a very short
shirt. He went climbing along on all fours on the roof toward the
chimney where the cats were. In the mean time these young ladies and