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You see Bill an’ I wuz jest like brothers; wuz raised on ‘jinin’ farms: he wuz his folks’ only child, an’ I wuz my folks’ only one. So, nat’ril like, we growed up together, lovin’ an’ sympathizin’ with each other. What I knowed, I told Bill, an’ what Bill knowed, he told me, an’ what neither on us knowed–why, that warn’t wuth knowin’!

If I had n’t got over my braggin’ days, I ‘d allow that, in our time, Bill an’ I wuz jest about the sparkin’est beaus in the township; leastwise that’s what the girls thought; but, to be honest about it, there wuz only two uv them girls we courted, Bill an’ I, he courtin’ one an’ I t’other. You see we sung in the choir, an’ as our good luck would have it we got sot on the sopranner an’ the alto, an’ bimeby–oh, well, after beauin’ ’em round a spell–a year or so, for that matter–we up an’ married ’em, an’ the old folks gin us the farms, ‘jinin’ farms, where we boys had lived all our lives. Lizzie, my wife, had always been powerful friendly with Marthy, Bill’s wife; them two girls never met up but what they wuz huggin’ an’ kissin’ an’ carryin’ on, like girls does; for women ain’t like men–they can’t control theirselves an’ their feelin’s, like the stronger sext does.

I tell you, it wuz happy times for Lizzie an’ me and Marthy an’ Bill–happy times on the ‘jinin’ farms, with the pastures full uv fat cattle, an’ the barns full uv hay an’ grain, and the twin cottages full uv love an’ contentment! Then when Cyrus come–our little boy–our first an’ only one! why, when he come, I wuz jest so happy an’ so grateful that if I had n’t been a man I guess I ‘d have hollered–maybe cried–with joy. Wanted to call the little tyke Bill, but Bill would n’t hear to nothin’ but Cyrus. You see, he ‘d bought a cyclopeedy the winter we wuz all marr’ed an’ had been readin’ in it uv a great foreign warrior named Cyrus that lived a long spell ago.

“Land uv Goshen, Bill!” sez I, “you don’t reckon the baby ‘ll ever be a warrior?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” sez Bill. “There ‘s no tellin’. At any rate, Cyrus Ketcham has an uncommon sound for a name; so Cyrus it must be, an’ when he ‘s seven years old I ‘ll gin him the finest Morgan colt in the deestrick!”

So we called him Cyrus, an’ he grew up lovin’ and bein’ loved by everybody.

Well, along about two years–or, say, eighteen months or so–after Cyrus come to us a little girl baby come to Bill an’ Marthy, an’ of all the cunnin’ sweet little things you ever seen that little girl baby was the cunnin’est an’ sweetest! Looked jest like one of them foreign crockery figgers you buy in city stores–all pink an’ white, with big brown eyes here, an’ a teeny, weeney mouth there, an’ a nose an’ ears, you’d have bet they wuz wax–they wuz so small an’ fragile. Never darst hold her for fear I ‘d break her, an’ it liked to skeered me to death to see the way Marthy and Lizzie would kind uv toss her round an’ trot her–so–on their knees or pat her–so–on the back when she wuz collicky like the wimmin folks sez all healthy babies is afore they ‘re three months old.

“You ‘re goin’ to have the namin’ uv her,” sez Bill to me.

“Yes,” sez Marthy; “we made it up atween us long ago that you should have the namin’ uv our baby like we had the namin’ uv yourn.”

Then, kind uv hectorin’ like–for I was always a powerful tease–I sez: “How would Cleopatry do for a name? or Venis? I have been readin’ the cyclopeedy myself, I ‘d have you know!”