DEACON SLIMPSEY’S MOURNFUL FOREBODINGS.
Thomas Jefferson went to the school-house to meetin’ last night, and he broke out to the breakfast-table:
“Betsey Bobbet spoke in meetin’ last night, father.” He addressed the words to his father, for he knows I won’t uphold no kind of light talking about serious things.
“She said she knew she was religious, because she felt she loved the bretheren.” Then they both laughed in an idiotic manner. But I said, in a tone of cool dignity, as I passed him his 3d cup of coffee, “She meant it in a Scriptural sense, no doubt.”
“I guess you’d think she meant it in a earthly sense, if you had seen her hang on to old Slimpsey last night; she’ll marry that old man yet, if he don’t look out.”
“Oh, shaw!” says I, coolly. “She’s payin’ attention to the editor of the Gimlet.”
“She’ll never get him,” says he. “She means to be on the safe side, and get one or the other of ’em; how steady she has been to meetin’ sence Deacon Slimpsey moved into the place.”
“You shall not make light of her religeen, Thomas Jefferson,” says I, in a severe voice.
“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 religeen Sunday nights, and then goin’ without any all the rest of the week; it looks as shiftless in ’em as a 3-year-old hat on a female.”
Says I, in a tone of deep rebuke, “Instead of tendin’ other folks’s motes, Thomas Jefferson, you had better take care of your own beams; you’ll have plenty work enough to last you one spell.”