The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1906-08-10
BILLY'S WAY.
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NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.
YES, Billy's just like men folks" ;.
Aunt Harriet used to say. He'll
mind goods any horse you ever see,
II he's managed right; but you've got
to understand Billy's way"
= At that Billy would give decided
nod of his gray old head as if to add.
That's true, Aunt Hattie And true,
indeed, it was. Billy's reputation for
wilfulness was so well established that
he was considered quite as much a
character as Aunt Harriet herself,
and she will be remembered in Cen
terville as long as anyone who knew
her lives to be her Boswell.
You should have seen her as she
walked up the Westinghouse aisle on
a sultry Sunday morning, waving her
palm leaf fan and settling into her
pew-it was next to the front one
with long-draWn and very audible
sigh. She was an old woman then,
the sun mer breezes fluttered the ends
of the blue ribbons that encompa5sei
her ample waist, and, lifting the red
roses on her Sunday bonnet, wavei
them above the coquettish ripples and
qurls of an abundant brown front. BY
her own account Aunt Harriet had
been q great belle and beauty in her
day and much given to worldly pleas
ures. She used often to tell in the
Thursday night prayer meetings OF the
balls" she had attended when she
was young and how she had often
danced till the red CLEANS in the
East made the Pickering tallow dips
burn dim and warned the merryn ak.
ers that morning was close at hand.
AS she had added hundred pounds
avoirdupois to her weight since those
giddy revels of her girlhood, 1t took
no small stretch of fancy to picture
her thus pirouetting, and this doubt
full feeling was deepened by the way
she sat down. Steadying herself by
the back of the pew in front, she
would gradually sink to within six
inches of her seat and then drop with
a thud that shook the pulpit itself.
But, as if she had not already taxed
our imagination to the limit during
the pause that was sure to follow, she
would strike up the last stanza of her
favorite hymn, beginning with:
When, from Mount Pisgah's lofty
height,
view my home and take my flight,
e nd ric
To seize the everlasting prize;
And repeating with long-drawn-out
refrain:
I'll shout while floating through the
air,
Farewell, farewell, sweet hour of
prayer.
With such very material Aunt
Harriet sitting there before us, it was
not easy to picture even her disem-
bodied spirit as floating through the
air." But it is the unexpected that
happens, and one July morning,
thanks to Billy, without dropping her
robe of fiesh," or, in fact, without
losing so much as button from her
new calico polcnaise, she really did
take her fight" in so thrilling a
fashion that it became one of Cen
treville's favorite traditions.
1t happened during the summer of
1878, an epoch always referred to as
''the year the railroad went through,
for the building of this railroad was a
great event to the little community.
There were six trains a day, three in
each direction, and when these trains
had been running only two or three
weeks Aunt Harriet decided early one
morning to take her knitting and spend
the day with friends at Brooks Cor
ners, little hamlet three miles away.
Accordingly, she MIXED her COW,
hurriedly ate her frugal breakfast,
throwing a dish towel over the un-
washed saucer and teaspoon, and
started for the barn to hitch up
Billy. But "hitching up Billy" was
nos a single act, as one might think;
il was the elimination of series, for
when Billy went, like the gentleman
in the plantation song, ''he went berry
sudden" So she began by running
the clumsy old phaeton out of the
barn into the side yard, with its back
turned squarely on Brooks's Corners
Then she put the whip in its socket
the carefully folded laprobe on the
-seat, a pail of buttermilk for tbs
friends and her knitting work under
1t, and, at last. having thoughtfully
surveyed the whole to make sure thai
nothing was forgotten, took down the
haraess and entered Billy's stall.