In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

What's That About Ghosts? by Samantha Clementine "Ef they's anything I won't putt up with, it's these dadblasted snakes a comin in and reposin thurselves around in the house. I had about enough out of snakes. Effen the weeds didn't git so high around, I don't reckon they'd feel so much at home, crawlin indoors and lazin around like some kin folks you wasn't expectin. "It was a snake gittin in the house made Teedy half witted. And you may believe I ain't partial to snakes, the old flat-headed things. I was agin snakes even before that'n got in the spoon drawer . . . Yep! Right hyere in this vury house, when me and the wife lived hyere yurs ago, and Teedy went to git a knife fer somethin or nother, and sent her off into everlastin babblin. And she ain't done nothin right senst. I tell ye this fer a fact. Chop down ye weeds from around ye, right off, ef ye don't want to turn out a Teedy of one of ye younguns. Ef you ain't got nothin to chop with, pull em up with ye hands or bite em off with ye teeth. I'm fierce on that subject. Git rid of snakes." Well, that was what old Tub-aLard Messer told me the night I moved into Moonlight Cottage up back of Frost, and it made purty good sense to me right off. Only they wasn't too much I could do yit that night, though I could of told him the plain truth was I ain't got no younguns. But he was doin the talkin right then, and I never tuk him up on it. I was standin in front of old Moonlight , which is what I named her from up home before I ever seen her. And I was Iookin her over fer the first time sence I contracted to buy her sight unseen from ol Tub, when he come up in the yard. And right then I was thinkin that the bright lights and big noises of the city wasn't so turrible after all, and maybe I better jist head on back before it got too dark too see my way back to the car. I had to park her down at the road under the bluff and walk up th'ough a stand a small timber, and I didn't have no hankerin to let night come on with me up hyere and good old Bucket-aBolts down thare whur I couldn't jump into her and drive off ef the notion struck me. And I was also a thinkin that ol Tuba -Lard had some reasons fer fillybusterin around about snakes. Tryin to cover up his tracks, I figgered, fer pullin off a fast deal on the house. I shore never would of knowed it when I seen it from his discription . So I figgered, "So much fer snakes," and, "It's what I git fer makin a deal th'ough the mail that-a-way, 'thout Iookin." So I jist went on in to take my medicine an git settled, thinkin no more about ol Tub, which is what I made up my mind to call him when I seen how fat he was and how lean the house. "A fool and his money . . ."I says. It was peace and quiet and to git some tales that I had in my head wrote down on paper that I wanted the house fer in the first place, and I didn't think that old house could be beat fer quiet, if nothin else. "And him relation to Grandma McAllister, too," I says to myself. 54 Well, don't never judge nobody by his kin folks. I never will agin. Fer they never was nobody better than Grandma McAllister. I'd stayed a day er two with her onct when I was a youngun, with my kin that married into the McAllisters. And she had the softest feather beds, and wasn't nothin like that old corpse delectie, her nephew. Later on that night, though, when the bugs...

pdf

Share