He wanted to know what they was, and I told him plainly they was “Mind your own business.”
He said he would bile ’em doun, and take ’em stiddy as a clock, and pretty soon he started off for Jonesville—he had staid to home that day to help his father. And I went on with a serene face a makin’ my preparations. Josiah didn’t hardly take his eyes off of my face, as I made ’em. He sot in a dejected way, a claspin’ the World in his two hands, with a sad look onto his face. He hated to think of my leavin’ him, and goin’ off on a tower. I see he did, and I says to him in a real affectionate tone,
“Josiah, haint there nothin’ I can do for you in New York, haint you got any errands to the village?”
He rubbed his bald head in deep thought for a minute or two, and then says he, (he thinks everything of the World,) “The nigger barber’s wife to Jonesville came pretty near runnin’ away with another nigger last night; if you have time I should love to have you go to the Editer of the World and tell him of it. I am afraid,” says he, and a gloomy, anxious look over-spread his eye-brow, “I am afraid he haint heard of it.”
I answered him in a soothin’ tone, “That I guessed he had heard of it before now, I guessed it would be in the next week’s World,” and Josiah kinder chirked up and went out to work.
The next day I took ten pounds of butter, and 4 dozen of eggs and Josiah carried me to Jonesville to trade ’em out, to get necessarys for me to wear on my tower. I didn’t begrech layin’ out so much expense, neither did Josiah, for we both knew that as I was gettin’ pretty well along in years, it wasn’t likely I should ever go off on a tower agin. And then I had been prudent and equinomical all my days, and it wasn’t no more than right that I should launch out now in a liberal way.
But all the time I was workin’ over that butter, and all the time I was countin’ out them eggs, Horace was in my mind. Hangin’ such hopes on him as I hung, I felt that I must do somethin’ openly, to give vent to my patriotic feelin’s in regard to him.
I never had wore hats, for I felt that I was too old to wear ’em. But now as I was startin’ off to Jonesville to get necessarys to wear on my mission to that great and good Horace, I felt that principle called on me to come out openly, and wear a white hat with a feather. And I felt that Josiah as the husband of Josiah Allen’s wife, and the carrier of her to get them necessarys, must also wear one.
The father of Josiah, had left to him with other clothin’, a large white fur hat. As the old gentleman hadn’t wore it for some 40 or 50 years prior to and before his desease, (he died when Thomas J. was a baby) it wasn’t in the hight of fashion. But says I, “Josiah Allen in the name of Horace and principle will you wear that hat?”