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HOMESICKNESS

There was a more than ordinary earnestness in the tone of Mr. Judkins as he said: “Referrin’ to this thing of bein’ homesick, I want to say right here that of all diseases, afflictions er complaints, this thing of bein’ homesick takes the cookies! A man may think when he’s got a’ aggrivated case of janders, er white-swellin’, say, er bone-erysipelas, that he’s to be looked up to as bein’ purty well fixed in this vale of trouble and unrest, but I want to tell you, when I want my sorrow blood-raw, don’t you understand, you may give me homesickness–straight goods, you know–and I’ll git more clean, legitimate agony out of that than you can out of either of the other attractions–yes, er even ef you’d ring in the full combination on me! You see, there’s no way of treatin’ homesickness only one–and that is to git back home–but as that’s a remedy you can’t git at no drug store, at so much per box–and ef you could, fer instance, and only had enough ready money anyhow to cover half the cost of a full box–and nothin’ but a full box ever reached the case–w’y, it follers that your condition still remains critical. And homesickness don’t show no favors. It’s jes’ as liable to strike you as me. High er low, er rich er poor, all comes under her jurishdiction, and whenever she once reaches fer a citizen, you can jes’ bet she gits there Eli, ever’ time!

“She don’t confine herse’f to youth, ner make no specialty of little children either, but she stalks abroad like a census-taker, and is as conscientious. She visits the city girl clean up to Maxinkuckee, and makes her wonder how things really is back home without her. And then she haunts her dreams, and wakes her up at all hours of the night, and sings old songs over fer her, and talks to her in low thrillin’ tones of a young man whose salary ain’t near big enough fer two; and then she leaves her photograph with her and comes away, and makes it lively fer the boys on the train, the conductor, the brakeman and the engineer. She even nests out the travellin’ man, and yanks him out of his reclinin’ chair, and walks him up and down the car, and runs him clean out of cigars and finecut, and smiles to hear him swear. Then she gits off at little country stations and touches up the night operator, who grumbles at his boy companion, and wishes to dernation ‘six’ was in, so’s he could ‘pound his ear.’

“And I’ll never forgit,” continued Mr. Judkins, “the last case of homesickness I had, and the cure I took fer it. ‘Tain’t been more’n a week ago neither. You see my old home is a’most too many laps from this base to make it very often, and in consequence I hadn’t been there fer five years and better, till this last trip, when I jes’ succumbed to the pressure, and th’owed up my hands and went. Seemed like I’d ‘a’ died if I hadn’t. And it was glorious to rack around the old town again–things lookin’ jes’ the same, mighty nigh, as they was when I was a boy, don’t you know. Run acrost an old schoolmate, too, and tuck supper at his happy little home, and then we got us a good nickel cigar, and walked and walked, and talked and talked! Tuck me all around, you understand, in the meller twilight–till, the first thing you know, there stood the old schoolhouse where me and him first learnt to chew tobacco, and all that! Well, sir! you hain’t got no idea of the feelin’s that was mine! W’y, I felt like I could th’ow my arms around the dear old buildin’ and squeeze it till the cupolo would jes’ pop out of the top of the roof like the core out of a b’ile! And I think if they ever was a’ epoch in my life when I could ‘a’ tackled poetry without no compunctions, as the feller says, w’y, then was the time–shore!”