The Governor murmured sunthin’ about a engagement he had.  He looked worried and anxious, but I and my Gardeen Angel hadn’t no idee of lettin’ him go while there wuz a chance for us to plead for the Right.

And I hastened to say, “Uncle Sam needn’t be ‘fraid of lendin’ money on that farm, for it is there solid, clear down to China; it can’t run away.”

The Governor kinder moved off a little, as if meditatin’ flight, and I spoke up some louder, bein’ determined to do all I could for Mahala Widrig—­good, honest, hard-workin’ creeter.

Sez I, “It will be the makin’ of Jim Widrigses folks and more’n fifty others right there round Jonesville, to say nothin’ about the hull of the United States; and it will be money in Uncle Sam’s pocket, too, in the end, and he will own up to me that it is.”

The Governor here took out his watch and looked at it almost onbeknown to me, I wuz so took up a-talkin’ for Justice and Mahala.

[Illustration:  The Governor took out his watch.]

Sez I, “This bill will bring money into Uncle Samuel’s pocket in the end, for it will keep the boys to hum on the old farm.”  Sez I, “It is Poverty that has driv the boys off—­hard work, high taxes, and ruinous mortgages drives to the city lots of ’em, to add to the pauper and criminal classes—­boys that Uncle Sam might have kep to hum by the means I speak of, to grow up into sober, respectable, prosperous citizens, a strength and a safeguard to the Republic, but whom he now will have to support in prisons and almshouses, a danger and menace to the Goverment.

“Poor Uncle Sam!—­poor, well-meanin’, but oft misguided old creeter!  It would be easier for him, if he only knew it, to do what Mr. Stanford wanted him to.

“Besides, think of the masses of fosterin’ crime he would be a-pressin’ back and a-turnin’ into good, pure influences to bless the world!  And besides, the oncounted gain to Heaven and earth!  Uncle Sam would git the two-cent mortgages back a dozen times in the increase of taxable property.”

The Governor murmured agin that he wuz wanted to once, in a distant part of the city—­he must start for California imegatly, and on the next train.  Sez he incoherently, “That school wuz about to open; he must be to the University to once.”

He wuz nearly delirious—­I spoze he wuz nearly overcome by my remarkable eloquence, but don’t know.

But as he sot off, a-movin’ backward in a polite way but swift, entirely onbeknown to him he come up aginst a big tree, and with a hopeless look of resignation he leaned up aginst it, while I, a-feelin’ that Providence had interfered to give me another chance at him, advanced onwards, and sez to him in a real eloquent way, “That bill will do more than any amount of beggin’, or jawin’, or preachin’, towards keepin’ the boys to hum on the old deserted farms that are so thick in the country; and,” sez I, “now that bill has fell out of his hands, I want you to take it up and pass it on to success.”