born. There wuz jest ten months difference between that and the one next
older. And they said she often spoke out in her last sickness, and said,
"Thank fortune, I've always kep' the law!" And they said the same thought
wuz a great comfort to him in his last moments. He died about a year after
she did, leavin' his second wife with twins and a good property.

Then there wuz Abagail Pester. She married a sort of a high-headed man,
though one that paid his debts, wuz truthful, good lookin', and played well
on the fiddle. Why, it seemed as if he had almost every qualification for
makin' a woman happy, only he had this one little eccentricity, he would
lock up Abagail's clothes every time he got mad at her.

Of course the law give her clothes to him, and knowin' that it wuz the
law in the state where they lived, she wouldn't have complained only when
they had company. But it wuz mortifyin', nobody could dispute it, to have
company come and have nothin' to put on. Several times she had to withdraw
into the woodhouse, and stay most all day there shiverin', and under the
suller stairs and round in clothes presses. But he boasted in prayer
meetin's and on boxes before grocery stores that he wuz a law-abidin'
citizen, and he wuz. Eben Flanders wouldn't lie for anybody.

But I'll bet Abagail Flanders beat our old revolutionary four-mothers in
thinkin' out new laws, when she lay round under stairs and behind barrels
in her night-gown. When a man hides his wife's stockin's and petticoats
it is governin' without the consent of the governed. If you don't believe
it you'd ort to peeked round them barrels and seen Abagail's eyes, they
had hull reams of by-laws in 'em and preambles, and Declarations of
Independence, so I've been told. But it beat everything I ever hearn on,
the lawful sufferin's of them wimmen. For there wuzn't nothin' illegal
about one single trouble of theirn. They suffered accordin' to law, every