University of Virginia Library

WATERING-PLACES.

“Are you going to any watering-place, this summer?”
asked a young friend of Mrs. Partington, on one of the
rainy days, the present week. She had just put up the
window to keep out the damp and disagreeable air, and
pulled her handkerchief more up over her shoulder to
keep off the chill. “Watering-places,” said she, with a
gentle tap on the cover of her box, at the same time
looking at Ike, who was engaged in making a kite out
of the last Puritan Recorder, that the dame had lain by
for her Sunday reading, — “watering-places I don't think

much of, now-a-days. There an't no need of 'em since
the lucky-motives have run off with the stages; but
once, as the old pumps stood by the waysides, under
the ambiguous trees, with a hollow log for the cattle
to drink out of, it seemed like a horses in the desert,
as some of 'em used to say.” — “My dear madam,” said
her young friend, “I mean the fashionable watering-places,
where people go to spend the summer.” — “O,”
she replied, “that 's it, is it? Well, we need n't go
away from home to find a watering-place to-day; and,
them that do, depend upon it,” — and here she laid her
mouth close to his ear, and spoke in a whisper, — “they
go for something else besides the water!” She gave
him a queer look as she said this, and pointed significantly
to the little buffet in the corner, where an old-fashioned
cut-glass decanter stood, surrounded by half
a dozen little glasses, as if they were young decanters
just hatched out; but what she meant we dare not attempt
to explain. Ike just then finished his kite by
burning the holes for the “belly-band” with the small
point of Mrs. Partington's scissors, that had been heated
red-hot for the purpose.