Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
Sometimes old Quimbey would fairly flee the town, and betake himself in a towering rage to his deserted hearth, to brood futilely over the ashes, and devise impotent schemes of vengeance. He often wondered afterward in dreary retrospection how he had survived that first troublous year after his daughter's elopement, when he was so lonely, so heavy-hearted at home, so harried and angered abroad.
"I jes knowed that hurt old Joel Quimbey wuss 'n ef a body hed druv a knife through him; he's been so proud o' bein' jestice 'mongst his betters, an' bein' 'lected at las', many times ez he hev run. Waal, Abs'lom, ye hev proved thar's law fur jestices too. I tell ye ye hev got sense in yer skull-i-bone."
But all her griefs were bewept on the crag, that there might be no tears to distress the tenderhearted Absalom when she should return to the house. The election of Squire Quimbey was a sad blow to the arrogant spirit of the Kittredges. They had easily accustomed themselves to ascendency, and they hotly resented the fact that fate had forborne the opportunity to hit Joel Quimbey when he was down.
And so for the first time old Joel Quimbey appeared as a law-breaker, and was duly fined by the worshipful county court fifty cents for each oath, that being the price at which the State rates the expensive and impious luxury of swearing in the hearing of a justice of the peace, and which in its discretion the court saw fit to adopt in this instance.
The phrase had a sound so deadly that there was much ado to satisfactorily explain the writ and its functions to Evelina, who had felt at ease again since the baby was at home, and so effectually guarded that to kidnap him was necessarily to murder two or three of the vigilant and stalwart Quimbey men.
The Quimbey and Kittredge factions poured into the hall; what cared they for the disputed claims of Jenkins versus Jones? The lovers of sensation cherished a hope that there might be a lawless effort to rescue the infant Kittredge from the custody to which he had been committed by the court.
"They hed a reg'lar scrimmage hyar in the hall them fool men Quimbey an' Kittredge. Old man Quimbey said suthin' ter Abs'lom Kittredge I dunno what all. Abs'lom never jawed back none. He jes made a dart an' snatched this hyar leetle critter out'n his mother's arms, stiddier waitin' fur the law, what he summonsed himself.
The chairman would be a candidate for re-election as justice of the peace at the expiration of his term. And after all what was old Quimbey to him, or he to old Quimbey, that, with practically the whole town looking on, he should destroy his political prospects and disregard the dignity of his office.
I never 'lowed ter see the day ez could show enny comfort fur his dad bein' dead, but we hev been spared some o' the tallest cavortin' that ever war seen sence the Big Smoky war built. Sometimes it plumb skeers me ter think ez we-uns hev got a Quimbey abidin' up hyar along o' we-uns in his house an' a-callin' o' herse'f Kittredge.
His comforts, it is true, were amply insured: a widowed sister had come to preside over his household a deaf old woman, who had much to be thankful for in her infirmity, for Joel Quimbey in his youth, before he acquired religion, had been known as a singularly profane man "a mos' survigrus cusser" and something of his old proficiency had returned to him.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking