“I ’lowed I’d ketch you here, my venerable and reliable feller-citizen!” said Jonas as he entered the lower story of Andrew Anderson’s castle and greeted August, sitting by Andrew’s loom.  It was the next evening after Julia’s interview with Cynthy Ann.  “When do you ’low to leave this terry-firmy and climb a ash-saplin’?  To-night, hey?  Goin’ to the Queen City to take to steamboat life in hopes of havin’ your sperrits raised by bein’ blowed up?  Take my advice and don’t make haste in the downward road to destruction, nor the up-hill one nuther.  A game a’n’t never through tell it’s played out, an’ the American eagle’s a chicken with steel spurs.  That air sweet singer of Israel that is so hifalugeon he has to anchor hisself to his boots, knows all the tricks, and is intimately acquainted with the kyards, whether it’s faro, poker, euchre, or French monte.  But blamed ef Providence a’n’t dealed you a better hand’n you think.  Never desperandum, as the Congressmen say, fer while the lamp holds out to burn you may beat the blackleg all to flinders and sing and shout forever.  Last night I went to bed thinkin’ ’Umphreys had the stakes all in his pocket.  This mornin’ I found he was in a far way to be beat outen his boots ef you stood yer ground like a man and a gineological descendant of Plymouth Rock!”

Andrew stopped his loom, and, looking at August, said:  “Our friend Jonas speaks somewhat periphrastically and euphuistically, and—­he’ll pardon me—­but he speaks a little ambiguously.”

“My love, I gin it up, as the fish-hawk said to the bald eagle one day.  I kin rattle off odd sayings and big words picked up at Fourth-of-Julys and barbecues and big meetins, but when you begin to fire off your forty-pound bomb-shell book-words, I climb down as suddent as Davy Crockett’s coon.  Maybe I do speak unbiguously, as you say, but I was givin’ you the biggest talkin’ I had in the basket.  And as fer my good news, a feller don’t like to eat up all his country sugar to wunst, I ‘low.  But I says to our young and promisin’ friend of German extraction, beloved, says I, hold onto that air limb a little longer and you’re saved.”

“But, Jonas,” said August, spinning Andrew’s winding-blade round and speaking slowly and bitterly, “a man don’t like to be trifled with, if he is a Dutchman!”

“But sposin’ a man hain’t been trifled with, Dutchman or no Dutchman?  Sposin’ it’s all a optical delusion of the yeers?  There’s a word fer you, Andrew, that a’n’t nuther unbiguous nor peri-what-you-may-call-it.”

“But,” said August, “Betsey Malcolm—­”

“Betsey Malcolm!” said Jonas.  “Betsey Malcolm to thunder!” and then he whistled.  “Set a dog to mind a basket of meat when his chops is a-waterin’ fer it!  Set a kingfisher to take keer of a fish-pond!  Set a cat to raisin’ your orphan chickens on the bottle!  Set a spider to nuss a fly sick with dyspepsy from eatin’ too much molasses!  I’d ruther trust a hen-hawk with a flock of patridges than to trust Betsey Malcolm with your affairs.  I ha’n’t walked behind you from meetin’ and seed her head a bobbin’ like a bluebird’s and her eyes a blazin an’ all that, fer nothin’.  Like as not, Betsey Malcolm’s more nor half your trouble in that quarter.”