In the back garden is fruit trees of all kinds, and berry vines, and bushes, and a well of soft water; two acres of land, “be it more or less: to wit, namely, and so 4th, a runnin’ up to a stake, and back again, to wit.” Josiah read it all off to me; he is a great case to read deeds and insurance papers, and so 4th. He thinks they are dretful agreeable readin’. I know when we was first married, and he wanted to use me so awful well,—bein jest married, he naturally wanted to make himself agreeable and interestin’ to me—and so to happyfy me and keep me from bein’ homesick, and endear himself still more to me, he would draw out his tin trunk from under the bed, and read over deeds and mortgages to me by the hour. But I didn’t encourage him in it, and kinder broke it up; but he loves to read ’em to this day; and I felt so neat over this contract, that I let him read the hull thing right through, and was glad to hear it, though it took him one hour by the clock. He reads slow, and then there was so many whereases, and namelys, and to wits, that he would git baulked every few minutes. He would git to wanderin’ round in ’em—git perfectly lost—and I’d have to lay holt and help him out. We are goin’ to git a deed of the house, unbeknown to Whitfield and Tirzah Ann, and make ’em a present of it. They was married the 14th day of September, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon—jest the time Josiah was born—so I told Josiah that I would bake up as nice vittles as I could, and enough of ’em,—enough to last a week or ten days—and we would have supper all ready in the new house, jest the day of the month and the time of the day he was born and they was married, and invite ’em over; and we’d have Thomas Jefferson and Maggie Snow, and the Widder Doodle, and turn it into a sort of 4th of July,—keep the day in a kind of a camp-meetin’, holiday style. I believe in workin’ and earnin’ your honest bread, etc. and so 4th; but still, I believe in makin’ things agreeable and pleasant, very. We Americans, as a nation, are a dretful anxious-lookin’, hard-workin’, long-faced, ambitious, go-ahead race, and we tackle a holiday as if it was a hard day’s work we had got to git through with jest as quick as we could; and we face enjoyments with considerable the same countenance we do funerals. But I am layin’ out now to take a good deal of comfort the 14th of next September, Providence permittin’. I think a sight of Tirzah Ann. I’ve done well by her, and she sees it now; she thinks a sight of old mother, I can tell you. She enjoys middlin’ poor health, now-a-days, and her pa and I feel anxious about her, and we talk about her a good deal nights, after we git to bed; and I wake up and think of her considerable, and worry.