“And I took out my handkerchief and cried on it, and he said he’d ‘overlook Doodle for once.’ And then he said agin, in a kind of a solemn and warnin’ way: “‘Widder, I am a layin’ on your feet, and my property is there, my land, my live stock, my housen and my housen stuff, and I, are all a layin’ on your feet. Make up your mind and make it up at once, for if you don’t consent, I have got other views ahead on me, which must be seen to instantly and at once. Time is hastenin’, and the world is full of willin’ wimmen. Widder, what do you say?” “And then,” says she, “I kinder consented and he said we’d be married the first of the week, and he turn off the hired girl and I could come right there and do the housework, and tend to the milk of fourteen cows, and be almost perfectly happy. He thought as he was hurried with his fall’s work, we’d better be married Sunday, so’s not to break into the week’s work; so we wuz,” says she, “we wuz married last Sunday, and we kep’ it still from you, so’s to surprise you.” “Truly you have,” says I. But I didn’t have no time to add or multiply any more words, for my Josiah came jest then and we started off homewards. After we had well got started, Josiah spoke up, and begun to grumble and find fault about their marriage so soon after Nancy Cypher’ses decease. He took on for as much as a mile, or a mile and a-half. Says he, “If Solomon Cypher didn’t have no decency, nor know nothin’, I should have thought the widder would have told him better.” But I looked him calmly in the face and says I, “Josiah, when you are doin’ a sum in arithmetic, how much do you usually get to carry from an ort?” And then I came out still more plainer, and says I, “Ort from ort leaves how many, Josiah Allen?” “Ort,” says he. “But what under the sun are you a-prancin’ off into ’rithmetic for?” “Wall,” says I, calmly, “When you obtain anything to carry from an ort, then I will obtain sense from the widder, I mean the bride. But who would think of blaming the ort?” BETSEY BOBBIT: HER POEM. Josiah came in, t’other day, from the postoffice; and he says, says he, throwin’ down the “Weekly Gimlet:” “Here’s old Betsey Bobbit been a makin’ a fool of herself agin. Just read this stuff that she calls a pome.” I took the newspaper, and sot down by the winder, to get more light, for my eyes ain’t as good as when I was a gal, and this is what I read: I WISH I WAS A WIDDER, BY BETSEY BOBBIT. Oh, “Gimlet,” back again I float With broken wings, a weary bard; I cannot write as once I wrote, I have to work so very hard. So hard my lot, so tossed about, My muse is fairly tuckered out. My muse aforesaid, once hath flown, But now her back is broke, and breast; And yet she fain would crumple down On “Gimlet” pages she would rest; And sing plain words as there she’s sot Haply they’ll rhyme, and haply not