I looked right at her 'most a minute with a majestic look. In spite
of her false curls and her new white ivory teeth, she is a humbly
critter. I looked at her silently while she sot and twisted her long
yellow bunnet-strings, and then I spoke out. "Hain't the editor of
the _Augur_ a widower with a pair of twins?"

"Yes," says she with a happy look.

Then says I, "If the man hain't a fool, he'll think you are one."

"Oh!" says she, and she dropped her bunnet-strings and clasped her
long bony hands together in her brown cotton gloves. "Oh, we ahdent
soles of genious have feelin's you cold, practical natures know
nuthing of, and if they did not gush out in poetry we should expiah.
You may as well try to tie up the gushing catarack of Niagarah with a
piece of welting-cord as to tie up the feelin's of an ahdent sole."

"Ardent sole!" says I coldly. "Which makes the most noise, Betsey
Bobbet, a three-inch brook or a ten-footer? which is the tearer?
which is the roarer? Deep waters run stillest. I have no faith in
feelin's that stalk round in public in mournin' weeds. I have no
faith in such mourners," says I.

"Oh, Josiah's wife, cold, practical female being, you know me not; we
are sundered as fah apart as if you was sitting on the North Pole and
I was sitting on the South Pole. Uncongenial being, you know me not."

"I may not know you, Betsey Bobbet, but I do know decency, and I know
that no munny would tempt me to write such stuff as that poetry and