As the speaker paused for needed breath Blandina clasped her hands and sithed out, “Oh, what glorious eloquence!  I never hearn anything like it!”

And I sez, “I never did but once, I know that voice, though I hain’t hearn it for twenty years; that is Prof.  Aspire Todd.”  And I thought to myself, he is practicin’ over a speech, and thought the Esquimeaux would stand it better than tribes less humble and good natered.  And so it turned out; he hoped he would be invited to speak at a scientific meetin’ to take place in Festival Hall in a day or two, and bein’ to the Inside Inn he’d tried to orate his speech in his own room, but it is built so shammy you can hear things from one end to the other, and they threatened him with horse whippin’ on one side and lynchin’ on the other, and bein’ drove to it he tried it on the Esquimeauxs.  They stood it pretty well, though I noticed one or two on ’em weepin’ bitterly, not knowin’ what ailed ’em.

Well, to resoom backward, I sez to Blandina, “I hearn Aspire Todd at a Fourth of July celebration in Josiah’s sugar bush.”

“Oh,” sez Blandina, claspin’ her hands, “would it be possible for you to introduce me to that noble being?”

Sez I, “You like his talk then?”

“Oh, yes!” sez she, shutting her eyes and clasping her hands.  “His matchless eloquence is beyond praise.”

“So ’tis,” sez I, “way beyond my praise.  But I can introduce you if you want me to; he visited me that time he wuz in Jonesville and stayed to supper.”  So as he come round the corner of the buildin’ follered by some bewildered lookin’ natives I put out my hand and sez, “I don’t know as you know me, Professor Aspire Todd, but you visited me in Jonesville.  I am Josiah Allen’s wife.”

He grasped my hand almost warmly and sez, “Indeed my memory retroacts readily on that delightsome remembrance.”

And then I introduced Blandina, knowin’ I wuz makin’ her perfectly happy by so doin’.  He’d growed old considerable, which I didn’t blame him for and didn’t see as he could help it, twenty years havin’ gone by.  His hair, which wuz still long and hung down over his turn-down collar, wuz streaked with gray.  But he still had the same kind of a curious, sentimental, high-flown look to him.

I didn’t admire his looks, but Blandina’s manners to him wuz worshipful, and it seemed to agree with him first rate, he seemed really to take to her.  And as he asked to accompany and go with us to the next exhibit, I fell in with it, and when my pardner come walked ahead with him while Professor Todd follered with a perfectly blissful Blandina, and before they parted he arranged a rondevoo next day with Blandina.

I wuz beat out when I got home and Miss Huff sent Aunt Pheeny up to my room with a glass of hot lemonade and some crackers, supper not bein’ quite ready owin’ to shiftless works in the kitchen.  Molly wuz in my room also sweet as a June rosy.  Aunt Tryphena wuz quiverin’ with excitement, and she sez, “Lazy, good for nothin’ things! but it hain’t what they do that I mind but it is their iggorance I despise.”