Nat's adventure was like this; I don't know how true it is; maybe he got
it out of a paper, or somewhere, but I will say this for him, that he DID
know how to tell it. He could make anybody's flesh crawl, and he'd turn
pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women and girls
got so faint they couldn't stick it out. Well, it was this way, as near
as I can remember:
He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his horse and shoved out to
the President's house with his letter, and they told him the President
was up to the Capitol, and just going to start for Philadelphia--not a
minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. Nat 'most dropped, it made him
so sick. His horse was put up, and he didn't know what to do. But just
then along comes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and he see his
chance. He rushes out and shouts: "A half a dollar if you git me to the
Capitol in half an hour, and a quarter extra if you do it in twenty
minutes!"
"Done!" says the darky.
Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went a-ripping and
a-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it
was something awful. Nat passed his arms through the loops and hung on
for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in
the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down Nat's feet was on
the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he couldn't
keep up with the hack.
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