"I knowed a man and wife--faith, I don't mind owning, as there's no strangers here, that the pair were my own relations--they'd be at it that hot one hour that you'd hear the poker and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the house with the movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you'd hear 'em singing 'The Spotted Cow' together as peaceable as two holy twins; yes--and very good voices they had, and would strike in like professional ballet-singers to one another's support in the high notes." "And I knowed a woman, and the husband o' her went away for four-and-twenty year," said the bark-ripper.

"And one night he came home when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down himself on the other side of the chimney-corner.

'Well,' says she, 'have ye got any news ?' 'Don't know as I have,' says he; 'have you ?' 'No,' says she, 'except that my daughter by my second husband was married last month, which was a year after I was made a widow by him.' 'Oh! Anything else ?' he says.

'No,' says she.

And there they sat, one on each side of that chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors sound asleep in their chairs, not having known what to talk about at all." "Well, I don't care who the man is," said Creedle, "they required a good deal to talk about, and that's true.