“That is jest how I want to act, like a Methodist, and a equinomical counsellor.”

“What for?” sez I.  “What do you want to do?”

“Why, to teach ’em,” sez he.  “To show myself off.  To counsel ’em.”

“To counsel ’em about what?” sez I heavily, bein’ bound to come to the bottom of the matter, and the sense on’t, if sense there wuz in it.

“Why,” sez he, “they are havin’ a counsel there to see if there are any new ways for men and Methodists to be equinomical.  And I’ll be dumned if there is a man or a Methodist from Maine to Florida that can counsel ’em better about bein’ equinomical than I can.

“Why, you have always said so,” sez he.  “You have called it tightness, but I have always known that it wuz pure economy; and now,” sez he, “has come the chance of a lifetime, for me to rise up and show myself off before the nation.  To git the high, lofty name that I ort to have, and do good.”

I dropped my choppin’ knife out of my hand, and rested my elbow on the table, and leaned my head on my hand in deep thought.

I see he had more sense on his side than I thought he had.  I recollected the different and various ways in which he had showed his equinomical tightness sence our married life begun, and I trembled for the result.

I ruminated over our early married life, and how, in spite of his words of almost impassioned tenderness and onwillingness for me to harm and strain myself by approachin’ the political pole—­still how he had let me wrestle with weighty hop-poles and draw water out of a deep well with a cistern pole for more’n fourteen years.

I remembered how he had nearly flooded out his own precious and valuable insides at Saratoga by his wild efforts to git the full worth of the five cents he had advanced to the Spring-tender.

I remembered the widder’s mite, how he had interpreted that scriptural incident about that noble female—­as interpreters will, to suit their own idees as males—­and how I had argued with him in vain on the mite, and his onscriptural and equinomical views.

I felt that he had a strong and powerful case; and though I could not brook the idee of his goin’, still I thought that I must be as wise as a serpent and as harmless as a turkle-dove, to git the victory over him.

He see by the fluckuations of color on my usially calm cheek, and by the pensive and thoughtful look in my two gray orbs, that I felt the strength and powerfulness of his cause.

And as he mused, he begun in joyous and triumphant axents to bring up before me some of his latest and most striking instances of equinomical tightness.

Sez he, “Do you remember the case of Sy Biddlecomb, and them green pumpkins of mine, how I—­” But I interrupted his almost fervid eloquence, and sez I, with my right hand extended in a real eloquent wave,

“Pause, Josiah Allen, and less consider and weigh things in the balances.  Go not too fast, less disapintment attend your efforts, and mortification wrops you in its mantilly.