"Samantha, save me! save me! I am lost!" sez he.
I wuz now in tears, and I sez wildly—
"I will save that dear man, or perish!" and I wuz jest a-rushin' into the inclosure when they come a-tearin' round for the fourth time, and jest a little ways from us the ostrich give a wild yell and leap, and Josiah wuz thrown almost onto our feet.
As the keeper rushed in to pick him up, we see he held a feather in his hand.
He thought it wuz tore out by excitement, and Josiah clinched the feathers to save himself.
But Josiah owned up to me afterwards that he gin up that he wuz a-goin' to be killed, and that his last thought wuz as he swooned away—wuz how much ostrich feathers cost, and how sweet it would be to give me a last gift of dyin' love, by pickin' a feather off for nothin'.
I groaned and sithed when he told me, and sez I, "What won't you do next, Josiah Allen?"
But this wuz hereafter, and to pick up the thread of my story agin.
Wall, Josiah wuzn't killed, he wuz only stunted, and he soon recovered his conscientousness.