"Samantha, when I'm took, if you hire anybody to mourn get some better lookin' females than these. I had almost ruther die onlamented than to have such lookin' creeters weepin' over my remains; now some fair lookin' females such as sister Celestine Bobbett and she that wuz Submit Tewksbury----" But I interrupted him by telling him truly that no hired tears would fall on his beloved face if I outlived him, and no boughten groans would be hearn. Sez I, "The tears of true love and grief would bedew your forward." "Well," sez he, "it would be my wishes." As we wended our way along we met several water-carriers with leather bottles, jest such a one as Hagar took with her and Ishmael out in the desert, and it wuz on this same desert whose sands wuz siftin' in about us every chance it had that she lay the child down to die and angels come and fed him. And, also, it bein' along towards night we met several shepherds; one wuz carryin' a tired lamb in his arms. They wuz patriarkal in appearance and dressed jest like the Bible pictures. I felt as though I had met Abraham or Isaac onbeknown to them. Another sight that impressed my pardner fearfully wuz the howlin' dervishes--we'd hearn about 'em a sight, and so we thought we would go and hear 'em howl. By payin' a little backsheesh (which is money) we got permission to attend one of their religious meetin's. There wuz a chief or Sheik, which Josiah always called a "shack"--and I d'no but he wuz well named--and about twenty or thirty howlers in long white robes. They made a low bow to the Shack and then knelt round him in a circle; then they bowed agin a number of times clear to the floor and begun to sing or pray. I d'no what you would call it, but the axents wuz dretful and the music that accompanied it harrowin' in the extreme. Then they got up and bowed agin to the Shack and begun to shake their heads and their arms and their feet rapid and voylent, all keepin' time to the music, or what I spoze they called music, their hair hangin' loose, their yellin' fearful, and then they begun to whirl like a top spinnin' round, faster and faster, whirlin' and howlin' and shriekin' till they couldn't howl or whirl any longer. Then the meetin' broke up as you may say, they formed a half circle agin round the Shack, bowed to the ground before him and fell down perfectly wore out on the floor. I should have thought they'd died. Why, I couldn't have stood it and lived nor Josiah couldn't; it wuz all we could stand to see it go on.