But I sez, “I guess they’ll git along without hearin’ that accordeon.”
“I might sing sunthin’, I spose,” sez he. “I could put on my dressin’ gown and belt it down with the tossels and appear as a singer, and sing a silo.”
That wuz the evenin’ after Dorothy, in a thin, white dress, a little low in the neck and short sleeves, had stood up and sung a lovely piece, or that is I ’spoze it wuz lovely, it wuz in some foreign tongue, but it sounded first rate, as sweet as the song of a robin or medder lark––you know how we all like to hear them, though we can’t quite understand 90 robin and lark language. It wuz kinder good in Josiah to want to give pleasure in return for what he had had, but I argyed him into thinkin’ that he and I would give more pleasure as a congregation than as speakers or singers. For after I had vetoed the singin’ that good man proposed that he should speak a piece. Sez he, “I could tell most the hull of the American Taxation.”
And I sez, “I wouldn’t harrer up the minds of the rich men on board with thoughts of taxes,” sez I, “when lots of ’em are goin’ away to get rid on ’em.”
“Well,” sez he, “I could tell the hull of Robert Kidd.”
And I sez, “Well, I wouldn’t harrer up their feelin’s talkin’ about hullsale stealin’; they have enough of that to hum in the big cities.”
So gradual I got him off from the idee.
There wuz one little boy about Tommy’s age and a sister a little older I felt real sorry for, they looked so queer, and their ma, a thin, wirey, nervous lookin’ woman brooded over ’em like a settin’ hen over her eggs. They wuz dressed well, but dretful bulged out and swollen lookin’, and I sez to their ma one day:
“Are your children dropsical?”
And she sez, “Oh, no, their health is good. The swellin’s you see are life preservers.” She said that she kep’ one on their stomachs night and day.