'Tender care'! Did you not wake me in the middle of the
night, last summer, by trickling down water on my face from a passing
shower? and did I not have to get up at that unearthly hour to move the
bed, and step splash into a puddle, and come very near being floated
away? Did not the water drip, drip, drip upon my writing-desk, and soak
the leather and swell the wood, and stain the ribbon and spoil the
paper inside, and all because you were treacherous at the roof and let
it? Have you not made a perfect rattery of yourself, yawning at every
possible chink and crumbling at the underpinning, and keeping me awake
night after night by the tramp of a whole brigade of the Grand Army
that slaughtered Bishop Hatto? Whenever a breeze comes along stout
enough to make an aspen-leaf tremble, don't you immediately go into
hysterics, and rock, and creak, and groan, as if you were the shell of
an earthquake? Don't you shrivel at every window to let in the
northeasters and all the snow-storms that walk abroad? Whenever a
needle, or a pencil, or a penny drops, don't you open somewhere and
take it in? 'Golden memories'! Leaden memories! Wooden memories! Madden
memories!"
My savage gave a war-whoop. I turned scornfully.
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