and got mad, etc., and
wouldn't do a thing to help the meetin' house along.

Well, I tried every lawful, and mebby a little on-lawful way to break
this enterprise of theirs up--and, as I heern afterwards, so did Sister
Henzy.

Sister Sypher is so wrapped up in Deacon Sypher that she would embrace a
buzz saw mill or any other enterprise he could bring to bear onto her.

"She would be perfectly willin' to be trompled on," so she often sez,
"if Deacon Sypher wuz to do the tromplin'."

Some sez he duz.

Wall, in spite of all my efforts, and in spite of all Sister Henzy's
efforts, our deacons seemed to jest flourish on this skeme of theirn.
And when we see it wuz goin' to be a sure thing, even Sister Sypher
begin to feel bad.

She told Albina Widrig, and Albina told Miss Henn, and Miss Henn told
me, that "what to do she didn't know, it would deprive her of so much of
the deacon's society." It wuz goin' to devour so much of his time that
she wuz afraid she couldn't stand it. She told Albina in confidence (and
Albina wouldn't want it told of, nor Miss Henn, nor I wouldn't) that she
had often been obleeged to go out into the lot between breakfast and
dinner to see the deacon, not bein' able to stand it without lookin' on
his face till dinner time.

And when she was laid up with a lame foot it wuz known that the deacon
left his plowin' and went up to the house, or as fur as the door step,
four or five times in the course of a mornin's work, it wuz spozed
because she wuz fearful of forgettin' how he looked before noon.

She is a dretful admirin' woman.

She acts dretful reverential and admirin' towards men--always calls
her husband "the Deacon," as if he was the one lonely deacon who was
perambulatin' the globe at this present time. And it is spozed that
when she dreams about him she dreams of him as "the Deacon," and not as
Samuel (his given name is Samuel).

[Illustration: "THE INITIALS STOOD FOR 'MISS DEACON SYPHER.'"]

But we don't know that for certain. We only spoze it. For the land of
dreams is a place where you can't slip on your sun-bonnet and foller
neighbor wimmen to see what they are a-doin' or what they are a-sayin'
from hour to hour.

No, the best calculator on gettin' neighborhood news can't even look
into that land, much less foller a neighborin' female into it.

No, their barks have got to be moored outside of them mysterious shores.

But, as I said, this had been spozen.

But it is known from