house along.

   Well, I tried every lawful, and mebby a little on-lawful way to break this enterprise of theirs up—and, as I heern afterwards, so did Sister Henzy.

   Sister Sypher is so wrapped up in Deacon Sypher that she would embrace a buzz saw mill or any other enterprise he could bring to bear onto her.

   "She would be perfectly willin' to be trompled on," so she often sez, "if Deacon Sypher wuz to do the tromplin'."

   Some sez he duz.

   Wall, in spite of all my efforts, and in spite of all Sister Henzy's efforts, our deacons seemed to jest flourish on this skeme of theirn. And when we see it wuz goin' to be a sure thing, even Sister Sypher begin to feel bad.

   She told Albina Widrig, and Albina told Miss Henn, and Miss Henn told me, that "what to do she didn't know, it would deprive her of so much of the deacon's society." It wuz goin' to devour so much of his time that she wuz afraid she couldn't stand it. She told Albina in confidence (and Albina wouldn't want it told of, nor Miss Henn, nor I wouldn't) that she had often been obleeged to go out into the lot between breakfast and dinner to see the deacon, not bein' able to stand it without lookin' on his face till dinner time.

   And when she was laid up with a lame foot it wuz known that the deacon left his plowin' and went up to the house, or as fur as the door step, four or five times in the course of a mornin's work, it wuz spozed because she wuz fearful of forgettin' how he looked before noon.

   She is a dretful admirin' woman.

   She acts dretful reverential and admirin' towards men—always calls her husband "the Deacon," as if he was the one lonely deacon who was perambulatin' the globe at this present time. And it is spozed that when she dreams about him she dreams of him as "the Deacon," and not as Samuel (his given name is Samuel).

   But we don't know that for certain. We only spoze it. For the land of dreams is a place where you can't slip on your sun-bonnet and foller neighbor wimmen to see what they are a-doin' or what they are a-sayin' from hour to hour.

   No, the best calculator on gettin' neighborhood news can't even look into that land, much less foller a neighborin' female into it.

   No, 

 Prev. P 7/26 next