ez I, "nor hain't had no idea on't. I wuz
only statin' the solemn facts and truth of the matter. And you will see
it some time, Cephas Bodley, if you don't now."

Sez Cephas, "The worm has turned, Josiah Allen's wife! Yes, I feel that
I have got to look now to more distant relations for comfort. Yes, the
worm has been stomped on too heavy."

He looked cold, cold as a iceickle almost. And I see that jest the few
words I had spoke, jest the slight hints I had gin, hadn't been took as
they should have been took. So I said no more. For agin the remark of
that little bad boy came up in my mind and restrained me from sayin' any
more.

Truly, as the young male child observed, "it wuzn't my funeral."

We went home almost immegiately afterwards, my heart nearly a-bleedin'
for the little children, poor little creeters, and Cephas actin' cold
and distant to the last And we hain't seen 'em sence. But news has come
from them, and come straight. Josiah heerd to Jonesville all about it.
And though it is hitchin' the democrat buggy on front of the mare--to
tell the end of the funeral here--yet I may as well tell it now and be
done with it.

The miller at Loontown wuz down to the Jonesville mill to get the loan
of some bags, and Josiah happened to be there to mill that day, and
heerd all about it.

Cephas had got the monument, and the ornaments on it cost fur more than
he expected. There wuz a wreath a-runnin' round it clear from the bottom
to the top, and verses a kinder runnin' up it at the same time. And it
cost fearful. Poetry a-runnin' up, they say, costs fur more than it duz
on a level.

Any way, the two thousand dollars that wuz insured on Wellington's life
wuzn't quite enough to pay for it. But the sale of his law library and
the best of the housen' stuff paid it. The nine hundred he left went,
every mite of it, to pay the funeral expenses and mournin' for the
family.

[Illustration: CARRIED TO THE COUNTY POOR HOUSE.]

And as bad luck always follers on in a procession, them mortgages of
Cephas'ses all run out sort o' together. His creditors sold him out,
and when his property wuz all disposed of it left him over fourteen
hundred dollars in debt.

The creditors acted perfectly greedy, so they say--took everything they
could; and one of the meanest ones took that insane bedquilt that I
finished. That _wuz_ mean. They say Sally Ann crumpled right down
when that wuz took. Some say that they got hold of that tall weed of