is too good to be
omitted, An old woman was fiercely criticising a neighbor and ended in
this way: "Folks that pretend to be somebody, and don't act like nobody,
ain't anybody!"

Another woman reminded me of Mrs. Partington. She told blood-curdling
tales of the positive reappearance of departed spirits, and when I said,
"Do you really believe all this?" she replied, "Indeed, I do, and yet
I'm not an <i>imaginary</i> woman!" Her dog was provoked into a conflict with
my setters, and she exclaimed: "Why, I never saw him so completely
<i>ennervated</i>."

Then the dear old lady who said she was a free thinker and wasn't
ashamed of it; guessed she knew as much as the minister 'bout this world
or the next; liked nothing better than to set down Sunday afternoons
after she'd fed her hens and read Ingersoll. "What books of his have
you?" I asked.

She handed me a small paper-bound volume which did not look like any of
"Bob's" productions. It was a Guide Book through Picturesque Vermont by
Ernest Ingersoll!

And I must not omit the queer sayings of a simple-hearted hired man on a
friend's farm.

Oh, for a photo of him as I saw him one cold, rainy morning tending
Jason Kibby's dozen cows. He had on a rubber coat and cap, but his
trouser legs were rolled above the knee and he was barefoot, "Hannibal,"
I shouted, "you'll take cold with your feet in that wet grass!"

"Gueth not, Marm," he lisped back cheerily. "I never cared for shooth
mythelf."

He was always shouting across the way to inquire if "<i>thith</i> wath hot
enough or cold enough to thute <i>me</i>?" As if I had expressed a strong
desire for phenomenal extremes of temperature. One morning he suddenly
departed. I met him trudging along with three hats jammed on to his head
and a rubber coat under his arm, for 'twas a fine day.

"Why, Hanny!" I exclaimed, "where are you going in such haste?"

"Mithter Kibby told me to go to Halifax, and--I'm going!"

Next, the man who was anxious to go into partnership with me. He would
work my farm at halves, or I could buy his farm, cranberry bog, and
woodland, and he would live right on there and run that place at halves;
urged me to buy twelve or fourteen cows cheap in the fall and start a
milk route, he to be the active partner; then he had a chance to buy a
lot of "essences" cheap, and if I'd purchase a peddling-wagon, he'd put
in his old horse, and we'd go halves on that business, or I could buy up
a lot of calves or you