—Josiah Allen’s Wife.

March Twentieth

Wooers and widows are never poor.

—Ralph Roister Doister (1566).

March Twenty-first

Do, but dally not: that’s the widow’s phrase.

—Barry.

March Twenty-second

“You know what counsel said, Sammy, as defended the gen’lem’n as beat his wife, with the poker, venever he got jolly: ‘And arter all, my Lord,’ says he, ‘it’s a amiable weakness.’ So I says respectin’ widders.”

—Dickens.