ce she assured me that she would be careful, and she jined her
companion and went on towards the spring. And I know she wuz dretful
pleased with what I'd said to her for I hearn her fairly laugh out as
she told the lady about it.

Whilst we wuz in Carlsbad Miss Meechim took the mud baths. She said
they wuz considered very genteel and I guess mebby they wuz, so many
things are genteel that are kinder disagreeable. They wuz also said to
be first-rate for the rumatiz and the nerves. But it seemed to me I
had almost ruther have nerves than to be covered all over with that
nasty black mud.

They take about sixty pounds of clay and mix it with the hot spring
water till it is just about as thick as I make the batter for
buckwheat cakes in Jonesville, and I make that jest about as thick as
I do my Injin bread. And you git into this bath and stay about half an
hour. Then of course before you're let loose in society you're gin a
clean water bath to git the mud off. Miss Meechim thought they helped
her a sight, and mebby they did, and she boasted a lot how genteel
they wuz.

But I told her I had never been in the habit of settin' store by mud
and lookin' up to it, and didn't believe I should begin at this late
day, but Josiah's rumatiz wuz so bad I didn't know but he had better
take one. But he said he had took one in Jonesville some years ago
that would last him durin' his nateral life.

He did fall into a deep mud-puddle one night goin' to sister Celestine
Gowdey's for a bask pattern for Tirzah Ann. And it bein' dark and the
puddle a deep one he floundered round in it till he looked more like a
drownded rat than a human bein'. He never could bear basks from that
hour till this, and he has always dated his rumatiz from that time,
but it hain't so; he had it before. But 'tennyrate he wouldn't take
the mud baths at Carlsbad, nor none of us did but Miss Meechim.
Howsumever there are lots of folks that set store by 'em.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Well, we went back to Vienna, and from there set sail for Berlin,
homeward bound. Josiah was in dretful good sperits, and said that no
monument or obelisk we had seen on our tower could ever roust up his
admiration like the Jonesville M. E. steeple when he should first
ketch sight on't loomin' up beautiful and glorious from the
enrapturin' Jonesville seenery.

And I felt a good deal as he did, but knowed that his feelin's made
him go too fur, for Jonesville seenery hain't enrapturin',