piece.”

“Why,” says I mildly, “it wasn’t nothin’ ag’inst your character, Josiah.”

“Oh no!” says he in a sarcastic tone. “You would want it talked over in prefaces and round, wouldn’t you, that you had the Night Mair, and pranced round in your sleep?”

“I never mentioned the word prance,” says I mildly, but firmly, “never.”

“Oh wall,” says he, “it is all the same thing.”

“No it haint,” says I firmly. “No it haint.”

“Wall,” says he, “you know jest how stories grow by tellin’. And by the time it got to New York,—I xdare persume to say before it got to that village,—the story run that I pranced round, and was wild as a henhawk. I have hated prefaces ever sense, and druther give half a cent than to have you write another one.”

x

“Don’t go beyond your means a tryin’ to bribe me,” says I, in a almost dry tone. Josiah is honest as a pulpit, but close, nearly tight. After a moment’s thought, I says,—“If you feel like that about it, Josiah, I wont have no preface in this book.”

“Wall,” says he, “it would take a load offen my mind if you wouldn’t.” And he added in cheerful and tender tones,—“Shan’t I start up the fire for you, Samantha, and hang onto the tea-kettle?”

I told him he might, and then I rose up and put my bottle of ink on to the mantletry piece, and sot the table for supper. And this—generous and likely reader though I think a sight on you, and would have been glad of the chance to have told you so in a lawful way—is jest the reason why I have denied myself that privilege and don’t have no preface to this book. Further explanations are unnecessary. To the discernin’ mind my reasons are patented, for such well know that a husband’s wishes to a fond wife, are almost like takin’ the law to her. And knowin’ this, I hope and trust you will kindly overlook its loss. You will not call me shiftless, nor yet slack. You will heed not the dark report that may be started up that I was short on it for prefaces, or entirely run out of ’em, and couldn’t get holt of one. You will believe not that tale, knowin’ it false and also untrue. You will regard its absence kindly and even tenderly, thinkin’ that what is my loss is your gain; thinkin’ that it is a delicate and self-sacrificin’ token of a wife’s almost 

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