“I have thought about it sometimes too, Josiah, and I have got it kinder fixed out in my mind what I would have on your tombstun—if I lived through it,” sez I with a deep sithe. “What wuz it?” sez he in a contented tone, for he knows I love him. “It is poetry, hain’t it?” “Yes,” sez I calmly, “I laid out to end it with a verse of poetry; it wuz to run as follers: ‘Here lies Josiah Allen, husband of Samantha Allen, and—’” “Hold on!” sez Josiah, gettin’ right up and lookin’ threatenin’. “Hold on right there where you be; no such words as them is a goin’ on my tombstun while I have a breath left in my body. Husband of— Josiah, husband of— I won’t have no such truck as that, and I can tell you that I won’t.” “Be calm, Josiah,” sez I, “be calm and set down,” for he looked so bad and voyalent that I feared apperplexy or some other fit. Sez I, “Be calm, or you will bring sunthin’ onto yourself.” “I won’t be calm, and I don’t care what I bring on, and I tell you I ruther bring it on than not, a good deal ruther. The idee! Josiah Allen, husband of— It has got to a great pass if a man has got down to that—to be a husband of—” “Why,” sez I, lookin’ up into his face stiddily, as he stood over me in a wild and threatenin’ attitude—and some wimmen would have been skairt and showed it out; but I wuzn’t. Good land! don’t I know Josiah Allen, and through him the hull race of mankind? I knew he wouldn’t hurt a hair of my foretop, but he would like to skair me out of the idee, that I knew. But sez I in a reasonable axent, “You had got it all fixed out ‘Samantha, wife of Josiah—’” “Wall, that is the way!” sez he, hollerin’ enough almost to crack my ear-pan—“that is the way every man has it on his pardner’s headstun. Go through the hull land and see if it hain’t; you can look on every stun.” Oh, how that “stun” rolled through my head! And sez I, “I am not deef, Josiah Allen, neither am I in Shackville, or Loontown, or the barn. Do you want to raise a panick in your son’s household? Moderate your voice or you will harm your own insides. I know it is the way every man has wrote it about their pardners, and it seemed so popular amongst men I thought I would try it.” [Illustration: “HE WUZ A WALKIN’ UP AND DOWN.”] “Wall, you won’t try it on me!” he hollered as loud as ever. “You won’t try it on me, and don’t you undertake it. Why, ruther than to have them words rared up over me I would—I would ruther not die at all. ‘Josiah Allen, husband of—’ No, mom, you don’t come no such game over me; you don’t demean me down into a ‘husband of—’!” “Why,” sez I, lookin’ calmly into his face (for I see I must be calm), “don’t you know how I have wrote my name for years and years, ‘Josiah Allen’s Wife’?” “Wall, that wuz the way to write it; it wuz stylish,” he yelled. Oh, how he yelled! Why, that “stylish” almost broke a hole through my ear-pan; the pan jest jarred, it wuz so voyalent. Sez I, “Set down, Josiah, and less argue on it.”