and just then I heard the old tin lantern rattle on
the brick floor of the cellar, the deacon said 'Merciful goodness;'
Pa said 'Helen damnation, I am stabbed;' and Ma yelled 'goodness sakes
alive;' and then there was a lot of dishpans on the stairs begun to
fall, and they all tried to get up cellar at once, and they fell over
each other; and O, my, what a frowy smell came up to the kitchen from
the cellar. It was enough to kill anybody. Pa was the first to get to
the head of the stairs, and he stuck his head in the kitchen, and drew a
long breath, and said '_whoosh!_ Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man.'
The deacon came up next, and he had run his head into a hanging shelf
and broken a glass jar of huckleberries, and they were all over him,
and he said 'give me air. Earth's but a desert drear.' Then Ma and the
deacon's wife came up on a gallop, and they looked tired. Pa began to
peel off his coat and vest and said he was going out to bury them, and
Ma said he could bury her, too, and I asked the deacon if he didn't
notice a faint odor of sewer gas coming from the cellar, and my chum
said it smelled more to him as though something had crawled in the
cellar and died. Well, you never saw a sicker crowd, and I felt sorry
for Ma and the deacon, 'cause their false teeth fell out, and I knew Ma
couldn't gossip and the deacon couldn't talk sassy without teeth. But
you'd a dide to see Pa. He was mad, and thought the deacon had put up
the job on him, and he was going to knock the deacon out in two rounds,
when Ma said there was no use of getting mad about a dispensation of
providence, and Pa said one more such dispensation of providence would
just kill him on the spot. They finally got the house aired, and my chum
and me slept on the hay in the barn, after we had opened the outside
cellar door so the animal could get out, and the next morning I had the
fever and ague, and Pa and Ma brought me home, and I have been firing
quinine down my neck ever since. Pa says it is malaria, but it is
getting up before daylight in the morning and prowling around a farm
doing chores before it is time to do chores, and I don't want any more
farm. I thought at Sunday school last Sunday, when the superintendent
talked about the odor of sanctity that pervaded the house on that
beautiful morning, and looked at the deacon, that the deacon thought
the superintendent was referring to him and Pa, but may be it was an
accident. Well, I must go home and s