"If I hadn't no other reason for jinin' in these doin's, cookin' has got to be done and how can a statute or a Historical Tabloo bile potatoes and brile steak and make yeast emptin's bread perked up on a pedestal or posin' in the creek, and you know, Josiah, that no matter how fur ambition or vain glory may lead a man, his appetite has got to be squenched, and vittles has got to be cooked else how can he squench it." And to this old trustworthy weepon I held in all his different plans to inviggle me into his preposterous idees and found it answered better than reason or ridicule. But even this failed to break up his crazy plan. His hull mind (what he had) wuz sot on it. CHAPTER II. I felt dretful and how I wuz goin' to break it up and git his mind off I couldn't tell; I talked it over with the children. They wuz goin' to be mortified to death by the idee if carried out and they told me in confidence and the woodhouse kitchen, "It must be stopped!" And I sez, "How is it goin' to be stopped? I've handled every weepon I know how to lay holt on. I've pompied him, cooked the very best of vittles, argued with him, eppisoded, but all to no use, he's as sot as a hen turkey on a brick bat, and I've got to the end of my chain." Sez Tirzah Ann, "Have you tried readin' historical novels to him?" "No," sez I, "I don't dast to be _too_ hash with him, your pa's health hain't what it wuz, I dassent take too hash measures." Sez she, "Have you tried readin' poetry?" "Yes," sez I, "I have read Pollock's Course of Time most through to him, and the biggest heft of 'Paradise Lost,' and I read the last named with deep feelin', I can tell you." "Didn't it do any good?" "Not a mite," sez I. "He would choke me off in the soarinest passages to boast about some crazy side-show at his Exposition." Tirzah Ann sithed and sez, "I don't know what can be done." Thomas J. is more practical and sez, "Can't you git his mind on some work? Hain't there sunthin' that ort to be done round the farm? Or in the house?" "Id'no," sez I. "He can't plow or reap in February or pick gooseberries or wash sheep. But I know what ort to be done in the house, I tried my best to git him at it in the fall, I do want a furnace and hot water pipes put in to heat the house. We most freeze these cold days, and it is too much for your pa when Ury is away to tend to the fires." "That's just the thing!" sez Thomas J., "get him interested in that and he will forgit all about the Allen Exposition by the time it is done." But I sez in a discouraged way, "If I couldn't git him at it in the fall Id'no how I'm goin' to now." "But it is worth tryin'," sez Thomas J., "for his scheme must be broke up, and if you git your furnace in now it will be all ready for another fall." "Well," sez I, "I can try." And so I begun that very night on a new tact, or ruther the old tact in a new way, I told him how sot Thomas J. wuz on our havin' a furnace and hot water pipes put in.