d my choppin' knife out of my hand, and rested my elbow on the
table, and leaned my head on my hand in deep thought.

I see he had more sense on his side than I thought he had. I recollected
the different and various ways in which he had showed his equinomical
tightness sence our married life begun, and I trembled for the result.

I ruminated over our early married life, and how, in spite of his words
of almost impassioned tenderness and onwillingness for me to harm and
strain myself by approachin' the political pole--still how he had let me
wrestle with weighty hop-poles and draw water out of a deep well with a
cistern pole for more'n fourteen years.

I remembered how he had nearly flooded out his own precious and valuable
insides at Saratoga by his wild efforts to git the full worth of the
five cents he had advanced to the Spring-tender.

I remembered the widder's mite, how he had interpreted that scriptural
incident about that noble female--as interpreters will, to suit their
own idees as males--and how I had argued with him in vain on the mite,
and his onscriptural and equinomical views.

I felt that he had a strong and powerful case; and though I could not
brook the idee of his goin', still I thought that I must be as wise as a
serpent and as harmless as a turkle-dove, to git the victory over him.

He see by the fluckuations of color on my usially calm cheek, and by the
pensive and thoughtful look in my two gray orbs, that I felt the
strength and powerfulness of his cause.

And as he mused, he begun in joyous and triumphant axents to bring up
before me some of his latest and most striking instances of equinomical
tightness.

Sez he, "Do you remember the case of Sy Biddlecomb, and them green
pumpkins of mine, how I--" But I interrupted his almost fervid
eloquence, and sez I, with my right hand extended in a real eloquent
wave,

"Pause, Josiah Allen, and less consider and weigh things in the
balances. Go not too fast, less disapintment attend your efforts, and
mortification wrops you in its mantilly.

"Your equinomical ways, Josiah Allen," sez I, "it seems to me ort to
rize you up above every other man on the face of the globe, and make a
lion of you of the first magnitude, even a roarin' African lion, as it
were."

He looked proud and happy, and I proceeded.

"But pause for one moment," sez I, in tender, cautious axents, "and
think of the power, the tremendious econimy of the males you are
a-tryin' to