“So ’tis,” says I, soothin’ly, hangin’ on the tea-kettle, and puttin’ the potatoes over the stove in the summer kitchen. For a long and arduous study of the sect has convinced me that good vittles are more healin’ than oil to pour onto a man’s lacerated feelin’s. And the same deep study has warned me never to get mad at the same time Josiah does, on these 2 great philisofical laws, hangs all the harmony of married life. Then I stepped out onto the stoop agin, and says to him in calm, affectionate accents,
“What is it about the old cider mill, Josiah?”
“Nothin’” says he, “Only I met one of the first mourners—I mean one of old Slimpsey’s sisters there, and she told me about it, she said that sense the Editer of the Auger was married, and sense Betsey had got back from New York she had acted like a wild critter. She seemed to think it was now or never. The awful doom of not bein’ married at all, seemed to fall upon her, and craze her with wild horror. And findin’ Slimpsey who was a weak sort of a man any way, and doubly weakened now by age and inflamatory rheumatism, she went and took care of him, and got the upper hand of him, made him a victim and married him, at his own house, Sunday night at half past seven.”
I was so lost in sorrowful thought as Josiah continued the mournful tale, that Josiah says, in a soothin’ tone,
“You ought to try to be reconciled to it Samantha, it seems to be the Lord’s will that she should marry him.”
“I don’t believe in layin’ every mean low lived thing to the Lord, Josiah, I lay this to Betsey Bobbet;” and I agin plunged down into gloomy thought, and was roused only by his concludin’ words,
“Seems to me Samantha, you might have a few griddle cakes, the bread—I see this mornin’—was gettin’ kinder dry.”
Mechanically I complied with his request, for my thoughts wasn’t there, they was with the afflicted, and down trodden.
One week after this I was goin’ up the post office steps, and I come face to face with Simon Slimpsey. He had grown 23 years older durin’ the past week. But he is a shiftless, harmless critter hurtin’ himself more’n any body else. He was naturally a small boned man. In the prime of his manhood he might have come up to Betsey’s shoulders, but now withered by age and grief the highest hat was futile to bring him up much above her belt ribbon. He looked sad indeed, my heart bled for him. But with the instinctive delicacy inherient to my sect, I put on a jokeuler tone, and says I, as I shook hands with him,