Читать книгу My Wayward Pardner; or, My Trials with Josiah, America, the Widow Bump, and Etcetery онлайн

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“Why,” says he, takin’ out his pocket handkerchief and wipin’ his forward, till the room smelt as strong as a peppermint sling,—“there haint a woman in Jonesville but what would jump at the chance of marryin’ of me. But they mustn’t calculate too strong on it. I wouldn’t be the one to tell ’em right out plain that there wasn’t no hopes of gettin’ me. That would be a little too heartless and cold-blooded in me. But they mustn’t build up too high castles in the air about it, for I may not marry at all.”all.”

“Like as not you wont,” says I, speakin’ not quite so mekanikle, but with considerable more meanin’. “I shouldn’t wonder a mite if you didn’t.”

“No,” says he, foldin’ his arms and lookin’ haughtily at a picture of a woman over the wood-box.

“No; the thing of it is I am so tender-hearted, and hate so to cause sufferin’.

“I can’t,” says he, knittin’ up his eyebrows (they was a kind of a olive green that day), “I can’t marry all the wimmen that want me. That is a settled thing. Anybody with half a mind can see that. I can’t do it. And so what would the result be if I should make a choice, and marry one. One woman made happy, and cruelty, wanton, bloody cruelty, to all other wimmen fur and near. Would that one woman’s happiness,” says he, knittin’ up his eye-brows as hard as I ever see any knit, and I have seen some considerable hard knittin’ in my day, “would that one woman’s happiness go anywhere near makin’ up for the agony that would rack the breasts of other wimmen, and tear their heart-strings all to flitters? That is the question,” says he, lookin’ gloomily into the wood-box, that is wearin’ on me night and day, and what shall I do to do right?”