He said three commercial travelers wuz talkin’ before an old man from the country whose loose fittin’ clothes were gently scattered with hay-seed.  The first one told with minute particulars of a Western cyclone that had lifted a house and sot it down in a neighborin’ township.  The next one said that he wuz knowin’ to the circumstances and how the cyclone swep back and brought the suller and sot it down under the house.  And the third one remembered vividly how the cyclone went back the second time and brought the hole the suller left and distributed it round under the new site.

The old man listened with deep interest, and said he wuz glad he’d had the privelige of hearin’ ’em, for their talk had cleared up a Bible verse he’d long pondered over.

They wuz astounded to think their talk had awakened religious meditations.  But the old gentleman said their conversation had cleared up that passage where it said: 

“Annanias come forth.”

He said it wuz now plain to him that it meant that these three drummers should stand before Annanias, the Prince of Liars, he takin’ his place behind ’em, the fourth in the rank of liars.

But this is neither here or there I only mention it as comin’ into my mind instinctively and onbeknown to myself as I hearn Josiah Allen’s remark, it came and went, as thoughts will, like a lightning flash, even as I wuz repeatin’ the words agin in wonderment and horrow.

“Fifty million dollars!”

“No, I said to you, Samantha, that in our conversation we would leave out the orts, fifty dollars wuz what I meant.  But as I said this is what I’ve thought when my brain wuz fired with ambition and glory of histin’ the name of Allen up where it ort to be and will be.  But when my blood has quieted down and I took a dispassionate view of the affair I have thought it would be more in keepin’ with the old traditions of the Allen family, to spend jest fifteen, I can do a noble job with Uncle Sime’s help and Ury’s, with exactly the same sum that wuz paid for these purchases.”

I see he wuz jest bound to ignore the millions.  But I knowed it wouldn’t do any good to keep twittin’ him of it.  And then he went on to describe more fully the Exposition of Josiah Allen that he’d been plottin’ for weeks and weeks.  He said that he and uncle Sime had used up two hull pads of writin’ paper at a cost of five cents each, plannin’ and figurin’.  But he didn’t begrech the outlay, he said.  He wuz layin’ out to have the lower paster used as a tentin’ ground for the hull Allen race, and the Gowdeys if he decided they wuz worthy to jine in, he hadn’t settled on that yet.  The cow paster wuz to be used for Equinomical and Agricultural displays and also Peaceful Industries and Inventions, and the lane leadin’ up to the barn from the lower paster he laid out to use as a Pike for all sorts of amusements, pitchin’ quaits, bull-in-the-barnyard, turnin’ hand-springs and summer sets, etc., etc.