!" and I wuz jest a-rushin' into
the inclosure when they come a-tearin' round for the fourth time, and
jest a little ways from us the ostrich give a wild yell and leap, and
Josiah wuz thrown almost onto our feet.

As the keeper rushed in to pick him up, we see he held a feather in his
hand.

He thought it wuz tore out by excitement, and Josiah clinched the
feathers to save himself.

But Josiah owned up to me afterwards that he gin up that he wuz a-goin'
to be killed, and that his last thought wuz as he swooned away--wuz how
much ostrich feathers cost, and how sweet it would be to give me a last
gift of dyin' love, by pickin' a feather off for nothin'.

I groaned and sithed when he told me, and sez I, "What won't you do
next, Josiah Allen?"

But this wuz hereafter, and to pick up the thread of my story agin.

Wall, Josiah wuzn't killed, he wuz only stunted, and he soon recovered
his conscientousness.

And before half a hour passed away he wuz a-talkin' as pert as you
please, a-boastin' of how he would tell it in Jonesville. Sez he, "I
wonder what Deacon Henzy will say when I tell him that I rode a bird
while I wuz here?" Sez he, "He never rode a crow or a sparrer."

"Nor you, nuther," sez I; "how could you ride a crow?"

"Wall," sez he, "I've rid a ostrich, and the news will cause great
excitement in Jonesville, and probable up as fur as Zoar and Loontown."

Then come Solomon's Temple. Josiah and I both felt that that wuz a good
scriptural sight, worthy of a deacon and a deaconess, for some say that
that is the proper way to address a deacon's wife.

But come to find out, the Temple wuz inside of a house, and you had to
pay to go in.

And I sez, "Less pay, Josiah Allen, and go in."

And he said that "it wuzn't scriptural. Solomon's Temple in Bible times
never had a house built round it. And he wuzn't a-goin' to encourage
folks to go on and build meetin'-housen inside of other housen.

"Why," sez he, "if that idee is encouraged, they will be for buildin' a
house round the Jonesville meetin'-house, and we will have to pay to go
in."

Sez he, "Less show our colors for the right, Samantha."

The argument wuz a middlin' good one, though I felt that there wuzn't no
danger.

But he went on ahead, and I had to foller on after him, like two old
ducks goin' to water.

I guess that if it had been free he wouldn't have insisted on our
showin' our colors.

Wall, the end of the Plaisance wuz devoted to soldier