But I explained it out to him that fashion called for dinner at the hour that we usually partook of our evenin’ meal at Jonesville.

Sez I, “Josiah, I would love for jest once to go to a big fashionable restaurant and mingle with the fashionable throng—­jest for instruction and education, Josiah, not that I want to foller it up.”

But sez he, “We’d better go to the same old place where we’ve got good, clean dinners and supperses, and enough on ’em, and at a livin’ price.”

But he argued warm at the foolishness of the enterprise.

But onlucky creeter that I wuz, I argued that, bein’ a woman in search of instruction and wisdom, I wanted to see life on as many sides as I could; while I was at Columbuses doin’s I wanted to look round and see all I could in a social and educational way.

Poor deceived human creeters, how they will blind their own eyes when they pursue their own desires!

I do spoze it wuz vanity and pride that wuz at the bottom of it.

And truly, if I desired to see life on a new side I wuz about to have my wish; and if I had a haughty sperit when I entered that hall of fashion, it wuz with droopin’ feathers and lowered crest that I went out on’t.

Josiah wuz mad when he finally gin up and accompanied and went in with me.

It wuz a beautifully decorated room, and crowds of splendidly dressed men and wimmen wuz a-settin’ round at little tables all over the room.

And as we went in, a tall, elegant-lookin’ man, who I spozed for a long time wuz a minister, and I wondered enough what brung him there, and why he should advance and wait on me, but spozed it wuz because of the high opinion they had of me at Chicago, and their wantin’ to use me so awful well.

But for all his white collar, and necktie, and sanctimonious look, I found out that he wuz a waiter, for all on ’em looked jest as he did, slick enough to be kept in a bandbox, and only let out once in a while to air.

Wall, he led the way to a little table, and we seated ourselves, Josiah still a-actin’ mad—­mad as a hen, and uppish.

And then the waiter put some little slips of paper before us, one with printin’ and one with writin’ on it, and a pencil, and sez he, “I will be back when you make out your order.”

And Josiah took out his old silver spectacles and begun to read out loud, and his voice wuz angry and morbid in the extreme.

Sez he, loud and clear, “Blue pints—­pints of what, I’d love to know?  If it wuz a good pint of sweetened vinegar and ginger, I’d fall in with the idee.”

Sez I, “Keep still, Josiah; they’re a-lookin’ at you.”

“Wall, let ’em look,” sez he, out loud and defiant.

“Consomme of chicken a la princess—­what do we want of Princesses here, or Queens, or Dukesses—­we want sunthin’ to eat!  Devilish crabs—­do you want some, Samantha?”

I looked over his shoulder, in wild horrer at them awful words, and then I whispered, “Devilled crabs—­and do you keep still, Josiah Allen; I’d ruther not have anythin’ to eat at all than to have you act so—­it hain’t devilish.”