nd. And if you wanted a doctor on a dark, stormy
night, you could get one without going on the wild waves; and if you
got skairt in the night and sot off to run, you could run as fur as
you wanted to without gittin' drownded.

I spoke to Josiah about this and he agreed with me, though he took the
occasion to bring in Coney Island, much to my shagrin.

"I wish," sez he, "I wish we could stop off somewheres and git a hot
dog."

"A hot dog?" sez I, consternation showin' in my foretop. "Don't you
know that dogs roamin' round loose and overhet in this sultry weather
is apt to git mad and bite you?"

"'Tain't that kind of animile I mean. I mean the kind they eat--in
Coney Island."

"Do they eat dogs in Coney Island?" I asks in a faint voice.

"Yes," sez he.

"And would you eat enny on't?"

"Why not?" sez he.

"Why not?" I cries regainin' my voice to once. "Josiah Allen, have you
became a canibal like them as lives in heathen lands and welcomes
civilized folks with open mouths?"

"Oh," sez he, "'tain't nothin' like that. These dogs hain't made o'
people. No, they air made from sassiges and cooked in front of a open
grate fire. They call 'em hot dogs and Serenus sez--"

I didn't gin him no chance to tell what Serenus sez. I sez many things
to him there and then that wuz calculated to make him forgit Coney
Island for awhile.

But to resoom forwards. We went by a big castle that wuz built up on a
hill on a island of considerable size with quite a grove of trees on
it. It wuz a noble, gray stun castle, with high towers and pinnacles
shinin' up toward the blue sky--Castle Rest, its name wuz, and I
thought most probable anybody could rest there first rate. The one
that built it and the one it wuz built for, had gone up into another
castle to rest, the great Castle of Rest, whose walls can't be moved
by any earthly shock. A good little mother it wuz built for, a
hard-workin', patient, tired-out little mother, who wuz left with a
house full of boys, and not much in the house, only boys. How she
worked and toiled to keep 'em comfortable and git 'em headed right,
washin', cookin', makin', and mendin'; learnin' 'em truthfulness,
honesty, and industry with their letters; teachin' 'em the
multiplication table and the commandments; trimmin' off their childish
faults, same as she did their hair; clippin' 'em off with her own
anxious lovin' hands. Mebby puttin' a bowl on their heads and cuttin'
round it, or else shinglin' 'em