AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
woman who was hustling about the old kitchen with its oven attachment, at the Weishe sale, to John and me. “You are right willkom.”
“No,” answered John, “I don't vant any tinner to-day. My stomach is not all right. After a vile I vill go out to Jacob (who sold candy and peanuts from a stand, to the people at the sale) and puy me a blate of ice cream. Ven your stomach is not all right, and you don't vant to eat nossing, dere is nossing so goot for it as ice cream—sure.” And he ate two plates of cream.
“Nefer puy an olt vagon or an olt set of harness,” is a part of John's farm philosophy. He was president of the Perkiomen Pike Company until the public took the pike, and is a director in the Schwenksville bank, and he owns four or five farms. He saw me tempted by an old farm wagon, well preserved, with huge rough timbers and great high dished wheels, made in 1781, which sold for $3.75.
“If you can't affort to py a new vagon, vy chust shift until you gets a liddle money. My fadder fixed up an olt vagon vonce and he vas sorry all his life. He says to me: ‘Dat vagon is no goot and it vould not pring vat it cost chust to fix it. If I'm not here any more, don't you puy dat vagon, Chon. Let it go at de vandue.’ And so I dit. But I pought an olt set of harness vonce. Dey vas not chust so olt, but dey vas rubbed, and den ven I vas going down hill wiss my team de harness proke and I vas in drouble. You let somepody else puy dat olt vagon.”
“Do you know olt Mike Ziegler vat lifes up at Lederachsville?” asked John one day when I met him in the Schwenksville street hurrying toward the plain brick house which is his home.
“I have heard of him. The Zieglers are an old Mennonite family.”
“Vell, he got himself puried last veek—on Friday."
