I knew well that there could be a large, a _very large_ and interestin’ book made out of what the Editor didn’t know. The minute he told me the Zebra was in his brain, I knew its stay there would be short, for it wouldn’t find anything to support itself on, for any length of time. I felt well; my heart felt several pounds lighter than it had; for lightness of heart never seems so light, as it does after anybody has been carryin’ a little jag of trouble. It takes the little streaks of shadow to set off the sunshine. Life is considerable like a rag carpet, if you only look on it with the eye of a weaver. It is made up of dark stripes and light stripes, and sometimes a considerable number of threads of hit or miss; and the dark stripes set off the light ones, and make ’em look first rate. But I am allegorin’. As I said, I felt relieved and cheerful, and I got supper on the table in a few minutes—the tea-kettle was all biled. After supper, I said to Josiah in cheerful axents: “I guess we had better go to Jonesville, anyway, for my mind seems to be sot onto that Debatin’-school, and I don’t believe the Editor’s havin’ the Zebra will break it down at all; and I want to go to Tirzah Ann’s a few minutes; and we are about out of tea—there haint enough for another drawin’.” Josiah said it wasn’t best to take the old mare out again that night, and he didn’t believe there would be a Debatin’-school, now the Editor had got the Zebra; he thought that would flat it all out. I didn’t argue on that; I didn’t stand on the Zebra, knowin’ well, I had a keener arrer in my bow. I merely threw in this remark, in a awful dry tone: “Very well, Josiah Allen; I can git along on sage tea, if you can; or, I can make crust coffee for breakfast.” I calmly kep’ a braidin’ up my back hair, previous to doin’ it up in a wad, for I knew what the end thereof would be. My companion, Josiah, is powerfully attached to his tea, and he sot for a number of minutes in perfect silence, meditatin’—I knew by the looks of his face—on sage tea. I kep’ perfectly still and let him meditate, and wouldn’t have interrupted him for the world, for I knew that sage tea, and crust coffee, taken internally of the mind, (as it were,) was what was good for him jest then. And so it proved, for in about three minutes and a half, he spoke out in tones as sharp as a meat axe; some like a simetar: “Wall! do git _ready_ if you are a goin’. I never did see such cases to be on the _go_ all the time, as wimmen be. But I shall go with the Bobs, jest as I come from the woods; I haint a goin’ to fuss to git out the sleigh to-night.” He acted cross, and worrysome, but I answered him calmly, and my mean looked first rate as I said it: