I don’t know as I wus ever more tried with Josiah Allen than I wus then, or ever give him a firmer, eloquenter lecture, against swearin’. But, in my heart I couldn’t help pityin’ him, for I knew Bill had jest fell onto some tomato-plants, of a extra kind, and set out, and broke ’em short off. And it wus only the day before, that he fell, as he was lookin’ at the colt; it was only a week old; but it was a uncommon nice one, and Josiah thought his eyes of it; and Bill wus admirin’ of it; there wuzn’t nothin’ ugly about him; but a fit come on, and he fell right onto the colt, and the colt, not expectin’ of it, and bein’ entirely unprepared, fell flat down, and the boy on it. And the colt jest lived, that is all. Josiah says it never will be worth anythin’; he thinks it broke sunthin’ inside. As I said, there wuzn’t nothin’ ugly about the boy. He’d be awful sorry, when he broke things, and flatted ’em all out a-fallin’ on ’em. All I blamed him for, wus in prowlin’ ’round so much. I thought then, and I think still, that seein’ he knew he had ’em, and wus liable to have ’em, he’d have done better to have kept still, and not tried to get ’round so much. But, his mother said he felt restless and oneasy. I couldn’t help likin’ the boy. And when he fell right into my bread, that wus a-risin’, and spilt the hull batch—and when he fell unto the parlor table, and broke the big parlor lamp, and everything else that wus on it—and when he fell onto a chicken-coop, and broke it down, and killed a hull brood of chickens—and more than fifty other things, jest about like ’em—why, I didn’t feel like scoldin’ him. I s’pose it wus my lofty principles that boyed me up; them and the thought that would come to me, another time; mebby Josiah Allen will heer to me, another time; mebby he will get sick of summer boarders, and takin’ of ’em in. THE SUFFERENS OF NATHAN SPOONER. Says I, “Josiah Allen, if there was a heavy fine to pay for shettin’ up doors, you wouldn’t never lose a cent of your property in that way,” and says I clutchin’ my lap full of carpet rags with a firmer grip, for truly, they wus flutterin’ like banners in the cold breeze, “if you don’t want me to blow away, Josiah Allen, shet up that door.” “Oh, shaw! Samantha, you won’t blow away, you are too hefty. It would take a Hurrycane, and a Simon, too, to tackle, and lift you.” “Simon who?” says I, in cold axents, cauzed partly by my frigid emotions and partly by the chilly blast, and partly by his darin’ to say any man could take me up and carry me away. “Oh! the Simons they had on the desert; I’ve hearn Thomas J. read about ’em. They’ll blow camels away, and everything.” Says I, dreamily, “Who’d have thought, twenty yeers ago, to heard that man a-courtin’ me, and callin’ me a zephire, and a pink posy, and a angel, that he’d ever live to see the day he’d call me a camel.”