But Henry Ward Beecher was up ‘n’ doin’ as usual last night.  He skum two pans o’ milk ‘n’ didn’t put the covers back, so a June bug got in.  Mrs. Brown says Mrs. Craig ’s welcome to drink her cat if she favors the idea, but she ain’t drinkin’ no June bugs herself, so she had to give the complete pan to the pigs.  ‘N’ he eat more too!—­he eat ajar o’ watermelon pickles ‘n’ all the calves-foot jelly ’t was all ready f’r old Mrs. Grace.  It’s a serious matter about the jelly, for Mrs. Grace ’s most dead ‘n’ all the calves in town is alive, ‘n’ so where any more jelly ’s to be got in time the Lord only knows.  Mrs. Brown thinks some one ’d ought to write to the minister; she says it ain’t possible ’s he’s always eat like this nights ‘n’ she wants to know how to put a stop to it.  Mrs. Allen thinks ’t some one ’d ought to write to the minister too.  She says ’t Sam ‘n’ Felicia was down on the bridge last night a-holdin’ hands.  She says Polly saw ’em.

“‘N’ Gran’ma Mullins is another as thinks ’t some one ’d ought to write to the minister.  She was down town a-buyin’ some honey to put on little Jane’s thumb.  She’s all but stark mad.  She says mice ‘n’ moths is goin’ to be mere jokes to her hereafter.  She says ’f the minister don’t come back soon little Jane ‘ll have her sucked out o’ bed ‘n’ board.  She says little Jane ’s like him in the history ’t where he chewed the grass never grew again.  There seems to be considerable anxiety ’s to when the minister ’ll get back.  Nobody thought to ask him where he was goin’, ‘n’ as a consequence nobody knows where he’s gone.  Nobody thought to ask him when he was comin’ back, ‘n’ ’s a consequence no one knows when he’s thinkin’ o’ comin’ back.  Mr. Kimball says ‘t his view o’ the matter is as the minister was tired o’ havin’ thirteen children ‘n’ is gone off somewhere else to begin all over.  Fun or not, the idea ’s sort of upset every one.  They went down to see where he bought his ticket for, but Johnny says he only took it to the junction, ‘n’ my own experience is ’t a junction may lead to ‘most anythin’.  Mrs. Macy says ’s there’s only one way to be sure whether he’s gone for good or not, ‘n’ that is to go up to the house ‘n’ see whether he took his ear-muffs along, for it stands to reason ’t any man who ‘d pack his ear-muffs a week like this ain’t intendin’ to ever return.  Every one see the sense o’ that, ‘n’ so Mrs. Macy ’s app’inted herself to go ‘n’ look the house over to-morrow mornin’.  I must say ’t ’f she don’t find them ear-muffs the c’mmunity ’ll be pretty blue to-morrow night.  No one knew how fond they was of the minister until they begin to find out what them thirteen childern come to when you add ’em all up separately.  I d’n’ know’s I ever was so glad of anythin’ in my life ‘s I am that I drew No. 14 out o’ Mrs. Craig’s sugar-bowl.  Fate ’s a strange thing when you look it under ‘n’ over ‘n’ hind end to, Mrs. Lathrop,—­there was me drawin’ No. 14 ‘n’ Mrs. Craig herself gettin’ Augustus, ‘n’ all on account of a sugar-bowl, ‘n’ that sugar-bowl hers ‘n’ not mine.”