“No man begun life with a firmer determination than I did to do well by the relations on your side, and as for the relations on my own side, I laid out to jest pamper ’em if I had the chance; but,” sez he, as a gloomy shadder settled down onto his countenance, “enuff is enuff. I have had Lodema Trumble fourteen weeks at one hitch; I have had Cousin Peter on my side, and Cousin Melinda Ann on yours, and aunts of all sorts and sizes, and have been grandsoned till I am sick on’t, and uncled till I despise the name; and as for cousinin’, why I’ve had ’em, first, and second, and third, and fourth, up to sixth and seventh; I have been scolded at, complained on, groaned over, and prayed at, and sung to, and tromboned, and pickelowed, and nagged, and fluted, and preached at—“ Sez I sternly, “Don’t you go to sayin’ a word aginst John Richard Allen, that angel man.” “I hain’t said nothin’ aginst that angel man, have I? Dumb him, he’d talk anybody to death.” “What are you doin’ now, this minute, Josiah Allen?” “I am a talkin’ sense, hard horse sense, and you know that I have been fifed, and base-drummed, and harrowed, and worried, and eat up, and picked to pieces down to my very bones by relations on both of our two sides, and I have stood it like a man. I hain’t never complained one word.” I groaned aloud here at this awful story. “Wall, I hain’t never complained much of any. But when the Nation takes it in hand and wants to draw our relations closter and closter, then I will interfere. For that is their main talk and effect, from what I can make out from this speech,” sez he, a pintin’ to a newspaper. “I will interfere, Samantha Allen, and you can’t keep me from it. I will stop it if a mortal man can. Anyway, I will boldly wade in and tell ’em my harrowin’ experience, and do all I can to break it up. For as I told you, Samantha Allen, I have had more experience with relations than any other human bein’ on the face of the globe; I have got the intellect and I have got the pans.” Oh, how I did have to talk to Josiah Allen to try to diswaide him from this rash enterprise! “Why,” sez I, “this meetin’ hain’t a goin’ on now; you are mistook.” But he knew he wuz in the right on’t. And anyway, he said he could tell his trials to some of the high officers of that enterprise and influence ’em. “I want to influence somebody, Samantha,” sez he, “before it is too late.” And so he kep’ on; he didn’t say nuthin’ before our son and daughter, but every time he would get me alone, whether it wuz in the seclusion of our bed-chamber, or in a buggy, or on the beautiful grounds of Belle Fanchon, then he would begin and talk, and talk, and talk. The family never mistrusted what wuz a goin’ on. Lots of times to the table, or anywhere, when the subject came round anywhere nigh to that that wuz uppermost in his brain, he would give me a wink, or step on my foot under the table. [Illustration: “I AM NEEDED THERE.” ]