Samantha at the World's Fair

by Marietta Holley

A tall white figger wuz a-standin' before the glass, draped from head to foot in heavy white drapery.

I'd often turned it over in my mind in hours of ease which I'd ruther have appear to me in the night—a burglar or a ghost.

And now in the tumultous beatin's of my heart I owned up that I would ruther a hundred times it would be a burglar.

Anything seemed to me better than to be alone at night with a ghost.

But anon, as I quaked and trembled under that sheet, the voice spoke agin—

"Samantha, are you awake?" And I sprung up in bed agin, and sez I—

"Josiah Allen, where are you? Oh, save me, Josiah! save me!"

The white figger turned. "Save you from what, Samantha? Is there a mouse under the bed, or is it a spider, or what?"

"Who be you?" sez I, almost incoherently. "Be you a ghost? Oh, Josiah, Josiah!" And I sunk back onto the pillow and busted into tears. The relief wuz too great.

But anon Wonder seized the place that Fear had held in my frame, and dried up the tear-drops, and I sprung up agin and sez—