"Don't you believe that, Josiah Allen; it hain't no such thing, I hearn all about it, the elephant didn't go clear in. He didn't go more than half in, they could see his back all the time and they got him out all right."
"Well, that's furder in the mud than the old mair ever went enough sight, and I never could have faced my country agin, if the streets had been so muddy at my Exposition."
"Don't be pickin' flaws all the time, Josiah. There is enough of beauty and grandeur here to satisfy any common man."
"But I hain't a common man, Samantha, and never wuz called so."
"Well, oncommon then, there is enough beauty here to satisfy an oncommon man."
That seemed to molify him, and he gin in that it wuz a pretty good show. But in many things inferior to what hisen would have been if he'd carried it out. But I discouraged all such morbid idees and led his mind off onto sunthin' else.
That evenin' whilst Josiah went out to mail a letter Blandina come into my room and sez the first thing, "Aunt Samantha, I love him passionately but my love is scorned by him."
And she busted into tears. I didn't ask no questions, but from Billy's icy demeanor at supper table and Blandina's sentimental grief-stricken linement I mistrusted she'd made overtoors to him that had been rejected.
But I tried to turn her mind 'round by showin' her a letter I'd jest got from Maggie, my son, Thomas Jefferson's wife, tellin' me that her sister Molly, who had been visitin' a college friend in the South, had come home much sooner than she had been expected and seemed run down and most sick.
But she wuz bound to go to the Fair and they thought it wouldn't hurt her to go, as there didn't seem to be anything serious the matter with her only she seemed melancholy and out of sperits, it seemed to be her mind that wuz ailin' more than her body. And would I if there wuz room in my boardin' place take her in and mother her a little. Maggie couldn't come herself, she wuzn't feelin' strong enough, and Thomas J. won't leave her, specially if anything ails her, no indeed! he jest worships her, and visey versey she him.