that them
butter figgers can't touch--no, nor the pop-corn trees can't reach that
height with their sorghum branches. It lays fur beyond the switchin'
timothy tail of that seed horse or the wavin' raisen mane of that prune
charger. It is a realm," sez I, "that I fear you will never stand in,
Josiah Allen."

"No, indeed," sez he; "and I don't want to. I hain't no desires that
way."

Again I sithed, and we walked off into another gallery.

Wall, I might write and keep a-writin' from Fourth of July to Christmas
Eve, and then git up Christmas mornin' and say truly that the half
hadn't been told of what we see there, and so what is the use of tryin'
to relate it in this epistle.

But suffice it to say that we stayed there all day long, and that night
we meandered home perfectly wore out, and perfectly riz up in our two
minds, or at least I wuz. Josiah's feelin's seemed to be clear fag, jest
plain wore out fag.

The nights are always cool in Chicago--that is, if the weather is
anyways comfortable durin' the day.

And this night it wuz so cool that a good woollen blanket and bedspread
wuz none too much for comfort.

And it wuz with a sithe of contentment that I lay down on my peaceful
goose-feather pillow, and drawed the blankets up over my weary frame and
sunk to sleep.

I had been to sleep I know not how long when a angry, excited voice
wakened me. It said, "Lay down, can't you!"

I hearn it as one in a dream. I couldn't sense where I wuz nor who wuz
talkin', when agin I hearn--

"Dum it all! why can't you fall as you ort to?"

Wuz some struggle a-goin' on in my room? The bed wuz in an alcove, and I
could not see the place from where the voice proceeded.

I reached my hand out. My worst apprehensions wuz realized. Josiah wuz
not there.

Wuz some one a-killin' him, and a-orderin' him to lay still and fall as
he ort to?

Wuz such boldness in crime possible?

I raised my head and looked out into the room, and then with a wild
shriek I covered up my head. Then I discovered that there wuz only one
thin sheet over me.

The sight I had seen had driv' the blood in my veins all back to my
heart.

A tall white figger wuz a-standin' before the glass, draped from head to
foot in heavy white drapery.

I'd often turned it over in my mind in hours of ease which I'd ruther
have appear to me in the night--a burglar or a ghost.

And now in the tumultous beatin's of my heart I owned up that I would
ruther a hundred