’The only attempt I had ever made at anything like a pastoral (if that may be called an attempt which was the result almost of pure accident) was in The Courtin’.  While the introduction to the First Series was going through the press, I received word from the printer that there was a blank page left which must be filled.  I sat down at once and improvised another fictitious “notice of the press,” in which, because verse would fill up space more cheaply than prose, I inserted an extract from a supposed ballad of Mr. Biglow.  I kept no copy of it, and the printer, as directed, cut it off when the gap was filled.  Presently I began to receive letters asking for the rest of it, sometimes for the balance of it.  I had none, but to answer such demands, I patched a conclusion upon it in a later edition.  Those who had only the first continued to importune me.  Afterward, being asked to write it out as an autograph for the Baltimore Sanitary Commission Fair, I added other verses, into some of which I infused a little more sentiment in a homely way, and after a fashion completed it by sketching in the characters and making a connected story.  Most likely I have spoiled it, but I shall put it at the end of this Introduction, to answer once for all those kindly importunings.’

THE COURTIN’

God makes sech nights, all white an’ still
  Fur ’z you can look or listen,
Moonshine an’ snow on field an’ hill,
  All silence an’ all glisten.

Zekle crep’ up quite unbeknown
  An’ peeked in thru’ the winder,
An’ there sot Huldy all alone,
  ’ith no one nigh to hender.

A fireplace filled the room’s one side
  With half a cord o’ wood in—­
There warn’t no stoves (tell comfort died)
  To bake ye to a puddin’.

The wa’nut logs shot sparkles out
  Towards the pootiest, bless her,
An’ leetle flames danced all about
  The chiny on the dresser.

Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung,
  An’ in amongst ’em rusted
The ole queen’s-arm thet gran’ther Young
  Fetched back f’om Concord busted.

The very room, coz she was in,
  Seemed warm f’om floor to ceilin’,
An’ she looked full ez rosy agin
  Ez the apples she was peelin’.

‘Twas kin’ o’ kingdom come to look
  On sech a blessed cretur,
A dogrose blushin’ to a brook
  Ain’t modester nor sweeter.

He was six foot o’ man, A 1,
  Clear grit an’ human natur’,
None couldn’t quicker pitch a ton
  Nor dror a furrer straighter.

He’d sparked it with full twenty gals,
  Hed squired ’em, danced ’em, druv ’em,
Fust this one, an’ then thet, by spells—­
  All is, he couldn’t love ’em.

But long o’ her his veins ’ould run
  All crinkly like curled maple,
The side she breshed felt full o’ sun
  Ez a south slope in Ap’il.

She thought no v’ice hed sech a swing
  Ez hisn in the choir;
My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring,
  She knowed the Lord was nigher.