He wuz a-travellin’ abroad. And, to use a common adage, usually applied to horses—“He felt his oats.”
Wall, they got up a paper on board and printed it on a typewriter—the Lord furnishin’ most of the jokes for it.
And then they had a peanut-party, and the Lord carried the most of anybody on the back of his hand and got the prize—3 long strings of glass beads, and he wore ’em all the evenin’, to his wife’s horrow.
But the clerk, whose father kep’ a peanut-stand, and who had dwelt with ’em all the days of his youth, he thought it wuz a vulgar party, and he looked at peanuts as if he knew ’em not.
There wuz times when the sea wuz rough, and Josiah and I retired to the cabin, and for hours bemoaned our fate and wondered if we should ever agin see the cliffs of Jonesville.
And on one heavey day, when the floor of our cell seemed to rise up and smite us in the pits of our stumicks, Josiah made his will, and handed it to me, with a face on which love and agony and fear appeared, about a third of each on ’em.
Sez he, in a voice tremblin’ with emotion—“Take my last tribute of love, and,” sez he, “have it recorded, or it may be broke.”
“But,” sez I, “dear Josiah”—for his love awoke my own; it had been havin’ a nap while I wuz a-wrestlin’ with the elements, and furniture that wuz a-tryin’ to upset me.
Sez I—“If you die, I, too, shall perish. So what avails a will?”
He hadn’t thought of that, and sez he, a-speakin’ out feebly from his bunk with his eyes shet—