I had some potatoes warmed up in cream, and some lamb-chops broiled brown and yet juicy, some hot muffins light as a feather, and some delicious coffee—it wuz good enough for a King or a Zar—but then it wuzn’t one of my choice efforts, for principle’s sake, which I often have to make in the cookin’ line, and—good land!—which every other human woman has to make who has a man to deal with. We can’t vote, and we have to do sunthin’ or other to get our own way. Wall, as I wuz a sayin’, he broke out anew, and sez he: “I am sick as a dog of all this talk about the Race Problem.” And then agin I uttered them wise words I had spoken the night before; they wuz jest heavy with wisdom if he had only known it; and sez I: “What makes you keep a bringin’ it up, then and a talkin’ about it?” And agin he sez, “He done it to let me know how he felt about it.” And agin I sez, “I knew it before.” And I silently but smoothly poured my sweet cream over my sliced potatoes, and turned my lamb-chops and drawed my coffee forwards so it would come to a bile. And he repeated, “I believe in lettin’ things alone that don’t consarn us; it hain’t none of our bizness.” And seein’ he wuz bound on talkin’ on it, why, I felt a feelin’ that I must roust up and set him right where I see he wuz wrong; I see it was my duty as a devoted pardner. And so, after we had got down to the table, and he sez agin in more powerful and even high-headed axents, “that it wuz none of our bizness,” then I spunked up and sez, “It seems to me, Josiah Allen, that the cause of eternal truth is _always_ our bizness.” “Oh, wall! it hain’t best to meddle; that is my idee, and that is my practice. Don’t you know that when Ury had that fight with Sam Shelmadine, I said I wouldn’t either make nor break? I said I won’t meddle, and I didn’t meddle. It wuzn’t my bizness.” [Illustration: “WHEN URY HAD THAT FIGHT WITH SAM.” ] “But you found it wuz your bizness before you got through with it—you lost Ury’s help six weeks in your hurryenst time, when he wuz away to the lawsuit, etc., etc. And it made Philury sick, and you and I had to be up with her more or less, and you took cold there one night, and had a sickness that lasted you for weeks and almost killed you; and if you _had_ died,” sez I in deep tones of affection and pathos, “if you _had_ left your devoted pardner forever, could you have looked me in the face and said that this trouble of theirs wuzn’t nuthin’ that affected us? No; when a black cloud comes up the sky you can’t tell where the lightnin’ is a goin’ to hit—whether it will strike saint or sinner.” I see he wuz affected by my tender and eloquent allusion to his passin’ away; for a moment he looked softened and almost as if he wuz a goin’ to lay down the argument somewhere and leave it there. But anon his linement clouded up, and he assumed the expression of doggy obstinacy his sect knows so well how to assume, and sez he: