"Well, I was off in a brown study so deep about artificial sins, I
didn't hear Liddy come in, she shut the door so softly and trod on
tiptoes so light on the carpet. The first thing I knew was I felt her
hands on my head, as she stood behind me, a dividin' of my hair with
her fingers.
"'Why, Sam,' said she, 'as I'm a livin' sinner if you ain't got some
white hairs in your head, and there is a little bald patch here right
on the crown. How strange it is! It only seems like yesterday you was
a curly-headed boy.'
"'Yes,' sais I, and I hove a sigh so loud it made the window jar; 'but
I have seen a great deal of trouble since then. I lost two wives in
Europe.'
"'Now do tell,' said she. 'Why you don't!--oh, jimminy criminy! two
wives! How was it, poor Sam?' and she kissed the bald spot on my pate,
and took a rockin'-chair and sat opposite to me, and began rockin'
backwards and forwards like a fellow sawin' wood. 'How was it, Sam,
dear?'
"'Why,' sais I, 'first and foremost, Liddy, I married a fashionable
lady to London. Well, bein' out night arter night at balls and operas,
and what not, she got kinder used up and beat out, and unbeknownst to
me used to take opium. Well, one night she took too much, and in the
morning she was as dead as a herring.'
"'Did she make a pretty corpse?' said Lid, lookin' very sanctimonious.
'Did she lay out handsum? They say prussic acid makes lovely corpses;
it keeps the eyes from fallin' in.
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