Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition | Page 3

the Louisiana Purchase."
"Do you mean to tell me, Josiah, that Hatevil Allen paid fifteen millions for this farm. Will you tell me that? You, a member of the meetin' house and a deacon?"
"Well, what you might call the same, it is the same figgers with the six orts left out. Great-granther Allen paid fifteen dollars for this piece of land, it wuz all woods then."
"Another of these most remarkable series of incidents that have ever took place on this continent, Thomas Jefferson wuz a main actor in the Louisana Purchase. He has left this spear some years ago, and who, who is the father of Thomas Jefferson to-day?"
I didn't say nothin', for I wuz engrossed in my knittin', I wuz jest turnin' the heel of his sock and needed my hull mind.
"And," sez he, smitin' his breast agin, "I ask you, Samantha, who is the father of Thomas Jefferson to-day?"
I had by this time turned the heel and I sez, "Why, I spoze he's got the same father now he always had, children don't change their fathers very often as a general thing."
"Well, you needn't be so grumpy about it. Don't you see that these wonderful coincidences are enough to apall a light-minded person. Why, I, even I with my cast iron strength of mind, have almost felt my brain stagger and reel as I onraveled the momentous affair.
"And I am plannin' a celebration, Samantha, that will hist up the name of Allen where it ort to be onto the very top of Fame's towerin' pillow, and keep it in everlastin' remembrance.
"And I, Samantha," and here he smote himself agin in the breast, "I, Josiah Allen, havin' exposed these circumstances, the most remarkable in American history, I lay out to name my show the Exposition of Josiah Allen. And I've thought some times that in order to mate mine with the St. Louis show, as you may say, I'd mebby ort to call myself St. Josiah."
"Saint Josiah!" sez I, and my axent wuz that icy cold that he shivered imperceptibly and added hastily, "Well, we will leave that to the future to decide."
"But," sez he firmly, spruntin' up agin, "if the nation calls on me to name myself thus I shall respond, and expose myself at my Exposition as Saint Josiah."
Sez I anxiously, "I wouldn't expose myself too much, Josiah. You remember the pa that took his weak-minded child to the ball, and told him to set still and not speak or they would find him out.
"And they asked him question after question and he didn't say a word, and finally they begun to scoff at him and told him he wuz a fool, and he called out, 'Father, father, they've found me out.'"
Josiah sez snappishly, "What you mean by bringin' that old chestnut up I cant see."
"Well," sez I, "I shan't sew the moral on any tighter." But he kep' on ignorin' my sarcastick allusion.
"To keep up the train of almost miraclous incidents marchin' along through the past connecting the St. Louis and the Allen Purchase like historical twins, I'm goin' to spend on the Exposition of Josiah Allen jest the amount paid for the other original purchase, and I may, for there is no tellin' what a Allen may do when his blood is rousted up, I may swing right out and pay jest the same amount St. Louis is payin' for her Exposition."
"Fifty millions!" sez I with emotions of or--or to think I had a pardner that would tell such a gigantic falsehood, and instinctively I thought of a story I'd hearn Thomas Jefferson tell the evenin' before.
He said three commercial travelers wuz talkin' before an old man from the country whose loose fittin' clothes were gently scattered with hay-seed. The first one told with minute particulars of a Western cyclone that had lifted a house and sot it down in a neighborin' township. The next one said that he wuz knowin' to the circumstances and how the cyclone swep back and brought the suller and sot it down under the house. And the third one remembered vividly how the cyclone went back the second time and brought the hole the suller left and distributed it round under the new site.
The old man listened with deep interest, and said he wuz glad he'd had the privelige of hearin' 'em, for their talk had cleared up a Bible verse he'd long pondered over.
They wuz astounded to think their talk had awakened religious meditations. But the old gentleman said their conversation had cleared up that passage where it said:
"Annanias come forth."
He said it wuz now plain to him that it meant that these three drummers should stand before Annanias, the Prince of Liars, he takin' his place behind 'em, the fourth in the rank of liars.
But this is neither