Remember womens spear, sisters,
Remember womens spear.
“Wall,” says I in an encouragin’ tone, as I handed him the paper agin—“that haint much different from the piece she had in the Gimlet a spell ago, that was about womens spear.”
“It is that spear that is goin’ to destroy me,” says he, mournfully.
“Don’t give up so, Deacon Slimpsey. I hate to see you lookin’ so gloomy and deprested.”
“It is the awful determination these lines breathe forth that appauls me,” says he. “I have seen it in another.
“Betsey Bobbet reminds me dreadfully of another. And I don’t want to marry agin, Miss Allen. I don’t want to,” says he, lookin’ me pitifully in the face, “I didn’t want to marry the first time; I wanted to be a bachelder. I think they have the easiest time of it by half. Now there is a friend of mine that never was married, he is jest my age, or that is, he is only half an hour younger, and that haint enough difference to make any account of, is it Miss Allen?” says he in a pensive and enquirin’ tone.
“No,” says I in a reasonable accent. “No, Deacon Slimpsey, it haint.”
“Wall, that man has always been a bachelder, and you ought to see what a head of hair he has got, sound at the roots now, not a lock missing. I wanted to be one, and meant to be, but jest as I got my plans all laid, she, my late wife, come and kept house for me, and married me. I lived with her for twenty 5 years, and when she left me,” he murmured with a contented look, “I was reconciled to it. I was reconciled before it took place. I don’t want to say anything against nobody that haint here, but I lost some hair by my late wife,” says he, putting his hand to his bald head in an abstracted way. “I lost a good deal of hair by her, and I haint much left as you can see,” says he in a melancholy tone. “I don’t want to be married agin. I did want to save a lock or two, for my children to keep as a relict of me.” And again he paused overcome by his feelin’s. I knew not what to say to comfort him, and I poured onto him a few comforting adjectives, sich as,