"ElizaLeeFollen-WhoSpokeNext" - читать интересную книгу автора (Follen Eliza Lee)

Pardon me for keeping you listening to me so long; I have done. I
wish to hear now what that respectable-looking broadsword has to
say. We two ought to be friends."

"I was born a gentleman," said the broadsword. "I was always
considered the sign, the symbol of one. Not many years since, a
sword was so essential to the character of a gentleman that a man
without one by his side, was, in fact, not considered a gentleman.

My master, who was also yours, Mr. Curlingtongs, was one the
officers in the company of Cadets at its first formation. He had the
honorable title of Major, and all his best friends called him Major.
Little did I think once that I should be condemned to the disgrace
of spending my old age in a garret with crooked curling tongs,
broken pitchers, old baize gowns, noseless tea-kettles, old
crutches, a foot stove, and, worse than all, a spinning wheel.

My only peers here are the venerable musket and the respectable wig.
Even they have seen too much hard service to be able fully to
appreciate the feelings of a gentleman who has been brought up as I
have. The degradation the musket especially endured, in being used
as a spade by such a very common sort of person as Judah Loring--a
degradation of which, far from being ashamed, he seems actually
proud; all this, I say, my friends, makes a wide separation between
us never to be forgotten or got over."

"I'm agreed, the further off the better," growled the musket. The
old wig also gave a sort of contemptuous hitch, that seemed to say,
he agreed with the musket.

"I consider myself," resumed the broad-sword, "to be a perfect
gentleman. I have never denied myself by any sort of labor. I have
been considered something to show, something to be used only as a
terror to evil doers.

It strikes me that I really made the Major; he never could appear in
his company or perform his duties without me; his queue was not more
essential. He was not a Major without me. Every one feared me when
they saw my shining blade out of its scabbard, and it was really
amusing occasionally to see the effect I produced. There have been
swords that have done bloody work, but I have never been so defiled.

The Boston Cadets, you know, are the Governor's body guard, and such
is the anxiety of people sometimes to see a real live governor when
he has on his governor's dress and character, that the women and
children crowd around him so that he can hardly find room to move
and breathe. At one of these times of great pressure, my master took
me out and flourished me round bravely. O, how they all scampered!
just like a flock of frightened geese, merely at the sight of me.
Such is the effect of my mere appearance. To be sure, the Major