and! how can I tell who or what it is?
It is pretty as a doll, and Krit seems to think his eyes on it; but he's
so full of fun, I can't git any straight story out of him.

But Thomas Jefferson says she is a bonny fidy girl--a good one and a
pretty one, and has got a father dretful well off; and he sez that she
and Krit are engaged. So I spoze more'n like as not they be.

And I also learnt, through a letter received that very day, that Mr.
Bolster has led Miss Plank to the altar, or she has led him--it don't
make much difference. Anyway, she has walked offen the Plank of
widowhood, and settled down onto a Bolster for life.

[Illustration: Mr. Bolster led Miss Plank to the altar.]

I wuz glad on't. She wanted a companion, and he loves to converse,
Heaven knows; and he is sure of one thing--he's almost certain, or as
certain as we can be of anything in this life, that he will have the
best pancakes that hands can make or spoons stir up.

I learnt also from her letter--Miss Bolster's, knee Plankses--that Nony
Piddock wuz a-goin into the ministery. What a case for funerals he will
be, and shockin' casualities! But he won't be good for much on a weddin'
occasion.

And speakin' of weddin's brings me back to my subject agin.

No, it wuzn't any of these things that cast that mournful shadder on my
eyebrows, anon, and even oftener, when I wuz out by myself--

And I spoze that I might as well tell what it wuz that I regretted and
missed--

It wuz Christopher Columbus! the Brave Admiral! good, noble creeter!

I felt, in view of all he had done for America and the world, it wuz too
bad that he had to die without havin' the privilege of seein'
Jonesville, and bein' with us that day, and seein' what we see, and
hearin' what we heard, and eatin' what we eat--

It wuz his doin's, the hull on't wuz Christopher Columbuses doin's. For
if he hadn't discovered America, why, he wouldn't had no World's Fair
for him. And then it stands to reason that Josiah and I shouldn't have
gone to it. And if we hadn't gone to Miss Plankses, Mr. Freeman and
Isabelle wouldn't have met.

Yes, I felt to lay the praise of it all to that blessed old mariner--I
felt that I hadn't done nothin' towards it to what he had. And I kep on
a-sayin' to myself--

"Oh, if he could only have been here, and seen with his own eyes what he
had done!"

And when I thought how he walked hungry through the streets of Genoa,
oh, how I did wish he could have had some