ask you again."
"Well?" says I, after a step or two, seeing he didn't speak.
"Well?" says he.
"I can't say 'Yes' or 'No' either, till you ask me," said I.
He stopped under the starlight and looked in my eyes.
"Emmie," says he, "did you ever doubt that I loved you?"
"Once I thought you did," said I; "but it's different now."
"I do love you," said he, "and you know it."
"Me, Stephen?" said I,—"with my face like a speckled sparrow's egg?"
"Yes, you," said he; and he bent down and kissed me, and then we walked on.
By-and-by Stephen said, When would I come and be the life of his house and the light of his eyes? That was rather a speech for Stephen; and I said, I would go whenever he wanted me. And then we went home very comfortably, and Stephen told mother it was all right, and mother and Lurindy did what they'd got very much into the habit of doing,—cried; and I said, I should think I was going to be buried, instead of married; and Stephen took my knitting-work away, and said, as I had knit all our trouble and all our joy into that thing, he meant to keep it just as it was; and that was the end of my knitting sale-socks.
I suppose, now I've told you so far, you'd maybe like to know the rest. Well, Lurindy and John were married Thanksgiving morning; and just as they moved aside, Stephen and I stepped up and took John and Aunt Mimy rather by surprise by being married too.
"Wal," says Aunt Mimy, "ef ever you hang eout another red flag, 't won't be because Lurindy's nussin' Stephen!"
I don't suppose there's a happier little woman in the State than me. I should like to see her, if there is. I go over home pretty often; and Aunt Mimy makes just as much of my baby—I've named him John—as mother does; and that's enough to ruin any child that wasn't a cherub born. And Miss Mimy always has a bottle of some new nostrum of her own stilling every time she sees any of us; we've got enough to swim a ship, on the top shelf of the pantry to-day, if it was all put together. As for Stephen, there he comes now through the huckleberry-pasture, with the baby on his arm; he seems to think there never was a baby before; and sometimes—Stephen's such a homebody—I'm tempted to think that maybe I've married my own shadow, after all. However, I wouldn't have it other than it is. Lurindy, she lives at home the most of the time; and once in a while, when Stephen and mother and I and she are all together, and as gay as larks, and the baby is creeping round, swallowing pins and hooks and eyes as if they were blueberries, and the fire is burning, and the kettle singing, and the hearth swept clean, it seems as if heaven had actually come down, or we'd all gone up without waiting for our robes; it seems as if it was altogether too much happiness for one family. And I've made Stephen take a paper on purpose to watch the ship-news; for John sails captain of a fruiter to the Mediterranean, and, sure enough, its little gilt figure-head that goes dipping in the foam is nothing else than the Sister of Charity.
SCUPPAUG
The crowd was decidedly a heterogeneous one on the edge of which I stood at eight o'clock, A.M., one scorching July morning, under an awning at the end of a rickety pier, waiting for the excursion-steamer which was to convey us to the distant sand-banks over which the clear waters lap, away down below the green-sloped highlands of Neversink,—sea-shoal banks, from which silvery fishes were warning us off with their waving fins.
Now the crowd, being a heterogeneous one, as I have said, had the vulgar element pervading it to a dominant extent. It consisted mainly of such "common people," indeed, that no person of exquisite refinement would have thought of feeling his way through it, unless his hands were protected by what Aminadab Sleek calls "little goat-gloves." And yet there is another style of mitten, a large, unshapely, bloated knuckle-fender, stuffed with curled hair, that might be far more appropriate to the operation of shouldering in among such "muscular Christians" as the majority around, on the occasion to which I refer.
In the resorts to which habitual tipplers have recourse for consolation of the spirituous kind, a cheap variety is usually on hand to meet exigencies,—the exigency of a commercial crisis, for instance, when the last lonely dime of the drinker is painfully extracted from the pocket, to be replaced by seven inconsiderable cents. This abomination is termed "all sorts" by the publican and his indispensable sinner. It is the accumulation of the drainage of innumerable gone drinks,—fancy and otherwise. The exquisite in the "little goat-gloves" would not hob-nob with me in that execrable beverage; no more would I with him; and yet one of its components may be the aristocratic Champagne. In the social elements of a water-excursion-party may be found the "all sorts" of a particular kind of city-life,—the good of it and the bad of it, with a dash of something that is very low. But I am going to talk about the thing as I found it,—the rough side of the social mill-stone; and, seeing that I have suffered nothing by contact with it, I suppose no harm will come to such as listen to the little I have got to say on the subject.
A benevolent desire to launch far and wide the already well-spread reputation of the New York rowdy impels the present writer to declare his conviction, that, should Physiology offer a premium for the production of a perfect and unmitigated specimen of polisson, Experience would seek for it among the choice representatives of the class in question,—ay, and find it, too. Nor would the ardor of search be chilled by the suggestion of scarcity conveyed in the practical sarcasm of the sly old cynic, when he scorched human nature with a horn lantern by instituting a search with it on the sun-bright highways for an unauthenticated type of man. And yet the rowdy, like many another ugly and repulsive thing, may have his use. In the East Indies, it is customary to keep a live turtle in the wayside water-tanks which are so precious in that thirsty land, the movements of the animal, as well as the industry with which it devours all noxious particles which chance may have conveyed into the waters, serving to keep them in a condition of purity and health. The rowdy is the turtle in the tank,—so far, at least, as being an ugly beast to look at and a great promoter of commotion,—by which latter service he keeps the community alive to the presence of impure particles in the social element, if he does not assist in getting rid of them. An alligator in an aquarium might furnish a better comparison for him in other respects.
Of this class there are many branches; but the one with which I have to deal at present is to be studied to most advantage by visiting some pier of the great river-frontage of New York, to which excursion-boats rush emulously at appointed hours, crossing and jostling each other with proper respect for their individual rights as free commoners of the well-tilled waters. Here, as, with audacious disregard of the chance-medley of smashed guards and obliterated paddle-boxes, the great water-wagons graze wheels upon the ripple-paved turnpike of the river, the steamboat-runner, squalidly red from the effects of last night's carouse, and reeking sensibly of the alcoholic "morning call," may be recognized by the native manner in which he makes the pier peculiarly his own,—by the inflammatory character—which unremitting dissipation has imparted to the inhaling apparatus of his unclassical features,—by the filthy splendor of his linen, which a low-buttoning waistcoat, gorgeous and dirty likewise, unbosoms disadvantageously to the gaze of the beholder,—by the invariable "diamond" pin, of gift-book style, with which the juncture of the first-mentioned integument is effected, if not adorned,—and, above all, by the massive guards and guy-chains with which his watch is hitched on to the belaying arrangements of Chatham Street garments, the original texture and tint of which have long been superseded by predominant grease. Hand and elbow with the professional city-rowdy the steamboat-runner is ever to be found: at the cribs, where the second-rate men of the "fancy" hold their secret meetings; clinging about the doors of the Court of Sessions, where, as eavesdroppers,—for they are known to the door-keeper, and rejected from the friendship of that stern officer,—they strive, with ear at keyhole, to catch a word or two which may give them a clue to the probable fate of "Jim," who is in the dock there, on his trial for homicide or some such light peccadillo;
