A few days after we got home, Josiah took Penstock and they sot off for a two weeks’ stay at Shadow Island. And a few days after they got there he writ me that they had broke ground for the cottage. And that very day I got my feet wet down to the creek paster huntin’ for a turkey’s nest, and come down with inflamatory rumatiz, and couldn’t walk a step for upwards of four weeks, and Ury’s wife come and took care on me. My head felt bad too, Coney Island had been too much for me—
Well, Josiah would come home Sundays all wrought up and enthusiastick boastin’ what a model house it wuz, jest perfect, and what new and magnificent discoveries he had made to lighten labor, which he wuz goin’ to git patented and probable make our everlastin’ fortune, as well as make Tirzah Ann perfectly happy. And I’d set with my foot on a piller, and hear him go on and forebode and forebode, and I groaned more about the house than I did with the pain in my lim, though that wuz fearful.
Well, after it had been goin’ on for about four 316 weeks, one Saturday when he come home over Sunday, he said the house wuz all up and nearin’ completion, and he carried the idee if he didn’t come right out and say it, that there wuzn’t a mansion in the New Jerusalem that went ahead on’t. My rumatiz and head wuz quite a little better, and he proposed that I should go back with him Monday mornin’ on a short tower and see the house, and be a humble witness and admirer of his glorious triumph (he didn’t say these words right out but carried the idee plain in his linement, and hauty demeanor). Well, I concluded to go, and Philury bandaged up my lim in soft flannel moistened with anarky, and packed various bottles of linement, etc., in my portmanty and Ury took us to the train.
Well I will pass over our voyage to Shadow Island, but in the fullness of time we arrove there, and stood in front of the cottage. The seen all round it wuz fair indeed, but the structure looked queer, queer as a dog. There wuz piazzas and porticos, and ornament piled on ornament cropped out on every side. It wuz weighted down with cheap little sawed out peaks and pints, and triangles perforated with holes for ornaments, but the hull thing looked shiftless, tippin’ and lop sided. I stood lookin’ 317 at it in silence for a long time, it looked so queer that it sort o’ stunted and brow beat me, and my first words wuz spoke as much to my own soul as to my companion, “It looks strange, passin’ strange!”
“Yes,” sez Josiah, “hain’t it a uneek plan?”
“Yes,” sez I, “a uneeker one wuz never seen on this planet.” And agin I seemed to lose myself in strange emotions, it looked so awful, a kind of or mingled with my indignation and regret.
“Nobody will steal them idees!” sez he proudly.
“No,” sez I sadly, “you’re safe from that.” And I sez, as I looked up at the queer, lop sided, flighty, vain thing, “It leans over considerable, Josiah Allen, it is very tippin’.”
He looked worried, but sez in a sort of apology way, “I had it lean over one side on account of havin’ rain water dripp offen the eaves, and have the snow slide off in drifty times. Ruffs have been known to fall in, and I wanted to ensure Tirzah Ann’s havin’ a ruff over her head anyway.”
Agin I looked on in solemn or, and sez wonderin’ly, “What will Tirzah Ann say when she sees it?” 318