CHAPTER IV.
This free pass of Josiah Allen's wus indeed a strange incident, and it made sights and sights of talk.
But of course there wus considerable lyin' about it, as you know the way is. Why, it does beat all how stories will grow.
Why, when I hear a story nowadays, I always allow a full half for shrinkage, and sometimes three-quarters; and a good many times that hain't enough. Such awful lyin' times! It duz beat all.
But about this strange thing that took place and happened, I will proceed and relate the plain and unvarnished history of it. And what I set down in this epistol, you can depend upon. It is the plain truth, entirely unvarnished: not a mite of varnish will there be on it.
A little over two years ago Josiah Allen, my companion, had a opportunity to buy a wood-lot cheap. It wus about a mild and a half from here, and one side of the lot run along by the side of the railroad. A Irishman had owned it previous and prior to this time, and had built a little shanty on it, and a pig-pen. But times got hard, the pig died, and owing to that, and other financikal difficulties, the Irishman had to sell the place, “ten acres more or less, runnin' up to a stake, and back again,” as the law directs.