time, and a sweetheart alongside, all muffled up but her eyes and lips—­the one lookin right into you, and the other talkin right at you—­is een a most enough to drive one ravin tarin distracted mad with pleasure, aint it?  And then the dear critters say the bells make such a din there’s no hearin one’s self speak; so they put their pretty little mugs close up to your face, and talk, talk, talk, till one can’t help lookin right at them instead of the horse, and then whap you both go capsized into, a snow drift together, skins, cushions and all.  And then to see the little critter shake herself when she gets up, like a duck landin from a pond, a chatterin away all the time like a Canary bird, and you a haw-hawin with pleasure, is fun alive, you may depend.  In this way Blue Nose gets led on to offer himself as a lovier, afore he knows where he bees.  But when he gets married, he recovers his eyesight in little less than half no time.  He soon finds he’s treed; his flint is fixed then, you may depend.  She larns him how vinegar is made:  Put plenty of sugar into the water aforehand, my dear, says she, if you want to make it real sharp.  The larf is on the other side of his mouth then.  If his slay gets upsot, its no longer a funny matter, I tell you; he catches it right and left.  Her eyes don’t look right up to hisn any more, nor her little tongue ring, ring, ring, like a bell any longer, but a great big hood covers her head, and a whappin great muff covers her face, and she looks like a bag of soiled clothes agoin to the brook to be washed.  When they get out, she don’t wait any more for him to walk lock and lock with her, but they march like a horse and a cow to water, one in each gutter.  If there aint a transmogrification its a pity.  The difference atween a wife and a sweetheart is near about as great as there is between new and hard cider—­a man never tires of puttin one to his lips, but makes plaguy wry faces at tother.  It makes me so kinder wamblecropt when I think on it, that I’m afeared to venture on matrimony at all.  I have seen some Blue Noses most properly bit, you may depend.  You’ve seen a boy a slidin on a most beautiful smooth bit of ice, ha’nt you, larfin, and hoopin, and hallooin like one possessed, when presently sowse he goes in over head and ears?  How he out fins and flops about, and blows like a porpoise properly frightened, don’t he? and when he gets out there he stands; all shiverin and shakin, and the water a squish-squashin in his shoes, and his trowsers all stickin slimsey like to his legs.  Well, he sneaks off home, lookin like a fool, and thinkin every body he meets is a larfin at him—­many folks here are like that are boy, afore they have been six months married.  They’d be proper glad to get out of the scrape too, and sneak off if they could, that’s a fact.  The marriage yoke is plaguy apt to gall the neck, as the ash bow does the ox in rainy weather, unless it be most particularly well fitted.  You’ve seen a yoke of cattle that warn’t properly mated,