Says I, anxiously: “if yur hain’t enjoyin’ poor health, Josiah, and yur morals feel firm, why is there such a change in yur mean?” says I. “Yur mean don’t seem no more like the mean it used to be, than if it belonged to another man.” But, instead of answering my affectionate arguments, he jumped up, and started for the barn. And, oh! how feerfully, feerfully cross he wus, for the next several days. Finally, to the breakfast-table, one mornin’, I says to him, in tones that would be replied to: “Josiah Allen, you are a-carryin’ sunthin’ on yur mind.” And says I, firmly: “Yur mind hain’t strong enough to carry it. You must and _shall_ let yur pardner help you!” Seein’ I was immovably sot onto the determination to _make_ him tell, he up and told me all about it. Says he: “Summer boarders is what ails me; I want to take ’em in.” And then he went on to tell how awfully he wus a-hankerin’ after ’em. Now, he knew, piles and piles of money wus to be made by it—and what awful pretty business it wus, too. Nothin’ but fun, to take ’em in! Anybody could take sights and sights of comfort with ’em. He said Mandagood said so. And, it wus so dreadful profitable, too. And he up and told me that Mandagood wus a-twittin’ him, all the time, that, if it wuzn’t for me, he could make jest as much as he chose. Mandagood knew well how I felt on the subject. He knew well I was principled against it, and sot. I don’t like Mandagood. He misuses his wife, in the wurst way. Works her down almost to skin and bone. They don’t live happy together at all. He is always envious of anybody that lives pleasant and agreeable with their pardners, and loves to break it up. And I shall always believe that it wus one great reason why he twitted Josiah so. And, for Mandagood to keep at him all the time, and throw them dozen boarders in his face, it hain’t no wonder to me that Josiah felt hurt. Josiah went on, from half to three-quarters of an hour, a-pleadin’ with me, and a-bringin’ up arguments, to prove out what a beautiful business it wus, and how awful happifying; and, finally, says he, with a sad and melancholy look: “I don’t want to say a word to turn your mind, Samantha; but, I will say this, that the idee that I can’t take boarders in, is a-wearin’ on me; it is a-wearin’ on me so, that I don’t know but it will wear me completely out.” I didn’t say nothin’; but I felt strange and curious. I knew that my companion wus a man of small heft—I knew it wouldn’t take near so much to wear him out, as it would a heftier man—and the agony that I see printed on his eyebrows, seemed to pierce clear to my very heart. But, I didn’t say nothin’. I see how fearfully he was a-sufferin’, and my affection for that man is like an oxes, as has often been remarked. And, oh! what a wild commotion began to go on inside of me, between my principles and my affections.