"Do wait, mother; all in good time.

Forty-five and a-half, brother Tony; that was your sum--ah!--you mentioned it some time back--half of what?
Is that half a fraction, as they call it?
I haven't forgot fractions, and logareems, and practice, and so on to algebrae, where it always seems to me to blow hard, for, whizz goes my head in a jiffy, as soon as I've mounted the ladder to look into that country.
How 'bout that forty-five and a half, brother Tony, if you don't mind condescending to explain ?" "Forty-five and a half ?" muttered Anthony, mystified.
"Oh, never mind, you know, if you don't like to say, brother Tony." The farmer touched him up with his pipe-stem.
"Five and a half," Anthony speculated.

"That's a fraction you got hold of, brother William John,--I remember the parson calling out those names at your wedding: 'I, William John, take thee, Susan;' yes, that's a fraction, but what's the good of it ?" "What I mean is, it ain't forty-five and half of forty-five.

Half of one, eh?
That's identical with a fraction.

One--a stroke--and two under it." "You've got it correct," Anthony assented.
"How many thousand divide it by ?" "Divide what by, brother William John?
I'm beat." "Ah! out comes the keys: lockup everything; it's time!" the farmer laughed, rather proud of his brother-in-law's perfect wakefulness after two stiff tumblers.