Doubtless it is of Yankee origin, and hence old English. It
may, of course, be derived according to Alice-in-Wonderland principles
from "skip" and "hither" or "thither" or all three; but the claim is
here made that it comes, like monkeys and men, from a common linguistic
ancestor.--G.v.d.M.
"But isn't there a man among them?" she had asked.
"A man!" I repeated.
"A man that knows how to shoot a pistol, or use a knife," she explained;
"and who would shoot or stab for a weak girl with nobody to take cart
of her."
I shook my head. Not one of these was a real man in the Kentucky, or
other proper sense: and Ma Fewkes with her boneless shoulders was not
one of those women of whom I had seen many in my life, who could be more
terrible to a wrong-doer than an army with bowie-knives.
"There's only two in the outfit," I went on, "that have got any sprawl
to them; and they are old Tom their bunged-up horse, and Rowena Fewkes."
"Who is she?" inquired Virginia Royall.
"A girl about your age," said I. "She's ragged and dirty, but she has a
little gumption."
And then she had skipped away, as I finally concluded, to keep Gowdy
from seeing her in conversation with me.
3
I pulled out for Manchester with Nathaniel Vincent Creede, whom
everybody calls just "N.V.," riding in the spring seat with me, and his
carpet-bag and his law library in the back of the wagon.
His library consisted of _Blackstone's Commentaries_--I saw them in his
present library in Monterey Centre only yesterday--_Chitty on Pleading_,
the _Code of Iowa of_ 1851, the _Session Laws_ of the state so far as it
had any session laws--a few thin books bound in yellow and pink boards.
Pages:
137
138
139
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