wuz gin back and how
small the sum wuz. And he said, 'A straw showed which way the wind
blowed, and the Nation must trust its public servants implicitly, or
where would be the safety of the people.'

"Then Keturah sassed him and said if a straw showed the direction of the
wind in Jonesville, how wuz it with the dead loads and stacks of straw
in Washington, sez she, they're so heavy with rottenness and corruption
they can't blow. You'll remember that powerful figger of speech in the
article. I told her it would make you mad as a hen and I spoze it did.
And I felt it my duty to molify you and tell you that a honester creeter
never lived than Keturah, and it wuz only these extronnery circumstances
that made her borry the ten cents. And workin' out by the day and eatin'
codfish as she duz, makes her more morbid, kinder salts her blood I
believe, and she lays it to you onjustly, for meat bein' so high that
she can't buy any.

"Ive told her time and agin it wuzn't your fault. But she sez you might
hold in the Trusts some if you wuz a minter.

"She sez you had 'em in your power once and could made a sample on 'em
but didn't, and so, sez she, I've got to live on codfish, and the flour
trust is bringin' up flour so Id'no but I'll have to eat saw-dust bread.
You remember them powerful metafors in the Auger. I wanted to explain
all this and I also had some errents of my own."

He made another effort to speak, but knowin' his remarkable eloquence,
and that I wouldn't try to git a word in after he begun, I should enjoy
his talk so, I kep' on:

"I want to be open and above board, Theodore, jest as you are nachelly.
And that other piece you remember that come out about the same time in
the Jonesville Gimlet I'll tell you plain that I approved on it, though
I didn't write it. You remember it begun with this quotation:

"'They enslave their children's children
Who make compromise with sin.'

"And it went on to talk about our great dignified Nation bein' a pardner
in Saloons, ruinin' men, breakin' wimmen's hearts, starvin' children,
committin' theft, murder, adultery, arson, helpin' on fights, death and
ruin, jest goin' in snux, as you may say with all this for the money got
out of it; it said that though there wuz many great evils to face and
overthrow, there wuz none that brutalized the race and agonized the
hearts of the people like this, and though all sin left its mark, no
other sin changed a man so into the loathsome body