keep the skies drippin' right along for most all
summer. And then when she has a dry spell, how dry she is! no matter
how much the dwindlin' creeks and empty wells and springs complain,
she has got to carry out her own idees till she gits ready to change.

Josiah Allen, since I had been his pardner had took many a fad into
his old head, which he had carried out as only Nater or a man can
carry 'em, onreasonable, mysterious, out of season, but bound to let
'em run. Sometimes in the past it had been a desire for singin' base
that had laid holt on him, base in every sense the word can be used.
Then agin he had painful and prolonged spells of wantin' to be genteel
and fashionable, then anon political ambition had rousted up his rusty
old faculties and for months and months Coney Island had been his
theme, and wuz now, and so on through a long roll of characters he had
desired to play in the drama of life.

But _dancin'!_ never did I expect to see that man with his age and his
profession and his achin' old bones, wantin' to dance. But so it wuz,
as will be seen in the follerin' pages. Queer as a dog folks are on
this planet, and I d'no but the Marites and Jupiters and Saturnses are
jest as queer. But to quit eppisodin' and resoom forwards agin.

I have always found that it hain't best to draw the matrimonial rope
too tight round your pardner's jungular veins. I see he wuz sot on
goin' and I felt I would ruther he would go with me who could have
some savin' control over him, than to have him git reckless and sally
off alone. So it wuz settled that we should go that night at early
candle light. And Faith wuz to go with us. Yes, I, Josiah Allen's
wife, had gin my consent to go to a dance. But jest so the environin'
cord of circumstances gits us all wound up in its tangles time and
agin. And as the way of poor weak mortals is, havin' made up my mind
to go I tried to bring to mind all the mitigatin' circumstances I
could. I thought of how the lambs capered on the hillside, how the
leaves on the trees danced to the music of the south wind, and how
even the motes swung round with each other in the sunlight. And then I
thought of how David danced before the ark, and how Jeptha's daughter
danced out to meet her father (to be sure she had her head took off
for it, but I tried to not dwell on that side of the subject). And
then I remembered how I did love music, and in spite of myself I felt
kinder chirked up thinkin' I should enjoy