d Josiah sez in a fraxious axent, "How queer it is that two such smart
young folks can look and act so spooney, but thank heaven! it won't
last. It won't be long before Royal will be willin' to pass the time o'
day with a Jonesvillian."

I told him there wuz nothin' so beautiful as love. "No, nor nothin' that
makes folk act so like pesky fools, they don't act as though they knew
putty."

I hated such oncongenial idees. But couldn't deny they wuz spooney, for
they wuz, not a small teaspoon but a big silver dinner spoon, and I
believe it will last. Not the outward form of the spoon, oh, no, that
would be too wearisome to the world and themselves, but the precious
metal that forms it. Love is the greatest thing in the world.

Blandina had always lived in a back place and had never heard a
graphophone, so bein' kinder tired, and bein' nigh a place where they
had one, we went in at her request and sot for quite a spell.

And we heard voices and songs gay and sad, marches and melodies,
loftiest oratory, maddest mirth and profoundest feeling all comin' out
of a little square box, what a idee!

What a man that Edison is. It seems always like watchin' the wonderful
onseen secrets of nater, like seein' the mortal made immortal to think
that voices we've loved and mourned as they wuz hushed in the last
stillness can sound out agin, breakin' our hearts with the same old
echoes, the same old sweetness of the voice we loved and lost, talkin'
in mortal words and axents to us when they've long, long ago learnt the
immortal language, beheld the immortal seens.

Why Cleopatra's voice might have been stored up as she made love to
Antony, or the voice of the relation on her own side, old Mr. Pharo
himself orderin' the Hebrews to git out of his premises, and their back
talk about plaguin' him till he wuz willin' they should go.

Why even Eve scoldin' Adam about slackness in gittin' kindlin' wood or
her pardner complainin' about her wastefulness and extravagance in usin'
so many fig leaves for her fall suit. Oh, how nateral, how nateral that
would sound to wimmen.

Or old Noah's voice as he stood in the Ark door bagonin and shoutin' to
the animals to walk in male and female. Or his voice kinder soothin' and
patronizin' tellin' the female dove to go out and shirk round on the
water and see if it wuz safe for the males in the party to go out. Oh,
how nateral that would sound to wimmen, soundin' out through the
centuries.

And on and