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