off his boots, and broke right through into the next room.

And that room wuz occupied by a young married couple. You know it wuz
dretful fashionable to marry and go to St. Louis on your tower. So
they'd follered Fashion and the star of Love and wuz havin' a first rate
time.

They had been there several days, and this evenin', he thinkin' his eyes
of her, and feelin' very sentimental as wuz nateral, wuz readin' poetry
to her, she settin' the picture of happiness and contentment with her
feet on a foot-stool, her pretty hands clasped in her lap, and her eyes
lookin' up adorin'ly into hisen as he read:

"Oh, beautious love, sweet realm of joy,
No wild alarm shall ere thy sweet calm break."

When crash! bang! down come the partition with a half dressed man on
top, brandishin' aloft a boot and screamin' like a painter, as wuz only
natural. He broke right into Love's Sweet Realm and skairt 'em into
fits.

She fell to once into highstericks, and he, when he recovered
conscientiousness threatened to lick the man, and everybody in St.
Louis, and made the air blue with conversation that the Realm of Love
never ort to hearn on, and wouldn't probable for years and years if it
hadn't been for this _contrary temps_.

I hearn this, but don't say it is so; you can hear most anything and it
held us in all right.

The next day, bein' Sunday, Josiah thought it would be our duty to stay
on the Fair ground and see the Pike, etc. But I sez: "Josiah, we will
begin this hefty job right, we will go to meetin'."

So we went out into the city and hunted up a M.E. meetin' house and
hearn a good sermon and went into class meetin' and gin testimonies both
on us. And Blandina bein' asked to by a man went forward for prayers and
sot for a spell on the sinners' bench. She's been a member for years,
but she's such a clever creeter she wants to obleege everybody.

Well, havin' done our three duties we went back peaceful and pious in
frame and went to walk in of course to our own temporary home. But what
do you think! that misuble, cheatin' man at the gate asked us to pay to
git in. We hearn afterward that this wuz a dishonest man and wuz sent
off.

"Pay!" sez Josiah. "Pay to come home from meetin'? Did you want us to
hang round the meetin' house all day and sleep on the steps? Or what did
you want?"

The man kep' that stuny look onto him and sez, "Fifty cents each."

Josiah fairly trembled with rage as he handed out the money, and sez he