The waters raged, thou clasped it tight,
I sighed, ‘should both be drownded now’—
I thought, Josiah,
Oh happy sheep to thus expiah.”
I showed the poetry to Josiah that night after he came home, and told him I had read it. He looked awful ashamed to think I had seen it, and, says he, with a dreadful sheepish look, “The persecution I underwent from that female can never be told; she fairly hunted me down. I hadn’t no rest for the soles of my feet. I thought one spell she would marry me in spite of all I could do, without givin’ me the benefit of law or gospel.” He see I looked stern, and he added, with a sick lookin’ smile, “I thought one spell,” to use Betsey’s language, “I was a gonah.”
I didn’t smile. Oh no, for the deep principle of my sect was reared up. I says to him, in a tone cold enough to almost freeze his ears, “Josiah Allen, shet up; of all the cowardly things a man ever done, it is goin’ round braggin’ about wimmin likin’ ’em, and follerin’ ’em up. Enny man that’ll do that is little enough to crawl through a knot hole without rubbing his clothes.” Says I, “I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got holt of the wrong individual.
“I SHOWED THE POETRY TO JOSIAH THAT NIGHT.”
“Now,” says I, “go to bed;” and I added, in still more freezing accents, “for I want to mend your pantaloons.” We gathered up his shoes and stockin’s and started off to bed, and we hain’t never passed a word on the subject sence. I believe when you disagree with your pardner, in freein’ your mind in the first on’t, and then not to be a-twittin’ about it afterwards. And as for bein’ jealous, I should jest as soon think of bein’ jealous of a meetin’-house as I should of Josiah. He is a well principled man. And I guess he wasn’t fur out o’ the way about Betsey Bobbet, though I wouldn’t encourage him by lettin’ him say a word on the subject, for I always make it a rule to stand up for my own sect; but when I hear her go on about the editer of the Augur, I can believe anything about Betsey Bobbet.
She came in here one day last week. It was about ten o’clock in the mornin’. I had got my house slick as a pin, and my dinner under way (I was goin’ to have a biled dinner, and a cherry puddin’ biled, with sweet sass to eat on it), and I sot down to finish sewin’ up the breadth of my new rag carpet. I thought I would get it done while I hadn’t so much to do, for it bein’ the 1st of March I knew sugarin’ would be comin’ on, and then cleanin’-house time, and I wanted it to put down jest as soon as the stove was carried out in the summer kitchin. The fire was sparklin’ away, and the painted floor a-shinin’ and the dinner a-bilin’, and I sot there sewin’ jest as calm as a clock, not dreamin’ of no trouble, when in came Betsey Bobbet.