My companion, Josiah, knew that my book was all finished and completed, and so one lovely day about half past four, P. M. in the afternoon, when he see me walk with a firm and even step up to the mantletry piece and take down my bottle of ink and my steel mounted pen, he says to me: “What are you goin’ to writin’ on _now_, Samantha?” Says I mildly, “I thought I’d lay to and write a preface to my book, Josiah. I thought I’d tell ’em that I had wrote it all down about you and I goin’ on a tower to Filadelfy village to see the Sentinel.” “I guess after you have wrote it all out in black ink in a book, about our goin’ to the Sentimental, folks that read it will find out we have been there, without your writin’ a preface to _tell_ ’em of it. They will unless they are dumb fools.” He snapped out _awful_ snappish. I couldn’t think what ailed him, and says I firmly: “Stop swearin’ instantly and to _once_, Josiah Allen!” And I added again in mild axents: “I guess I’ll lay to and write my preface, Josiah; you know there has got to be one.” “_Why_ has there got to be one?” Oh! how fractious and sharp that “why” was. I never see a sharper, more worrysome “why” in my hull life than that “why” was. But I kep’ cool, and says I in calm tones: “Because there _has_; Folks _always_ have prefaces, Josiah.” “What _makes_ ’em have ’em? there’s the dumb of it. What _makes_ ’em?” Says I mekanically,—for a stiddy follerin’ of duty has made reprovin’ my pardner in times of need, a second or third nature to me—“stop swearin’ to _once_, Josiah Allen! They have prefaces, Josiah, because”—again I paused half a moment in deep thought—“they have ’em, because they _do_ have ’em, that’s why.” But even this plain and almost lucid statement didn’t seem to satisfy him, and he kep’ a arguin’ and sayin’,—“I’d be hanged if _I’d_ have ’em,” and so on and so 4th. And I argued back again. Says I: “You know folks are urged to publish books time and again, that wouldn’t have had no idee of doin’ it if they had been let alone.” Says I,—“You know after they git their books all finished, they hang back and hate to have ’em published; hate to, like dogs; and are urged out of their way by relatives and friends, and have to give up, and have ’em published. They naturally want to tell the Public how it is, and that these things are so.” “Oh wall,” says he, “if the Public is any like me, he’d ruther hear the urgin’ himself than to hear the author tell on it. What did they break their backs for a writin’ fourteen or fifteen hundred pages if they laid out to hang back in the end. If they found their books all wrote out, a growin’ on huckleberry bushes, or cewcumber vines, there would be some sense in talkin’ about urgin’ ’em out of their way.” And he sot his head on one side, and looked up at the ceilin’ with a dretful shrewd look onto his face, and went to kinder whistlin’. I can’t bear hintin’, and never could, I always despised hinters. And I says in almost cold tones, says I: