I _did_ git him started to readin a couple of years back. I had signed for a paper that said a good deal about the Alliance and the Grange and sich, and Jobe he read it every week, and got so interested that he would talk on the things he read about to me and to the neighbors. He got nearly over his settin and studyin and seemed in better spirits so long as he kept a readin of that paper. But one day a feller, who was a Republican canderdate for a county office, came to our house for dinner (they allers make it here about dinner-time, them canderdate fellers do). [Illustration: “WE BOTH HANKERED.”] Well, arter dinner, Jobe and that feller went into the front room, and the feller gin Jobe a segar (a regular five-center, Jobe said), and then they set and smoked, smoked and talked, talked about the prospect of their party carryin the county, the feller doin all the talkin, until at last Jobe told him that he “had been readin some of the principles of the People’s party and liked em purty well.” The feller reared back, opened his eyes, looked at Jobe from head to foot, and then indignant like says, says he to Jobe: “I am astonished!—astonished to think that Jobe Gaskins, one of the most intelligent, most prominent and influential Republicans in this township, should read sich trash, much less indorse it.” And from that day to this Jobe Gaskins, my dear husband, has quit his readin and gone back to his settin and studyin. His party principles was teched. The argament of that canderdate feller was unanswerable; it sunk deep into Jobe’s boozim, and from the time that that feller thanked Jobe for his dinner and hoss feed, and invited Jobe and me both to come into his office and see him, if he was elected, to this writin, I have not had the pleasure of talkin with my husband as before. [Illustration: “I did git him started to readin.”] That feller robbed me of all the bliss I enjoyed of havin my pardner in life to talk with of evenins. And all I got for bein thus robbed, and for the dinner and hoss feed he et, was a invitation to see him okepy the high position of county officer—as though that would pay for vittles or satisfy an achin void, caused by him a turnin Jobe from his readin to his settin and studyin. What good would it do me to see him okepyin a county office and drawin of a big salary? Yes, drawin of a big salary that poor Jobe has to work his lites out of him to help pay. All that there canderdate feller cares for Jobe remainin to be a Republican is so that he, and sich fellers like him, will continer to vote for him and his likes, and pay the high taxes out of which they git their big salaries. What do they care for poor old Jobe Gaskins, whether he be a Republican or a Dimicrat or a Populist or one of them wild Anacrists, if it were not that he had a vote and they want to keep him in line? What keer they what papers he reads, or how quick he changes his polerticks, if they dident want to git office and draw a big salary?