Her house wuz kep clean and sweet too, which wuz indeed a boon.
She talked a sight about her husband, which I don't know as she could help—anyway, I guess she didn't try to.
She told me the first oppurtunity what a good Christian he wuz, how devoted to her, and how much property he laid up, and that he wuz "in salt."
I thought for quite a spell she meant brine, and dassent hardly enquire into the particulars, not knowin' what she had done by the departed, widders are so queer.
But after she had mentioned to me more'n a dozen times her love for the departed, and his industrious and prosperous ways, and tellin' me every single time, "he wuz in salt," I found out that she meant that he wuz in the salt trade—bought and sold, I spozed.
But oh, how she did love to talk about that man; truly she used his sirname to connect us to the vast past, and to the mysterious future. We trod that Plank every day and all day, if we would listen to her.
And sometimes when I would try to get her offen that Plank for a minute, and would bring up the World's Fair to her, and how big the housen wuz, I would find my efforts futile; for all she would say about 'em wuz to tell what Mr. Plank would have done if he had been a-livin', and if he had been onhampered, and out of salt, how much better he would have done than the directors did, and what bigger housen he would have built.
And I would say, "A house that covers over most forty acres is a pretty big house."
But she seemed to think that Mr. Plank would have built housen that covered a few more acres, and towered up higher, and had loftier cupalos.