didn't put his boots on, because it wuzn't wuth while to put 'em
on agin so near bed-time. And he that sot out that afternoon a
feelin' so haughty, and lookin' down on Ezra and Druzilla, and
bein' brung back by 'em, in that condition -- and bein' goured all
the time by thoughts of the ignominious way his flirtin' had
ended, by her droppin' him by the side of the road, like a weed
she had trampled on too hardly. And a bein' gourded deeper than
all the rest of his agonies, by a senseless jealousy of Deacon
Balch -- and a thinkin' for the first time in his life, what it
would be, if her affections, that had been like a divine beacon to
him all his life, if that flame should ever go out, or ever
flicker in its earthly socket -- oh, those thoughts that he had
seemed to consider in his own mad race for fashion -- oh, how that
sass that had seemed sweet to him as a gander, oh how bitter and
poisonous it wuz to partake of as a goose.

Oh! the agony of that ride. We went middlin' slow back -- and
before we got to Saratoga the English girl went past us, she had
been to the Sulphur Springs and back agin. She didn't pay no
attention to us, for she wuz alayin' on a plan in her own mind,
for a moonlight pedestrian excursion on foot, that evenin', out to
the old battle ground of Saratoga.

Josiah never looked to the right hand or the left, as she passed
him, at many, many a knot an hour. And I felt that my pardner's
sufferin from that cause was over, and mine too, but oh! by what
agony wuz it gained. For 3 days and 3 nights he never stood on
any of his feet for a consecutive minute and a half, and I bathed
him with anarky, and bathed his very soul with many a sweet moral
lesson at the same time. And when at last Josiah Allen emerged