Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It seemed to be in answer to the men who had nominated him for path-master, and it read as follers: Feller Constituents and Male Men of Jonesville and the surroundin' and adjacent worlds! I thank you, fellow and male citizents, I thank you heartily, and from the depths of my bein', for the honor you have heaped onto me, in pintin' me path-master. But I feel it to be my duty to decline it.
You know they have elected me path-master, but I hain't a goin' to accept it. I tell you, when anybody gets into political life, ambition rousts up in 'em: path-master don't satisfy me. I want to be senator: I want to, like a dog. And I don't lay out to tackle the job as Elburtus did, and act too good." "No!" says I sternly. "There hain't no danger of your bein' too good."
Johnson was path-master of Cleveland, and he retains in his possession the list of names of those who did work on the roads in that year, armed with good and sufficient shovels according to law. Mr. Johnson's success as a ship-builder encouraged him to persevere in that business.
They don't want to vote! They don't care a cent about bein' path-master or President. And I say, that after givin' a man a fair trial and a long one, if he won't try to buy or sell a vote, it is a sure sign that he can't asimulate with Americans, and be one with 'em; that he can't never be mingled in with 'em peacible. And I'll bet that I'll start the Catholics out and the Jews.
And I felt that he could not do himself and me the bitter wrong to try it agin, and still I trembled. And right while I was tremblin', he returned, and silently laid "The Gimlet" in my lap, and sot down, and nearly buried his face in his hands. And the very first piece on which the eye of my spectacle rested, was this: "Josiah Allen on a Path-Master."
Why, I've thought that the road between Jonesville and Loontown wuz beautiful and easy travellin'. Old Hagadone is path-master and vain of the road, and calls the men out twice a year to pay poll taxes and such by workin' it. Sugar maples, elder bushes, and shuemakes, and wild grapes and ivy run along the side of the stun wall, makin' it, I always had thought, on-approachable in beauty.
A staring, glaring farm-house, flanked by a red barn and a pigsty, all crowding the public road as hard as the path-master will permit, is incongruous and unsightly. With all outdoors to choose from, why ape the crowded city streets? With much to apologize for in barn and pigsty, why place them in the seat of honor? Moreover, many things which take place on the farm gain enchantment from distance.
And what do we know of the travelers that go up and down on 'em and outward and homeward? These roads don't need any surveyor to lay 'em out, or path-master to clear 'em of snow and dirt, no weeds grow up by the wayside, nor dirt lays in the track. "No, clear and broad and unobstructed the luminous pathways may lay all round us onknown to us.
Father was path-master for a number of years and he crosswayed the lowest spots and across the black ash swales. He cut logs twelve feet long and laid them side by side across the center of the road. Some of the logs, that he put into the road on the lowest ground, were more than a foot through; of course smaller poles answered where the ground was higher. We called this our corduroy road.
And he said he never found wimmen backward in lookin' up, he said he never see a place that would dant 'em and stop their tongues from waggin'. He made light of the great incident and would been glad to had men dedicate it; indeed he jest the same as told me he felt the Exposition had stood in its own light in not havin' a certain leadin' man in Jonesville, who wuz way up in political and moral life, havin' held the offices of path-master and deacon.
Word Of The Day