“And there we would be, all wore out with our job, and not pleasin’ nobody, nor nothin’, but makin’ the hull caboodle mad as hens at us; and we a-not meanin’ any hurt, none of the time, a-meanin’ well towards Jonesville and rinosterhorses.  Wouldn’t we be in a situation to be pitied, Arvilly?”

“Yes,” sez she, “it is jest so as I tell you; Cephus sez that he won’t wait a minute longer than September.”

I see how it wuz—­she hadn’t hearn a word of my remarkable eloquence.  Like all the rest, she had vivid idees about Sunday closin’; but come to the p’int, her own affairs wuz of the most consequence.  She forgot all about the struggles of the Directors in their efforts to do what wuz right and best, in thoughts of Cephus.

But I considered it human nater, and forgive her.  Wall, after Arvilly left me, I returned agin to the sights in the noble Liberal Arts Department, and see everything else that wuz riz up and helpful; and finding out everything about the land and sea, the Heavens, and depths below the earth and seas.

And oh, what queer, queer feelin’s that sight gin me; they hain’t to be described upon, and I hain’t a-goin’ to try to; it would be too much—­too much for the public to hear about it, and for me to record ’em; though there wuz plenty of weights, measures, and balances, if I had tried to tackle the job of weighin’ ’em.

Now, what I have said of the liberal part, and especially of the trainin’ of the young, you can see plain that it wuz as much more interestin’ than the manafactures part as the soul is superior to the body, or eternity is longer than time.

So, the world bein’ such a sort of a curious place, it didn’t surprise me a mite to see that this department, that wuz the most important in the hull Columbian World’s Fair, wuz dretful cramped for room, and kinder put away upstairs.

For, as I sez to myself, the old world has such dretful curious kinks in it, it didn’t surprise me a mite to have this department sort o’ squeezed into the end o’ one buildin’, and upstairs kinder, while the display for horned cattle covered over sixty acres.

A good many farmers are as careful agin of their blooded stock as they are of the welfare of their wives and children.

They will put work and hardship on the mother of their children that they wouldn’t think of darin’ to venture with their cows with a pedigree, for they would say, such overwork will injure the calf.

How is it with their own children, when the delicate mother does all the household drudgery of a farm, and milks seven or eight cows night and mornin’?

Toilin’ till late bedtime, gettin’ up before half rested, and takin’ up agin the hard toil till the little feeble child-life is born into the world.

How is it with the mother and the child?

For answer, I refer you to countless newspaper files, under the headin’ of “mysterious dispensations of Providence,” and to old solitary churchyards, and to the insane statisticks of the country.