As I have remarked and said, I wus principled against takin’ in summer boarders. I had seen ’em took in, time and agin’ and seen the effects of it. And I had said, and said it calmly, that boarders was a moth. I had said, and I have weighed my words, (as it were,) as I said it, that when a woman done her own housework, it wus all she ort to do, to take care of her own menfolks, and her house, and housen-stuff. And hired girls, I wus immovably sot against from my birth. Home seemed to me to be a peaceful haven, jest large enough for two barks; my bark, and Josiah’s bark. And when foreign schooners, (to foller up my simely), sailed in, they generally proved in the end to be ships of war, pirate fleets, stealin’ happiness and ease, and runnin’ up the death’s head of our lost joy at the masthead. But, I am a-eppisodin’, and a-wanderin’ off into fields of poesy; and to resume, and go on. Any female woman, who has got a beloved pardner, and also a heart inside of her breast bones, knows how the conflict ended. I yielded, and giv’ in. And, that very day, Josiah went and engaged ’em. He had heerd of ’em from Mandagood. They wus boarders that Mandagood had had the summer before, and they had applied to him for board agin; but, he told Josiah, that he would giv’ ’em up to him. He said “He wouldn’t be selfish and onneighborly, he would give ’em up.” “Why,” says Josiah, as he wus a tellin’ it over to me, “Mandagood acted fairly tickled at the idee of givin’ ’em up to me. There hain’t a selfish hair in Jake Mandagood’s head—not a hair!” I thought it looked kinder queer, to think that Mandagood should act so awful willin’ to give them boarders up to Josiah and me, knowin’, as I did, that he was as selfish as the common run of men, if not selfisher. But I didn’t tell my thoughts. No, I didn’t say a word. Neither did I say a word when he said there wus four children in the family that wus a-comin’. No, I held firm. The job was undertook by me, for the savin’ of my pardner. I had undertook it in a martyr way, a almost John Rogers way, and I wuzn’t goin’ to spile the job by murmurin’s and complainin’s. But, oh! how animated Josiah Allen wus that day, after he had come back from engagin’ of ’em. His appetite all came back, powerfully. He eat a feerful dinner. His restlessness, and oneasyness, had disappeared; his affectionate demeanor all returned. He would have acted spoony, if he had so much as a crumb of encouragement from me. But, I didn’t encourage him. There was a loftiness and majesty in my mean, (caused by my principles), that almost awed him. I looked firstrate, and acted so. And, Josiah Allen, as I have said, how highlarious he was. He wus goin’ to make so much money by ’em. Says he: “Besides the happiness we shall enjoy with ’em, the almost perfect bliss, jest think of four dollars a week apiece for the man and wife, and two dollars apiece for the children.”