Mr Pratt, she opens up, this Mr Green is a friend of yours, I believe.
For nine years, says I.
Cut him out, says she. Hes no gentleman!
Why, maam, says I, hes a plain incumbent of the mountain, with asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, maam, Ive found him impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years of Idahos society, Mrs Sampson, I winds up, I should hate to impute him, and I should hate to see him imputed.
Mr Pratt, she opens up, this Mr Green is a friend of yours, I believe.
For nine years, says I.
Cut him out, says she. Hes no gentleman!
Why, maam, says I, hes a plain incumbent of the mountain, with asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, maam, Ive found him impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years of Idahos society, Mrs Sampson, I winds up, I should hate to impute him, and I should hate to see him imputed.
Its right plausible of you, Mr Pratt, says Mrs Sampson, to take up the curmudgeons in your friends behalf; but it dont alter the fact that he has made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle the ignominy of any lady.
Why, now, now, now! says I. Old Idaho do that! I could believe it of myself sooner. I never knew but one thing to deride in him; and a blizzard was responsible for that. Once while we was snowbound in the mountains he became a prey to a kind of spurious and uneven poetry, which may have corrupted his demeanor.
It has, says Mrs Sampson. Ever since I knew him he has been reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls Ruby Ott, and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by her poetry.
Then Idaho has struck a new book, says I, for one he had was by a man who writes under the nom de plume[19] of K. M.
Hed better have stuck to it, says Mrs Sampson, whatever it was. And to-day he caps the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and on em is pinned a note. Now, Mr Pratt, you know a lady when you see her; and you know how I stand in Rosa society. Do you think for a moment that Id skip out to the woods with a man alone with a jug of wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down under the trees with him? I take a little claret with my meals, but Im not in the habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising Cain in any such style as that. And of course hed bring his book of verses along, too. He said so. Let him go on his scandalous picnics alone! Or let him take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she wouldnt kick unless it was on account of there being too much bread along. And what do you think of your gentleman friend now, Mr Pratt?
Well, m, says I, it may be that Idahos invitation was a kind of poetry, and meant no harm. Maybe it belonged to the class of rhymes they call figurative. They offend law and order, but they get sent through the mails on the grounds that they mean something that they dont say. Id be glad on Idahos account if youd overlook it, says I, and let us extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to the higher planes of fact and fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like this, Mrs Sampson, I goes on, we should let our thoughts dwell accordingly. Though it is warm here, we should remember that at the equator the line of perpetual frost is at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Between the latitudes of forty degrees and forty-nine degrees it is from four thousand to nine thousand feet.
Oh, Mr Pratt, says Mrs Sampson, its such a comfort to hear you say them beautiful facts after getting such a jar from that minx of a Rubys poetry!
Let us sit on this log at the roadside, says I, and forget the inhumanity and ribaldry of the poets. It is in the glorious columns of ascertained facts and legalized measures that beauty is to be found. In this very log we sit upon, Mrs Sampson, says I, is statistics more wonderful than any poem. The rings show it was sixty years old. At the depth of two thousand feet it would become coal in three thousand years. The deepest coal mine in the world is at Killingworth, near Newcastle. A box four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet eight inches deep will hold one ton of coal. If an artery is cut, compress it above the wound. A mans leg contains thirty bones. The Tower of London was burned in 1841.
Go on, Mr Pratt, says Mrs Sampson. Them ideas is so original and soothing. I think statistics are just as lovely as they can be.
But it wasnt till two weeks later that I got all that was coming to me out of Herkimer.
One night I was waked up by folks hollering Fire! all around. I jumped up and dressed and went out of the hotel to enjoy the scene. When I seen it was Mrs Sampsons house, I gave forth a kind of yell, and I was there in two minutes.