the
two. If anything 'ud keep a man from being selfish, you would,'
says I. 'D----d if I ain't spent two-thirds of my time and drawed
some on the last, fishin' you out of messes. Now,' I says to him,
'why don't you get married and settle up?'

"Dear friends and brothers, that was just a piece of pursyflage. I
know women better than any man I ever met that I felt knew less.
I've seen wimmen so foolish I wouldn't believe anything more
foolish could exist, if it hadn't a-been I'd seen still more
foolish wimmen with these same eyes. But a woman who'd marry Pete
was beyond my expectations. It took a lady with a turble
brain-power and a deliberate intention to arrive at that state of
mind; so when Pete says to me, 'That's just what I be goin' to do,
Zeke,' he had me swallowing my breath.

"I gathered my fadin' strength and gained perticlers.

"Seems there was a lady 'bout thirty or forty years older than she
oncet had been, who did plain washin' for the Royal Soverign Prince
boys. The R. S. P. mine was run rather irregular. The boys took
the clean-ups for wages, and the owner took the proceeds from stock
he sold as dividends. I may mention there was less in clean-ups
than there was in stock, so the future Mrs. P. Douglass was buckin'
fate in the shape of a brace game. They was an awful nice set of
boys, the Royal Soverign Princes, but when you divide thirty
dollars and fifty cents amongst fifteen men for a month's wages,
the washer-lady can't expect city prices.

"Pete had gained a holt on this lady's affections by falling into
the flume and allowin' himself to be piped over the waste-gate.
She took care of him for three weeks, at the end of which time Pete
arose, renewed, refreshed, and more full of determined uselessness
than ever. Any woman will love any man that bothers her enough. A
man's idee of romance is to do what he wants to, or to be
comfortable; a woman's idee of romance is to feel that she's
obliged to do what she really wants to do, under such circumstances
as will allow her to call it a great sackerfice, or to be made
uncomfortable, which is her real notion of comfort. You have only
to look at a woman's housekeepin' to reelize the restfulness she
finds in keepin' things disturbed all the time. I have looked upon
the housekeepin' of enough Mrs. Scraggses to be able to speak with
the v'ice of experience, if not the v'ice of wisdom.

"So Mrs. Maggy Watson, the lady of which I heretofore speak,