And he waved the towel some like a banner and wiped his whiskers out in a aggressive way, and stood up his few hairs over his foretop in a sort of a helmet way, and I see by his axent and demeanors that he really wuz in earnest about sunthin’ or other, and I beset him to tell me what it wuz. For I am deathly afraid of his plans, and have been for some time. But he wouldn’t tell me for quite a spell. But at last as he opened the chamber-door for a minute, and the grateful odor of the rich coffee and the tender, brown steak come up from below, and wuz wafted into his brain and gently stimulated it, he sort o’ melted down and told me all about it. He wanted to jine the Pan American Congress as a delegate and a worker. Sez he, “Samantha, I want to go and be a Pan American. I want to like a dog.” “What for?” sez I. “What do you want to embark into this enterprise for, Josiah Allen?” “Wall,” sez he, “I will tell you what for. I want to enter into this project because I am fitted for it,” sez he, “I have got the intellect for it, and I have got the pans.” Wall, I see there wuz some truth in this latter statement. For the spring before, nuthin’ to do but Josiah had to go and get pans instead of pails to use in a new strip of sugar bush we had bought on. I wanted him not to, but he wouldn’t give in. And of course they wuz so onhandy he couldn’t use ’em much of any, and there we wuz left with our pans on our hands—immense ones, fourteen-quart pans. The idee! Wall, the pans wuzn’t of any earthly use to us, only I could make a few on ’em come handy about the house, and I had give a few on ’em to the girls, Tirzah Ann and Maggie. And then they wuz packed away up on the store-room shelves—most seven dozen of ’em; and truly, take them with our dairy pans, why I do spoze we had more pans than anybody for miles round either way. [Illustration: “AND I HAVE GOT THE PANS.” ] Wall, he wuz jest bound to go; he said he felt a call. Sez he, “There is things a goin’ on there amongst them Pan Americans that ought to be broke up; and,” sez he, “they need a firm, noble, manly mind to grapple with ’em. Most the hull talk of all of ’em that come from different countries is about our pleasant relations with one another; and they own up that their chief aim is to draw our relations closter together. Samantha, that has got to be stopped.” And he went on with a look of stern determination onto his eyebrow that it seldom wore.