But Josiah had begun to pick up his crumbs again. Truly it is hard work to keep men down in the valley of humiliation. You can’t keep ’em worked up and mortified for any great length of time, do the best you can. But I continued on in almost dretful axents.

“You ort to repent in sackcloth and ashes, Josiah Allen.”

“We haint got no sackcloth Samantha,” says he, “and we have sold our ashes. Probable the man wouldn’t want me to be a repentin’ in ’em. It would be apt to leach ’em, too much lie for ’em.”

“I’d try to turn it off into a joke, Josiah Allen, I’d laugh if I was in your place about lyin’. Your tears ort to flow like a leach barrell. Oh if you could realize as I do the wickedness of your act. Destroyin’ your country’s honor. Sellin’ your father’s coat when I wanted it for carpet rags.” Says I, “I am as good a mind as I ever was to eat, to color the hull thing black, warp and all, makin’ a mournin’ carpet of it, to set down and bewail my pardner’s wickedness from year to year.”

“It would look pretty solemn Samantha.” I see the idee worried him.

“It wouldn’t look no solemner than I feel, Josiah Allen.”

And then I kep’ perfectly still for a number of minutes, for silence is the solemn temple with its roof as high as the heavens, convenient for the human soul to retire into, at any time, unbeknown to anybody; to offer up thanksgivin’s, or repent of iniquities. And I thought my Josiah was repentin’ of hisen.

But truly as I said men’s consciences are like ingy rubber, dretful easy and stretchy, and almost impossible to break like a bruised reed. For while I was a hopin’ that my companion was a repentin’, and thought mebby he would burst out a cryin’, overcome by a realizin’ sense of his depravities; and I was a thinkin’ that if he did, I should take up a corner of his bandanna handkerchief and cry on it too—that man for all his back slidin’s is so oncommon dear to me—he spoke out in jest as chirp a way as I ever seen him, and for all the world, jest as if he hadn’t done nothin’:

“I wonder if sister Doodle will have supper ready, Samantha. I meant to have told her to fried a little o’ that beef.”