A WOMAN OF FEW WORDS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 909, 15 January 1881, Page 2

A WOMAN OF FEW WORDS.

We find in a Californian diary the following glorification of a quality we are not sure we should like. A man of few words is very well, but a woman of few words is a matter open to argument:—“ I encountered today, in a ravine some three miles distant, among the gold washers, a woman from San Jose. She was at work with a large wooden bowl by the side of the stream. I asked her how long she had been there, and how much gold she averaged a day. She replied, ‘ Three weeks and an ounce.’ Her reply reminded me of an anecdote of the late Judge Blank, who met a girl returning from market, and asked her ‘ How deep did you find the stream ? and what did you get for your butter ?’ ‘ Up to the knees and ninepence,’ was the reply. ‘Ah !’ said the judge to himself: ‘ she is the girl for me; no words lost there ;’ turned back, proposed, was accepted, and married the next week ; and a more happy couple the conjugal bonds never united ; the nuptial lamp never waned; its ray was steady and clear to the last. Ye who paddle off and on for seven years and are perhaps capsized at last, take a lesson of the judge, that ‘ up to the knees and ninepence ’ is worth all the rose letters and melancholy rhymes ever penned.”