believe that everything's goin' on
all right with the world and that whatever happens is for the best,
but I can't open a paper without readin' about some husband and wife
that's parted from each other, and that looks like there's somethin'
mighty wrong with this day and time. Me and Uncle Billy Bascom was
talkin' about it last week, and Uncle Billy says, 'If folks'd only
forsake their sins as easy as they forsake their husbands and their
wives nowadays, this'd be a sanctified world.'

"No, child, the partin' of husbands and wives is one new-fangled way I
can't git used to. Why, as far back as I can ricollect there never was
but one woman in the Goshen neighborhood that left her husband, and
that was Emmeline Amos, that married Henry Sanford. Emmeline was a
first cousin to Sam Amos. Sam's father was Jeremiah Amos, and
Emmeline's father was Middleton Amos. Emmeline was a pretty little
thing, and sweet-tempered and smart about work, but her mother used to
say that Emmeline had a mind like a piece o' changeable silk. She'd
want a thing, and she wouldn't rest till she got it, and the minute
she got it she'd fall out with it and want somethin' else. If she went
to town and bought a blue dress, before she got to the toll-gate
she'd want to turn back and buy a pink one, and about the only thing
she was constant in wantin' was Henry.

"They'd been sweethearts more or less all their lives, and it was a
settled thing that they expected to be married as soon as Henry got
his farm paid for. But before the day was set, the war broke out and
Henry enlisted. It went mighty hard with him to leave Emmeline, but a
man that stayed out o' the army for the sake of a gyirl didn't stand
much chance with the gyirl or anybody else them days. Him and Emmeline
wanted to be married before he went, but the old folks said no.
Emmeline's mother says, 'This'll give Emmeline a chance to know her
own mind and change it--if she's goin' to change it--before it's too
late. If Henry comes back, well and good; and if he don't come back,
it'll be all the better for Emmeline that she didn't marry him, for,'
says she, 'a young gyirl's chances o' gittin' married are better than
a widder's.'

"So Henry went, and Emmeline stayed and waited for him good and
faithful. Towards the end of the war--I don't ricollect what battle it
was--Henry got shot in the shoulder, and after stayin' some time in
the hospittle he managed to come back home more dead than alive, and