Now Knott had quite made up his mind 120
  That Colonel Jones should have her;
No beauty he, but oft we find
Sweet kernels ’neath a roughish rind,
So hoped his Jenny’d be resigned
  And make no more palaver;
Glanced at the fact that love was blind,
That girls were ratherish inclined
  To pet their little crosses,
Then nosologically defined
The rate at which the system pined 130
In those unfortunates who dined
Upon that metaphoric kind
  Of dish—­their own proboscis.

But she, with many tears and moans,
  Besought him not to mock her. 
Said ’twas too much for flesh and bones
To marry mortgages and loans,
That fathers’ hearts were stocks and stones. 
And that she’d go, when Mrs. Jones,
  To Davy Jones’s locker; 140
Then gave her head a little toss
That said as plain as ever was,
If men are always at a loss
  Mere womankind to bridle—­
To try the thing on woman cross
  Were fifty times as idle;
For she a strict resolve had made
  And registered in private,
That either she would die a maid,
Or else be Mrs. Doctor Slade, 150
  If a woman could contrive it;
And, though the wedding-day was set,
  Jenny was more so, rather,
Declaring, in a pretty pet,
That, howsoe’er they spread their net,
She would out-Jennyral them yet,
  The colonel and her father.

Just at this time the Public’s eyes
  Were keenly on the watch, a stir
Beginning slowly to arise 160
About those questions and replies. 
Those raps that unwrapped mysteries
  So rapidly at Rochester,
And Knott, already nervous grown
By lying much awake alone. 
And listening, sometimes to a moan,
  And sometimes to a clatter,
Whene’er the wind at night would rouse
The gingerbread-work on his house,
Or when some, hasty-tempered mouse, 170
Behind the plastering, made a towse
  About a family matter,
Began to wonder if his wife,
A paralytic half her life. 
  Which made it more surprising,
Might not, to rule him from her urn,
Have taken a peripatetic turn
  For want of exorcising.

This thought, once nestled in his head,
Erelong contagious grew, and spread 180
Infecting all his mind with dread,
Until at last he lay in bed
And heard his wife, with well-known tread,
Entering the kitchen through the shed,
  (Or was’t his fancy, mocking?)
Opening the pantry, cutting bread,
And then (she’d been some ten years dead)
  Closets and drawers unlocking;
Or, in his room (his breath grew thick) 189
He heard the long-familiar click
Of slender needles flying quick,
  As if she knit a stocking;
For whom?—­he prayed that years might flit
  With pains rheumatic shooting,
Before those ghostly things she knit
Upon his unfleshed sole might fit,
He did not fancy it a bit,