would pour over it and whisper, though what it wuz about I couldn't
imagine. And if I'd had the curosity of some wimmen it would drove me
into a caniption fit.

And more'n a dozen times I see him and Uncle Sime down by the back
paster on the creek pacin' to and fro as if they wuz measurin' land. And
most of all they seemed to be measurin' off solemn like and important
the lane from the creek lot up to the house and takin' measurements, as
queer lookin' sights as I ever see, and then they would consult the
papers and atlas agin, and whisper and act.

And about this time he begun to talk to me about the St. Louis
Exposition. He opened the subject one day by remarkin' that he spozed I
had never hearn of the Louisana Purchase. He said that the minds of
females in their leisure hours bein' took up by more frivolous things,
such as tattin' and crazy bed-quilts, he spozed that I, bein' a female
woman, had never hearn on't.

And my mind bein' at that time took up in startin' the seams in a blue
and white sock I wuz knittin' for him, didn't reply, and he went on and
talked and talked about it.

But good land! I knowed all about the Louisana Purchase; I knowed it
come into our hands in 1803, that immense tract of land, settlin'
forever in our favor the war for supremacy on this continent between
ourselves and England, and givin' us the broad highway of the
Mississippi to sail to and fro on which had been denied us, besides the
enormous future increase in our wealth and population.

I knowed that between 1700 and 1800 this tract wuz tossted back and
forth between France and Spain and England some as if it wuz a immense
atlas containing pictured earth and sea instead of the real land and
water.

It passed backwards and forwards through the century till 1803 when it
bein' at the time in the hands of France, we bought it of Napoleon
Bonaparte who had got possession of it a few years before, and Heaven
only knows what ambitious dreams of foundin' a new empire in a new
France filled that powerful brain, under that queer three-cornered hat
of hisen when he got it of Spain.

But 'tennyrate he sold it in 1803 to our country, the writin's bein'
drawed up by Thomas Jefferson, namesake of our own Thomas Jefferson,
Josiah's child by his first wife. Napoleon, or I spoze it would sound
more respectful to call him Mr. Bonaparte, he wanted money bad, and he
didn't want England to git ahead, and so he sold it to us.

He acted some as Mis