"You would be glad to if you wuz good enough," sez she; "if you had attained unto a state of perfection, you would feel like it."

   That kinder riled me up, and I sez, "Wall, I have lived in this house with them that wuz perfect, and that is bad enough for me, without bein' one of 'em myself. For more disagreeable creeters," sez I, a prickin' my biscuit with a fork, "more disagreeable creeters I never laid eyes on."

   Trueman's wife thinks she is perfect, she has told me so time and agin—thinks she hain't done anything wrong in upwards of a number of years.

   But she didn't say nothin' to this, only begun agin about the wickedness and immorality of my makin' riz biscuit that mornin', and the deep disgrace of Josiah Allen keepin' on with his work.

   But before I could speak up and take his part, for I

    will

   not hear my companion found fault with by any female but myself, she had gathered up her robe, and swept upstairs with it, leavin' orders for a flatiron to be sent up.

   Wall, the believers wuz all a-goin' to meet at the Risley school-house that afternoon. They wuz about 40 of 'em, men and wimmen. And I told Josiah at noon, I believed I would go down to the school-house to the meetin'. And he a-feelin', I mistrust, that if they should happen to be in the right on't, and the world should come to a end, he wanted to be by the side of his beloved pardner, he offered to go too. But he never had no robe, no, nor never thought of havin'.

   The Risley school-house stood in a clearin', and had tall stumps round it in the door-yard. And we had heard that some of the believers wuz goin' to get up on them stumps, so's to start off from there. And sure enough, we found it wuz the calculation of some on 'em.

   The school-boys had made steps up the sides of some of the biggest stumps, and lots of times in political meetin's men had riz up on 'em to talk to the masses below. Why I s'poze a crowd of as many as 45 or 48, had assembled there at one time durin' the heat of the campain.

   But them politicians had on their usual run of clothes, they didn't have on white book muslin robes. Good land!

   CHAPTER XVI.

   Wall, lots of folks had assembled to the school-house when we got there, about 3 

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