For my part I hain’t no notion of the world bustin’ up yit, though things does look kind of skeery jest now. It would jest be my luck if sum ’bominable thing like a war or a coleramorbus, or a starvation was to cum along now that I’ve got the hansomest and smartest gall in Georgia for a wife. They say ther is no sich thing as cumplete happiness on this yeath, and that makes me think so more, for nothing short of sum monstrous grate calamity could rumple my feathers now. But I do hope it will all blow over. I do b’lieve Mary grows hansomer every day, and if things could stay jest as they is now, I’d like to live ’til I was old enuff to be grandaddy to Methusla. But it’s time I was gwine over to mother’s to bring her home. So no more from Your frend, ’til deth, Jos. Jones. LETTER IX. Pineville, June 19th, 1843. Dear Sir, Everything’s went on pretty smooth sense I writ my last letter to you. Mary soon got over her skare, but the way she’s mad at Cousin Pete won’t wear off in a coon’s age. She ses he musent never put his foot in our house, if he don’t want to get his old red whiskers scalded off his fool face. She ses she always thought Pete had _some sense_, but now, she ses, she don’t know whether he’s a bigger rascal than he is a fool. Wimmin’s monstrous curious critters, now ’tween you and me, and it takes more hed than I’ve got to manage ’em without some diffikilties now and then. It seems to me Mary’s gittin’ curiouser every day. I don’t know what upon yeath to make of her sometimes, she acts so quar. Lord knows, I does everything in my power to please her—I gits everything she wants—I always lets her have her own way in everything, and I stays home with her more’n half my time—but every now and then she takes a cryin’ spell, jest for nothin’. Now, I’ll jest tell you one little circumstance, jest to let you see how curious she does do me sometimes. Two or three months ago little Sally Rogers gin her one of the leetlest dogs I reckon you ever did see. It’s a little white curly thing ’bout as big as my fist, with little red eyes and a little bushy tail screwed rite over its back so tite that it can’t hardly touch its hind legs to the floor, and when it barks it’s got a little sharp voice that goes rite through a body’s hed like a cotton gimblet. Well, Mary and the galls is all the time washin’ and comin’, and fixin’ it off with ribbons on its neck and tail, and nursin’ it in ther laps till they’ve got the dratted thing so sasy that ther ain’t no gittin’ along with it.