And says I,—“_I_ wont believe anything, Josiah Allen, till I have got holt of it.” Says I, “mists and black arts are liable to be cast before your eyes; but if you lay holt of anything with your two hands, you are pretty certain it is there.” Never havin’ laid holt of her tow curls and other ornaments, as they was bein’ sold, I don’t tell it for certain truth, but only what I have hearn; but that they have a dretful hard time on’t to git along, _that_ I _know_. Besides poverty, the horrors lay holt of Slimpsey the worst kind. They shake him as a dog shakes a chipmunk. When he lived with his first wife he didn’t have ’em more’n a few times a month, or so; but _now_ he has ’em every day, stiddy, right along. He yells at Betsey; goes to bed with his boots on; throws his hat at her, hollers, and keeps a actin’. He drinks, too, when he can git anything to drink. He says he drinks to forget his trouble; but what a simple move that is, for when he gits over it, there his trouble is, right before his eyes. There Betsey stands. Trouble is as black and troublesome again looked at through the glass, and topers find that it is; for they have the old trouble, all the same, besides shame and disgrace, and bodily ruination. [Illustration: ALAS! POOR BETSEY.] Considerin’ what a dretful hard time Betsey has, it would seem to a bystander to calmly think on’t, that she didn’t git much of any comfort from her marriage, except the dignity she told me of the other night, with her own tongue as she was goin’ home from washin’, at Miss Gowdey’s. (Miss Gowdey had a felon and was disabled.) She had on a old hood, and one of her husband’s old coats with brass buttons—for it was a rainin’ and she didn’t care for looks. She was all drabbled up, and looked tired enough to sink. She had a piece of pork to pay her for her washin’, and a piller-case about half full of the second sort of flour a carryin’ along, that Miss Gowdey had give her; and as I happened to be a standin’ in the front door a lookin’ for my companion, Josiah,—who had gone to Jonesville to mill—we got to talkin’ about one thing and another, and she up and told me that she wouldn’t part with the dignity she got by marryin’, for 25 cents, much as she needed money. Though she said it was a worse trial than anybody had any idee of, for her to give up writin’ poetry.