wanted to, for I see I wuzn't goin' to have a minute's time to go into the parlor and visit with her.

   She looked pretty sober and thoughtful, and I didn't know as she liked it, to think I couldn't do as I promised to do, accordin' to agreement, to hear her lecture, and lift my hand up when I differed from her.

   But, good land! I couldn't help it. I couldn't get a minute's time to lift my hand up. I could have heard the lecture, but I couldn't spare my hands.

   And then Josiah would come a-rushin' in after one thing and another, actin' as was natural, accordin' to the nater of man, more like a wild man than a Christian Methodist. For he was so wrought up and excited by havin' so much on his hands to do, and the onexpectedness of it, that he couldn't help actin' jest as he did act. I don't believe he could. And then Steve Yerden is enough to distract a leather-man, any way.

   Twice I had to drop everything and find cloths to do up the horse's legs, where it had grazed 'em a-fallin' out of the machine. And once I took my hands out of the pie-crust to find a piece of old rope to tie up the harness. It seemed as if I left off every five minutes to wait on Josiah Allen, to find somethin' that he wanted and couldn't find, or else to do somethin' for him that he couldn't do.

   Truly, it was a wild and harrowin' time, and tegus. But I kept a firm holt of my principles, and didn't groan—not when anybody could hear me. I won't deny that I did, out in the buttery by myself, give vent to a groan or two, and a few sithes. But immegiately, or a very little after, I was calm again.

   Wall, worse things wuz a-comin' onto me, though I didn't know it. I owed a tin peddler; had been owin' him for four weeks. I owed him twenty-five pounds of paper rags, for a new strainer. I had been expectin' him for over three weeks every day. But in all the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, there wuzn't another day that would satisfy him; he had got to come on jest that day, jest as I wuz fryin' my nut cakes for dinner.

   I tried to put him off till another day. But no! He said it wuz his last trip, and he must have his rags. And so I had to put by my work, and lug down my rag-bag. His steel-yards wuz broke, so he had to weigh 'em in the house. It wuz a tegus job, for he wuz one of the perticuler kind, and had to look 'em all over before he weighed 'em, and pick out every little piece of brown paper, or full cloth—everything, he 

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