me, and
now I've got one thousand and seventy ahead on me."

[Illustration: "_Serenus Gowdey tramped up and down our kitchen floor
swingin' his arms and describin' the wonders of Coney
Island._" (_See page 7_)]

He begun jest as I put my potatoes on to bile, I wuz goin' to smash
'em with plenty of cream and butter; I hearn him till dinner wuz on
the table, and I wuz turnin' out the rich, fragrant coffee and addin'
the cream to it, and his praise on 'em wuz still flowin' in a stiddy
stream, and then I asked him, in one of his short pauses for breath,
how Grout Nickelson's rumatiz wuz.

He answered polite but brief, and resoomed the subject nearest and
dearest. I then, with dizzy foretop and achin' ear pans, tried to turn
his mind onto politics and religion, no avail. I tried cotton cloth,
carbide, lamb's wool blankets, Panama Canal, literatoor, X rays, hens'
eggs, Standard Oil, the school mom, reciprocity, and the tariff; not a
mite of change, all his idees swoshin' up against them islands, and
tryin' to float off our minds there with hisen. I thought of what I'd
hearn Thomas J. read about Tennyson's character, who "didn't want to
die a listener," and I sez in a firm voice, "I've had a letter from
Cousin Faithful Smith. She's comin' here next spring to make a
visit."

Whitfield said he should love to see Cousin Faith, but whilst she wuz
here, we all ort to go to the Thousand Islands.

Sez Josiah firmly, "We ort to take her to Coney Island," and he went
on rehearsin' Serenuses praises, and the education and the bliss one
could git there. He rid his hobby nobly, but Whitfield, bein' young
and spry, could ride his hobby faster and furder, till finally Josiah
got discouraged, and sot still a spell, and then scratched his head,
and went out to the barn. And Whitfield seated himself with ease on
his hobby, which pranced about us till, well as I love the children, I
felt relieved to see 'em go, for my head felt as if the river wuz
rushin' through it. And after they left and we driv over to the post
office, it seemed as if the democrat wuz a boat and the dusty road a
broad, liquid stream, down which we wuz glidin' and the neighin' of
the old mair (we had to leave her colt to home) wuz the snort of a
steamer. My dreams that night wuz about the Saint Lawrence, kinder
swoshy and floatin' round.

Well, the cold winter passed away, as winters will, if you have
patience to wait (or if you don't either, to be exact and truthful