Now I am not going to weary your patience by telling you how just then our "help" entered, one bearing a tray-full of tall sperm candles, another an immense waiter, crowned with the thick-gilt, untarnished china, that had been handed down in our family by four successive generations--we had begged our dear mother to let the tea, the tea only, be handed around as it was done in Boston; she in an evil hour consenting. Nor how Cousin Jehoiakim, aroused from his meditation by the glare of light, starting up, cast his eyes upon Mercy, the stout serving maiden, and bearer of that same precious porcelain--for which my dear mother's reverence was as great, every whit, as that of Charles Lamb's for old China; and how the next moment the waiter was in the hands of my six feet seven and a-half cousin, with "Du let me help you, young woman!" and how the next instant the six feet seven and a-half formed a horizontal line with the floor, instead of a perpendicular one; and how the glittering fragments of gold and white glistened from under every chair, and from the hearth, and out from among the ashes, like unto so many evil eyes glaring upon him for his stupidity and carelessness; and how little Fanny unwound from one foot of the prostrate six feet seven and a-half several yards of snow-white muslin--the innocent cause of the disaster; and how, light as a bird, she sprung, merrily laughing, from the room, with the fluttering fragments of her cobweb dress gathered in an impromptu drapery around her graceful little form.
No; I will not fatigue you with the history of that unlucky adventure; nor how, but a short time after, when we had taken tea from less costly China, and had fallen into a witty, merry uttering of each other's thoughts, we were interrupted by screams the most--but never mind what kind, seeing I have said you shall not be fatigued with a description of what was nothing but an immense kettle of boiling lard flowing quietly and river-like over the long length of the before so spotless kitchen floor, with many a cluster of dough-nut islands interspersed, by way of relieving the said river of monotony. Our dear mother was famed for miles around for the profusion and superiority of her dough-nuts, hence our soubriquet--"Dough-nut Hall." And, seeing that Mercy was only scalded half to death, the guilty culprit, who insisted that the kettle was "too heavy for a woman to lift," escaping unhurt, that is bodily--his remorse of conscience being truly pitiable. No; none of all this, with long, ugly sentences, shall you have; no, nor a detail of his many daily, hourly, and almost momently, misadventures; how once, when we were sitting in Miss Elliott's room, in he bolted with, "Bless my soul! what a lot of industrious women-folk! 'How doth the busy bee;'" that new and elegant little poem was, word for word, recited. Little Fanny he found making a bead purse for Brother Dick, and examining her box with every conceivable shade of bead duly assorted, and separated from each other by innumerable partitions. No matter what he said about them, only the beads were spilled, and the purse could not be finished; and then were Miss Jane's delicate brushes passed through his wondering red hair before a saving hand could arrest them; then was Miss Jane's beautiful inlaid dressing-box broken irreparably; and then--but I will tell you what I will relate you--all about our sleigh-ride and country ball. Yes! that you must know; not because it is worth telling, but because I should like you to hear it--all about how I nearly lost my darling. But to commence.