“Oh, that lost companion of mine! oh, that beauchious female so humilitous in her sweet humility, so super-conscious of man’s superior attainments, she seemingly only existed to minister to my corporial necessities.”

“Well she might, Professor, well she might,” sez Blandina.  “Any woman of right feelin’ would feel only too blest and honored to do the same.”

“I experienced from the first moment my eyes rested on you,” sez the Professor in solemn axents, “a sensation, or a feeling, as you may say, that you wuz my affinity, that your soul wuz congenial, and every transitory period of time that has progressively advanced since then has but intensified the impression.”

Though I couldn’t see her, I could feel Blandina simper.  But at that minute Josiah interrupted the dialogue by askin’ where Samantha wuz, and I come forward and jined ’em.  Blandina looked radiantly happy, and I motioned to Molly and Josiah to come on, I knowed they would rather have our room than our company.  For I remembered I wuz onmarried myself once, and though my sperit wuz never incarnated in the personality of a Blandina, yet I had a vivid remembrance of the time when Love first laid holt on me, and I well remembered the feelin’s I felt at the ardent attentions of a Josiah.

Professor Todd might not be an object of admiration to me, indeed he wuz not, fur from it!  But one of the last things we learn in life is not to judge other folks attachments and desires by our own liking, and not to condemn other people for having fur different ideals than our own.  I had found out that Professor Todd wuz likely and respectable and well off, and if Blandina had got to git along through life without knowin’ much, she had better git along with a protector and under comfortable circumstances.  So I stood ready to give away the bride at any time, for to tell the truth I had worried about her future, not knowin’ but I had her on my hands for life.  But true to my principles I felt that I would make no matches nor break none, but would only smooth the path for True Love to trundle along in.

Josiah wuz blind as a bat to what I see, and wanted to know, “What Blandina wuz pokin’ round with that fool for?”

Truly men can’t see through a stun wall or a matrimonial movement with anything like the clearness of a woman.  As I wended my way onwards I felt jest as sure in my mind how it would end as I did two months afterwards when I see ’em at the altar.

But to resoom backwards.  Josiah, Molly and I wended our way off to another department of the immense buildin’, goin’ from one display to another, and could have stayed a week and seen sunthin’ new every minute.

I took sights of comfort at the Indian schools.  Seein’ on one side the old poor oncivilized way of living, habits and customs; and then to see what education and culture had done and wuz doing for ’em, what swift strides they wuz makin’ along the road that leads upwards.  And to see ‘em workin’ away right before us at all the industrial trades, to see inteligence in the eyes that had held savagery, to hear the inteligent conversation in place of gutteral axents, I wuz highly tickled.