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The news of this here percession across the plains will bring them down as thick as bees on the track, and I tell you there will be some tough fights afore we get across." "Have you had much experience of the plains?" Frank asked. "We are hunters," the other said briefly, "and have been out there, more or less, since we were boys.
But Roxby's eyes, with a certain gleam of excitement, a superstitious dilation, still dwelt upon the bridge at the end of the upward vista. He went on merely from the impetus of the subject. "Yes, sir she seen it a-pacin' of its sorrowful way acrost that bredge, same ez the t'others of the percession o' harnts. 'Twar my niece, Mill'cent brother's darter by name, Mill'cent Roxby.
Wa'al, putty soon the percession hove in sight, an' the' was a reg'lar stampede among the boys, an' when it got by, I run an' ketched up with it agin, an' walked alongside the el'phant, tin pail an' all, till they fetched up inside the tent.
Why, at my cousin Emma McIntyre's wedding, her that married the apothecary over in Jersey City, though her mother appeared to her in a dream and told her she'd rue the day she done it, but as Emma said, she got more advice than she wanted from the living, and if she was to listen to spectres too she'd never be sure what she'd ought to do and what she'd oughtn't; but I will say her husband took to drink, and she never was the same woman after her fust baby well, they had an elegant church wedding, and what you s'pose I saw as I was walkin' up the aisle with the wedding percession?"
The' was a cirkis billed to show down here in Homeville, an' ev'ry barn an' shed fer miles around had pictures stuck onto 'em of el'phants, an' rhinoceroses, an' ev'ry animul that went into the ark; an' girls ridin' bareback an' jumpin' through hoops, an' fellers ridin' bareback an' turnin' summersets, an' doin' turnovers on swings; an' clowns gettin' hoss-whipped, an' ev'ry kind of a thing that could be pictered out; an' how the' was to be a grand percession at ten o'clock, 'ith golden chariots, an' scripteral allegories, an' the hull bus'nis; an' the gran' performance at two o'clock; admission twenty-five cents, children under twelve, at cetery, an' so forth.
"Don't miscontruct me," went on Phonograph, "as undervaluatin' the a-ristocrats. Some of 'em air proper people and can travel right along with the Watson boys. I've herded some with 'em myself. I've viewed the elephant with the Mayor of Fort Worth, and I've listened to the owl with the gen'ral passenger agent of the Katy, and they can keep up with the percession from where you laid the chunk.
"An' this friend o' mine," Little continued, "sees this here funeral, an' bein' in th' c'ndition he's in, he thinks it is a percession, an' he waves his hat an' cheers, an' he gets urrested." Little looked sternly at Whitey as though to drive the moral of this story home, and to warn him never to drink and cheer a funeral.
And the snake-feeders they helped Miss Katydid over the lowest fence-rail, and here come Big Ant Black with such a string behind her it looked like a funeral instead of a family percession and she twisted her neck from side to side as soon as she see the great big apple, kind of wonderin' if they couldn't carry it off.
I'd never had two shillin' of my own in my hull life. But the more I thought on't the uneasier I got. Somethin' seemed pullin' an' haulin' at me, an' fin'ly I gin in. I allowed I'd see that percession anyway if it took a leg, an' mebbe I c'd git back 'ithout nobody missin' me.
I never see any money goin' beggin' yet, long as I've lived, but what some chap had his hands on it quick enough. But I s'pose it's all right." "It's me wife I'm troublin' about. I'm no dandy, Goodness knows, but if people'll let me alone I'll let them alone, and I don't interfere with anyone. But if old Peg turns up she'll want to be right in front of the percession.
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