it.

Trueman wuz Josiah's cousin, on his own side, and I always made a
practice of usin' her quite well. She used to live neighbor to me before
I wuz married, and she come and stayed nine weeks.

She is a tall spindlin' woman, a Second Adventist by perswasion, and
weighs about ninety-nine pounds.

Wall, as I say, she means middlin' well, and would be quite agreeable
if it wuzn't for a habit she has of thinkin' what she duz is a leetle
better than anybody else can do, and wantin' to tell a leetle better
story than anybody else can.

Now she thinks she looks better than I do. But Josiah sez she can't
begin with me for looks, and I don't spoze she can, though of course it
hain't to be expected that I would want it told of that I said so. No, I
wouldn't want it told of pro or con, especially con. But I know Josiah
Allen has always been called a pretty good judge of wimmen's looks.

[Illustration: "SHE IS A TALL SPINDLIN' WOMAN."]

And now she thinks she can set hens better than I can--and make better
riz biscuit. She jest the same as told me so. Any way, the first time
I baked bread after she got here, she looked down on my loaves real
haughty, yet with a pityin' look, and sez:

"It is very good for yeast, but I always use milk emptin's."

And she kinder tested her head, and sort o' swept out of the room, not
with a broom, no, she would scorn to sweep out a room with a broom or
help me in any way, but she sort o' swept it out with her mean. But I
didn't care, I knew my bread wuz good.

Now if anybody is sick, she will always tell of times when she has been
sicker. She boasts of layin' three nights and two days in a fit. But we
don't believe it, Josiah and me don't. That is, we don't believe she lay
there so long, a-runnin'.

We believe she come out of 'em occasionally.

But you couldn't get her to give off a hour or a minute of the time.
Three nights and two days she lay there a-runnin', so she sez, and she
has said it so long, that we spoze, Josiah and me do, that she believes
it herself now.

CHAPTER XIII.

Curius, hain't it? How folks will get to tellin' things, and finally
tell 'em so much, that finally they will get to believin' of 'em
themselves--boastin' of bein' rich, etc., or bad. Now I have seen folks
boast over that, act real haughty because they had been bad and got over
it. I've seen temperance lecturers and religious exhorters boast sights
and sights over how bad they had been. But th