|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 32
In the agitation consequent upon this incident she butters her bread
with the lard, and takes an enormous bite on the way up stairs. She
seeks no more refreshment that night.
One resort alone is left. With a despairing sigh she turns the great
faucet of the bath-tub and holds her head under it till she is upon the
verge of a watery grave. This experiment is her forlorn hope. Perhaps
about three or four o'clock she falls into a series of jerky naps, and
dreams that she is editor of a popular Hebrew magazine, wandering
frantically through a warehouse full of aspirant MSS. (chiefly from the
junior classes of theological seminaries) of which she cannot translate
a letter.
Of the tenth of Keturah's unearthly experiences,--of the number of times
she has been taken for a robber, and chased by the entire roused and
bewildered family, with loaded guns; of the pans of milk she has upset,
the crockery whose hopes she has untimely shattered, the skulls she has
cracked against open doors, the rocking-chairs she has stumbled over and
apostrophized in her own meek way; of the neighbors she has frightened
out of town by her perambulations; of the alarms of fire she has raised,
pacing the wood-shed with a lantern for exercise stormy nights; of all
the possible and impossible corners and crevices in which she has sought
repose, (she has slept on every sofa in every room in the house, and
once she spent a whole night on a closet shelf); of the amiable
condition of her mornings, and the terror she is fast becoming to
family. Church, and State, the time would fail her to tell. Were she to
"let slip the dogs of war," and relate a modicum of the agonies she
undergoes,--how the stamping of a neighbor's horse on a barn floor will
drive every solitary wink of sleep from her eyes and slumber from her
eyelids; the nibbling of a mouse in some un-get-at-able place in the
wall prove torture; the rattling of a pane of glass, ticking of a clock,
or pattering of rain-drops, as effective as a cannon; a guest in the
"spare room" with a musical "love of a baby," something far different
from a blessing, and a tolerably windy night, one lengthened vigil long
drawn out,--the liberal public would cry, "Forbear!" It becomes really
an interesting science to learn how slight a thing will utterly deprive
an unfortunate creature of the great necessity of life; but this article
not being a scientific treatise, that must be left to the sympathizing
imagination.
Keturah feels compelled, however, to relate the story of two memorable
nights, of which the only wonder is that she has lived to tell the tale.
Every incident is stamped indelibly upon her brain. It is wrought in
letters of fire. "While memory holds a seat in this distracted globe,"
it shall not, cannot be forgotten.
It was a night in June,--sultry, gasping, fearful. Keturah went to her
own room, as is her custom, at the Puritanic hour of nine. Sleep, for a
couple of hours, being out of the question, she threw wide her doors
and windows, and betook herself to her writing-desk. A story for a
magazine, which it was imperative should be finished to-morrow, appealed
to her already partially stupefied brain. She forced her unwilling pen
into the service, whisked the table round into the draught, and began.
In about five minutes the sibyl caught the inspiration of her god, and
heat and sleeplessness were alike forgotten. This sounds very poetic,
but it wasn't at all. Keturah regrets to say that she had on a very
unbecoming green wrapper, and several ink-spots on her fingers.
It was a very thrilling and original story, and it came, as all
thrilling and original stories must come, to a crisis. Seraphina found
Theodore kissing the hand of Celeste in the woods. Keturah became
excited.
"'O Theodore!' whispered the unhappy maiden to the moaning trees. 'O
Theodore, my--'"
Whir! buzz! swosh! came something through the window into the lamp, and
down squirming into the ink-bottle. Keturah jumped. If you have half the
horror of those great June beetles that she has, you will know how she
jumped. She emptied the entire contents of the ink-bottle out of the
window, closed her blinds, and began again.
"'Theodore,' said Seraphina.
"'Seraphina,' said Theodore." Jump the second! There he was,--not
Theodore, but the beetle,--whirring round the lamp, and buzzing down
into her lap. Hadn't he been burned in the light, drowned in the ink,
speared with the pen, and crushed by falling from the window? Yet there
he was, or the ghost of him, fluttering his inky wings into her very
eyes, and walking leisurely across the smooth, fair page that waited to
be inscribed with Seraphina's woe. Nerved by despair, Keturah did a
horrible thing. Never before or since has she been known to accomplish
it. She put him down on the floor and stepped on him. She repented of
the act in dust and ashes. Before she could get across the room to close
the window ten more had come to his funeral. To describe the horrors of
the ensuing hour she has no words. She put them out of the window,--they
came directly back. She drowned them in the wash-bowl,--they fluttered,
and sputtered, and buzzed up into the air. She killed them in
corners,--they came to life under her very eyes. She caught them in her
handkerchief and tied them up tight,--they crawled out before she could
get them in. She shut the cover of the wash-stand down on them,--she
looked in awhile after and there was not one to be seen. All ten of the
great blundering creatures were knocking their brains out against the
ceiling. After the endurance of terrors that came very near turning her
hair gray, she had pushed the last one out on the balcony, shut the
window, and was gasping away in the airless room, her first momentary
sense of security, when there struck upon her agonized ear a fiendish
buzzing, and three of them came whirling back through a crack about as
large as a knitting-needle. No _mortal_ beetle could have come through
it. Keturah turned pale and let them alone.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|