“Samantha, I don’t believe it is right for members of the meetin’ house to be goin’ at such a gait.”

And I hollered back to him, “It hain’t none of my doin’s, it hain’t nothin’ I wanted,” I a hangin’ onto my bunnet strings and tryin’ to keep my bunnet on.  As for the tabs of my mantilly I had gin up tryin’ to curb ’em down, and they waved out like a pirate’s flag in a cyclone only a different color.

Finally Josiah hollered to the shuffler, “I want you to curb in your machine!  I’m a deacon, and have got my station in the Jonesville meetin’ house to think on.  Hold it in, I say!”

The shuffler glanced round at us as calm as a goggle-eyed clam and never dained to answer, and seemin’ly urged on the orto to redoubled speed.

Oh, the awfulness of the seen! the terrific noise soundin’ on my ear pans till it seemed as if them pans must break down, the dirt a flyin’, my pardner standin’ up with his whiskers and coat tails wavin’ in the breeze.  His hat blowed off and by almost superhuman exertions I ketched it and carried it in my hand, thinkin’ it wuz safer than on his head.

He a yellin’, “Stop, I tell you!  Whoa! back up!  Dum your dum picter, whoa I say!”

For the last few milds Josiah rid standin’ all I could do and say.  Yellin’ at the shuffler, hollerin’ whoa to him, and appealin’ to Heaven and me simultaneous as it were, for mercy and succor.

[Illustration]

And that shuffler payin’ no more attention to him than as if he wuz a fly, not a hoss fly, but jest a common fly.  Only he would look back at us once in awhile through them big goggles of hisen that most curdled my blood to see ’em.

At last Josiah, seemin’ to give up all hope, sunk back and grasped holt of my tab and sez, “Good-bye, Samantha, if you git through alive remember I died tryin’ to save you.”  His emotions and the dirt choked him, and he faintly added: 

“Tell the bretheren and see that it is put in the Jonesville Augur, that I died a hero’s death tryin’ to save my pardner.”  And his grasp on my tabs become almost hysterical.

But at that minute the entrance gate wuz reached and the orto stopped so abruptly, that Josiah who had got up agin, wuz precipitated into my lap.  But he got out immegiately, and the minute he and I stepped onto terry firmy he turned and shook his fist at the man and sez he, “If it wuzn’t for the crowd and Samantha’s feelin’s, I would whip you within an inch of your life!  Oh, if I only had you in a ten acre lot you’d feel the wrath of a lion when it wuz rousted up!”

But I laid my hand on him and led him away, I knowed such seens wuz bad for his nerve.  He trembled like a popple leaf, and the minute we got through the gate I had to set down with him and deal out four nut-cakes before he wuz himself agin.

I wuz determined this day to go to the Palace of Fine Arts, so we did and I put in a time of almost perfect happiness there.  We went into Government Building entrance that day, and I proposed to Josiah that we should stop at Liberal Arts Building on the way, and he at first demurred and sez: