“The best of husbands!” What wuz Lettice a-thinkin’ on? She’d no need to put his actin’s and cuttin’s up on a tombstun. I wouldn’t advised her to; but I should say to her—“Now, Lettice, you jest put onto that gravestun a good, plain Bible verse—‘The Lord be merciful to me, a sinner,’ or, ‘Now the weary are at rest,’” or sunthin’ like that—I should have convinced her. But, then, I wuzn’t there—I wuz born a few hundred years too late, and so it had to be; but it made me feel bad to see it. I want my sect to have a little self-respect.
Al Faizi is dretful well-read in history, and he took out that little book of hisen, and copied off the hull of the inscription on Leicester’s tomb, all the glowin’ eulogy of his glorious deeds, which he knew wuz false. He didn’t say nothin’, as usual, but looked quite a good deal as he writ.
I didn’t say nothin’ to him, but Josiah will att him once in a while about his writin’, and he sez now—
“What are you a-writin’ about, Fazer?”
He turned his dreamy, pleasant eyes onto us, and seemed to be lookin’ some distance through us and beyend us, and the light from the East winder fell warm on his face as he sez evasively—
“Your missionaries tell our people to always tell the truth—that we will be lost if we do not.”
“Wall,” sez Josiah, “that is true.”
Al Faizi didn’t reply to him, but kep’ on a-writin’.
Wall, a happy man wuz my pardner as we returned to the tarvern, and a good, refreshin’ meal of vittles wuz spread before him. He done jestice to it—full jestice—yes, indeed!
Wall, the next mornin’ we sot out for the Lake Deestrict, accordin’ to Martin’s first plan, which he’d changed some. Sez Martin, as we wuz talkin’ it over that evenin’—