"Once in a while some farmer Would come a driven' past And he'd hear my cry, And stop and sigh-- Till I jest laid back, at last, And I hollered rain till I thought my throat Would bust wide open at ever' note! "But I _fetched_ her!--O I _fetched_ her!-- 'Cause a little while ago, As I kindo' set With one eye shet, And a-singin' soft and low, A voice drapped down on my fevered brain Sayin',--'Ef you'll jest hush I'll rain!'" "Our Wife" [Illustration] The story opens in 1877, when, on an April morning, the yellow-haired "devil" arrived at the office of the Jack Creek _Pizenweed_, at 7 o'clock, and found the editor in. It was so unusual to find the editor in at that hour that the boy whistled in a low contralto voice, and passed on into the "news room," leaving the gentlemanly, genial and urbane editor of the _Pizenweed_ as he had found him, sitting in his foundered chair, with his head immersed in a pile of exchanges on the table and his venerable Smith & Wesson near by, acting as a paper-weight. The gentlemanly, genial and urbane editor of the _Pizenweed_ presented the appearance of a man engaged in sleeping off a long and aggravated case of drunk. His hat was on the back of his head, and his features were entirely obscured by the loose papers in which they nestled. Later on, Elijah P. Beckwith, the foreman, came in, and found the following copy on the hook, marked "Leaded Editorial," and divided it up into "takes" for the yellow-haired devil and himself: "In another column of this issue will be found, among the legal notices, the first publication of a summons in an action for divorce, in which our wife is plaintiff and we are made defendant. While generally deprecating the practice of bringing private matters into public through the medium of the press, we feel justified in this instance, inasmuch as the summons sets forth, as a cause of action, that we are, and have been, for the space of ten years, a confirmed drunkard without hope of recovery, and totally unwilling to provide for and maintain our said wife. "That we have been given to drink, we do not, at this time, undertake to deny or in any way controvert, but that we cannot quit at any time, we do most earnestly contend. "In 1867, on the 4th day of July, we married our wife. It was a joyful day, and earth had never looked to us so fair or so desirable as a summer resort as it did that day. The flowers bloomed, the air was fresh and exhilarating, the little birds and the hens poured forth their respective lays. It was a day long to be remembered, and it seemed as though we had never seen Nature get up and hump herself to be so attractive as she did on that special morning--the morning of all mornings--the morning on which we married our wife.