“Now,” sez I, “you jest do them shoes right up and carry ’em back to the store, and if you have got to have a new pair, git some that will be more becomin’ to a human creeter, let alone a class-leader, and a perfessor, and a grandfather.”

So at last I prevailed—­he a-forebodin’ to the very last that it would make talk to see him in such shoes.  But he got a pair that wuzn’t more’n one size too small for him, and I presumed to think they would stretch some.  And, anyway, I laid out to put his good, roomy old gaiters in my own trunk, so he could have a paneky to fall back on, and to soothe.

As for myself, I took my old slips, that had been my faithful companions for over two years, and a pair of good big roomy bootees.

I never bought nothin’ new for any of my feet, not even a shoe-string.  And the only new thing that I bought, anyway, wuz a new muslin night-cap with a lace ruffle.

I bought that, and I spoze vanity and pride wuz to the bottom of it.  I feel my own shortcomin’s, I feel ’em deep, and try to repent, every now and then, I do.

But I did think in my own mind that in case of fire, and I knew that Chicago wuz a great case for burnin’ itself up—­I thought in case of fire in the night I wouldn’t want to be ketched with a plain sheep’s-head night-cap on, which, though comfortable, and my choice for stiddy wear, hain’t beautiful.

And I thought if there wuz a fire, and I wuz to be depictered in the newspapers as a-bein’ rescued, I did feel a little pride in havin’ a becomin’ night-cap on, and not bein’ engraved with a sheep’s head on.

Thinks’es I, the pictures in the newspapers are enough to bring on the cold chills onto anybody, even if took bareheaded, and what—­what would be the horror of ’em took in a sheep’s head!

There it wuz, there is my own weakness sot right down in black and white.  But, anyway, it only cost thirty-five cents, and there wuzn’t nothin’ painful about it, like Josiah’s shoes, nor protracted, like Tirzah Ann’s stockin’s.

Wall, Ury and Philury moved in the day before, and Josiah and I left in the very best of sperits and on the ten o’clock train, Maggie and Thomas Jefferson and Krit a-meetin’ us to the depot.

Maggie looked as pretty as a pink, if she didn’t make no preperations.  She had on her plain waist, black silk, and a little black velvet turban, and she had pinned a bunch of fresh rosies to her waist, and the rosies wuzn’t any pinker than her pretty cheeks and lips, and the dew that had fell into them roses’ hearts that night wuzn’t any brighter than her sweet gray eyes.

She makes a beautiful woman, Maggie Allen duz; and she ort to, to correspond with her husband, for my boy, Thomas Jefferson, is a young man of a thousand, and it is admitted that he is by all the Jonesvillians—­nearly every villian of ’em admits it.

Tirzah Ann and the babe wuz to the depot to see us off, and she said that she should come on jest as soon as she got through with her preperations.