The World’s Wit and Humor: An Encyclopedia in 15 Volumes. 1906.
Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber (18141890)Mrs. Partingtons Oracular Pearls
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Mrs. Partington greatly deprecated any ill remark about any one, and she heard the observation in silence, until the schoolmaster continued:
“Don’t you think so?”
“Why, as to his being a beast,” replied she, “I am not willing to say, though some say he is very glutinous in his habits, and sometimes is indicted to steamiousness; but there is nothing harmonious about him that I know of; so I should be loath to call him so. The least we say is soonest mended, and none of us are any better than we ought to be, with corruption without and temptation within, and the Lord knows what, to disturb our equal Abraham, and bring us down all of a sudden, as Mr. Buss cut his leg——”
“I meant fat—obese—fat, madam,” said the schoolmaster.
“Well,” she replied, “perhaps he is, which you might have said so at first; but that has no weight against his character, that I know of, if he came honestly by it, which is none of my business.”
The rebuke was well received, and Ike, who had listened attentively, drew with charcoal the picture of a fat man on the white closet door.
“This is not an ice car, madam,” replied the gentleman to whom she addressed her remark.
“Well, I must say that tobacco-smoke is not so nice as it might be, and I don’t think people behave themselves altogether as well as they might who smoke where there is ladies; but we must take folks as we find ’em.”
“Have a cigar, madam?” said her acquaintance.
“No, thank you,” she replied, astonished at his audacity, as she saw him rub a match and light his weed.
“Go it alone!” said a voice behind her.
“Yes,” said she, “I’m alone,” thinking herself addressed.
She looked round to see a game of euchre progressing. As Batchelder, the conductor, entered, he saw the black bonnet and the kind eyes, and whispered in her ear, “You are in the smoking-car;” whereupon she went out and found her sphere in the next car.
There was a smart tap on the looking-glass that hung upon the wall, followed instantly by another.
“Gracious!” said she; “what’s that? I hope the glass isn’t fractioned, for it’s a sure sign of calamity, and mercy knows they come along full fast enough without helping ’em by breaking looking-glasses.”
There was another tap, and she caught sight of a white bean that fell on the floor; and there, reflected in the glass, was the face of Ike, who was blowing beans at the mirror through a crack in the door.
“’Tain’t nothing else,” replied he, thrusting the cat’s head through the paper, which served as an elaborated choker.
“Et als.!” mused she. “I never ate als in my life that I know of, though there is so many dishes with new names that one might forget ’em all, unless he is an epicac.”
She turned everything in her mind to remember what she had eaten—her mind over full of turnovers—but it refused to come to her; and she made a memorandum, by tying a knot in her handkerchief, to call on the editor and find out about it. Ike sat upon the leaf of the extension-table, swinging his feet beneath it, trying to make a tune out of the creak.