I knit away with a look of cold mockery on my face that I spose worried him, for he sez, “I wish I could git you interested in my show, Samantha.  Mebby you’d want to represent Britanny scourin’ the blue seas, you always thought so much of the Widder Albert.  You could enact it in the creek where the water is shaller.  You’ve got a long scrubbin’ brush, I always thought you looked some like Britanny, and you do scrub and scour so beautiful, Samantha.”

“No, Josiah, you’ll never git me into that scrape, not but what Britanny may need help with her scrubbin’ brush.  But I shan’t catch my death cold makin’ a fool of myself by tacklin’ that job.”

“Oh, you could wear my rubber boots.  But I shall not urge the matter, I only thought we two countries are such clost friends and I wanted you to have the foremost character, but I can probable git someone else to enact it.  But the strain is fearful on me, Samantha, to have everything go on as it should.”

His looks wuz strange.  I could see that he wuz all nerved up, and his mind (what he had) wuz all wrought up to its highest tension; I knowed what happened when the tension to my sewin’ machine wuz drawed too tight—­it broke.  And my machine wuz strong in comparison to some other things I won’t mention out of respect to my pardner.  I felt that I must be cautious and tread carefully if I would influence him for his good, so I brought forth the argument that seldom failed with him, and sez I: 

“If I hadn’t no other reason for jinin’ in these doin’s, cookin’ has got to be done and how can a statute or a Historical Tabloo bile potatoes and brile steak and make yeast emptin’s bread perked up on a pedestal or posin’ in the creek, and you know, Josiah, that no matter how fur ambition or vain glory may lead a man, his appetite has got to be squenched, and vittles has got to be cooked else how can he squench it.”

And to this old trustworthy weepon I held in all his different plans to inviggle me into his preposterous idees and found it answered better than reason or ridicule.  But even this failed to break up his crazy plan.  His hull mind (what he had) wuz sot on it.

CHAPTER II.

I felt dretful and how I wuz goin’ to break it up and git his mind off I couldn’t tell; I talked it over with the children.  They wuz goin’ to be mortified to death by the idee if carried out and they told me in confidence and the woodhouse kitchen, “It must be stopped!”

And I sez, “How is it goin’ to be stopped?  I’ve handled every weepon I know how to lay holt on.  I’ve pompied him, cooked the very best of vittles, argued with him, eppisoded, but all to no use, he’s as sot as a hen turkey on a brick bat, and I’ve got to the end of my chain.”

Sez Tirzah Ann, “Have you tried readin’ historical novels to him?”

“No,” sez I, “I don’t dast to be too hash with him, your pa’s health hain’t what it wuz, I dassent take too hash measures.”