"If I hadn't no other reason for jinin' in these doin's, cookin' has got
to be done and how can a statute or a Historical Tabloo bile potatoes
and brile steak and make yeast emptin's bread perked up on a pedestal or
posin' in the creek, and you know, Josiah, that no matter how fur
ambition or vain glory may lead a man, his appetite has got to be
squenched, and vittles has got to be cooked else how can he squench it."

And to this old trustworthy weepon I held in all his different plans to
inviggle me into his preposterous idees and found it answered better
than reason or ridicule. But even this failed to break up his crazy
plan. His hull mind (what he had) wuz sot on it.




CHAPTER II.


I felt dretful and how I wuz goin' to break it up and git his mind off I
couldn't tell; I talked it over with the children. They wuz goin' to be
mortified to death by the idee if carried out and they told me in
confidence and the woodhouse kitchen, "It must be stopped!"

And I sez, "How is it goin' to be stopped? I've handled every weepon I
know how to lay holt on. I've pompied him, cooked the very best of
vittles, argued with him, eppisoded, but all to no use, he's as sot as a
hen turkey on a brick bat, and I've got to the end of my chain."

Sez Tirzah Ann, "Have you tried readin' historical novels to him?"