Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (ebook reader android txt) 📖

How beautiful wuz the shore as we approached it, its scenery different from Jonesville scenery, but yet worth seein’––yes, indeed! Mountain and valley, rock and green velvet verdure, tall palm trees shadin’ kinder low houses, but still beautiful and attractive. And what beautiful colors greeted our weary eyes as we drew nigher. I thought of that gate of Jerusalem the Golden, all enamelled with emerald, amethyst, chalcedony, and pearl sot in gold. The golden brown earth made from melted lava, the feathery foliage of the palms that riz up beyend the dazzlin’ white beach, the crystal blue waters with myriad-hued fishes playing down in its crystal depths. Oh, how fair the seen as we approached nearer and see plainer and plainer the pictured beauty of the shore. Shinin’ green valley, emerald-topped mountain, amethyst sea; which wuz the most beautiful it wuz hard to say.

Evangeline Noble stood off by herself leanin’ on the rail of the deck as if she see through the beauty into the inner heart of things, and see in her mind’s eye all the work her own people, the missionaries, had done there. The thought that they had taken the natives like diamonds incrusted in dirt and cleansed them of the blackest of their habits. She see in the past natives burying their children alive, putting to death the mentally weak, worshipping horrible idols, killing and eating their enemies, etc., etc. But now, under the blessed light of the torch, that long procession of martyrs had held up, the former things wuz passin’ away, and she, too, wuz one of that blessed host of God’s helpers. She looked riz up and radiant as if she see way beyend the islands 106 of the sea and all she hoped to do for her Master on earth, and as if he wuz talking to her now, teaching her his will.

Nigher to us Elder Wessel wuz standing, and he sez, lifting up his eyes to heaven:

“Oh islands of the sea! where every prospect pleases and only man is vile.”

And Arvilly hearn him and snapped out, “I d’no as they’re so very vile till traders and other civilized folks teach ’em to drink and cheat and tear round.” His eyes lost in a minute that heavenly expression they had wore and sez he:

“Oh, islands of the sea! where every prospect pleases and eat each other up and etcetery.”

“Well, I d’no,” sez she, “but I’d ruther be killed to once by a club and eat up and be done with than to die by inches as wimmen do under our civilized American license laws. The savages kill their enemies, but the American savage kills the one that loves him best, and has to see her children turned into brutes and ruffians, under what is called a Christian dispensation. There hain’t no hypocrisy and Phariseeism in a good straight club death, and most likely whilst he wuz eatin’ me up he wouldn’t pose before foreign nations as a reformer and civilizer of the world.”

“Oh, Sister Arvilly,” sez he, “think of the hideous idols they worship! You can’t approve of that,” sez he.

But Arvilly, the ondanted, went on, “Well I never see or hearn of any savage idol to compare in hegiousness with the Whiskey Power that is built up and pampered and worshipped by Americans rich and poor, high and low, Church and State. Let any one make a move to tear that idol down from its altar, made of dead men’s bones, and see what a flutter there is in the camp, how new laws are made and old laws shoved aside, and new laws fixed over, and the highest and the lowest will lie and cringe and drag themselves on their knees in front of it to protect it and worship it. Don’t talk to me about your wood idols; they hain’t nothin’ to be compared to it. They stay where they’re put, they don’t 107 rare round and kill their worshippers as this Whiskey idol duz. I’d think enough sight more of some men high in authority if they would buy a good clean basswood idol and put it up in the Capitol at Washington, D. C., and kneel down before it three times a day, than to do what they are doin’; they wouldn’t do half the hurt and God knows it, and He would advise ’em that way if they ever got nigh enough to Him so’s He could speak to ’em at all.”

“Oh, Sister Arvilly!” sez Elder Wessel, and he looked as if he would faint away. And I too wuz shocked to my soul, specially as Josiah whispered kinder low to me:

“Samantha, we might git a small idol whilst we’re here. You know it would come handy in hayin’ time and when the roads are drifted full.”

I looked at him in a way that he will remember through his hull life, and sez he quick, “I shan’t do nothin’ of the kind unless you’re willin’.”

“Willin’!” sez I, in heart-broken axents. “What will happen next to me?” And then indignation dried my tears before they fell and I sez, “I command you, Josiah Allen, to never speak to me on this subject agin; or think on’t!” sez I fiercely.

He muttered sunthin’ about thinkin’ what he wuz a mindter. And I turned to Arvilly and sez, to git her mind off:

“See that native, Arvilly, standin’ up on that board!”

For as our good ship bore us onward we see crowds of natives standin’ up on little tottlin’ boards, dartin’ through the water every which way, risin’ and fallin’ on the waves. I couldn’t done it to save my life. No, Josiah nor me couldn’t stood on boards like that on our creek, to say nothin’ of the Pacific Ocean. But we should never have appeared in public dressed in that way––it wuzn’t decent, and I told Josiah I wouldn’t look at ’em if I wuz in his place; I mistrusted that some on ’em might be wimmen. And then I thought of the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve first took the 108 place, and I didn’t really know what to think. But I drawed Arvilly’s attention to one on ’em that seemed extra dextrious in managin’ his board and sez, “How under the sun duz he do it, Arvilly?”

“I d’no,” sez she, and she added dreamily, “I wonder if he would want a copy of the ‘Twin Crimes,’ or the ‘Wicked and Warlike.’ If I do sell any here to the natives it’ll put some new idees in their heads about idol worship wickeder and warliker than they ever had.” Miss Meechim and Dorothy wuz approachin’ and Robert Strong I see looked off with rapt eyes onto the glorious seen. And as no two can see the same things in any picture, but see the idees of their own mind, blended in and shadin’ the view, I spozed that Robert Strong see rared up on the foreground of that enchantin’ seen his ideal City of Justice, where gigantic trusts, crushin’ the people’s life out, never sot its feet, but love, equality and good common sense sot on their thrones in the middle on’t, and the people they ruled wuz prosperous and happy. And anon he looked down into Dorothy’s sweet face as if no foreign shore or any inner vision ever looked so good to him.

Miss Meechim hated to have Dorothy see them natives, I see she did; actin’ so skittish towards the male sect always, it wuz dretful galdin’ to her to see ’em in that state and specially to have Dorothy see ’em. She looked awful apprehensive towards them swimmers and board riders and then at her niece. But when she catched sight of Robert by her side a look of warm relief swep’ over her anxious face, as if in her mind’s eye she see Dorothy by his help walkin’ through the future a prosperous and contented bacheldor maid.

Tommy wuz kinder talkin’ to himself or to his invisible playmate. He wonnered how he wuz goin’ to git on shore, wonnerin’ if he could stand up on one of them little boards and if his grandpa and grandma would each have one to stand up on, and kinder lookin’ forward to such an experience I could see, and Josiah wuz wonderin’ how soon he 109 could git a good meat dinner. And so as on shore or sea each one wuz seein’ what their soul’s eye had to