“Beware of bein’ infringed upon!”—and then followed another almost dangerous blow—“Beware of that terrible and fearful day, when men and wimmen shall come in contract with each other.” He stopped perfectly still, looked all round the house with that wise and almost owl-like look on him, and then in a slow, impressive, and eloquent manner, he raised his hands and struck his breast bone with both thumbs and sot down. Some of the speakers seemed to be real envious of his gestures, but they ort to have considered that it was all in knowin’ how; it was all in practice. He’d probably studied on every motion for days and days, and they hadn’t ort to have begreched ’em so to him. But if he hadn’t never studied on elocution and impressive gesturin’; if he hadn’t looked a mite like an owl for solemnity and wisdom, his talk would have been dretful impressive and scareful to some, he painted it all out in such high colors, what a terrible and awful thing it would be for the two sects to ever come in “contract with each other.” I s’pose he meant contact,—I haint a doubt of it. [Illustration: SUNDAY SLUMBERS.] Why, to have heerd him go on, if there had been a delegate present to the “Creation Searchin’ Society,” from the moon—or any other world adjacent to Jonesville—he wouldn’t have had any idee that men and wimmen had ever got any nearer to each other than from half to three-quarters of a mile. I s’pose I never could have made that foreigner believe, if I had talked myself blind, that, for all Solomon Cypher showed such deadly fear of men comin’ in “contract” with wimmen, he had lived with one forty years; drinked out of the same dipper; slept together Sundays in the same pew of the same meetin’ house; and brought up a big family of childern together, which belonged to both on ’em. Howsumever, them was the facts of the case; but I let him go on, for principle held me down, and made me want to know how it would end; whether freedom, and the principles of our 4 fathers would triumph, or whether they would be quirled up like caterpillers, and be trod on. I knew in my mind I shouldn’t git up and talk, not if they voted me in ten times over, for reasons that I give more formally; and besides them reasons, I was lame, and had ruther set and knit, for Josiah needed his socks; and I have always said, and I say still, that a woman ort to make her family comfortable, before she tackles the nation, or the heathen, or anything.