The Soldier's Wife — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

rg Pome \ a ey bes fe 637 W. LAKE ST. THE SOLDIER'S WIPE. CHAPTER I. ho was also the best looking. A couple of Roors off from the “ doctor’s” was the shop of Mi. Oba- diah Bates, the village barber; but the letters painted ina very straggling form on the facie We are about to introduce the reader to onelof his dingy, dirty, poverty-siricken establish- of those picturesque little villages which are|men', magnificent!y deseribed him as “hiir- dres- chiefly to be found in our agricultural districts,ser, perf immer, and wig miker.”’ A few pots ol and without which no Engl'sh landscape wouldiquestionable-lo king unguent labelled “ Bates be complete. As the following tale is to a con-|supe: fine bear’s grease” constituted his princiral THE RECRUITING SARGEANT. siderable extent founded upon facts, we are compelled for reasons that will develop them- selves in the course of the narrative, to bestow names of our own choice upon the leading char. acters, in order to avoid that identification of persons which would arise from maintaining their real names. For asimilar reason are we led to substi(ute an imaginary name for that of the little village to which we have alluded: and we will therefore denominate it Oakleigh. This appellation occurs not from any motiveless ca- orice, but is suggested by the circumstance that im the village and its neighborhood there were some majestic oaks of four centuries’ growth,— stock-in-trade ; and a placard announced that ié was “real genuine bezr’s-grease, made upon the spot from fine bears expressly imported by Mr. Bates for the purpose :?’—although never within the memory of the oldest inhabitant of the place 'had such a thing as a bear been seen there, save and except on one occasion When a travelling menager.e stopped for a day in the village. However, no one disputed Mr. Bates’s assertion relative to the genuine and home-made qualities of his bear’s grease ; aud so the placard remained in the window, Next to the barber’s establishment appeared the baker’s shop, where there were at least three some of them still flourishing nobly—others hold- | quarterns, half a-dozen doughy-looking rolls, a ing up aloft a whitened crown of leafless branches above the mass of verdure which covered all their lower and larger outspreading arms. In great respect and veneration were these trees held by the villagers; and to any new-comer were they shown as the “ lions” of the place. The village, which was situated in a midland county, did not contain above a hundred houses ; and these for the most part were the humble dwellings of agricultural laborers, The shops were few in number, and chiefly grouped to- gether in the central part of the one straggling street which constituted the place. There was the apothecary’s shop, with its three bottles of colored waters, its half-dozen poppy-heads, and its “ poor man’s plaister,” all duly displayed im the window ; and as Dr. Colycinth enjoyed an extensive practice amongst all the surrounding hamlets and farms, he was enabled to keep a horse and gig. On the strength of the equipage, which they occasionally spoke of as “the car- riage,” Mrs. Colycinth and her three daughters wousidered themselves very fine people indeed ; couple of bags of flour, and a small pile of gin- gerbread nuts, always to be seen in the window. Next door was the butcher’s—a very compact little shop indeed, in which it would have been Inconvenient for the portly butcher himself to move about if there were more than one sheep hanging there ata time: but, generally speak- ing; one scrag of mutton pendent. to a hook, and some bits of beet upon a board, constituted the stock which greeted the eve of the passer-by on five days out of the six, Next to the butcher's was the chandler’s, or general dealer’s : and there the collection was most miscellaneous—com- prising red herrings aud balls of twine, tea and ¢ coffee, sugar and cheese, candles and bacon, sweetstuff and hog’s-lard, fire-wood and blaek- ing-bottles, snuff and cigars, fresh and salt bee | ter, eggs and soap, hearth-stones and craggy masses of salt, together with various other arti- cles requisite for domestic purposes, Tlhere was a tailors shop and a cobler’s stall; and there was a little place kept by a lone old widow who somehow or other managed to get a living by aud they dressed uncominonly smart—especially | the sale of a few apples, gingerbread cakes, aud Miss Kitty, the second of the three sisters, and lollipops, ail displayed in ber window 80 as te MiGdoOo OLEB490 CS (E@