The dulcet sound ceased. "Miss," said Cash, the moment that he
could express himself, so entranced was he by the music,--"Miss
Doolittle, what was the instrument Mo Mercer showed me in your gallery
once, it went by a crank and had rollers in it?"
It was now the time for Miss Patience to blush: so away went the blood
from confusion to her cheeks. She hesitated, stammered, and said, if Mr.
Cash must know, it was a-a-a-_Yankee washing-machine_.
The name grated on Mo Mercer's ears as if rusty nails had been thrust
into them; the heretofore invulnerable Mercer's knees trembled, the
sweat started to his brow, as he heard the taunting whispers of
"visiting the Capitol twice" and seeing pianos as plenty as woodchucks.
The fashionable vices of envy and maliciousness were that moment sown in
the village of Hardscrabble; and Mo Mercer, the great, the confident,
the happy and self-possessed, surprising as it may seem, was the first
victim sacrificed to their influence.
Time wore on, and pianos became common, and Mo Mercer less popular; and
he finally disappeared altogether, on the evening of the day on which a
Yankee peddler of notions sold to the highest bidder, "six patent,
warranted, and improved Mo Mercer pianos."
WHAR DEM SINFUL APPLES GROW
BY ANNE VIRGINIA CULBERTSON
Ol' Adam he live in de Gyardin uv Eden,
('Way down yonner)
He didn' know writin' an' he didn' know readin',
('Way down yonner)
He stay dar erlone jes' eatin' an' a-sleepin',
He say, "Dis mighty po' comp'ny I'se a-keepin',"
'Way down yonner whar dem sinful apples grow.
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