“Chirk up, Simon Slimpsey, be a man.”
“That is the trouble,” says he “if I wasn’t a man, she would give me some peace.” And he wept into his red silk handkerchief (with a yellow border) bitterly.
FREE LOVE LECTURES.
It was a beautiful mornin’ in October. The trees in the woods nigh by, had all got their new fall suits on, red and purple and orange, while further back, the old hills seemed to be a settin’ up with a blue gauze vail on. There was a little mite of a breeze blowin’ up through the orchard, where the apples lay in red and yellow heaps in the green grass. Everything looked so beautiful and fresh, that as I went out on the doorstep to shake the table-cloth, my heart fairly sung for joy. And I exclaimed to Josiah in clear, happy tones,
“What a day it is, Josiah, to gather the winter apples and pull the beets.”
He says, “Yes, Samantha, and after you get your work done up, don’t you s’pose you could come out and pick up apples a spell?”
I told him in the same cheerful tones I had formally used, “that I would, and that I would hurry up my dishes as fast as I could, and come out.”
But alas! how little do we know what trial a hour may bring forth; this hour brought forth Betsey Bobbet. As I went to the door to throw out my dishwater, I see her comin’ through the gate. I controlled myself pretty well, and met her with considerable calmness. She was in awful good spirits. There had been a lecture on Free Love to Jonesville; Prof. Theron Gusher had been a lecturin’ there, and Betsey had attended to it, and was all full of the idee. She begun almost before she sot down, and says she,