old muley cow cornered up a-tryin' to put a
lightnin' rod on her. Wall, I paid him fer what he had done, and thanked
the Lord he hadn't done any more. Wall, he got me to sine a paper
what sed he had done a good job, and he sed he had to show that to the
company.

Wall, about a week after that we had a thunder storm, and I think the
lightnin' struck everything on the place except the spring wagon and old
muley cow, and they didn't have any lightnin' rod on 'em. Wall I thought
I wuz a-gittin' off mighty lucky til next day, when along cum a feller
with that paper what I had sined, and durned if it wan't a note fer six
hundred dollars, and by gosh if I didn't hav to pay it!

Buncode agin, by chowder!

Energy--There is a lot of energy in this life that wasted. I
notis that the man who has a good strong pipe most usually
rides in front.--Punkin Centre Philosophy.

A Meeting of the Annanias Club

WALL, sometimes a lot of us old codgers used to git down to Ezra
Hoskins' grossery store and we'd sot 'round and chaw terbacker and
whittle sticks and eat crackers and cheese and proons and anything Ezra
happened to have layin' 'round loos, and then we'd git to spinnin' yarns
that would jist about put Annanias and Safiry right out of business
if they wuz here now. Wall, one afternoon we wuz all settin' 'round
spinnin' yarns when Deacon Witherspoon sed that eckos wuz mighty
peculiar things, cos down whar he wuz born and raised thar wuz a passell
of hills cum together and you couldn't git out thar and talk louder 'n
a whisper on account of the ecko. But one day a summer boarder what wuz
thar remarked as how he wasn't afraid to talk right out in meetin' in
front of any old lot of hills what wuz ever created; so he went out and
hollered jist as loud as he could holler, and he started a ecko a-goin'
and it flew up agin one hill and bounced off onto another one and
gittin' bigger and louder all the time 'til it got back whar it started
from and hit a stone quarry and knocked off a piece of stone and hit
that feller in the head, and he didn't cum too fer over three hours.
Wall, we thought that wuz purty good fer a Deacon. Wall, none of us sed
anything fer a right smart spell and then Si Pettingill remarked "he
didn't know anything about eckos, but he calculated he'd seen some
mighty peculiar things; sed he guessed he'd seen it rain 'bout as hard
as anybody ever seen it rain." Someone sed, "Wall, Si, how hard did