“Is this pleasure, Josiah Allen?”
He gave the old mare a awful cut, an says he, “I’d like to know what you want to be so agrevatin’ for?”
I didn’t multiply any more words with him, only as we drove up to our door-step, and he helped me out into a mud puddle, I says to him:
“Mebby you’ll hear to me another time, Josiah Allen.”
And I’ll bet he will. I haint afraid to bet a ten cent bill, that that man won’t never open his mouth to me again about a Pleasure Exertion.
HOW WE TOOK IN SUMMER BOARDERS.
Last summer, as the days grew hot, Josiah grew fearfully cross. And his worst spells would come on to him, as he would come home from Jonesville.
You see, an old friend of his’n, Jake Mandagood by name, was a-takin’ in boarders, and makin’ money by ’em. And s’pose, from what I learned afterward, that he kep’ a-throwin’ them boarders into Josiah’s face, and sayin’ if it wuzn’t for his wife, he could make jest as much money. Jake Mandagood had heerd me talk on the subject time and agin. For my feelin’s about summer boarders, and takin’ of ’em in, had always been cast-iron. I wouldn’t take ’em in, I had allers said.
Josiah, like other pardners of his sect, is very fond of havin’ things as he wants ’em; and he is also fond of makin’ money; and I s’pose that wus what made him so fearfully cross to me. But I was skairt most to death, seein’ him come home lookin’ so manger, and crosser than any bear out of a circus.