Oh, Josiah,
It seemed as if I must expiah.

"I saw thee coming down the street,
_She_ by your side in bonnet bloo,
The stuns that grated 'neath thy feet,
Seemed crunching on my vitals, too.
Oh, Josiah,
It seemed as if I must expiah.

"I saw thee washing sheep last night,
On the bridge I stood with marble brow.
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,