Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/28

 out; 'for they thought it was a leather judgment a-coming.' The people about the door got hold of and got into the vehicle, so that they 'liked to have shaken it all to pieces' with curiosity. The minister's wife, too, got in and 'teetered up and down a little;' but she thought it was 'a darn tottlish thing' and said she 'wouldn't ride in it for nothin' in the world.' There was no service in the afternoon. The next day some old women took their knitting-work and sat in the chaise. As my grandfather had a lawsuit with a witch-woman there, the people prophesied that she would upset his chaise, till they remembered that there was silver-plating enough about it and the harness to lay all the witches in the country.

"My grandmother also instructed that people how to make coffee, which was pounded in a mortar; and by the time she went out of town the sound of the mortar was heard in all that land. By this time, no doubt, she and Ceres are equally regarded as mythological by their posterity. She also found that the young ladies there 'were taking on' because some that had been to Boston and [xx]