Allen; I can git along on sage 28tea, if you can; or, I can make crust coffee for breakfast.” 28 I calmly kep’ a braidin’ up my back hair, previous to doin’ it up in a wad, for I knew what the end thereof would be. My companion, Josiah, is powerfully attached to his tea, and he sot for a number of minutes in perfect silence, meditatin’—I knew by the looks of his face—on sage tea. I kep’ perfectly still and let him meditate, and wouldn’t have interrupted him for the world, for I knew that sage tea, and crust coffee, taken internally of the mind, (as it were,) was what was good for him jest then. And so it proved, for in about three minutes and a half, he spoke out in tones as sharp as a meat axe; some like a simetar: “Wall! do git ready if you are a goin’. I never did see such cases to be on the go all the time, as wimmen be. But I shall go with the Bobs, jest as I come from the woods; I haint a goin’ to fuss to git out the sleigh to-night.” He acted cross, and worrysome, but I answered him calmly, and my mean looked first rate as I said it: “There is a great literary treat in front of me, to-night, Josiah Allen, and a few Bobs, more or less, haint a goin’ to overthrow my comfort, or my principles. No!” says I stoppin’ at my bed-room door, and wavin’ my right hand in a real eloquent wave; “no! no! Josiah Allen; the seekin’ mind, bent on improvin’ itself; and the earnest soul a plottin’ after the good of the race, Bobs has no power over. Such minds cannot be turned round in their glorious career by Bobs.” 30 A RIDE ON THE BOBS. 31“Wall! wall!” he snapped out again, “do git ready. I believe wimmen would stop to talk and visit on their way to the stake.” 31 I didn’t say nothin’ back, but with a calm face I went into the bed-room and put on my brown alpaca dress; for I thought seein’ I had my way, I’d let him have his say, knowin’ by experience, that the last word would be dretful sort o’ comfortin’ to him. I had a soap-stone and plenty of Buffaloes, and I didn’t care if we did go on the Bobs, (or Roberts, I s’pose would be more polite to call ’em.) There was a good floor to ’em, and so we sot off, and I didn’t care a mite if I did feel strange and curious, and a good deal in the circus line; as if I was some first-class curiosity that my companion, Josiah, had discovered in a foreign land, and
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