And her weight bein’ two hundred and forty, she showed off vivid aginst the settin’ sun.

Selinda is a meek woman and obedient, but she cries easy.  You have got to take good traits and bad ones in folks.  She can’t help it.  She always cries in class meetin’, or anywhere—­has cried time and agin a-tellin’ how she would be trompled on and lay down and have her head chopped off if Bizer told her to.

And of course it couldn’t be expected she would go through this fearful experience without sheddin’ tears.  No; before she had been up there two minits she begun to cry.

[Illustration:  Before she had been up there two minits she begun to cry.]

She always makes up pitiful faces when she weeps.  It has been talked on a sight in Jonesville, some sayin’ she might help it, and some contendin’ that she couldn’t; but she skairs children frequent.

But now she dassent leggo a minit to git her handkerchief, so she rode along weepin’ silently, and a fearful sight for men or angels, but truly a cryin’ monument of wifely devotion.

As she moved off, I could see at the first strain her dress waist, bein’ one of the short round ones with a belt, had bust asunder, leavin’ a white waist of cotton flannel between ’em, which seemed to be a-growin’ wider and wider all the time. (She wears cotton flannel for her health.)

As I see this, and not knowin’ what would ensue and take place in her clothin’, I cast onto the wind my own fears, and the shrinkin’ timidity of my sect, and graspin’ my umbrell in my hand, I run along by the side of the lofty quadreped, a-tryin’ to reach up and fix her a little.

But I could not; her position wuz too lofty, the mount wuz too precipitous on which she sot.

She see me, but she didn’t stop her cryin’, and the faces she wuz a-makin’ wuz pitiful in the extreme, and skairful to anybody that hadn’t seen ’em so much as I had.  She wuz half bent, which made her cotton-flannel infirmity harder to witness.

The camel wuz a-swayin’ fearful from side to side, and a-lurchin’ forwards and a lurchin’ backwards at a dangerous rate.

Oh, how dizzy-headed Selinda must have been!  How skairt and how dretful her feelin’s wuz!

Sez I, “Dismount to once, Selinda Dagget.”

“No,” sez she; “Bizer has placed me here, and here I will stay.”

“You don’t know whether you will or not,” sez I.  “I believe you are a-fallin’ off; and,” sez I, “I’m ’fraid you’ll git killed, Selinda; do git down!”

“I fear it too,” sez she, and she looked down on me with agony in her mean, and sez she—­

“Good-bye, Sister Allen; if we don’t meet agin, we both believe in a better country.”

I wuz all carried away by my emotions, or wouldn’t spoke out so; but I sez—­

“This country is all right enough, if folks didn’t act like fools in it.”  Sez I, “Do you git down and pull down your bask, and wipe your nose and eyes; you look like fury, Selinda Dagget.”