Josiah Allen's Wife as a P. A. and P. I.: Samantha at the Centennial. / Designed As a Bright and Shining Light, to Pierce the Fogs of Error and Injustice That Surround Society and Josiah, and to Bring More Clearly to View the Path That Leads Straight on to Virtue and Happiness.

by Marietta Holley

The good lookin’ feller was jest liftin’ of it in, and countin’ over his money, when the two fellers come up with the colt. It seemed that they had had a explanation as they was comin’ back; I see they had as quick as I catched sight on ’em, for they was a walkin’ one on one side of the road, and the other on the other, most tight up to the fence. They was most dead the colt had run ’em so, and it did seem as if their faces couldn’t look no redder nor more madder than they did as we catched sight on ’em and Josiah thanked ’em for drivin’ back the colt; but when they see that the other feller had sold us a machine, their faces did look redder and madder.

But I didn’t care a mite; we drove off tickled enough that we had got through with our sufferin’s with agents. And the colt had got so beat out a runnin’ and racin’, that he drove home first-rate, walkin’ along by the old mare as stiddy as a deacon.

PREPARIN’ FOR OUR TOWER.

It was on a fair and lovely mornin’, though middlin’ cool, that I told my Josiah that if he and I was a goin’ to see the Sentinal it was time for us to be makin’ some preparations. Thomas J. haint a goin’ till bime-by. He wants to go in company with Maggy Snow and her father, and I don’t blame him a mite—I was young once myself. The Squire is laid up now with rheumatiz, can’t step a step on his left foot. I was out on the back stoop, a shakin’ my table cloth and Josiah was out there a grindin’ his jack knife on the grindstun, and I says to him, again:

“Josiah Allen it is time for us to prepare.”

Says he, “I thought mebby you’d want to give up goin’, Samantha.”

“I want to give up goin’!” says I, in a almost mekanical tone, but very cold.

“Yes,” says he in a sickly and almost foolish tone. “I didn’t know but you’d want to wait till the next one; I didn’t know but you’d drather.”

“Drather!” I repeated still more icily. “I would wait if I was in your place Josiah Allen, till we are as old as the hills; if we was alive we’d be carried there in a side show, and you know it;” and I folded up my table cloth almost severely.