Lovey's life went out
altogether, and mine hasn't been any too gay.

"I'll begin on Lovey's rose first. She was the prettiest and the
liveliest girl in the village, and she had more beaux than you could
shake a stick at. I generally had to take what she left over. Reuben
Granger was crazy about her from the time she was knee-high; but when
he went away to Bangor to study for the ministry, the others had it
all their own way. She was only seventeen; she hadn't ever experienced
religion, and she was mischeevous as a kitten.

"You remember you laughed, this morning, when Mr. Bascom told about
Hogshead Jowett? Well, he used to want to keep company with Lovey; but
she couldn't abide him, and whenever he come to court her she clim' into
a hogshead, and hid till after he 'd gone. The boys found it out, and
used to call him 'Hogshead Jowett." He was the biggest fool in Foxboro'
Four Corners; and that 's saying consid'able, for Foxboro' is famous
for its fools, and always has been. There was thirteen of 'em there one
year. They say a man come out from Portland, and when he got as fur
as Foxboro' he kep' inquiring the way to Dunstan; and I declare if he
didn't meet them thirteen fools, one after another, standing in their
front dooryards ready to answer questions. When he got to Dunstan, says
he, 'For the Lord's sake, what kind of a village is that I've just went
through? Be they _all_ fools there?'

"Hogshead was scairt to death whenever he come to see Lovice. One night,
when he 'd been there once, and she 'd hid, as she always done, he come
back a second time, and she went to the door, not mistrusting it was
him. 'Did you forget anything?' says she, sparkling out at him through
a little crack. He was all taken aback by seeing her, and he stammered
out, 'Yes, I forgot my han'k'chief; but it don't make no odds, for I
didn't pay out but fifteen cents for it two year ago, and I don't make
no use of it 'ceptins to wipe my nose on.' How we did laugh over that!
Well, he had a conviction of sin pretty soon afterwards, and p'r'aps
it helped his head some; at any rate he quit farming, and become a
Bullockite preacher.

"It seems odd, when Lovice wa'n't a perfessor herself, she should have
drawed the most pious young men in the village, but she did: she had
good Orthodox beaux, Free and Close Baptists, Millerites and Adventists,
all on her string together; she even had one Cochranite, though the
sect had mostly died out. But when Reu