cago."

Of course it seemed all right to me, but I was afraid of it, and was
thinking of pounding him up right then, when in came Elder Thorndyke to
put in the paper something about his next Sunday's services, and McGill
asked him to read the story and act as umpire. And after he had gone
over it, he grasped my hand and said that Virginia and I had not told
them half of the strange story of our living through the blizzard out on
the prairie, and that it was a great drama of resolution, resource and
bravery on my part, and seemed almost like a miracle.

"Will this hurt Virginia's feelings if it is printed?" I asked.

"No, no," he said. "It will make her fiance a hero. It will tickle her,"
said he, "half to death."

Then I told Dick he might go on with it if he would leave it just as it
was. The joke was on him, after all, for there was nothing in it about
my fight with Buck Gowdy, or of my robbing him of the team and sleigh
and harness and robes and Nick, the little dog.

The third thing that N.V. thought might have sent me down through the
greased tin horn of politics, which has ruined more good men than any
other form of gambling, was my management of the business of getting the
township set off, against the opposition of the whole Monterey Centre
Ring. But he did not know of that day in Dubuque, and of my smuggling of
Mrs. Bliven into Iowa, as I have told it in this history. It hurt Bliven
politically, but he kept on boosting me, and it was his electioneering,
that I knew nothing about, that elected me justice of the peace; and it
was Mrs. Bliven's urging that caused me to qualify by being sworn
in--though I couldn't see what she meant by her interest.

6

On my next birthday, the twenty-seventh of July, however, something
happened that after a few months of figuring made me think that they
knew what they were about all the time; for on that day they (the
Blivens) got up a surprise party on us, and came in such rigs as they
had (there were more light rigs than at the Governor Wade reception, a
fact of historical interest as showing progress); though Virginia did
not seem to be much surprised. In the course of the evening Doc Bliven
started in making fun of me as a justice of the peace.

"I helped a little to elect you, Jake," said he, "but I'll bet you
couldn't make out a mittimus if you had to send a criminal to jail
to-night."

"I won't bet," I said, "I know I couldn't!"

"I'll bet the oysters for the cr