Well, we stood there by the counter, a feelin’ of Jane, and tryin’ the thickness and color of it, and talkin’ together—as wimmen will—when who should come in but the Editor of the Auger’ses wife. She is a woman that is liked better on further acquaintance. She is thought a sight on in Jonesville; more’n her husband is, ten times over. She’s had two pair of twins sense she was married; I never see such a hand for twins as the Editor is. He’s had three pair and a half sense I knew him.
Well, as I was a sayin’, she came in, and called for some cigars. She told us he sent her to git ’em, the two biggest twins bein’ to school, and there bein’ nobody to come only jest him or her. She had walked afoot, and looked tired enough to sink; they lived about a mile and a half out of the village.
She said the Editor could not come himself for he was writin’ a long article on “The Imprudence, Impurity, and Impiety of Woman’s Appearance at the Pole.” She said, he said he was goin’ to make a great effort; he was goin’ to present the indecency and immorality of woman’s goin’ to ’lection, in such a masterly way that it would set the matter to rest forever. It was for to-morrow’s paper, and bein’ obleeged to use up so much brain, as he had to in the effort, he felt he must have some cigars, and a codfish; you know fish is dretful nourishin’ to the mind, and he is fond of it; he told her to get the biggest codfish she could get, and bile it up. And she was goin’ to.
I didn’t say much in reply to her, truly, as the poet says, “The least said is the soonest mended.” I only told her in a kind of a blind way, that if codfish was good for common sense, not to stent him on it. And jest then the storekeeper came back from down suller with the fish.
BRAIN FOOD.
“Good land!” says I the minute I laid eyes on it; “haint you made a mistake?”
“What mistake?” says he.
Says I, “Haint it a whale?”
“Oh no,” says he, “it is a codfish; but it is a pretty sizeable one.”