trikes. It made him sick to listen to Tom, and to hear the
people say "My land!" "Did you ever!" "My goodness sakes alive!" and
all such things; but he couldn't pull away from it, any more than a fly
that's got its hind leg fast in the molasses. And always when Tom come
to a rest, the poor old cretur would chip in on HIS same old travels
and work them for all they were worth; but they were pretty faded, and
didn't go for much, and it was pitiful to see. And then Tom would take
another innings, and then the old man again--and so on, and so on, for
an hour and more, each trying to beat out the other.

You see, Parsons' travels happened like this: When he first got to
be postmaster and was green in the business, there come a letter
for somebody he didn't know, and there wasn't any such person in the
village. Well, he didn't know what to do, nor how to act, and there the
letter stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of
it gave him a conniption. The postage wasn't paid on it, and that was
another thing to worry about. There wasn't any way to collect that ten
cents, and he reckon'd the gov'ment would hold him responsible for it
and maybe turn him out besides, when they found he hadn't collected it.
Well, at last he couldn't stand it any longer. He couldn't sleep nights,
he couldn't eat, he was thinned down to a shadder, yet he da'sn't ask
anybody's advice, for the very person he asked for advice might go back
on him and let the gov'ment know about the letter. He had the letter
buried under the floor, but that did no good; if he happened to see
a person standing over the place it'd give him the cold shivers, and
loaded him up with suspicions, and he would sit up that night till the
town was still and dark, and then he would sneak there and get it out
and bury it in another place. Of course, people got to avoiding him and
shaking their heads and whispering, because, the way he was looking and
acting, they judged he had killed somebody or done something terrible,
they didn't know what, and if he had been a stranger they would've
lynched him.

Well, as I was saying, it got so he couldn't stand it any longer; so
he made up his mind to pull out for Washington, and just go to the
President of the United States and make a clean breast of the whole
thing, not keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay
it before the whole gov'ment, and say, "Now, there she is--do with me
what you're a mind to; th