But Blandina seemed to lose her efforts, for Uncle Sime talked real grouty to her, he has never had a idee of marryin' anybody since his wife died and he mistrusts wimmen are runnin' after him. You know male widowers do git that idee into their heads, them that are as humbly as Time in the Primer, and a onmarried woman can't ask 'em about the weather, or sheep, or anything but what they mistrust some hidden warmth, and pride themselves on how attractive they be. It's a sight.
As nigh as I could find out the minute Josiah Allen left me he took the railway and hurried to the wicked place where he and Uncle Sime wuz to meet, expectin' to git back in ample time to meet us. But they wuz so took up with the show they dallied, and so retribution and a indignant pardner overtook 'em. Well, we took the Intremoral railway and went back to finish Agricultural Hall, for that bein' writ on my pad I wanted to complete it so fur as we could, of course it would took months to do justice to it.
We got there in a few minutes, and Josiah, as might be expected, wanted to see the food exhibits, so we went where there wuz all kinds of food made of vegetable products, all kind of grain, flour mills where you could see wheat go in one end and bread come out the other, bakeries, kitchens, tea and coffee pavilions and every sort of animal food products, milk and cream in every form, fresh and preserved cheese and butter dairies, all sorts of dairy tools, churns, separators, cheese presses and vats, everything connected with makin' butter and cheese, transporting and distributing. Starch factories, broom factories, market gardening in all branches.
Grasses, all sorts of fodder for cattle, raised in every country of the world, and the best methods of raising. Everything relating to poultry, artificial hatching and raising. Every kind of crop raised in every country of the world and the best methods of raising and handling them. As in cotton, you can see it from the tiny seed clear to the cotton mill, so in corn, you see everything that is manufactured from it and how it is done—meal, breakfast foods, starch, bread, pastry, baking powders, yeast, from a kernel of corn up to mills and manufactories. And so it wuz in everything raised in our own country and all over the world.
And there wuz a display of insects, bees and everything relating to honey and wax. Silk worms and their work and products, cochineal and all kinds of useful insects and their work, and hurtful insects and methods of destroying them, and so on and so on and so on. I couldn't tell all I see if I should try a week, and what we see wuzn't a drop to a fountain. The immense buildin' is divided off into streets and blocks jest like a city, and you might roam through them streets a month and find sunthin' new and interestin' every day and hour.
Well, from there we went to Horticultural Hall, or we had started for there when Josiah made a observation about the size of a potato he had seen in Agricultural Hall, that I had to in the cause of Truth and Duty object to, the size he mentioned was a twelve-quart pail, and I said:
"Josiah, take off a few quarts from that pail. For the good of your soul take off two quarts anyway."
"Not a quart!" sez he, "nor a spunful."
Well, we had words about it, Blandina as usual siding with her uncle, and it ended with their goin' back with a string, which Josiah produced from his pocket to measure it, I offering to stay by a certain statute till they got back. And as I stood there lookin' at the stiddy passin' crowd and philosophizin' on it as my nater is, I wuz accosted by a strange lookin' man, as I took it to be (I say It for reasons named hereafter).
"Josiah Allen's wife, I am happy to meet you; I knew you at once though it is so long since we met." In the meantime it had gripped holt of my hand with fervor.