Then with a calm tone, but a beatin' heart, I took up the Plan, and presented it to him. I wanted to find out the heights and depths of that Plan before I said a word about my own adventures at Washington, D.C. Oh, how that plan had worried me! But the minute I mentioned it, Josiah looked as if he would sink. And at first he tried to move off the subject, but I wouldn't let him. I held him up firm to that plan, and, to use a poetical image, I hitched him there. Says I, “You know what you told me, Josiah,--you said that plan would make you beloved and revered.” He groaned. Says I, “You know you said it would make you a lion, and me a lioness: do you remember, Josiah Allen?” He groaned awful. Says I firmly, “It didn't make you a lion, did it?” He didn't speak, only sithed. But says I firmly, for I wus bound to come to the truth of it,-- “Are you a lion?” “No,” say she, “I hain't.” “Wall,” says I, “then what be you?” “I am a fool,” says he bitterly, “a dumb fool.” “Wall,” says I encouragingly, “you no need to have laid on plans, and I needn't have gone off on no towers of discovery, to have found that out. But now,” says I in softer axents, for I see he did indeed look agitated and melancholy,-- “Tell your Samantha all about it.” Says he mournfully, “I have got to find 'The Gimlet.'” [Illustration: ARE YOU A LION?] “The Gimlet!” I sithed to myself; and the wild and harrowin' thought went through me like a arrow,--that my worst apprehensions had been realized, and that man had been a writing poetry. But then I remembered that he had promised me years ago, that he never would tackle the job agin. He begun to make a poem when we was first married; but there wuzn't no great harm done, for he had only wrote two lines when I found it out and broke it up. Bein' jest married, I had a good deal of influence over him; and he promised me sacred, to never, _never_, as long as he lived and breathed, try to write another line of poetry agin. We was married in the spring, and these 2 lines was as follers:-- “How happified this spring appears-- More happier than I ever knew springs to be, _shears_.” And I asked him what he put the “shears” in for, and he said he did it to rhyme. And then was the time, then and there, that I made him promise on the Old Testament, _never_ to try to write a line of poetry agin. And I felt that he _could_ not do himself and me the bitter wrong to try it agin, and still I trembled. And right while I was tremblin', he returned, and silently laid “The Gimlet” in my lap, and sot down, and nearly buried his face in his hands. And the very first piece on which the eye of my spectacle rested, was this: “Josiah Allen on a Path-Master.” And I dropped the paper in my lap, and says I,-- “_What_ have you been doing _now_, Josiah Allen? Have you been a fightin'? What path-master have you been on?”