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Getting Into The "Right Pew"
by
The third anniversary of Jeff. Jones’s annexation to the widow was coming around. It was New Year’s day in the morn; it brought rather sober reflections into Jeff.’s mind, on the head of which he thought he’d as soon as not– get tight! This notion was pleasing, and dressing himself in his best clothes, Jones informed Mrs. J. that he wished to call on a few old friends, and would be home to dine and bring some friends with him!
“See that you do, then,” said Mrs. J., “see that you do, that’s all!” and she gave Mr. J. “a look” not at all like Miss Juliet’s to Mr. Romeo–she spoke, and she said something.
However, Jones cleared himself; dinner hour arrived, if Jeff. Jones did not; Mrs. Jones smiled and chatted, and did the honors of the table with rare good grace, but where was Jones?
“He’ll be poking in just as dinner is over, and the puddings cold, and company preparing to leave; then he’ll catch a lecturing.”
But don’t fret your pretty self, Mrs. Jones–for dinner passed and tea-time came, but no Jones. Mrs. Jones began to get snappish, and by ten o’clock she had bitten all the ends from her taper fingers, besides dreadfully scolding the servants, all around. Mrs. J. finally retired–the clock had struck 12, and no Jones was to be seen; Mrs. J. was worried out; she could not sleep a blessed wink. She got up again, Jones might have met with some dreadful accident! She had not thought of that before! Perhaps at that very hour he was in the bottom of the Hudson, or in the deep cells of the Tombs! It was awful! Mrs. Jones dressed–the house was as still as a church-yard–she put on an old hood, and shawl to match, and noiselessly she crept down stairs; and by a passage out through the back area into a rear street. Mrs. Jones at the dead hour of night determined to seek some information of her husband. She had not gotten over a block, or block and a half from her mansion, when she spies two men coming along–wing and wing, merry as grigs, reeling to and fro, and singing in stentorian notes:
“A man that is (hic) married (hic) has lost every hope–
He’s (hic) like a poor (hic) pig with his foot in a rope!
O-o-o! dear! O-o-o! dear–cracky!
A man that is (hic) married has so (hic) many ills–
He’s like a (hic) poor fish with a (hic) hook in his gills!
O-o-o-o! dear! O-o-o-o! dear–cracky!”
In terror of these roaring bacchanalians, who were slowly approaching her, Mrs. Jones stood close in the doorway of a store; the revellers parted at the corner of the street, after many asseverations of eternal friendship, much noise and twattle. One of the carousers came lumbering towards Mrs. J., and she, in some alarm, left her hiding place and darted past the midnight brawler; and to her horror, the fellow made tracks after her as fast as a drunken man could travel, and that ain’t slow; for almost any man inside of sixty can run, like blazes, when he is scarce able to stand upon his pins because of the quantity of bricks in his beaver. Mrs. Jones ran towards her dwelling, but before she could reach it, the ruffian at her heels clasped her! Just as she was about to give an awful scream, wake up all the neighbors and police ten miles around, she saw– Jones! Jeff. Jones, her recreant husband!
It was a moment of awful import–the widow was equal to the crisis, however, and governed herself accordingly; proving the truth of some dead and gone philosopher who has left it in black and white, that the widows are always more than a match for any man in Christendom!