Sam Lawson's Oldtown Fireside Stories

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Stowe Harriet Beecher. Sam Lawson's Oldtown Fireside Stories

THE GHOST IN THE MILL

THE SULLIVAN LOOKING-GLASS

THE MINISTER’S HOUSEKEEPER

THE WIDOW’S BANDBOX

CAPTAIN KIDD’S MONEY

“MIS’ ELDERKIN’S PITCHER.”

THE GHOST IN THE CAP’N BROWN HOUSE

COLONEL EPH’S SHOE-BUCKLES

THE BULL-FIGHT

HOW TO FIGHT THE DEVIL

LAUGHIN’ IN MEETIN’

TOM TOOTHACHE’S GHOST STORY

THE PARSON’S HORSE-RACE

OLDTOWN FIRESIDE TALKS OF THE REVOLUTION

A STUDENT’S SEA STORY

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“AUNT LOIS,” said I, “what was that story about Ruth Sullivan?”

Aunt Lois’s quick black eyes gave a surprised flash; and she and my grandmother looked at each other a minute significantly.

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“Folks seemed to think it was all over with him, and Ruth might jest as well give up fust as last. And the old Gineral he’d come to think she might do better; and he kep’ a introducin’ one and another, and tryin’ to marry her off; but Ruth she wouldn’t. She used to write sheets and sheets to your Aunt Lois about it; and I think Aunt Lois she kep’ her grit up. Your Aunt Lois she’d a stuck by a man to the end o’ time ef’t ben her case; and so she told Ruth.

“Wal, then there was young Jeff Sullivan, the Gineral’s nephew, he turned up; and the Gineral he took a gret fancy to him. He was next heir to the Gineral; but he’d ben a pretty rackety youngster in his young days, – off to sea, and what not, and sowed a consid’able crop o’ wild oats. People said he’d been a pirating off there in South Ameriky. Lordy massy! nobody rightly knew where he hed ben or where he hadn’t: all was, he turned up at last all alive, and chipper as a skunk blackbird. Wal, of course he made his court to Ruth; and the Gineral, he rather backed him up in it; but Ruth she wouldn’t have nothin’ to say to him. Wal, he come and took up his lodgin’ at the Gineral’s; and he was jest as slippery as an eel, and sort o’ slid into every thing, that was a goin’ on in the house and about it. He was here, and he was there, and he was everywhere, and a havin’ his say about this and that; and he got everybody putty much under his thumb. And they used to say, he wound the Gineral round and round like a skein o’ yarn; but he couldn’t come it round Ruth.

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