big, I hain't told it big enough.

Good land! I guess I won't boast any more.

Wall, seein' that I am in sunthin' of a hurry, I will let it go, and
mebby if I should go over it agin I should lie the other way.

Good land! good land! what a world this is, and with all your care and
watchfulness, how hard it is to keep walkin' right along, in Injun file,
along the narrer rope walk of megumness and exact truth.

But I am a-eppisodin', and to resoom.

Wall, as I said, we didn't git home till pitch dark, and then I drempt
of fish all night, and eels, and alligators, and such. It wuz tegus.

[Illustration: I drempt of fish all night.]

The next mornin' Josiah Allen met me all riz up with a new idee.

He had been out to buy a new pair of suspenders, his havin' gin out the
day before; and he come to our room, where I wuz calmly settin'
a-bastin' in some clean cotton lace into the sleeves of my alpaca dress.

And sez he right out abrup, with no preamble, "Samantha, less go down to
the Fair Ground in a whale."

"In a whale?" sez I; "are you a loonatick, or what duz ail you, to try
to make a pair of Jonahses of us at our age?"