every man's admiration, when directed in another direction than himself. I own I suffered from them clingin' idees of hern durin' my widowerhood till Samantha rendered me immune. But under all them sufferin's of mine and my almost hopeless efforts to shy off from her, and avoid her, yet I felt that her adorin' love and her warm clingin' attentions to males wuz eminently becomin' to a female if only turned off from me onto some more willin' man. All these thoughts chased each other through my brain, but still I kep' the cool superiority of my sect and sez coldly:"I want no female thought to cumber and weigh down the sails of my skyward bound volume." 

But sez she in a humble pleadin' manner, so becomin' in a female and agreeable to males, "My poetry all breathes the weakness and inferiority of my sect, and the overwhelmin' need we have to be protected by the nobler uplifteder sect. And though Simon has been bedrid for years and his brain had softened even when we wuz wed, and he and his numerous children have been hard for my emmanuel strength to support and take care on, yet I found in my union to a male man a dignity and rest I had never known in my more single state." Here Betsy sithed hard a few times, for she wuz indeed weary, she works hard and fares hard and shows it, but she continued: 

"Is it not possible that in a humble way my verses may give a tiny puff of wind, that added to your mighty roarin' gusts will waft your grand craft upward and onward on its Heaving sent mission of elevatin' men up, and helpin' 'em in this turrible epock of time they're passin' through. And rebukin' and lowerin' females down for their bold doin's, in opposin' and badgerin' their natural gardeens and protectors, their brazen efforts to be equal to 'em which is a crime agin Nater."

For though as I said, Simon can't lift his head from the piller, and his language to me is awful at times, and extremely profane, and boot-jacks have been throwed at me, and teacups and sassers smashed agin my form, and milk porridge and catnip tea have deluged me from them flyin' cups and bowls, yet, as I said, I felt through all, even when I wuz bruised and wet as sop, that when he gin me his name at the altar, he gin with it a dignity and uplifted feelin', that nothin' else could give or take away. And I would fain have them womanly idees of mine made immortal by appearin' in your noble volume as a pattern for bolder onwomanly wimmen to foller." 

As Betsy paused I once more waded out bare legged into the sea of thought. Thinkses I even a tiny drop of water helps to make the mighty Ocean, and the Ocean he 

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