“And when, half dead from her dreadful life, she ran away at the peril of her life, and wuz taken in by a charitable woman, and nursed back to life and sanity agin.

“The law took that baby out of that safe refuge, and give her back into the hands of her brutal master—­took her back, knowin’ the life she would be compelled to lead.

“Think if it wuz our Tirzah Ann, Josiah Allen!”

“Dum the dum fools!” sez he, a chokin’ some, and then he pulled out his bandanna handkerchief and busted right out a-cryin’ onto it.

[Illustration:  “Dum ’em, I say!”]

“Dum ’em, I say!” sez he, out of its red and yeller depths.  “I’d love to skin the hull on ’em, Judge and Jury.”

And I sez meanin’ly, “Now, do you want to go and be intimate with them law-makers, Josiah Allen?”

“No,” sez he, a-wipin’ his eyes and a-lookin’ mad, “no, I don’t!  I want sunthin’ to eat!”

And I riz up imegatly, and got a good dinner—­a extra good one.  And he never said another word about goin’ to Washington, D.C.

CHAPTER VI.

There wuz sights and sights of talk in Jonesville and the adjacent and surroundin’ world about the World’s Fair bein’ open on Sundays.

There wuz sights and sights of fightin’ back and forth about the rights and the wrongs of it.

And there wuz some talk about the saloons bein’ open too, bein’ open week days and Sundays.

But, of course, there wuzn’t so much talk about that; it seemed to be all settled from the very first on’t that the saloons wuz a-goin’ to be open the hull of the time—­that they must be.

Why, it seemed to be understood that drunkards had to be made and kep up; murderers, and asassins, and thieves, and robbers, and law-breakers of every kind, and fighters, and wife-beaters, and arsons, and rapiners, and child-killers had to be made.  That wuz neccessary, and considered so from the first.  For if this trade wuz to stop for even one day out of the seven, why, where would be the crimes and casualities, the cuttin’s up and actin’s, the murders and the suicides, to fill up the Sunday papers with?

And to keep the police courts full and a-runnin’ over with business, and the prisons, and jails, and reformatorys full of victims, and the morgues full of dead bodies.

No; the saloons had to be open Sundays; that wuz considered as almost a settled thing from the very first on’t.

Why, the nation must have considered it one of the neccessarys, or it wouldn’t have gone into partnership with ’em, and took part of the pay.

But there wuz a great and almost impassioned fight a-goin’ on about havin’ the World’s Fair, the broad gallerys of art and beauty, bein’ open to the public Sunday.

Lots of Christian men and wimmen come right out and said, swore right up and down that if Christopher Columbus let folks come to his doin’s on Sunday they wouldn’t go to it at all.