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 seen there wuz splinters in it, and I couldn't be liftin' it round without gittin' 'em under my thumb!"

"I didn't know you wuz goin' to lift it, Josiah."

"You ort to know it! I wuz liftin' it after hens' eggs, I thought I would see if there wuz any under the barn before I piled the straw on the floor, and if it wuzn't for you I wouldn't keep a dum hen on the place! And if I ever git so I can use this hand agin," sez he a-wavin' it out kinder ferocious-like, "I'll brain every dum one of 'em, there never shall a hen step her dum foot on my farm agin after to-day!"

"Well, well, do keep still, Josiah Allen, how can I git this sliver out and you prancin' round so?"

"Oh, yes, keep right on, jaw me all you want to, keep right on jawin' and talkin', and not let me have a minute's rest. And let me faint away on your hands. Oh, gracious heavens! can't you stab a little deeper!"

"Why, you wanted me to prick it out, Josiah."

In other times I should have rebuked him sharply for swearin', but truly a woman learns after twenty years experience in married life that there is a time for scoldin' and a time to refrain from scoldin'. I knew that until that sliver wuz out and the pain eased off there would be no more use reasonin' with Josiah Allen than there would be with a wild hyena, for when pain enters into a man's system (a ordinary man) it drives reason out of it, and common sense and decency.

After a while I got the sliver out and did it up in Pond's extract, he groanin' and jumpin' and blamin' me for it every minute. Why, he told me in one of the worst twinges that if it wuzn't for me there wouldn't be a hemlock board on the premises, anyway. And there I never had to my recollection said the word "hemlock"