How can it be stopped?"

Tirzah Ann looked completely squelched and could do nothin' only weakly
ask: "If I spozed I could git him to play on a accordeon, she kinder
thought that some time she'd hearn of some man, somewhere havin' his
mind soothed by one."

"Accordeon!" sez I. "You couldn't git his mind offen that plan if you
gin him one of the golden harps we read about."

Tirzah Ann subsided, only sayin': "We would all be the town's talk, and
it would probable kill her with mortification."

Thomas J. sot still with his brow knit in deep thought and sez "I will
try one thing more."

I never knew exactly how Thomas J. worked it, or what he paid 'em, but I
know that a day or two after, the prices them livin' statutes asked
Josiah for bein' whitewashed, wuz sunthin' perfectly exorbitant, and so
with the Powers and the Peaceful Inventors. He never could stood it with
his closeness.

Thomas J. didn't appear outwardly, but wuz the power behind the thrones,
so I spoze. When Josiah wuz taxed with these fearful expenses (they writ
it in letters to him) his plan tottled ready to fall. And of course I
stood ready and follered it up with eloquent arguments, tenderness and
the very best of vittles. Neither on 'em could carried the day alone,
but all together conquered. He gin in. The plan tottered over and fell
onto him, and my pardner, to continue the metafor, lay under the ruins
as squshed and mute as if he wuz never goin' to git up agin.

But when his wild emotions of ambition and vanity and display wuz all
broke up a settled melancholy hovered down onto him and draped him like
a black mantilly. He seemed all onstrung, and all my efforts to string
him up agin seemed vain.

I strove to hide my apprehensions under a holler veil of calmness and
even hilarity; I give him catnip with a smile on my lip but deep
forebodin' in my mind, and the same with thoroughwert. But catnip didn't
nip his ambition and thoroughwort wuzn't thorough enough to restore his
cheerfulness.

I encouraged him to go to the lake fishin' with Deacon Henzy, though I'd
suffered more than I had ever told from similar occasions. Deacon Henzy
loves hard cider and keeps a kag on tap durin' the summer, he sez it is
for his liver, but liver or no liver it hain't right.

I hain't goin' to make no insinuations about their doin's though sister
Henzy has approached me on the subject time and agin, she hain't so
clost mouthed as I am. But I will merely say that w