Produced by Anita Hammond, Wayne Hammond and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
[Illustration: A ROCKY SPRING IN YANKEE LAND]
PHILADELPHIA F.A. DAVIS COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 1922
Copyright, Great Britain. All Rights Reserved.
PRINTED IN U. S. A. PRESS OF F. A. DAVIS COMPANY PHILADELPHIA, PA.
WHOSE ABILITY TO THINK STRAIGHT, COMBINED WITH AN UNRUFFLED POISE AND NEVER FAILING SENSE OF HUMOR, HAS ENABLED THEM AND THEIR DESCENDANTS TO TAKE A LEADING PART IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR GLORIOUS COUNTRY
The dry wit of the New England Yankee has done much to cheer the Lonely Traveler on his way. It has oiled the thinking machinery when it creaked and provided inspiration for that spontaneous good fellowship which helps so much to make life worth living.
The following pages are not the product of an overworked imagination, but a record of actual happenings. The characters who pass in review before the reader are real personages whose various experiences have gladdened many adjacent firesides.
However, the author realizes that certain serious and literal souls are so constructed that what to others is a source of glee and merriment, is to them but “the crackling of thorns under a pot.” Hence the origin of his conscientious plan to display in the book’s “show window,” so to speak, a sample of the brand of Yankee humor the reader may expect to find should he resolve to read further.
Therefore, let us turn aside from these gracious words of the author as above and consider for a moment the soliloquy of Uncle Andrew Cheney, who did not like his son-in-law.
Uncle Andrew did not like work very well either, which is often unfortunate for a husband and father of a family. In view of his own impecunious state, it was peculiarly annoying to him to continually be witnessing the lavish display of an elderly neighbor who had considerable inherited property, but, who though a long time married, was childless.
One summer evening Uncle Andrew was sitting disconsolately on the steps of the little country grocery store, when he heard the clatter of horses’ feet and saw the well-to-do neighbor driving by with his pair of high stepping colts. Uncle Andrew scowled but said nothing. Again came the thud of feet and the horses and proud driver, coming back up the country road, once more passed the store. Uncle Andrew glowered at the spectacle with increasing disgust, but still managed to restrain himself.