“I won’t, mother, I shouldn’t feel right to, for it is light enough now, it don’t all consist in talkin’ in meetin’, mother. I don’t believe in folks’es usin’ up all their religion Sunday nights, and then goin’ without any all the rest of the week, it looks as shiftless in ’em as a three-year-old hat on a female. The religion that gets up on Sunday nights, and then sets down all the rest of the week, I don’t think much of.”
Says I in a tone of deep rebuke, “Instead of tendin’ other folks’es motes, Thomas Jefferson, you had better take care of your own beams, you’ll have plenty work, enough to last you one spell.”
“And if you have got through with your breakfast,” says his father, “you had better go and fodder the cows.”
Thomas J. arose with alacraty and went to the barn, and his father soon drew on his boots and follered him, and with a pensive brow I turned out my dishwater. I hadn’t got my dishes more than half done, when with no warnin’ of no kind, the door bust open, and in tottered Simon Slimpsey, pale as a piece of a white cotton shirt. I wildly wrung out my dishcloth, and offered him a chair, sayin’ in a agitated tone, “What is the matter, Simon Slimpsey?”
“Am I pursued?” says he in a voice of low frenzy, as he sunk into a wooden bottomed chair. I cast one or two eagle glances out of the window, both ways, and replied in a voice of choked doun emotion,
“There haint nobody in sight; has your life been attackted by burglers and incindiarys? speak, Simon Slimpsey, speak!”
He struggled nobly for calmness, but in vain, and then he put his hand wildly to his brow, and murmured in low and hollow accents—
“Betsey Bobbet.”
I see he was overcome by as many as six or seven different emotions of various anguishes, and I give him pretty near a minute to recover himself, and then says I as I sadly resumed my dishcloth,
“What of her, Simon Slimpsey?”