I have been sick enough with a axident. Josiah had got his plantin’ all done, and the garden seeds was comin’ up nice as a pin, I will have a good garden. But the hens bothered me most to death, and kep’ me a chasin’ out after ’em all the time. No sooner would I get ’em off the peas, then they would be on the mush mellons, and then the cowcumbers would take it and then the string beans, and there I was rushin’ out doors bareheaded all times of day. It was worse for me than all my house work, and so I told Josiah. One day I went out full sail after ’em, and I fell kerslap over a rail that lay in the grass, and turned my ancle jint, and I was laid up bed sick for two weeks. It makes me out of patience to think of it, for we might have a dog that is worth somethin’ if it wasn’t for Josiah, but as it is, if he haint to the house I have to do all the chasin’ there is done, for I might as well get the door step started on to the cattle, or hens, as to get our dog off of it, to go on to any thing. And he is big as a young eliphant too, eats as much as a cow, and of all the lazy critters I ever did see, he is the cap sheaf. Why, when Josiah sets him on to the hens, he has to take him by the collar and kinder draws him along, all the way. And as for cows and calves, he seems to be afraid of ’em, somethin’ kinder constitutionel Josiah says. I tell him he might better bark ’em off himself, especially as he is a first rate hand at it, you can’t tell him from a dog when he sets out. One mornin’ I says to him, “Josiah Allen, what’s the use of your keepin’ that pup?” Says he “Samantha, he is a good feller, if I will kinder run ahead of him, and keep between him and the cows, he will go on to them first rate, he seems to want encouragement.” “Encouragement!” says I, “I should think as much.” I didn’t say no more, and that very day the axident happened. Josiah heard me holler, and he come runnin’ from the barn--and a scairter man I never see. He took me right up, and was carryin’ of me in. I was in awful agony--and the first words I remember sayin’ was these, in a faint voice. “I wonder if you’ll keep that pup now?” Says he firmly, yet with pity, and with pale and anxious face. “Mebby you didn’t encourage him enough.” Says I deliriously, “Did you expect I was goin’ to carry him in my arms and throw him at the hens? I tried every other way.” [Illustration: THE AXIDENT.] “Wall, wall!” says he, kinder soothin’ly, “Do keep still, how do you expect I’m goin’ to carry you if you touse round so.” He laid me down on the lounge in the settin’ room, and I never got off of it, for two weeks. Fever set in--I had been kinder unwell for quite a spell, but I wouldn’t give up. I would keep ’round to work. But this axident seemed to be the last hump on the camel’s back, I had to give in, and Tirzah Ann had to come home from school to do the work.