weet while he rests, and his labor
makes his food taste good and nourishes his strength, while the rich
man who can lay till noon, turns on his restless pillow and can't
sleep night or day. And while he has plenty to buy rich viands he has
no appetite to eat or health to digest his food.

"The morning song of the lark sounds sweet to the laborer as it rises
over the dew-spangled fields, as he goes forth to his daily toil,
while the paid songs the rich man hears palls on his pleasure-tired
senses. At home you have rest of body, and in travel you have
education and variety; yes, the gouts and twits in life even up pretty
well and the yarn runs pretty smooth offen the reel of Time to the
traveller and the stay-at-home, the rich and the poor."

Josiah wuz brushin' his back hair with two brushes (one would have
been plenty enough), and he kep' on with his employment and sez
without lookin' up:

"I wonder where the Widder Rice's grandson, Ezra, is? He wuz out to
the West the last I hearn on him."

There it wuz! My eloquence had rolled offen him like water from a tin
eavespout; hadn't touched him at all nor uplifted him, though I felt
real riz up. You know you can talk yourself up onto quite a hite if
you try; but Josiah wuzn't moved a mite from the place he'd stood on.

Well, that wuz one of the gouts in my yarn of life, but a twit wuz
near by--it had its compensation. He worships me! And I went on and
eppisoded to myself to bring myself up to the mark as I wadded up my
back hair. Sez I to myself: "If Josiah had the eye to see the onseen
eagles soarin' up in the sky above his head, mebby he would also see
my faults too plain. If he could hear in winter midnights the murmur
of dancin' waters and the melogious voice of the south wind blowin'
over roses and voyalets, he might also hear the voice of Distrust. If
he had the wisdom of Solomon he might also have his discursive
fancies, his various and evanescent attachments. But as it is, his
love is stiddy and as firm as a rock. So the gouts and the twits
evened each other up after all, and the yarn run pretty smooth."

CHAPTER XXVIII

The next mornin' Tommy wuz delighted with the idee of goin' in a boat
after some hair-pins for me and a comb for him--he had broke hisen. It
wuzn't fur we went, and I spoze we might have walked by goin' a little
furder; but variety is the spice of life, and it seemed to kinder
refresh us.

Floating in a gondola on the Grand Canal of