“Wives, obey your husbands.”

She didn’t rebel outward, but she whispered to me in pitiful axents—­

“I hate to ride that creeter—­oh, how I hate to!  But you know my principles,” sez she; “you know I always said that wives ort to obey their pardners.”

And I sez, “When pardners and common sense conflict, I foller common sense every time.  Howsumever,” sez I, “if you want to air them principles of yourn, you won’t be apt to find a more lofty place to exhibit ’em.”

And I glanced up the gray precipitous sides of that camel, and she looked up ’em, too, with fear and tremblin’, but begun to gird her lions, figgeratively speakin’, to obey Bizer and embark.

She has always boasted to me and the other neighborin’ wimmen that she has never disobeyed her husband once; and I sez to her cheerfully, “Wall, I have, and expect to agin, if the Lord spares my life.”

And so Miss Bobbet told her, and Miss Gowdy, and Miss Peedick, and all the rest.  She acted so high-headed about it, that we said it some to take down her pride, and some on principle.

We believed there wuz reason in all things, and none of us wimmen felt that we would stand

“On a burnin’ deck,
Whence all but we had fled,”

and burn up, even if our pardners had ordered us to.  We wuz law-abidin’, every one on us, but we felt there wuz times where law ended and common sense begun.

But Selinda argued, I well remember, that if Bizer had ordered her to stay on that deck, she should stay and be sot fire to.

And she praised up little Casey Bianky warmly, while we thought and said that Casey acted like a fool, and felt that Mr. Bianky would much ruther had him run and save himself than to burn up; anyway, old Miss Bianky would, and I believe his pa would.

Men are good-hearted creeters the biggest heft of the time, but failable in judgment sometimes, jest like female wimmen.

But Selinda wuz firm in her belief.

And here this day in Chicago she gin one of the most remarkable proofs of it ever seen in this country.

So while Selinda trembled like a popple leaf, and her false teeth rattled over her dry tongue (besides the camel, she wuz ’fraid as death of the Turkey that driv it, and he did look fierce), the camel knelt down, and the almost swoonin’ Selinda was histed up onto his back by the proud and haughty Bizer, and the strange-lookin’ Turkey.

She had no more than got seated when the driver give a skairful yell, and the camel give a fearful lunge, and straightened up on its feet, and Selinda’s bunnet fell back onto her neck, and lay there through the hull of the enterprise, and her gray hair floated back onchecked, for she dassent let her hands go a minit to fix it.

It wuz a mournin’ bunnet and veil, but black gittin’ soiled so easy, she had put on a bright green alpaca dress she had, thinkin’ that she wouldn’t see nobody she knew; and she wore some old yeller mitts for the same reason, and some low, shabby-lookin’ shoes, and some white stockin’s.