a neatly-worked handkerchief for pulpit use. Yet, though she
was at once liberal and strict, pious and politic; though she induced
one Sally Dwyer to join her church and declare she "got the change of
heart;" though she was eternally working and planning to bring others to
her way of thinking, and had some success in her proselyting
efforts,--she never could, with all her art, biblical lore, and policy,
succeed in causing any body to say, "I take thee, Amanda, to my wedded
wife." This was the chief point; and here is just where she failed. What
was the cause of it? She was not too old--not near so old as Miss
Longface, whom the youthful parson Barker lately wedded. "And besides,"
said she, in a soliloquy, "when I was young, it was just the same bad
luck. Is it that men are less numerous than ladies? There might be
something in that, for she had seen it stated in their newspaper, 'The
Home Journal,' that female births exceeded that of males by forty
thousand annually in certain European kingdoms. The number of Popish
priests also," she said, "who remain unmarried, adds greatly to the
superfluity of the female sex. Hence there is no part of the wicked
Popish system I regard so much contrary to God's holy word as celibacy.
Celibacy!" she cried aloud; "one of the doctrines of devils, as any one
can tell, who has been these twenty years in search of a mate, and could
never yet find one! O horrid thought!" She had consulted the famous
fortune teller at the state fair of Vermont, and, after having paid that
"seer of future events" a fee of ten dollars, she found his prediction
was false. For she was told she would be married within two years, and
to a neighboring minister; but now it was twenty-six months since, and
the only single minister around lately got married to Miss Longface, a
very ignorant and unamiable person. But there was no taste, or judgment,
or discernment nowadays in men, as this fact clearly proved.
"Thunderation on them!" said she, in a rage.

Such were the ideas that were passing through the brain of Amanda one
Sunday morning, as she lounged on the sofa of her sitting room, when,
upon her looking out towards the lawn in front, she perceived Paul and
Bridget kneeling by a seat, at the foot of a large wild plum tree that
stood at the end of the green plot in front of the house, and that had
its branches bent within a few feet of the ground by the embraces of a
rich grape vine that for years had grown around it