Sass, five dollars. I don’t often take it, but when I do I charge.

From A treasury of American anecdotes; sly, salty, shaggy stories of heroes and hellions, beguilers and buffoons, spellbinders and scapegoats, gagsters and gossips, from the grassroots and sidewalks of America by Benjamin Albert Botkin. 

When Boston was Fanny Kemble’s home, and her summers were spent here and there in rural Massachusetts, she engaged a worthy neighbor to be her charioteer during the season of one of her country sojournings. With kind-hearted loquacity he was beginning to expatiate on the country, the crops and the history of the people roundabout, when Fanny remarked, in her imperious dogmatic fashion, “Sir, I have engaged you to drive for me, not to talk to me.” The farmer ceased, pursed up his lips, and ever after kept his peace.

When the vacation weeks were over, and Miss Kemble was about to return to town, she sent for her Jehu and his bill. Running her eyes down its awkward columns, she paused. “What is this item, sir?”  said she. “I cannot understand it.” And with equal gravity he rejoined, “Sass, five dollars. I don’t often take it, but when I do I charge.”