“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.”] They never noticed the wink, and their feet didn’t feel the crunch of his boot toe—no, I bore it in silence and alone. For how could they see the tall mountain peaks of ambition that loomed up in front of that peaceful, bald-headed man—precipitous mounts that he wuz in fancy scalin’, with the eyes of a admirin’ world lookin’ up to him? No; how little can them a settin’ with us round the same table see the scenes that is passin’ before the mental vision of each. No, they can’t do it; the human breast hain’t made with a winder in it, or even a swing door. No; I alone knew what wuz a passin’ and a goin’ on in that beloved breast. To me, as he always had, he revealed the high bubbles he wuz a throwin’ up over his head, and had always throwed ever and anon, and even oftener, bubbles wrought out of the foamin’ suds of hope and ambition, and propelled upwards out of the long-stailed pipe of his fancy, floated by the gusty wind of his vain efforts.