I.

SAMANTHA AT SARATOGA.


The idee on't come to me one day about sundown, or a little before
sundown. I wuz a settin' in calm peace, and a big rockin' chair
covered with a handsome copperplate, a readin' what the Sammist
sez about "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity." The words struck deep,
and as I said, it was jest that very minute that the idee struck
me about goin' to Saratoga. Why I should have had the idee at
jest that minute, I can't tell, nor Josiah can't. We have talked
about it sense.

But good land! such creeters as thoughts be never wuz, nor never
will be. They will creep in, and round, and over anything, and
get inside of your mind (entirely unbeknown to you) at any time.
Curious, haint it? -- How you may try to hedge 'em out, and shet
the doors and everything. But they will creep up into your mind,
climb up and draw up their ladders, and there they will be, and
stalk round independent as if they owned your hull head; curious!

Well, there the idee wuz -- I never knew nothin' about it, nor how
it got there. But there it wuz, lookin' me right in the face of
my soul, kinder pert and saucy, sayin', "You'd better go to
Saratoga next summer; you and Josiah."

But I argued with it. Sez I, "What should we go to Saratoga for?
None of the relations live there on my side, or on hison; why