up a stun above her poor guilty head and carved on it the sacred name of "Wife."
Why, they wuzn't a dry eye in my head, not one, when she had finished it. And, though mebby it wouldn't be my first choice to recite to an evenin' party, still I wuz jest melted down by it, and so wuz Josiah Allen, as I glanced round at him he wuz jest puttin' his bandanna back into his pocket and wuz winkin' hard, he has got a heart, Josiah Allen has.
But all of a sudden, jest before she got through recitin' it, this woman with the brood of girls gathered 'em in front of her, as if danger wuz behind her, and shooed 'em out of the room. And I declare for it, and I am tellin' the truth, as she stood up sweepin' out, I see way down below their shoulder blades, every single blade. They went into the room where they wuz dancing, it wuz there they sought safety from indelicacy and unrefined suggestions, but for them that see 'em come in the sight wuz fur worse than the back view, yes fur worse.
But no sooner did the anxious mother chase her brood out in front of her than another woman, whose dress wuz so low it is a wonder it held onto her till she got out, she swep' out with her two daughters in front of her, one on 'em dressed in a string of pearls and a ostrich tip, and the other one bare as she wuz born almost from her waist up, every mite of their dresses almost layin' on the carpet. They fled from the contagion of indelicacy into the ballroom, and went to talkin' Bible together and condemnin' bitterly the low, immodest woman who had dared to recite such a poem before their innocent daughters. They had guarded 'em so, they said from everything and anything that could by any
