I Had An Aunt And Her
Hair Was Snow-White At Twenty-One And My Grandmother Was The Same
Way." ...
"Oh yes, the suffering is something terrible.
You've
had it yourself in a mild form and of course you know. The last
time they operated on me, I was on the table an hour and forty
minutes - mind you, an hour and forty minutes by the clock - and
for three days and nights they didn't know whether I would live
another minute."
A crash of glass.
"Stew'd, I ashidently turn' over m' drink - bring me nozher brand'
'n' sozza." ... "Just a minute, Mr. Blosser, I want to tell my
husband about it - he'll be awful interested. Say, listen, Poppa,
this gentleman here knows Maxie Hockstein out in Grand Rapids."
... "Do you think so, really? A lot of people have said that very
same thing to me. They come up to me and say 'I know you must be
a Southerner because you have such a true Southern accent.' I
suppose I must come by it naturally, for while I was born in New
Jersey, my mother was a member of a very old Virginia family and
we've always been very strong Southern sympathizers and I went to
a finishing school in Baltimore and I was always being mistaken
for a Southern girl." ... "Well, I sure had enough of it to do me
for one spell. I seen the whole shootin' match and I don't regret
what it cost me, but, believe me, little old Keokuk is goin' to
look purty good to me when I get back there. Why, them people
don't know no more about makin' a cocktail than a rabbit." ...
"That's her standing yonder talking to the captain. Yes, that's
what so many people say, but as a matter of fact, she's the youngest
one of the two. I say, 'These are my daughters,' and then people
say, 'You mean your sisters.' Still I married very young - at
seventeen - and possibly that helps to explain it." ... "Oh, is
that a shark out yonder? Well, anyway, it's a porpoise, and a
porpoise is a kind of shark, isn't it? When a porpoise grows up,
it gets to be a shark - I read that somewhere. Ain't nature just
wonderful?" ... "Raymund Walter Pelham, if I have to speak to
you again, young man, I'm going to take you to the stateroom and
give you something you won't forget in a hurry." ... "Stew'd,
hellup me gellup."
Thus the lazy hours slip by and the spell of the sea takes hold
on you and you lose count of the time and can barely muster up the
energy to perform the regular noonday task of putting your watch
back half an hour. A passenger remarks that this is Thursday and
you wonder dimly what happened to Wednesday.
Three days more - just three. The realization comes to you with a
joyous shock. Somebody sights a sea-gull. With eager eyes you
watch its curving flight.
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