make a crackin' good gondola
out of the old stun boat, kinder hist it up in front and whittle out a
head on it and a neck some like an old gander's. We could take old
High Horns for a model, and we could make good oars out of old
fish-poles and broom-handles, and you own a veil, and blue streamers
don't cost much--nothin' henders us from showin' off in that way but
your obstinate sperit."

But I sez, "I shall never appear in that panoramy, never."

"Oh, well," sez he, gayly, "Jonesville has other females beside you,
more tractable and more genteel. Most probable Sister Celestine
Bobbett and she that wuz Submit Tewksberry would love to float in a
gondola by the side of one of Jonesville's leadin' men."

I looked full in his face and sez, "Has foreign travel shook your
morals till they begin to tottle? Have I got to see a back-slidden
Josiah?"

Sez he, real earnest, "You are the choice of my youth, the joy of my
prime of life."

"Well, then," sez I, "shet up!" I wuz out of patience with his giddy
idees, and wouldn't brook 'em.

We laid out to go from Milan to Genoa till we changed our plans. I
thought it wuzn't no more'n right that we should pay Columbus that
honor, for I always wondered, and spoze always shall, what would have
become of us if we hadn't been discovered. I spoze we should have got
along some way, but it wouldn't have been nigh so handy for us. I
presoom mebby Josiah and I would have been warwhoopin' and livin' in
tepees and eatin' dogs, though it don't seem to me that any colored
skin I might have could have made me relish Snip either in a stew or
briled. That dog is most human.

I always felt real grateful to Columbus and knowed he hadn't been used
as he ort to be. And then Mother Smith left me a work-bag, most new,
made of Genoa velvet, and I awfully wanted to git a little piece more
to put with it so's I could make a bunnet out of it. But Dorothy
wanted to see Verona and her wish wuz law to the head of our party,
and when the head of a procession turns down a road, the rest of the
procession must foller on in order to look worth a cent. Miss Meechim
said that it wuz on her account that he favored Dorothy so. But it
wuzn't no such thing and anybody could see different if their eyes
wuzn't blinded with self-conceit and egotism. But take them two
together and there is no blinders equal to 'em. They go fur ahead of
the old mair's, and hern are made of thick leather.

Well, Robert thought we had b