"Last time Pitt came here he said he should have three or four days'
vacation the 12th of August, and he thought we'd better get married
then, if 't was agreeable to me. I was kind of shy, and the almanac
was hanging alongside of the table, so I took it up and looked to see
what day of the week the 12th fell on. 'Oh, Pitt,' I said, 'we can't
be married on Friday; it's dreadful unlucky.' He began to scold then,
and said I didn't care anything about him if I wouldn't marry him when
it was most convenient; and I said I would if 't was any day but
Friday; and he said that was all moonshine, and nobody but foolish old
women believed in such nonsense; and I said there wasn't a girl in
town that would marry him on a Friday; and he said there was; and I
asked him to come right out and tell who he meant; and he said he
didn't mean anybody in particular; and I said he did; and he said,
well, Jennie Perkins would, on Friday or Sunday or wash-day or any
other day; and I said if I was a man I vow I wouldn't take a girl that
was so anxious as all that; and he said he'd rather take one that was
a little too anxious than one that wasn't anxious enough; and so we
had it, back and forth, till I got so mad I couldn't see the almanac.
Then, just to show him I had more good reasons than one, I said,
'Besides, if we should be married on a Friday we'd have to go away on
a Saturday, and ten to one 't would rain on our wedding-trip.'
"'Why would it rain Saturday more than any other day?' said he; and
then I mistrusted I was getting into fresh trouble, but I was too mad
to back out, and said I, 'They say it rains more Saturdays in the year
than any other day'; and he got red in the face and said, 'Where'd you
get that silly notion?' Then I said it wasn't any silly notion, it was
Gospel truth, and anybody that took notice of anything knew it was so;
and he said he never heard of it in his life; and I said there was
considerable many things that he'd never heard of that he'd be all the
better for knowing; and he said he was like Josh Billings, he'd rather
know a few things well than know so many things that wa'n't so."
"You might have told him how we compared notes about rainy days at the
Aid Club," said her mother. "You remember Hannah Sophia Palmer hadn't
noticed it, but the minute you mentioned it she remembered how, when
she was a child, she was always worryin' for fear she couldn't wear
her new hat a Sunday, and it must have been because it was threatening
weather a Saturday, and she was afraid it would keep up for Sunday.
And the widow Buzzell said she always picked up her apples for
pie-baking on Friday, it was so apt to be dull or wet on a Saturday."
"I told him all of that," continued Huldah, "and how old Mrs. Bascom
said they had a literary society over to Edgewood that used to meet
twice a month on Saturday afternoons, and it rained or snowed so often
they had to change their meetings to a Wednesday.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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