The relation on Columbuses side wuz a middlin’ good-lookin’ and a good-natered lookin’ man, no taller than Josiah, with blue eyes, gray hair, and short whiskers.

[Illustration:  Columbuses own relation on his own side, with his wife and daughter.]

His wife wuz a good-lookin’, plump woman, some younger apparently than he wuz, and the daughter wuz pretty and fresh-lookin’ as a pink rose.

I liked their looks first rate.

And jest the minute my eyes fell on ’em, so quick my intellect moves, I knew what was incumbent on me to do.

It wuz my place, it would be expected of me—­I must welcome them to America; I must, in the name of my own dignity, and the power of the Nation, gin ’em the freedom of Jonesville.  I must not slight them for their own sakes, and their noble ancestors.

One human weakness might be discovered in me by a clost observer in that rapt hour:  I didn’t really know how to address the wife of the Duke.

And I whispered to Irena Flanders, and, sez I, “If a man is a duke, what would his wife be called?” Sez I, “She’d feel hurt if I slighted her.”

And sez she, “If one is a duke, the other would naterally be called a drake.”

I knew better than that—­she hain’t any too smart by nater, and her mind runs to fowls, what there is of it.

But my Josiah heard the inquiry, and sez he—­

“I should call her a duck;” and he continued, with his eyes riveted on the beautiful face of the Duke’s daughter—­

“That pretty girl is a duck, and no mistake.”

But I sez, “Hush; that would be too familiar and also too rural.”

I hain’t ashamed of the country—­no, indeed, I am proud on’t; still I knew that it wuz, specially in June, noted for its tender greenness.

And sez I, “I’ll trust to the hour to inspire me; I’ll sail out as his great ancestor did, and trust to Providence to help me out.”

So I advanced onto ’em, and I thought, as I went, if you call a man by the hull of his name he hadn’t ort to complain; so I sez with a deep curchey—­I knew a plain curchey wouldn’t do justice to the occasion.

So I gracefully took hold of my alpaca skirt with both hands and held it out slightly, and curchied from ten to fourteen inches, I should judge.

I wanted it deep enough to show the profound esteem and honor in which I held him, and not deep enough so’s to give him the false idee that I wuz a professional dancer, or opera singer, or anything of that sort.

I judged that my curchey wuz jest about right.

[Illustration:  “I salute you in the name of Jonesville and America.”]

Imegatly after my curchey I sez, “Don Christobel Colon De Toledo De La Cerda Y Gante,” and then I paused for breath, while the world waited—­

“I welcome you to this country—­I salute you in the name of Jonesville and America.”

And then agin I made that noble, beautiful curchey.