Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer and punctuation errors have been corrected, but dialect, unconventional and inconsistent spellings (haint/hain’t, their/thier, etc) are left untouched. [Illustration: MR. BOBBET TELLS NEWS.] MY OPINIONS AND BETSEY BOBBET’S. DESIGNED AS A BEACON LIGHT, TO GUIDE WOMEN TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, BUT WHICH MAY BE READ BY MEMBERS OF THE STERNER SECT, WITHOUT INJURY TO THEMSELVES OR THE BOOK. BY JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE. “_Who will read the Book, Samantha, when it is rote?_” PUBLISHED BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY, HARTFORD, CONN.: AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY. 1884. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by the AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. This Book is Dedicated To my own Lawful Pardner, JOSIAH. Whom (although I have been his Consort for a little upwards of 14 years) I still Love with a CAST-IRON DEVOTEDNESS. PREFACE. Which is to be read, if it haint askin’ too much of the kind hearted reader. In the first days of our married life, I strained nearly every nerve to help my companion Josiah along and take care of his children by his former consort, the subject of black African slavery also wearin’ on me, and a mortgage of 200 and 50 dollars on the farm. But as we prospered and the mortgage was cleared, and the children were off to school, the black African also bein’ liberated about the same time of the mortgage, then my mind bein’ free from these cares--the great subject of Wimmen’s Rites kept a goarin’ me, and a voice kept a sayin’ inside of me, “Josiah Allen’s wife, write a book givin’ your views on the great subject of Wimmen’s Rites.” But I hung back in spirit from the idea and says I, to myself, “I never went to school much and don’t know nothin’ about grammer, and I never could spell worth a cent.” But still that deep voice kept a ’swaiden me--“Josiah Allen’s wife, write a book.” Says I, “I can’t write a book, I don’t know no underground dungeons, I haint acquainted with no haunted houses, I never see a hero suspended over a abyss by his gallusses, I never beheld a heroine swoon away, I never see a Injun tommy hawked, nor a ghost; I never had any of these advantages; I can’t write a book.”