I see he wuz sick of lookin’ at flowers, and I d’no as I could blame him; for my own head seemed to be jest a-turnin’ round and round, and every turnin’ had more colors than any rainbow you ever laid eyes on.

He wuz dretful anxious to git out-doors himself.  He said it wuz all for himself that he wuz hurryin’ so.

I d’no that, but I do know that in his haste to help me git out he stepped on my foot, and almost made a wreck of that valuable member.

I looked bad, and groaned, and sithed considerable ’fore he got to the sheltered bench he’d sot out for.

He acted sorry, and I didn’t reproach him any.

I only sez, “Oh, I don’t lay it up aginst you, Josiah.  It jest reminds me of Sister Blanker.”

And he sez, “I don’t thank you to compare me to that slab-sided old maid.”

Sez I, “I believe she’s a Christian, Josiah.”

And so I do.  But sez I, “Folks must be megum even in goodness, Josiah Allen, and in order to set down and hold a half orphan in your arms, you mustn’t overset yourself and come down on the floor on top of a hull orphan or a nursin’ child.

“You mustn’t tromple so fast on your way to the gole as to walk over and upset two or three lame ones and paryletics.”

Sez I, “Do you remember my eppisode with Sister Blanker, Josiah?”

He did not frame a reply to me, but sot off to look at sunthin’ or ruther, sayin’ that he would come back in a few minutes.

And as I sot there alone Memory went on and onrolled her panorama in front of my eyeballs, about my singular eppisode with Drusilla Blanker.

Sister Blanker is a good woman and a Christian, but she never so much as sot her foot on the fair plains of megumness, whose balmy, even climate has afforded me so much comfort all my life.

No; she is a woman who stalks on towards goles and don’t mind who or what she upsets on her way.

She is a woman who a-chasin’ sinners slams the door in the faces of saints.

And what I mean by this is that she is in such a hurry to git inside the door of Duty (a real heavy door sometimes, heavy as iron), she don’t see whether or not it is a-goin’ to slam back and hit somebody in the forward.

A remarkable instance of this memory onrolled on her panorama—­a eppisode that took place in our own Jonesville meetin’-house.

The session room where we go to session sometimes and to transact other business has got a heavy swing door.  And everybody who goes through it always calculates to hold it back if there is anybody comin’ behind ’em, for that door has been known to knock a man down when it come onto him onexpected and onbeknown to him.

Wall, Sister Blanker wuz a-goin’ on ahead of me one night; it wuz a charitable meetin’ that we wuz a-goin’ to—­to quilt a bedquilt for a heathen—­and she knew I wuz jest behind her—­right on her tracts, as you may say, for we had sot out together from the preachin’-room, and we had been a-talkin’ all the way there on the different merits of otter color or butnut for linin’ for the quilt, and as to whether herrin’-bone looked so good as a quiltin’ stitch as plain rib.