Question

a century ride
by grace e. denison
from outing, volume xxiii, issue 1, october 1893
you never saw such a dear little yellow - haired, dainty - featured maid as maude mannering, the
successful girl - graduate and medical student.
when she came forward at commencement, in a delightful little greenaway gown of white muslin,
peppered over with tiny dots, with the very smile of childhood in her wide blue eyes, and her curly hair
clustering round her brows - the learned doctors, imported to adorn the commencement exercises,
blinked their eyes and looked twice, and hesitated, even then, to accept her as an established fact.
that she could be the medical student, that she could enter a dissecting room, carve up a subject,
watch a mortal sickness, stand by a dying bed - preposterous! it might not be! and yet, it all, and much
more, had been
the learned doctors stared, with their unbelieving eyes, and the chancellor smiled as they turned to
one another, agape, and shook their heads, while maude tripped smilingly back to her seat, and the
students shrieked and sang to her glory.
“shall i go?” were the words which would have issued from her pretty lips, one day, a week later (had
she been in the habit of talking to herself) as she finished reading a long and chatty letter inviting her to
“come away north, and spend the holidays,” and concluding with these words “we are fifty miles from
everywhere, and our roads are splendid, so you had better bring your bicycle, or velocipede, or
whatever it is you ride to the horror and confusion of auntie.” maude turned the letter thoughtfully over,
skimming from page to page. there was a postscript, of course, simply four words, “can’t is with us.”
but, whatever the girl read, she saw only those four words, and it was on their account that she asked
herself, “shall i go?” can it was her correspondent’s brother, her escort at the wedding of that lady, and,
subsequently, her own rejected sweetheart of last year. last year was a long time ago, to be sure, and
can had not moped over things. maude was not vain, she concluded to go.
the station, away up north, was reached by maude on a sweet june evening, about sunset. never did
a daintier little figure descend from a palace car, and stand forlornly beside a couple of trunks and a
bicycle, watching the lessening train as it melted into the distance in the red sunset. hall - a - dozen
houses dotted the prairie - a store, a drying shed, a small inn and the combined postoffice and station
clustered close together in the vast emptiness. within hail - a - mile stood the last grove of trees, marking
read the excerpt from “a century ride.”
“i’m choking with thirst,” said maude. “get me a drink of water, and i’ll tell you,” and the doctor
bounced in for a dipper, and out to the pump for the required beverage.
to update this excerpt to a more modern style, what slang would most likely replace “choking with thirst?”
cottonmouthed with thirst
getting up a thirst
dying of thirst
‘athirst somethin’ fierce’

Explanation:

The phrase "choking with thirst" is an old - fashioned expression. In modern slang, "dying of thirst" is a more commonly used equivalent. It conveys a strong feeling of extreme thirst in a vivid way.

Answer:

dying of thirst