inda had always follered Elder Minkley's orders strict, that he gin
her at the altar--

"Wives, obey your husbands."

She didn't rebel outward, but she whispered to me in pitiful axents--

"I hate to ride that creeter--oh, how I hate to! But you know my
principles," sez she; "you know I always said that wives ort to obey
their pardners."

And I sez, "When pardners and common sense conflict, I foller common
sense every time. Howsumever," sez I, "if you want to air them
principles of yourn, you won't be apt to find a more lofty place to
exhibit 'em."

And I glanced up the gray precipitous sides of that camel, and she
looked up 'em, too, with fear and tremblin', but begun to gird her
lions, figgeratively speakin', to obey Bizer and embark.

She has always boasted to me and the other neighborin' wimmen that she
has never disobeyed her husband once; and I sez to her cheerfully,
"Wall, I have, and expect to agin, if the Lord spares my life."

And so Miss Bobbet told her, and Miss Gowdy, and Miss Peedick, and all
the rest. She acted so high-headed about it, that we said it some to
take down her pride, and some on principle.

We believed there wuz reason in all things, and none of us wimmen felt
that we would stand

"On a burnin' deck,
Whence all but we had fled,"

and burn up, even if our pardners had ordered us to. We wuz law-abidin',
every one on us, but we felt there wuz times where law ended and common
sense begun.

But Selinda argued, I well remember, that if Bizer had ordered her to
stay on that deck, she should stay and be sot fire to.

And she praised up little Casey Bianky warmly, while we thought and said
that Casey acted like a fool, and felt that Mr. Bianky would much ruther
had him run and save himself than to burn up; anyway, old Miss Bianky
would, and I believe his pa would.

Men are good-hearted creeters the biggest heft of the time, but failable
in judgment sometimes, jest like female wimmen.

But Selinda wuz firm in her belief.

And here this day in Chicago she gin one of the most remarkable proofs
of it ever seen in this country.

So while Selinda trembled like a popple leaf, and her false teeth
rattled over her dry tongue (besides the camel, she wuz 'fraid as death
of the Turkey that driv it, and he did look fierce), the camel knelt
down, and the almost swoonin' Selinda was histed up onto his back by the
proud and haughty Bizer, and the strange-lookin' Turkey.

She had no more than go