Synopsis

Lorinda Cagwin invited Josiah and me to a reunion of the Allen family at her home nigh Washington, D.C., the birthplace of the first Allen we knowed anything about, and Josiah said: "Bein' one of the best lookin' and influential Allens on earth now, it would be expected on him to attend to it." And I fell in with the idee, partly to be done as I would be done by if it wuz the relation on my side, and partly because by goin' I could hit two birds with one stun, as the poet sez. Indeed, I could hit four on 'em. My own cousin, Diantha Trimble, lived in a city nigh Lorinda's and I had promised to visit her if I wuz ever nigh her, and help bear her burdens for a spell, of which burden more anon and bom-by. Diantha wuz one bird, the Reunion another, and the third bird I had in my mind's eye wuz the big outdoor meeting of the suffragists that wuz to be held in the city where Diantha lived, only a little ways from Lorinda's. And the fourth bird and the biggest one I wuz aimin' to hit from this tower of ourn wuz Washington, D.C. I wanted to visit the Capitol of our country, the center of our great civilization that stands like the sun in the solar system, sendin' out beam...