Part 3 (1/2)

I see Ardelia wuz used to obeyin' her ma. She opened the sheet to once, and begun.

Jest the minute Ardelia stopped readin' Miss Tatt says proudly: ”There! haint that a remarkable poem,?”

Sez I, calmly, ”Yes it is a remarkable one.”

”Did you ever hear anything like it?” says she, triumphly.

”No,” sez I honestly, ”I never did.”

”Ardelia, read the poem on Little Ardelia Cordelia; give Miss Allen the treat of hearin' that beautiful thing.”

I sort a sithed low to myself; it wuz more of a groan than a common sithe, but Miss Tutt didn't heed it, she kep' right on --

”I have always brought up my children to make other folks happy, all they can, and in rehearsin' this lovely and remarkable poem, Ardelia will be not only makin' you perfectly happy, givin' you a rich intellectual feast, that you can't often have, way out here in the country, fur from Tuttville; but she will also be attendin'

to the business that brought us here. I have always fetched my children up to combine joy and business; weld 'em together like bra.s.s and steel. Ardelia, begin!”

So Ardelia commenced agin'. It wuz wrote on a big sheet of paper and a runnin' vine wuz a runnin' all 'round the edge of the paper, made with a pen.

Jest as soon as Ardelia stopped rehearsin' the verses, Miss Tutt sez agin to me:

”Haint that a most remarkable poem?”

And agin I sez calmly, and trutbfully, ”Yes, it is a very remarkable one!”

”And now,” sez Miss Tutt, plungin' her hand in the bag, and drawin' out a sheet of paper, ”to convince you that Ardelia has always had this divine gift of poesy -- that it is not, all the effect of culture and high education -- let me read to you a poem she wrote when she wuz only a mere child,” and Miss Tutt read:

”LINES ON A CAT

”WRITTEN BY ARDELIA TUTT, ”At the age of fourteen years, two months and eight days.

”Oh Cat! Sweet Tabby cat of mine; 6 months of age has pa.s.sed o'er thee, And I would not resign, resign The pleasure that I find in you.

Dear old cat!”

”Don't you think,” sez Miss Tutt, ”that this poem shows a fund of pa.s.sion, a reserve power of pa.s.sion and constancy, remarkable in one so young?”

”Yes,” sez I reasonably, ”no doubt she liked the cat. And,” sez I, wantin' to say somethin' pleasant and agreeable to her, ”no doubt it was a likely cat.”

”Oh the cat itself is of miner importance,” sez Miss Tutt. ”We will fling the cat to the winds. It's of my daughter I would speak. I simply handled the cat to show the rare precocious intellect. Oh! how it gushed out in the last line in the unconquerable burst of repressed pa.s.sion -- `Dear old cat!'

Shakespeare might have wrote that line, do you not think so?”

”No doubt he might,” sez I, calmly, ”but he didn't.”

I see she looked mad and I hastened to say: ”He wuzn't aquainted with the cat.”

She looked kinder mollyfied and continued:

”Ardelia dashes off things with a speed that would astonish a mere common writer. Why she dashed off thirty-nine verses once while she wuz waitin' for the dish water to bile, and sent 'em right off to the printer, without glancin' at 'em agin.'

”I dare say so,” sez I, ”I should judge so by the sound on 'em.”

”Out of envy and jealousy, the rankest envy, and the shearest jealousy, them verses wuz sent back with the infamous request that she should use 'em for curl papers. But she sot right down and wrote forty-eight verses on a `Cruel Request,' wrote 'em inside of eighteen minutes. She throws off things, Ardelia does, in half an hour, that it would take other poets, weeks and weeks to write.”