'What sort of a girl is she ?' I asked.

'Is she pretty?
What color is her hair ?' But Jacob put up his hand and stopped me.

'Thar!' he says, 'don't ask no questions, and I'll tell ye.

Fust place, she ain't no gal, no more'n yer Aunt Saleny is!' (that was a maiden aunt of mine, dear, and well over forty at that time.) 'And what does she look like ?' 'Wal! D'ye ever see an old cedar fence-rail,--one that had been chumped out with a blunt axe, and had laid out in the sun and the wind and the snow and the rain till 'twas warped this way, and shrunk that way, and twisted every way?
Wal! Simon's wife looks as if she had swallowed one o' them fence-rails, and _shrunk to it_! Dear, dear! how I laughed.

And 'twas true, my dear! It was just the way she did look.