I DIDN'T marry Miss Crutty: I am not sorry for it though. She was a
nasty, ugly, ill-tempered wretch, and I've always said so ever since.

And all this arose from those infernal boots, and that unlucky paragraph
in the county paper--I'll tell you how.

In the first place, it was taken up as a quiz by one of the wicked,
profligate, unprincipled organs of the London press, who chose to be
very facetious about the "Marriage in High Life," and made all sorts of
jokes about me and my dear Miss Crutty.

Secondly, it was read in this London paper by my mortal enemy, Bunting,
who had been introduced to old Stiffelkind's acquaintance by my
adventure with him, and had his shoes made regularly by that foreign
upstart.

Thirdly, he happened to want a pair of shoes mended at this particular
period, and as he was measured by the disgusting old High-Dutch cobbler,
he told him his old friend Stubbs was going to be married.

"And to whom?" said old Stiffelkind. "To a voman wit geld, I vill take
my oath."

"Yes," says Bunting, "a country girl--a Miss Magdalen Carotty or Crotty,
at a place called Sloffemsquiggle."

"SHLOFFEMSCHWIEGEL!" bursts out the dreadful bootmaker. "Mein Gott, mein
Gott! das geht nicht! I tell you, sare, it is no go. Miss Crotty is
my niece. I vill go down myself. I vill never let her marry dat