“She’ll be the death on me,” says he, “and that haint the worst on it, my sole is jeopardized on account of her. Oh,” says he, groanin’ in a anguish, “could you believe it, Miss Allen, that I—a member of a Authodox church and the father of 13 small children—could be tempted to swear? Behold that wretch. As I come through your gate jest now, I said to myself ‘By Jupiter, I can’t stand it so, much longer.’ And last night I wished I was a ghost, for I thought if I was a apperition I could have escaped from her view. Oh,” says he, groanin’ agin, “I have got so low as to wish I was a ghost.”
He paused, and in a deep and almost broodin’ silence, I finished my dishes, and hung up my dishpan.
“She come rushin’ out of Deacon Gowdey’s, as I come by jest now, to talk to me, she don’t give me no peace, last night she would walk tight to my side all the way home, and she looked hungry at the gate, as I went through and fastened it on the inside.”
Agin he paused overcome by his emotions, and I looked pityingly on him. He was a small boned man of about seventy summers and winters. He was always a weak, feeble, helpless critter, a kind of a underlin’ always. He never had any morals, he got out of morals when he was a young man, and haint been able to get any sense. He has always drinked a good deal of liquor, and has chawed so much tobacco that his mouth looks more like a old yellow spitoon than anything else. As I looked sadly on him I see that age, who had ploughed the wrinkles into his face, had turned the furrows deep. The cruel fingers of time, or some other female, had plucked nearly every hair from his head, and the ruthless hand of fate had also seen fit to deprive him of his eye winkers, not one solitary winker bein’ left for a shade tree (as it were) to protect the pale pupils below; and they bein’ a light watery blue, and the lids bein’ inflamed, they looked sad indeed. Owin’ to afflictive providences he was dressed up more than men generally be, for his neck bein’ badly swelled he wore a string of amber beads, and in behalf of his sore eyes he wore ear rings. But truly outside splendor and glitter won’t satisfy the mind, and bring happiness. I looked upon his mournful face, and my heart melted inside of me, almost as soft as it could, almost as soft as butter in the month of August. And I said to him in a soothin’ and encouragin’ tone,
“Mebby she will marry the Editer of the Augur, she is payin’ attention to him.”
SIMON SLIMPSEY.
“No she won’t,” says he in a solemn and affectin’ way, that brought tears to my eyes as I sot peelin’ my onions for dinner. “No she won’t, I shall be the one, I feel it. I was always the victim, I was always down trodden. When I was a baby my mother had two twins, both of ’em a little older than me, and they almost tore me to pieces before I got into trowses. Mebby it would have been better for me if they had,” says he in a mewsin’ and mournful tone—I knew he thought of Betsey then—and heavin’ a deep sigh he resumed,
“When I went to school and we played leap frog, if there was a frog to be squshed down under all the rest, I was that frog. It has always been so—if there was ever a underlin’ and a victim wanted, I was that underlin’ and that victim. And Betsey Bobbet will get round me yet, you see if she don’t, wimmen are awful perseverin’ in such things.”
“Cheer up Simon Slimpsey, you haint obleeged to marry her, it is a free country, folks haint obleeged to marry unless they are a mind to, it don’t take a brass band to make that legal.” I quoted these words in a light and joyous manner hopin’ to rouse him from his dispondancy, but in vain, for he only repeated in a gloomy tone,