whipped, and parted with, and stole from. Why, they can't blame her for
feelin' fairly savage about 'em, as she duz.

For as she sez to me once, when we wuz talkin' it over, how everything had
happened to her. "Yes," sez she, with a axent like bone-set and vinegar,
"and what few things hain't happened to me has happened to my folks."

And sure enough I couldn't dispute her. Trouble and wrongs and sufferin's
seemed to be epidemic in the race of Pester wimmen. Why, one of her aunts
on her father's side, Huldah Pester, married for her first husband,
Eliphelet Perkins. He wuz a minister, rode on a circuit, and he took Huldah
on it too, and she rode round with him on it a good deal of the time. But
she never loved to, she wuz a woman that loved to be still, and kinder
settled down at home.

But she loved Eliphelet so well that she would do anything to please him,
so she rode round with him on that circuit till she wuz perfectly fagged
out.

He wuz a dretful good man to her, but he wuz kinder poor and they had hard
times to git along. But what property they had wuzn't taxed, so that helped
some, and Huldah would make one dollar go a good ways.

No, their property wuzn't taxed till Eliphelet died. Then the supervisor
taxed it the very minute the breath left his body; run his horse, so it wuz
said, so's to be sure to git it onto the tax list, and comply with the law.

You see Eliphelet's salary stopped when his breath did. And I spoze the
law thought, seein' she wuz havin' trouble, she might jest as well have a
little more; so it taxed all the property it never had taxed a cent for