When it rains, if there ain't
a pretty how-do-you-do, it's a pity--beds toated out of this room,
and tubs set in t'other to catch soft water to wash; while the
clapboards, loose at the eends, go clap, clap, clap, like gals
a-hacklin' flax, and the winders and doors keep a-dancin' to the
music. The only dry place in the house is in the chimbley corner,
where the folks all huddle up, as an old hen and her chickens do
under a cart of a wet day. 'I wish I had the matter of half a dozen
pound of nails,' you'll hear the old gentleman in the grand house
say, 'I'll be darned if I don't, for if I had, I'd fix them 'ere
clapboards; I guess they'll go for it some o' these days.' 'I wish
you had,' his wife would say, 'for they do make a most particular
unhansum clatter, that's a fact;' and so they let it be till the next
tempestical time comes, and then they wish agin. Now, this grand
house has only two rooms downstairs, that are altogether slicked up
and finished off complete; the other is jist petitioned off rough
like, one half great dark entries, and t'other half places that
look a plaguy sight more like packin' boxes than rooms. Well, all
upstairs is a great onfarnished place, filled with every sort of
good-for-nothin' trumpery in natur'--barrels without eends; corn-cobs
half husked; cast off clothes and bits of old harness; sheep skins,
hides, and wool; apples, one half rotten, and t'other half squashed;
a thousand or two of shingles that have bust their withes, and broke
loose all over the floor; hay rakes, forks and sickles, without
handles or teeth; rusty scythes, and odds and eends without number.
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