“When anybody is a-bakin’ up alive in crowded cities, when the hot sun is shinin’ back on ’em from brick walls and stony roads, when all the air that comes to them comes hot and suffocatin’, like a simon blowin’ over a desert—to such, a change of body is sweet, and is truly healthy. But,” says I, lookin’ ’round agin on the cool and entrancin’ beauty and freshness of the land and other scape, “to you whom Providence has placed in a Eden of beauty and bloom, I agin repeat the words of the poet: ‘Better let well enough alone.’” I could see by the looks of her face that I hadn’t convinced her. But at that very minute, Josiah came back and hollered to me that he guessed we had better be a-goin’ back, for he wus afraid the hens would get out, and get into the turnips; he had jist set out a new bed, and the hens wus bewitched to eat tops off; we had shet ’em up, but felt it wus resky to not watch ’em. So we started, but not before I told Whitfield my mind about their goin’ off for a rest. I said but little, for Josiah wus hollerin’, but what I did say wus very smart, and to the purpose. But if you’ll believe it, after all my eloquent talk, and everything, the very next week they went off for the summer. They came to see us the day before they went, but their plans wus all laid (they wus goin’ to the same place Skidmore and his wife went), and their tickets wus bought, so I didn’t say nothin’ more—what wus the use? Thinks’s I, bought wit is the best, if you don’t pay too much for it. They’ll find out for themselves whether I wus in the right or not. But bad as I thought it wus goin’ to be, little did I think it would be as bad as it wus, little did I think Tirzah Ann would be brought home on a bed, but she wus; and Whitfield walked with a cane, and had his arm in a sling. But as I told Josiah, “if anybody wus a mind to chase up pleasure so uncommon tight it wusn’t no wonder if they got lamed by it.” Wall, the very next day after they got back from their trip, I went to see ’em, and Tirzah Ann told me all about it, all the sufferin’s and hardships they had enjoyed on their rest, and pleasure exertion. There wasn’t a dry eye in my head while I was a-listenin’ to her, and lookin’ into their feeble and used up lookin’ faces. She and Whitfield wus poor as snails; I never see either of ’em in half so poor order before. They hadn’t no ambition nor strength to work, they looked gloomy and morbid, their morals had got all run down, their best clothes wus all worn out. And that babe, I could have wept and cried to see how that little thing looked, jest as poor as a little snail, and pale as a little fantom. And, oh, how fearfully cross! It was dretful affectin’ to me to see her so snappish. She reminded me of her grandpa, in his fractious hours. It wus a dretful affectin’ scene to me, I told Tirzah Ann, says I, “Your mean and Whitfield’s don’t look no more like your old means than if they didn’t belong to the same persons.”