times it would be a burglar.

Anything seemed to me better than to be alone at night with a ghost.

But anon, as I quaked and trembled under that sheet, the voice spoke
agin--

"Samantha, are you awake?" And I sprung up in bed agin, and sez I--

"Josiah Allen, where are you? Oh, save me, Josiah! save me!"

The white figger turned. "Save you from what, Samantha? Is there a mouse
under the bed, or is it a spider, or what?"

"Who be you?" sez I, almost incoherently. "Be you a ghost? Oh, Josiah,
Josiah!" And I sunk back onto the pillow and busted into tears. The
relief wuz too great.

But anon Wonder seized the place that Fear had held in my frame, and
dried up the tear-drops, and I sprung up agin and sez--

"What be you a-doin', Josiah Allen, rigged up as you be in the middle of
the night, with the lights all a-burnin'?"

For every gas jet in the room was a-blazin' high.

Sez he, "I am posin' for a statute, Samantha."

And come to look closter, I see he had took off the blanket and
bedspread and had swathed 'em round his form some like a toga.

And I see it wuz them that he wuz apostrofizin' and orderin' to lay down
in folds and fall graceful.

And somehow the idee of his takin' the bedclothes offen me seemed to mad
me about as much as his foolishness and vanity did.

And sez I, "Do you take off them bedclothes offen you, and put 'em back
agin, and come to bed!"

But he didn't heed me, he went on with his vain doin's and actin'.

"I am impersonatin' Apollo!" sez he, a-layin' his head onto one side and
a-lookin' at me over his shoulder in a kind of a languishin' way.

Sez he, a-liftin' his heel, and holdin' it up a little ways, "I did
think I would be Mercury, but I hadn't any wing handy for my off heel. I
would be strikin' as Mercury," sez he, "but I think I would be at my
best as Apollo. What do you think I had better be, Samantha?"

[Illustration: "I would be strikin' as Mercury, but I think I would
be at my best as Apollo."]

"A loonatick would strike me as the right thing, Josiah Allen, or an
idiot from birth.

"Or," sez I, speakin' more ironicler as my fear died away, leavin' in
its void a great madness and tiredness, "if you'd brung your scythe
along you might personate Old Father Time."

I guess this kinder madded him, and sez he, "Don't you want to pose,
Samantha?

"Don't you want to be the Witch of Endor?" sez he.

"Yes," sez I, "I'd love to! If I _wuz_ her you'd see sights in this room