Page 346 - 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 ...

scrips as with butter. And rt won't make no difference a hundred
years from now whether a man lias lived on butter or hog’s fat. Not
a speck!
I sold the butter, and took three dollars' worth of skates. Miss
Pike, the milliner, said I ought to have a skating costume— it wasn't
properous to skate in a long-tailed gownd and crinoline.
So one day I sot myself to work, and fixed one. I took a pair of
Joshua’s red flannel drawers, and sot two rosettes of green ribbon onto
the bottoms of 'em ; and then 1 took a yaller petticoat of mine, and
sewed five rows of biue braids round the bottom of that; my waist
I made out: of a red and brown plaid shawl, and for a cap T took one
of Joshua’s cast-off stove-pipe hats, and cut it down a story. I tied a
wide piece of red flannel around it, and pulled out an old crower's
tail, and stuck that into the front of it. Joshua lalTed at me, the
master. He sed I looked jest like an Injun squaw; but as he never
seed one, I dunno how he knowed.
Sam Jellison sed he'd larn me how to d o ; but I told him no; 1
didn't want nobody a-handling me round a-llnding out whether I wore
corsets or not. I didn't like the style, I guessed I could take keer
of myself, Tfd allers managed to. I’d took kecr of myself through
the jonders, and the dispepsy, and the collery morbus, and I'd allers
made my soap, and did my own cleaning, arid I guessed I could
skate without nobody's assistance. I didn’t want no little upstarts a
holding onto me with one arm, and lafiing at me in t'other sleeve at
the same time.
Sam he whistled and sed nothing. It’s a dreadful hateful way some
folks have of insulting of ye— that whistle of theirn.
One Tuesday morning, bright and airly, I got my work out: of the
way, and dressing myself in my skating costume, I took my skates in
one hand and a long pole to steady myself by in the other, and set
sail for the mill-pond,
I shouldn’t have dared to begin such an undertaking any day but
Tuesday. Wednesday is aliers a dreadful day for rile! Why, I ’ve
broke more’n ten dollars' worth of crockery Wednesdays; and I’ve