around! hold up your heads! I want to look at you good! Well, well,

well, it does seem most too good to be true, I declare! Lord, I'm so

glad to see you! Does a body's whole soul good to look at you! Shake

hands again! Keep on shaking hands! Goodness gracious alive. What will

my wife say?--Oh yes indeed, it's so!--married only last week--lovely,

perfectly lovely creature, the noblest woman that ever--you'll like her,

Nancy! Like her? Lord bless me you'll love her--you'll dote on her

-you'll be twins! Well, well, well, let me look at you again! Same old

-why bless my life it was only jest this very morning that my wife says,

'Colonel'--she will call me Colonel spite of everything I can do--she

says 'Colonel, something tells me somebody's coming!' and sure enough

here you are, the last people on earth a body could have expected.

Why she'll think she's a prophetess--and hanged if I don't think so too

--and you know there ain't any, country but what a prophet's an honor to,

as the proverb says. Lord bless me and here's the children, too!

Washington, Emily, don't you know me? Come, give us a kiss. Won't I fix

you, though!--ponies, cows, dogs, everything you can think of that'll

delight a child's heart-and--Why how's this? Little strangers? Well

you won't be any strangers here, I can tell you. Bless your souls we'll

make you think you never was at home before--'deed and 'deed we will,

I can tell you! Come, now, bundle right along with me. You can't

glorify any hearth stone but mine in this camp, you know--can't eat

anybody's bread but mine--can't do anything but just make yourselves

perfectly at home and comfortable, and spread yourselves out and rest!

You hear me! Here--Jim, Tom, Pete, Jake, fly around! Take that team to

my place--put the wagon in my lot--put the horses under the shed, and get

The Gilded Age