elf in front of any idol and perish, I will save you if I shed
the last drop of blood in my system!"

"Yes," sez I, "you could do great bizness in savin' me, togged out as
you are, made helpless by your own folly; but," sez I, in a holler,
awful axent, "it hain't that, Josiah; it is fur worse than losin' my
life; that wouldn't be nothin' in comparison."

He looked white as a piller case. Sez he: "Tell me to once what you
lay out to do."

"Well," sez I, "if you must know, I spoze that it might help our
relations with China if I should part with you and wed a China
potentate. It would kill me and be bad for the potentate, but if your
country's welfare is at stake, if it would help our relations I----"

"Let the relations go to Jericho, Samantha! every one on 'em, and the
Potentates! every one on 'em!" and he kicked off them robes quicker
than I can tell the tale.

Sez I, "Josiah, you needn't tear every rag you've got on; take 'em off
quietly." He'd put 'em on over his own clothes. He obeyed me
implicitly, and sez he anxiously, as he laid 'em all on the bed:

"You've gin up the idee, hain't you, Samantha?"

Sez I, "I have for the present, Josiah, I wuz only doin' it to
emulate your sacrifice; if you don't sacrifice yourself any further, I
shan't."

He hadn't been so good to me for sometime as he wuz for the rest of
that day. I only done it to stop his display, and my conscience hain't
been quite at rest ever sence about it, but then a woman has to work
headwork to keep her pardner within bounds. I wuzn't goin' to have him
make a fool of himself before Arvilly and Miss Meechim. Arvilly would
never let him hearn the end on't nor me nuther.

Well, we met the potentate in our own clothes and he met us in his own
clothes, jest as he and we had a right to. He wuz a real sensible man,
so Robert Strong said, and he understood a good deal of his talk and
ort to know.

Well, from Shanghai we sailed for Hongkong and then embarked for Point
de Galle on the island of Ceylon, expectin' to stop on the way at
Saigon in Cochin-China and Singapore.

It wuz dretful windy and onpleasant at first. It is much pleasanter to
read about a monsoon in Jonesville with your feet on a base burner
than to experience one on a steamer. Everything swayed and tipped and
swung, that could, even to our stomachs. We only made a short stop at
Saigon--a hotter place I wuz never in. I thought of the oven in our
kitchen range and felt that if Philury