Page 345 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

body nor nothing. And lie’s apt to git to using big words, if he
happens to lift, against anything. The other day he skated against a
tall stump in the millpond, and a madder man you never seed. He
took it for somebody standing there; and, if he is a deacon, I!m
ready to give my Bible oath that he came at it, and hit it several licks
with his fist, afore he found 01.1L that it wasn’t no one.
All the wimmen foEks has been out on the ice this fad. T never
seed such a turnout afore. The way they've done, they've cooked
up enuflf Satterdays to last all through the next week, and then they’ve
skated, and their husbands has staid at home, and swore and cat cold
vittles.
Law sake! how things have changed since 1 was a gal ! The
world is gitting more and more civilizer! every day. In a thousand
years from now, at the present rate of getting along, this airth will be
too good to live in, and most of us will have to leave, if we hain’t
already.
Why, I can remember when a gal that dared to lonk at a pair of
skates was called a Tomboy; and you might as well have served
out a term in the States Prison as to have been called that! It was
in awful name 1 It used to be a sin fora gal to do anything that a
jfjny did, except milk the cows, and eat pudding and molasses.
As soon as it got cold enough to friz up, I made up my mind to see
what T could do at skating. T bad an idea that it wouldn't take me
110 time at all to larn. All the gals was an awful spell adarning ■ but
all in the world that made ’em so long was ’cause they had fellers
a-showing of ’em how, and they kinder liked the fun. If there hadn't
been a feller in the neighborhood, a’most any of ’em would laint the
o ' *
whole trade in three days.
1 went over to the bridge, and sold five pounds of butter, and got
me a pair of skates. Hain’t it astonishing how butter has gone up ?
Never seed the beat of it in all my life! We don’t pretend to eat a
mite of butter to our house, though we've got three farrer cows and
a new milk's heifer. Joshua grumbles like everything; but T tell
him 'taint no use— I’d as lives he’d spread his bread with fifty-cent