Sez Cephas, "The worm has turned, Josiah Allen's wife! Yes, I feel that
I have got to look now to more distant relations for comfort. Yes, the
worm has been stomped on too heavy."

He looked cold, cold as a iceickle almost. And I see that jest the few
words I had spoke, jest the slight hints I had gin, hadn't been took as
they should have been took. So I said no more. For agin the remark of
that little bad boy came up in my mind and restrained me from sayin' any
more.

Truly, as the young male child observed, "it wuzn't my funeral."

We went home almost immegiately afterwards, my heart nearly a-bleedin'
for the little children, poor little creeters, and Cephas actin' cold
and distant to the last And we hain't seen 'em sence. But news has come
from them, and come straight. Josiah heerd to Jonesville all about it.
And though it is hitchin' the democrat buggy on front of the mare--to
tell the end of the funeral here--yet I may as well tell it now and be
done with it.

The miller at Loontown wuz down to the Jonesville mill to get the loan
of some bags, and Josiah happened to be there to mill that day, and
heerd all about it.

Cephas had got the monument, and the ornaments on it cost fur more than
he expected. There wuz a wreath a-runnin' round it clear from the bottom
to the top, and verses a kinder runnin' up it at the same time. And it
cost fearful. Poetry a-runnin' up, they say, costs fur more than it duz
on a level.