e, 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 philosophe