“No, mom; much obliged jest the same, but I am a-goin’ to canvass my way there.  I am goin’ to sell the ‘Wild, Wicked, and Warlike Deeds of Man.’  I calculate to make money enough to get me there and ride some of the way, and take care of me while I am there; I may tackle some other book or article to sell.  But I am goin’ to branch out on that, and I am goin’ to have a good time, too.”

[Illustration:  “No, mom; much obliged jest the same.”]

Miss Stebbins said, “She wanted to go, and calculated to, but she wanted to finish that croshay lap-robe before snow fell.”

“Wall,” sez I, “snow hain’t a-goin’ to fall very soon now, early in the Spring so.”

“Wall,” she said, “that it wuz such tryin’ work for the eyes, she wouldn’t leave it for nothin’ till she got back, for she mistrusted that she should feel kind o’ mauger and wore out.  And then,” she said, “she had got to make a dozen fine shirts for Solomon, so’s to leave him comfortable while she wuz gone, and the children three suits apiece all round.”

Sez I, “How long do you lay out to be gone?”

“About two weeks,” she said.

And I told her, “That it didn’t seem as if he would need so many shirts for so short a time.”

But she said, “She should feel more relieved to have ’em done.”

So I wouldn’t say no more to break it up.  For it is fur from me to want to diminish any female’s relief.

And the cars tooted jest then, so I didn’t have no more time to multiply words with her anyway.

CHAPTER VIII.

We were travellin’ in a car they call a parlor, though it didn’t look no more like our parlor than ours does like a steeple on a wind-mill.  But it wuz dretful nice and comogeous.

We five occupied seats all together, and right next to us, acrost the aisle, wuz two men a-arguin’ on the Injun question.  I didn’t know ’em, but I see that Thomas J. and Krit wuz some acquainted with ’em; they wuz business men.

When I first begun to hear ’em talk (they talked loud—­we couldn’t help hearin’ ’em), they seemed to be kinder laughin’, and one of ’em said: 

“Yes, they denied the right of suffrage to wimmen and give it to the Injuns, and the next week the Injuns started off on the war-path.  Whether they did it through independence or through triumph nobody knows, but it is known that they went.”

And I thought to myself, “Mebby they wuz mad to think that the Goverment denied to intelligent Christian wimmen the rights gin to savages.”  Thinks’es I, “It is enough to make a Injun mad, or anything else.”

[Illustration:  “They denied the right of suffrage to wimmen and give it to the Injuns.”]

But I didn’t speak my mind out loud, and they begun to talk earnest and excited about ’em, and I could see as they went on that they felt jest alike towards the Injuns, and wanted ’em wiped off’en the face of the earth; but they disagreed some as to the ways they wanted ’em wiped.  One of ’em wanted ’em shot right down to once, and exterminated jest as you kill potato-bugs.