"And it wuz jest about that time," sez Dr. Meezik, "le'me see, it wuz on my birthday about nine minutes past four o'clock in the afternoon, or it may have been nine and a half minutes past, I always want to be perfectly exact in my statements, but we will let it go at nine minutes.
"I wuz a great hunter in them days and fearless as a lion as you may know by my goin' out on the ice to meet that bear who had come to eat green corn, and killed him with my hoe handle.
"I had gone a little further north than I had ever gone before, and I come out to a big clearin' that I had never seen. I should say it wuz half a degree north of where we're settin' now, or it might have been half a pint further, a man can't be too exact and particular in telling such things, for some folks if they wanted to pick flaws and find fault might doubt his statement. But I didn't have my pocket compass with me and I wuz so surprised at what I see there that I don't know that I should thought to use it if I had had it.
"I must say that as many strange things as I've seen and heard I never wuz so surprised as I wuz at what I see there.
"Right there in that big clearin' there wuz a perfect army of tinkers makin' a immense brass kettle. There wuz jest one hundred of 'em, for I counted 'em over twice so's to be sure of gittin' the exact number. I am always so perfectly reliable in my statements, and am bound to git the smallest petickulars jest right. I spoze I got the habit partly from weighin' out my medicines so exact.
"And them tinkers wuz hammerin' away for all they wuz worth on that kettle, and you may judge of the size of it when I tell you them workmen wuz so fur apart they couldn't hear each other a hammerin'."
Even Condelick Henzy wuz took back and browbeat and sez mekanically, "What do you spoze they wuz goin' to do with the kettle?"
"Well," sez Dr. Meezik, "they didn't tell me, for I didn't want to act forward and ask, but I always spozed they wuz goin' to use it to bile your cabbage in."
Just at this epock of time Samantha gathered up her insane piece work and left the room. She didn't say nothin', but I knowed by the looks of her linement jest as well as I know now, that she'd throw that kettle and that cabbage in my face some time the most inconvenient for me, and you can see plain she's done it and now I hope she's satisfied.
As I said I went out to the barn and kinder fussed round cleanin' up some, and I never see Samantha agin till dinner time. I wuzn't afraid to go in and meet her and have her resoom her argument agin. No, I skorn the importation. I belong to a fearless sect, and am almost unacquainted with the word fear, though I know there is such a word in the Dictionary.