The Project Gutenberg EBook of Samantha Among the Brethren, Part 4.
by Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

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Title: Samantha Among the Brethren, Part 4.

Author: Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

Release Date: August 10, 2004 [EBook #9446]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SAMANTHA

AMONG THE BRETHREN.

By

"Josiah Allen's Wife"

(Marietta Holley)

Part 4

CHAPTER XIII.

Curius, hain't it? How folks will get to tellin' things, and finally
tell 'em so much, that finally they will get to believin' of 'em
themselves--boastin' of bein' rich, etc., or bad. Now I have seen folks
boast over that, act real haughty because they had been bad and got over
it. I've seen temperance lecturers and religious exhorters boast sights
and sights over how bad they had been. But they wuzn't tellin' the
truth, though they had told the same thing so much that probable they
had got to thinkin' so.

But in the case of one man in petickuler, I found out for myself, for I
didn't believe what he wuz a sayin' any of the time.

Why, he made out in evenin' meetin's, protracted and otherwise, that he
had been a awful villain. Why no pirate wuz ever wickeder than he made
himself out to be, in the old times before he turned round and become
pious.

[Illustration: "HIS FACE WUZ A GOOD MORAL FACE."]

But I didn't believe it, for he had a good look to his face, all but the
high headed look he had, and sort o' vain.

But except this one look, his face wuz a good moral face, and I knew
that no man could cut up and act as he claimed that he had, without
carryin' some marks on the face of the cuttin' up, and also of the
actin'.

And so, as it happened, I went a visitin' (to Josiah's relations) to the
very place where he had claimed to do his deeds of wild badness, and I
found that he had always been a pattern man--never had done a single
mean act, so fur as wuz known.

Where wuz his boastin' then? As the Bible sez, why, it wuz all vain
talk. He had done it to get up a reputation. He