I feel but little in the humour for writing any thing that will have the stamp of
cheerfulness.—Perhaps it would be best therefore not to write at all, and I
don't think I should, were it not for the hope of getting a reply.—I believe
when the Lord created the world, he used up all the good stuff, and was forced to
form Woodbury and its denizens, out of the fag ends, the scraps and refuse: for a
more unsophisticated race than lives hereabouts you will seldom meet with in your
travels.—They get up in the morning, and toil through the day, with no
interregnum of joy or leisure, except breakfast and dinner.—They live on salt
pork and cucumbers; and for a delicacy they sometimes treat company to
rye-cake and buttermilk.—Is not this enough to send them to perdition
"uncancelled, unanointed, unannealed?"—If Chesterfield2 were forced to live
here ten hours he would fret himself to death: I have heard the words "thank you,"
but once since my sojuorn in this earthly purgatory.—Now is the season for loc_gk.01470_large.jpg what they call
"huckleberry frolicks."—I had the inestimable ecstasy of being invited to one
of these refined amusements.—I went.—We each carried a tin pail, or a
basket, or a big bowl, or a pudding bag.—It was fun no doubt, but it cost me
two mortal pounds of flesh, besides numerous remnants of my apparrel, which still
remain, for what I know, on the briars and bushes.—Wasn't it hot!—And
then our dinner—our pic-nic
dinner!—There's the rub!—Guess now what we had.—A
broken-bowl half full of cold potatoes; three or four bones thinly garnished
with dirty, greasy ham; a huge pie, made out of green apples, molasses, and
buckwheat crust; six radishes, and a tin pan of boiled beans!!—And all this
had to be washed down with a drink they called "switchell," a villanous compound, as near as I could discover, of water, vinegar,
and brown sugar.3—Our conversation, too, was a caution to white folks; it
consisted principally, as you may imagine, of ethereal flashes of wit, scraps of
Homeric and Italian poetry, disquisitions on science and the arts, quotations from
the most learned writers, and suggestions on the speediest way of making
butter.—Tim Hewlett4 vowed he ought to have a buss5 from Patty Strong6; Patty
modestly declined the honour.—A struggle was the result, in which Tim's face
received permanent marks of the length of Patty's finger nails; and the comb of that
vigorous young damsel
loc_gk.01471_large.jpg lost some of its fair proportions.—It was a drawn
battle.—At the conclusion of this performance, we gathered together our forces
and the, bowls, baskets, and pudding-bags aforesaid, and returned home: for my
part feeling "particularly and peculiarly kewrious" from
the weight of amusement.—
I am much obliged for the paper you sent me.—Write soon.—Send me something funny; for I am getting to be a miserable kind of a dog: I am sick of wearing away by inches, and spending the fairest portion of my little span of life, here in this nest of bears, this forsaken of all God's creation; among clowns and country bumpkins [torn-away] flat-heads, and coarse brown-faced girls, dirty, ill-favored young brats, with squalling throats and rude manners, and bog-trotters, with all the disgusting conceit, of ignorance and vulgarity.—It is enough to make the fountains of good-will dry up in our hearts, to wither all gentle and loving dispositions, when we are forced to descend and be as one among the grossest, the most low-minded of the human race.—Life is a dreary road, at the best; and I am just at this time in one of the most stony, rough, desert, hilly, and heart-sickening parts of the journey.—But Time is the Great Physician who cures, they say, our ills of mind and body.—I pray the fates he may rid me of my spleen ere long
W. W.Correspondent:
Abraham Paul Leech
(1815–1886) was the son of Obadiah Paul Leech (1792–1881), an
auctioneer, and his wife, Susan Holland Leech. One of three children, Leech
would go on to become a bookkeeper and friend of Walt Whitman. Leech also served
as secretary pro tem of The Jamaica Lyceum in the 1840s in Jamaica, New York. He
and his wife, Phebe Kissam Duryea Leech (1823–1885) had two children:
Abraham Duryea Leech (1851–1876) and John Leech (1860–?).