“No,” says I pretty brief, for I was jest puttin’ in the ingrediences to a six quart pan loaf of fruit cake, and on them occasions I want my mind cool and unruffled.
“Aspire Todd is goin’ to deliver the oration,” says she.
“Aspire Todd! Who’s he?” says I cooly.
“Josiah Allen’s wife,” says she, “have you forgotten the sweet poem that thrilled us so in the Jonesville Gimlet a few weeks since?”
“I haint been thrilled by no poem,” says I with an almost icy face pourin’ in my melted butter.
“Then it must be that you have never seen it, I have it in my port-money and I will read it to you,” says she, not heedin’ the dark froun gatherin’ on my eye-brow, and she begun to read,
A questioning sail sent over the Mystic Sea.
BY PROF. ASPIRE TODD.
So the majestic thunder-bolt of feeling,
Out of our inner lives, our unseen beings flow,