“Wall,” says I in an encouragin’ tone, as I handed him the paper agin—“that haint much different from the piece she had in the _Gimlet_ a spell ago, that was about womens spear.” “It is that spear that is goin’ to destroy me,” says he, mournfully. “Don’t give up so, Deacon Slimpsey. I hate to see you lookin’ so gloomy and deprested.” “It is the awful determination these lines breathe forth that appauls me,” says he. “I have seen it in another. “Betsey Bobbet reminds me dreadfully of another. And I don’t want to marry agin, Miss Allen. I don’t want to,” says he, lookin’ me pitifully in the face, “I didn’t want to marry the first time; I wanted to be a bachelder. I think they have the easiest time of it by half. Now there is a friend of mine that never was married, he is jest my age, or that is, he is only half an hour younger, and that haint enough difference to make any account of, is it Miss Allen?” says he in a pensive and enquirin’ tone. “No,” says I in a reasonable accent. “No, Deacon Slimpsey, it haint.” “Wall, that man has always been a bachelder, and you ought to see what a head of hair he has got, sound at the roots now, not a lock missing. I wanted to be one, and meant to be, but jest as I got my plans all laid, she, my late wife, come and kept house for me, and married me. I lived with her for twenty 5 years, and when she left me,” he murmured with a contented look, “I was reconciled to it. I was reconciled before it took place. I don’t want to say anything against nobody that haint here, but I lost some hair by my late wife,” says he, putting his hand to his bald head in an abstracted way. “I lost a good deal of hair by her, and I haint much left as you can see,” says he in a melancholy tone. “I don’t want to be married agin. I did want to save a lock or two, for my children to keep as a relict of me.” And again he paused overcome by his feelin’s. I knew not what to say to comfort him, and I poured onto him a few comforting adjectives, sich as, “Mebby you are borrowin’ trouble without a cause, Deacon. With life there is hope, Deacon Slimpsey. It is always the darkest before daylight.” But in vain. He only sighed mournfully. “She’ll get round me yet, Miss Allen—mark my words, and when the time comes you will think of what I told you.” His face was most black with gloomy apprehensions, as he repeated again—“You see if she don’t get round me,” and a tear began to flow; I turned away with instinctive delicacy, and set my pan of onions in the sink, but when I glanced at him again it was still flowing, and I said to him in a tone of two-thirds pity and one comfort. “Chirk up, Deacon Slimpsey, be a man.” “That is the trouble,” says he, “if I wasnt a man she would give me some peace,” and he wept into his red silk handkerchief (with a yellow border) bitterly. BORROWING THE MAGAZINE.