But never, never, did I see Josiah Allen so highlarious in his most highlarious times. He acted almost perfectly happy. Why, you would have thought he was a young man to see him act. It was fairly sickish, and I told him so.
“Wall,” says he, as he started out, “you can make light of me all you are a mind to, Samantha, but as long as Josiah Allen has the chance to make another fellow-mortal perfectly happy, and put money in his own pocket at the same time, he hain’t the feller to let the chance slip.”
“Wall,” says I coldly, “shet the gate after you.”
I knew there wuzn’t no use in arguin’ any more with him about it. And I think it is a great thing to know when to stop arguin’ or preachin’ or anythin’. It is a great thing to know enough to stop talkin’ when you have got through sayin’ anythin’. But this is a deep subject; one I might allegore hours and hours on, and still leave ample room for allegory.
And to resoom and continue on, he started off; and I wound up the clock, and undressed and went to bed, leavin’ the back-kitchen door onlocked.
Wall, that was in the neighborhood of 10 o’clock. And I declare for’t, and I hain’t afraid to own it, that I felt afraid. There I was all alone in the house, sunthin’ that hardly ever happened to me, for Josiah Allen was always one that you couldn’t get away from home nights if he could possibly help it; and if he did go I almost always went with him. Yes, Josiah Allen is almost always near me; and though he hain’t probable so much protection as he would be if he weighed more by the steelyards, yet such is my love for him that I feel safe when he is by my side.
I had read only a day or two before about a number of houses bein’ broken open and plundered, besides several cases of rapine; and though I hain’t, I persume, so afraid of burglers as I would be if I had ever been burgled, and though I tried to put my best foot forward, and be calm, still, the solemn thought would come to me, and I couldn’t drive it away: Who knows but what this is the time that I shall be rapined and burgled?
Oh! what a fearful time I did have in my mind, as I lay there in my usually peaceful feather-bed.
Wall, I got wider and wider awake every minute, and thinkses I, I will get up and light the lamp, and read a little, and mebby that will quiet me down. So I got up and sot down by the buro, and took up the last World; and the very first piece I read was a account of a house bein’ broke into, between ten o’clock and midnight, and four wimmen massacreed in their beds.
I laid down the World, and groaned loud. And then I sithed hard several times. And right there, while I was a sithin’, sunthin’ come kerslop aginst the window, right by my side. And though I hain’t no doubt it was a June bug or a bat, still if it had been a burgler all saddled and bridled that had rode up aginst my winder, it couldn’t have skairt me no worse, and I couldn’t have jumped no higher, I was that wrought up and excited.