And that is all the help I can get. And I s’pose I shall have to let it go on. But I feel like death about it. When he comes here, and Kitty don’t happen to be here, he will always begin to exhort me on religion. He is the disagreeablest, self-righteousest creeter I ever see, and that I won’t deny.
“Oh,” says he to me yesterday—there had been a funeral up by here, and when he came back he hitched the hearse, and come in. And he began to exhort me, and says he: “I have been a thinkin’ of it all day,—how glad I am that salvation is free.”
I felt wore out with him, and says I: “Well you may be glad. For if it wasn’t free, you wouldn’t have any—not a mite. You wouldn’t either if you had to pay a cent for it.”
Before he could say anything, Kitty come in. She had been out to the barn with Josiah to feed the sheep. She looked like a blush-rose; her eyes a dancin’ and a sparklin’. And Kellup acted spoonier than any spoon I have got on my buttery shelves.
JOSIAH GOES INTO BUSINESS.
Josiah Allen has got a sort of a natural hankerin’ after makin’ money easy. A sort of a speculatin’ turn to his mind, which most men have. But not havin’ the other ingregiences that go with it to make it a success, his speculations turn out awful, 2 episodes of which I will relate and set down. One pleasant evenin’ Josiah had jest got back from carryin’ Kitty Smith to Tirzah Ann’s. Tirzah Ann had sent for her to stay a spell with her. And Josiah had got back and put the horses out, and sot by the fire a meditatin’ to all outward appearance. When all of a sudden he broke out and says:
“Samantha, I love to make money easy.”
“Do you?” says I, in a mechanicle way, for I was bindin’ off the heel of a sock of hisen, and my mind was sort o’ drawed out by that heel, and strained.
“Yes,” says he, crossin’ his legs, and lookin’ dretful wise at me, “Yes, I love to, like a dog. I love to kinder speculate.”