And Uncle Sime chimed in, “We wuz took faint both on us jest as we got to the door and had to set down, and I mistrusted I should find cousin Zekiel there,” and then happenin’ to remember, both at the same time, they begun to say how they went for the good of the meetin’ house.

Sez I in frigid axents, “Say no more!” And I turned onto my heel and walked coldly away.

But Blandina whispered to me, “Oh, be merciful, Aunt Samantha, men have such powerful intellects, that Shows that would almost ruin a woman, don’t affect them hardly any.  Speak tenderly to him,” sez she, “and I myself will gently accost Mr. Bentley.”

So she stepped back to his side and Josiah advanced and walked by me still pourin’ out excuses.  Why he gin enough reasons to excuse a regiment let alone one small deacon.

But Blandina seemed to lose her efforts, for Uncle Sime talked real grouty to her, he has never had a idee of marryin’ anybody since his wife died and he mistrusts wimmen are runnin’ after him.  You know male widowers do git that idee into their heads, them that are as humbly as Time in the Primer, and a onmarried woman can’t ask ’em about the weather, or sheep, or anything but what they mistrust some hidden warmth, and pride themselves on how attractive they be.  It’s a sight.

As nigh as I could find out the minute Josiah Allen left me he took the railway and hurried to the wicked place where he and Uncle Sime wuz to meet, expectin’ to git back in ample time to meet us.  But they wuz so took up with the show they dallied, and so retribution and a indignant pardner overtook ’em.  Well, we took the Intremoral railway and went back to finish Agricultural Hall, for that bein’ writ on my pad I wanted to complete it so fur as we could, of course it would took months to do justice to it.

We got there in a few minutes, and Josiah, as might be expected, wanted to see the food exhibits, so we went where there wuz all kinds of food made of vegetable products, all kind of grain, flour mills where you could see wheat go in one end and bread come out the other, bakeries, kitchens, tea and coffee pavilions and every sort of animal food products, milk and cream in every form, fresh and preserved cheese and butter dairies, all sorts of dairy tools, churns, separators, cheese presses and vats, everything connected with makin’ butter and cheese, transporting and distributing.  Starch factories, broom factories, market gardening in all branches.

Grasses, all sorts of fodder for cattle, raised in every country of the world, and the best methods of raising.  Everything relating to poultry, artificial hatching and raising.  Every kind of crop raised in every country of the world and the best methods of raising and handling them.  As in cotton, you can see it from the tiny seed clear to the cotton mill, so in corn, you see everything that is manufactured from it and how it is done—­meal, breakfast foods, starch, bread, pastry, baking powders, yeast, from a kernel of corn up to mills and manufactories.  And so it wuz in everything raised in our own country and all over the world.