person, I

    do

   like 'em, and visy-versey.

   But at the same time my likin' for a person mustn't be strong enough to overthrow my principles. And when she asked me in her sweet axents, "How I liked her lecture, and if I could see any faults in it?" I leaned up against Duty, and told her, "I liked it first-rate, but I couldn't agree with every word of it."

   Here Josiah Allen give me a look sharp enough to take my head clear off, if looks could behead anybody. But they can't.

   And I kept right on, calm and serene, and sez I, "It wuz very full of beautiful idees, as full of 'em as a rose-bush is full of sweetness in June, but," says I, "if I speak at all I must tell the truth, and I must say that while your lecture is as sweet and beautiful a effort as I ever see tackled, full of beautiful thoughts, and eloquence, still I must say that in my opinion it lacked one thing, it wuzn't mean enough."

   "Mean enough?" sez she. "What do you mean?"

   "Why," sez I, "I mean, mean temperature, you know, middleinness, megumness, and whatever you may call it; you go too fur."

   She said with a modest look "that she guessed she didn't, she guessed she didn't go too far."

   And Josiah Allen spoke up, cross as a bear, and, sez he, "I know she didn't. She didn't say a word that wuzn't gospel truth."

   Sez I, "Married life is the happiest life in my opinion; that is, when it is happy. Some hain't happy, but at the same time the happiest of 'em hain't

    all

   happiness."

   "It is," sez Josiah (cross and surly), "it is, too."

   And Serena Fogg said, gently, that she thought I wuz mistaken, "she thought it wuz." And Josiah jined right in with her and said:

   "He

    knew

   it wuz, and he would take his oath to it."

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