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"Quit the old steamer for good, I have. Me and the skipper had some words and I told him where he could go. Ho! ho! I don't know whether he went or not; anyhow, I started for Trumet. Got there and found you'd come into money and had moved to Scarford and was livin' with the big-bugs. Some house you've got here, ain't it! Soon's I see it I headed for the back door.
In the opinion of the West, "big-bugs" did not come down to this kind of occupation unless they had been roughly handled by fate or fortune. "Talk? Watch me now, he talks like a testimonial in a frame," said Malachi Deely on the day this tale opens, to John Sibley, the gambling young farmer who, strange to say, did well out of both gambling and farming. "Words to him are like nuts to a monkey.
"The low-down white hates us bekase we ain't mean an' ornery ez they air, an' hold ourselves above 'em. The big-bugs hates us bekase we won't knuckle down ter 'em, ez ther niggers an' the pore whites do. So hit's cat-an'-dog all the time. We don't belong ter the same parties, we don't jine the same churches, an' thar's more or less trouble a-gwine on batween us an' them continnerly."
It now informed his answer to Van Cleve's characterization of his job. "If I can sneak a tenth of the truth past the copy-desk," he said, "I'm doing well. And what sort of man am I when I go up against these big-bugs of industry at their conventions, and conferences, appearing as representative of The Courier which represents their interests? A damned hypocrite, I'd say!
One of the biggest big-bugs there is in New York. Ah, ha! what did I tell you?" He was fairly boiling over with gloat, but from between the bubbles I managed to find out that the new boarder was a big banker from New York, name of Van Wedderburn, with a barrel of cash and a hogshead of dyspepsy.
An hour and a quarter of suspense and torture passes, while collars wilt and coats come off, and fans in the gallery wave incessantly, and excited conversation buzzes in every quarter. And now, see! there is whispering on the stage among the big-bugs. Mr. Chairman Doby rises with a paper in his hand, and the buzzing dies down to silence.
"We'd ought to think of her best good," said Fanny, judiciously. "I've been thinkin' every evening lately that he'd be comin'. I've had the fire in the parlor stove all ready to touch off, an' I've kept dusted in there. I know he liked her, but mebbe he's like all the rest of the big-bugs." "What do you mean?" asked Andrew, with an inward qualm of repulsion.
I used to know an old woman Aunt Hepsibah Tucker, her name was she's dead now. The pride of Aunt Hepsy's heart was that she took nineteen bottles of 'Balm of Burdock Tea' and the tea folks printed her picture as a testimonial that she lived through it. Ho, ho! And society big-bugs appear to have the same cravin'." "Some of them do.
"You said it was a bug," said Peletiah, in loud disapproval, on the further side. "Well, so he was," declared Rachel, turning around to him. "Some men are big-bugs, an' some men are only little mean ones. But this one I'm tellin' you about was, oh, an awful big one," and she spread her arms with a generous sweep to indicate his importance. "Men aren't ever bugs," said Peletiah decidedly.
In the opinion of the West, "big-bugs" did not come down to this kind of occupation unless they had been roughly handled by fate or fortune. "Talk? Watch me now, he talks like a testimonial in a frame," said Malachi Deely on the day this tale opens, to John Sibley, the gambling young farmer who, strange to say, did well out of both gambling and farming. "Words to him are like nuts to a monkey.
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