“Yes,” sez I calmly, “I laid out to end it with a verse of poetry; it wuz to run as follers: ‘Here lies Josiah Allen, husband of Samantha Allen, and—’”
“Hold on!” sez Josiah, gettin’ right up and lookin’ threatenin’. “Hold on right there where you be; no such words as them is a goin’ on my tombstun while I have a breath left in my body. Husband of—Josiah, husband of—I won’t have no such truck as that, and I can tell you that I won’t.”
“Be calm, Josiah,” sez I, “be calm and set down,” for he looked so bad and voyalent that I feared apperplexy or some other fit. Sez I, “Be calm, or you will bring sunthin’ onto yourself.”
“I won’t be calm, and I don’t care what I bring on, and I tell you I ruther bring it on than not, a good deal ruther. The idee! Josiah Allen, husband of—It has got to a great pass if a man has got down to that—to be a husband of—”
“Why,” sez I, lookin’ up into his face stiddily, as he stood over me in a wild and threatenin’ attitude—and some wimmen would have been skairt and showed it out; but I wuzn’t. Good land! don’t I know Josiah Allen, and through him the hull race of mankind? I knew he wouldn’t hurt a hair of my foretop, but he would like to skair me out of the idee, that I knew.
But sez I in a reasonable axent, “You had got it all fixed out ‘Samantha, wife of Josiah—’”
“Wall, that is the way!” sez he, hollerin’ enough almost to crack my ear-pan—“that is the way every man has it on his pardner’s headstun. Go through the hull land and see if it hain’t; you can look on every stun.”
“HE WUZ A WALKIN’ UP AND DOWN.”
Oh, how that “stun” rolled through my head! And sez I, “I am not deef, Josiah Allen, neither am I in Shackville, or Loontown, or the barn. Do you want to raise a panic in your son’s household? Moderate your voice or you will harm your own insides. I know it is the way every man has wrote it about their pardners, and it seemed so popular amongst men I thought I would try it.”