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Updated: June 17, 2025
Sailors, collegemen, Pikes, farmers, clerks, loafers, and sentimentalists, stood in front of Sim Ripson's store, and stared their eyes into watery redness in vain attempts to hurry the boat. A bet of drinks for the crowd, lost by the non-arrival of the boat on time, was just being paid, when Sim Ripson, whose bar-window commanded the river, exclaimed: "She's comin'!"
One morning a small crowd of early drinkers at Sim Ripson's dropped their glasses, yet did not go briskly out to work as usual. In fact, they even hung aloof, in a most ungentlemanly manner, from Jerry Miller, who had just stood treat, and both these departures from the usual custom indicated that something unusual was the matter.
Old Hatchetjaw said it was because Sim Ripson's liquor wasn't good; Moosoo, the Frenchman, maintained it was due to the absence of chivalrous spirit; Crosstree, the sailor, said it was always so with landsmen; Fourteenth Street privately confided to several that 'twas because there was no good blood in camp; the amateur phrenologist ascribed it to an undue cerebral circulation; and Uncle Ben, the deacon, insisted upon it that the fiend, personally, was the disturbing element.
Blizzer to common sense, and as he had argued Uncle Ben, first into a perfect frenzy and then into silence, the crowd considered Mrs. Blizzer's faith doomed. Monday morning, bright and early, as men with aching heads were taking their morning bitters, Mrs. Blizzer appeared at Sim Ripson's store, and purchased a bar of soap. "Boys heard ye singin' yesterday," said Sim. "Yes?" inquired Mrs. Blizzer.
A moment later Arkansas Bill was on Sim Ripson's horse, and galloping off for a doctor, and Sim Ripson, who had always threatened sudden death to any one touching his beloved animal, saw him, and refrained even from profanity. The doctor came, and the boys crowded the door to hear what he had to say.
But one evening, during a temporary lull in the conversation at Sim Ripson's, old Uncle Ben, ex-deacon of a New Hampshire church, lifted up his voice, and remarked: "'Pears to me Blizzer's beginnin' to look scrumptious. He used to be the shabbiest man in camp."
Probably all of them were right, for it seemed impossible that the Sunday excitements at Sim Ripson's could proceed from any single cause their proportions were too magnificent.
The boys dropped in pleasantly, two or three at a time, and drank merrily with each other; and the two or three who were not drinking men sauntered in to compare notes with the others. There were no aristocrats or paupers at Tough Case, nor any cliques; whatever the men were at home, here they were equal, and Sim Ripson's was the general gathering-place for everybody.
Wants some things from 'Frisco, though, an' I'm a-goin' for 'em." And Arkansas Bill departed, while the men at Sim Ripson's sneaked guiltily down to the creek. For many days the boys hung about the camp's single street every morning, unwilling to go to work until they had seen Mrs. Blizzer appear in front of the sick man's hut. The boys took turns at carrying water, making fires, and serving Mrs.
That night Sim Ripson complained that it had been the poorest Sunday he had ever had at Tough Case; the boys drank, but it was a sort of nerveless, unbusinesslike way that Sim Ripson greatly regretted; and very few bets were settled in Sim Ripson's principal stock in trade. When Sim finally learned the cause of his trouble, he promptly announced his intention of converting Mrs.
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