carry a quart of oats and a little jag of hay in the bottom of the buggy. If I had concluded to pick out a girl and go, I had got it all fixed out in my mind how I would manage. I had thought it over, while I was ondecided and duty was a-strugglin' with me. But I was made to see where the right way for me lay, and I am goin' to foller it. Joe Purday is goin' to have my horse, and give me seven shillin's for the use of it and its keepin'. He come to hire it just before I made up my mind that I hadn't ort to go.

   "Of course it is a cross to me. But I am willin' to bear crosses for the fair sect. Why," says he, a-comin' out in a open, generous way, "I would be willin', if necessary for the general good of the fair sect—I would be willin' to sacrifice ten cents for 'em, or pretty nigh that, I wish so well to 'em. I

    hain't

   that enemy to 'em that they think I am. I can't marry 'em all, Heaven knows I can't, but I wish 'em well."

   "Wal," says I, "I guess my dishwater is hot; it must be pretty near bilin' by this time."

   And he took the hint and started off. I see it wouldn't do no good to argue with him that wimmen didn't worship him. For when a feller once gets it into his head that female wimmen are all after him, you might jest as well dispute the wind as argue with him. You can't convince him nor the wind—neither of 'em—so what's the use of wastin' breath on 'em. And I didn't want to spend a extra breath that day anyway, knowin' I had such a hard day's work in front of me, a-finishin' cookin' up provisions for the exertion, and gettin' things done up in the house so I could leave 'em for all day.

   We had got to start about the middle of the night; for the lake was fifteen miles from Jonesville, and the old mare's bein' so slow, we had got to start an hour or two ahead of the rest. I told Josiah in the first on't, that I had just as lives set up all night as to be routed out at two o'clock. But he was so animated and happy at the idee of goin' that he looked on the bright side of everything, and he said that we would go to bed before dark, and get as much sleep as we commonly did. So we went to bed the sun an hour high. And I was truly tired enough to lay down, for I had worked dretful hard that day—almost beyond my strength. But we hadn't more'n got settled down into the bed, when we heard a buggy and a single wagon stop at the gate, and I got up and peeked through the window, and I

   see it was visitors 

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