Wunst, indeed, I might have done so, but the merest accident in the world saved me. A young man in my younger
days, when the bloom wuz on the peach, ere sleepless nights spent in meditatin’ on the wrongs of my sex had worn furrows into these wunst blushing cheeks, a young man come to our house, and conversed sweetly with me.
It wuz my fust beau, and oh, my sisters, had he that night asked me to be his’n, I should have been weak enough to have said Yes, and I would have been a washer of dishes and a mender of stockin’s for life.
But fate saved me! He did’nt ask me.
—Revised by F. Lizzie Peirce.
Enguerrande’s Child.
La Comtesse Marie holds festival
In the fairest nook of her fair demesne,
For courtly gallants and smiling dames
To mimic the sports of the village green,