Sez I, “I should know that of all the places in the world that would be his chosen rondevoo.”

“Yes,” sez she, “he has got such exquisite taste—­in dress.”

I don’t believe she had a idee what it wuz, I believe she thought from what she said that it wuz some kind of men’s clothes, or scarf pins mebby.  I myself didn’t even hazard a inward guess, but made up my mind to be resigned to the sight whatever it wuz and bear up under it the best I could.

But we found out it included all kinds of measures, attitudes and angles, photographs, moulds, casts and rates of pulsation, measurements of respiration, tryin’ to measure and estimate as well as they can the different physical values of the different races and people, it wuz a sight to see it.

Sure enough Professor Todd wuz there, and I willin’ly resigned her into his care.  He offerin’ to see her home after the illumination.  I knowed he wuz to be trusted, and they went off, Blandina lookin’ up happy and adorin’, he happy, patronizin’ and lookin’ down.  Both on ’em contented creeters.  He leadin’ her a willin’ victim to where the biggest named articles wuz and explainin’ ’em to her in words more’n two inches long, I’ll bet, but if anybody is happy that’s enough.  And though it is puttin’ the wagon considerable ways before the horse, I may as well tell a conversation I overheard between Professor Todd and Blandina later in the day.  Molly and Josiah wuz interested in lookin’ at a display a little ways off, and I’d sot down for a spell restin’ my tired head on my hand, and closed my eyes, for they too wuz so weary I felt I should almost be ashamed to face them two gray orbs in the lookin’-glass, for I knowed I had worked ’em too hard, and no knowin’ when they would git any rest, for it seemed as though the more we see the more there wuz to see.

And I sot there lost in wistful retrospection of the view from our back door where there wuz but one object in front of me, and that wuz a plain barn with no cupolas or minarets, or towers or domes on it.  No, jest a plain barn with a slidin’ door enriched and bejeweled when open only by the form of my beloved pardner.  And the only vista visible the grassy path that led round the hen house to the ash-barrel, and the only ornamental water, the waterin’ trough embellished only by the green moss on its sides.

I felt I’d seen too many ornaments, I most knowed I should never hanker agin for a minaret or a mosque, or a steeple or a crescent, or a wavin’ banner, or gildin’, I felt that my heart would never more long and pine for water to squirt up in the air or drizzle down three or four hundred feet, nor for statutes or peaks or pillers.  No, I almost felt I should have Dave Yerden saw off the top of the whatnot because it riz up in a sort of ornamental fashion, and I almost despised the thought of the M. E. steeple in Jonesville, to such wicked and reckless lengths will over-weariness lead one.  But jest as I wuz rebukin’ myself to myself, I hearn jest on the other side on me the voices of Blandina and Professor Aspire Todd.  He wuz evidently continuing a conversation begun sometime before.