Page:1880. A Tramp Abroad.djvu/205

 wasn't all I could do to keep from hugging you! My tongue's all warped with trying to curl it around these forsaken wind-galled nine-jointed German words here; now I tell you it's awful good to lay it over a Christian word once more and kind of let the old taste soak in. I'm from western New York. My name is Cholley Adams. I'm a student, you know. Been here going on two years. I'm learning to be a horse-doctor. I like that part of it, you know, but these people, they won't learn a fellow in his own language, they make him learn in German; so before I could tackle the horse-doctoring I had to tackle this miserable language.

"First-off, I thought it would certainly give me the botts, but I don't mind it now. I've got it where the hair's short, I think; and dontchuknow, they made me learn Latin, too. Now between you and me, I wouldn't give a for all the Latin that was ever jabbered; and the first thing I calculate to do when I get through, is to just sit down and forget it. 'Twont take me long, and I don't mind the time, anyway. And I tell you what! the difference between school-teaching over yonder and school-teaching over here,—sho! We don't know anything about it! Here you've got to peg and peg and peg and there just ain't any let-up,—and what you learn here, you've got to know, dontchuknow,—or else you'll have one of thesespavined, spectacled, ring-boned, knock-kneed old professors in your hair, I've been here long enough, and I'm getting blessed tired of it, mind I tell you. The old man wrote me that he was coming over in June, and said he'd take me home in August, whether I was done with my education or not, but durn him, he didn't come; never said why; just sent me a hamper of Sunday school books, and told me to be good, and hold on a while. I don't take to Sunday school books, dontchuknow,—I don't hanker after them when IT can get pie,—but I read them, anyway, because whatever the old man tells me to do, that's the thing that I'm a-going to do, or tear something you know. I buckled in and read all of those books, because he