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 storeroom 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. “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?”