INTERVIEW WITH HORACE
“Yes!” says he, “but it places anybody under a very strong light—a very strong light. I have never done anything out of the way sense I was first born, but what I have seen it in the papers. I tore my pantaloons once,” says he, gloomily, “in gettin’ over the fence at the early age of 2 and a half, and I bit my mother once at the age of 7 months a nursin’, I could wish these two errors of my past to be forgotten by the world and overlooked, but in vain. I am taunted with ’em on every side. I never threw a boot jack at a tom cat in the dead of the night, but what my picture has been took in the act, I never swore a oath to myself in the depths of my own stomach, but what I have seen that unspoken oath in the papers. I never jawed Mrs. Greeley about my shirt buttons,” he continued, sadly, “in the depths of our secluded chamber, but what it has been illustrated with notes.”
As he spoke of jawin’ about shirt buttons, I says to myself, “How much! how much human nature is alike in all men,” and I says aloud,
“How much you remind me of Josiah.”
“Of Josiah!” says he, and that name seemed to make him remember himself, and to come nobly out of his gloomy reflections. “Josiah, he is your husband! Oh yes, Josiah Allen’s wife! I am glad to meet you, for although I couldn’t comply with the request your letter contained, yet it convinced me that you are a sincere friend to the human race.”
“Yes,” says I, “Horace, I am, and I want you to consider my request over agin.”
But he interrupted me hurriedly, seemin’ to want to turn my mind from that subject.
“What do you think of Fourier’s system, Josiah Allen’s wife?” says he, lookin’ at me languidly over his specks.