Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

“ It wasn't till the dirty tide began to fall that I could bring myself to dare to speak it, for there was that passion in me, and that tremble, and them curses, that I darsent try before the little gal.
At last I brings it slow.
"And where," says I, "is her?"
"Marm," said Blithe, "was sick."
"Where," says I, "is her?"
"She took it, father," said my little gal, in her patient little voice, "for neuralgy, father. We come from one house to another, and the more we come the more there was no money; and so we come to this one. And I curled the feathers; for I couldn't go to school. ”

“ I left my little gal in a decent place, and I thought, please God, I'd always have a decent place for her, and when I saw that house, as well as I could see it through the dark, for it was a growing dark, I couldn't tell you if I was to try, sir, how it come upon me.
Maybe you don't know, sir, what them living-places are like along the shore. Living-places? dying-places more like! Maybe you wouldn't feel acquainted with the smells and slime, and leavings of the tide? I never meant my little gal should be. She is such a gentle little gal, with such a pretty way. ”

“ But then, there come the little gal. She was the swoird of flames—God bless her!—that turned me and kept me, which way and what, from my old ways, and my lonesome ways, and my reckless.
I don't quite understand, sir, clear, how a man can ever be what he been before, after he's had a little gal. ”

“ There's things I'd like to be for the sake of the little gal. And there's things I'd like the little gal to be for the sake of me. And though a man has nothing to complain of, sir, who is obligated to the Almighty for a little gal, yet I wonder sometimes why it is they come so hard and slip so easy; and why it is that, do my best, I can get my little gal just her dinners and her suppers, and just her bonnets and her aprons; and why it is that if you was to want the kingdom of heaven come on earth for your little gal, you've just to raise your finger for her, and it'll come to time, express. ”

“ It must be a great satisfaction, it seems to me, being a oyster, to live under a dredging-boat. But what, now, is the sense of being a oyster? If the Almighty made one set of living creeturs for no purpose nor no reason under the canopy of Heaven but to slip easy down another set of living creeturs' throats—but there, I've lost it ”

“ What, sir? Bless you, sir! what's a man good for if he isn't worried more nor less? I reckon I can stand it. What would Adam have been wuth, now, if he'd staid to Eden, loafing round among his plants and greens? I've thought, this long while, I wouldn't have owned him for a grandfather.
There, sir! If you turn your head now—a little more. Do you see a little gal with a little book under her arm away around the corner? ”

“ Well, it come one night of a December. It was an ugly night, too; you don't often see an uglier, in a dredging-boat. It sleeted thick, and blew. It was dark as a pocket. My pipe got out and my fire got down, and it got wet and spattery below; and lonesome—well, yes; oncommon so. I'd come upon deck, and stuck myself into the storm for company; I was setting half over the gun' ale, looking down.
I was setting on the gun'ale, looking down, I know; for the tide was at the turn, and I was wondering about the oysters and how they took it in their minds of a stormy night ”

“ And it was an awful thing coming back and finding her with marm, and spekkylating, and wondering, and considering if it would be one of marm's days, and if Blithe would be much knocked up,—by which I mean it mental and moral, sir; take marm at her worst she never struck that child—and for wishing in partikkelar that Blithe and I could set down in the Common or somewheres alone, at the first.
It was such a sunshiny sort o' day, as I said; that sort of day when a man with a smashed elbow and a little gal feels as if he'd like a place to set in quiet. ”

“ Why, when you come to see the world, as I did down to Virginny, then plump down in this town, leastways my parts of it, for a lifetime, sir, if there's any one thing more than any other thing a man's conscious of, it's elbows. ”

“ Considerin, too, that you hadn't hasped the cabin door, and that the tide splashed in, dropping down, and that the cat would leave the sarsinger dish to run and lick the drops up. Considerin a lurch to the old hulk now and then, heels over head like a tipsy log, and viewin the wind from a cheerful point.
I think, sir, I must be of a curious turn of mind. It used to trouble me now a great deal, in that boat, about the oysters. Not the dredging, by no means, for what would be the sense in being a oyster, if you wasn't dredged? ”

“ Blithe thinks so too. Blithe is smart to see pints of a thing. She'll talk betimes of setting me up in the candy line, but molasses is proper dear, and there is the sinking of the instrument, which we've got a mortgage on the cook-stove for, in which case, you see, you'd be under some difficulties in respect to boiling down of your stock in trade.
Blithe is my little gal.
Did you ever go out oyster-dredgin', sir? No? Well, you'd ought to. That's a line of business very well to take in a fancy way, say for an afternoon. ”

“ A one-armed man can't pick and choose; and what's the pension, come to think on't? A man is often lucky, sir, to get the chance to be a public nuisance in this ere world. Never thought o' that, now, did you? I bought out an I-talian just setting up in poetry 'tother end the city; your choice for five cents, and a large blue margin, sir, besides. There's one toon I like. Ever hear it? It goes:
"Bonny Jockey, Blithe and gay." ”

“ So when I come along home, there come out a man with a little slate in his hand.
"How now?" says I.
"Any orders?" says he; and with that he hangs up his slate agin my door-post; he was a furrin-looking man, with a yeller face. "I have a Venus die Medicine," says he, "which I think would suit ye; likewise a Gen. Grant of a most delicate shade of pink; and a Sister Madonna in gray clay," says he. ”

“ I don't play that toon so much for pay. Yes, she's going to school. When we get into a pinch, she takes her little feathers home o' nights; but I mean she shall go to school. She can cipher now, and write in capitals quite plain. ”