and that wuz a plain
barn with no cupolas or minarets, or towers or domes on it. No, jest a
plain barn with a slidin' door enriched and bejeweled when open only by
the form of my beloved pardner. And the only vista visible the grassy
path that led round the hen house to the ash-barrel, and the only
ornamental water, the waterin' trough embellished only by the green moss
on its sides.

I felt I'd seen too many ornaments, I most knowed I should never hanker
agin for a minaret or a mosque, or a steeple or a crescent, or a wavin'
banner, or gildin', I felt that my heart would never more long and pine
for water to squirt up in the air or drizzle down three or four hundred
feet, nor for statutes or peaks or pillers. No, I almost felt I should
have Dave Yerden saw off the top of the whatnot because it riz up in a
sort of ornamental fashion, and I almost despised the thought of the M.
E. steeple in Jonesville, to such wicked and reckless lengths will
over-weariness lead one. But jest as I wuz rebukin' myself to myself, I
hearn jest on the other side on me the voices of Blandina and Professor
Aspire Todd. He wuz evidently continuing a conversation begun sometime
before.

"Oh, that lost companion of mine! oh, that beauchious female so
humilitous in her sweet humility, so super-conscious of man's superior
attainments, she seemingly only existed to minister to my corporial
necessities."

"Well she might, Professor, well she might," sez Blandina. "Any woman of
right feelin' would feel only too blest and honored to do the same."

"I experienced from the first moment my eyes rested on you," sez the
Professor in solemn axents, "a sensation, or a feeling, as you may say,
that you wuz my affinity, that your soul wuz congenial, and every
transitory period of time that has progressively advanced since then has
but intensified the impression."

Though I couldn't see her, I could feel Blandina simper. But at that
minute Josiah interrupted the dialogue by askin' where Samantha wuz, and
I come forward and jined 'em. Blandina looked radiantly happy, and I
motioned to Molly and Josiah to come on, I knowed they would rather have
our room than our company. For I remembered I wuz onmarried myself once,
and though my sperit wuz never incarnated in the personality of a
Blandina, yet I had a vivid remembrance of the time when Love first laid
holt on me, and I well remembered the feelin's I felt at the ardent
attentions of a Josiah.

Professor