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

agin’ on his food, but his looks wuz mournful, and if I could I would have put on a apron willin’ly and gone down into the kitchen and cooked him a good square meal, but I knew it wouldn’t be thought on, so I kep’ calm.

Well, our bed wuz kinder queer. It wuz quite noble lookin’, four high posts with lace curtains looped up and mosquito nettin’ danglin’ down, and instead of springs a woven cane mattress stretched out lookin’ some like our cane seat chairs. How to git under that canopy and not let in a swarm of mosquitoes wuz what we didn’t know, but we did finally creep under and lay down. It wuz like layin’ on the barn floor, the cane mattress didn’t yield a mite, and Josiah’s low groans mingled with my sithes for quite a spell. Tommy wuz fast asleep in his little bed and so didn’t sense anything. Well, the tegus night passed away, happily I spoze for the attentive mosquitoes who shared the canopy with us, and mebby liked to sample foreign acquaintances, 142 but tegus for us, and we wuz glad when it wuz time to git up.

The first meal of the day wuz brought to our room; chocolate not over good, some bread and some eggs, almost raw, wuz what it consisted of. Josiah, who wanted some lamb chops, baked potatoes and coffee, wuz mad as a hen. “Heavens and earth!” sez he, “why I never sucked eggs when a boy; have I got to come to it in my old age? Raw eggs and chocklate you could cut with a knife. A few years of such food will leave you a widder, Samantha.”

“Well,” sez I, “do let’s make the best of it; when you’re in Rome do as the Romans do.”

“I shan’t suck eggs, for no Romans or for no Phillippine.”

“Eat ’em with your spoon,” sez I, “as you’d ort to.”

“Or with my knife,” sez he. “Did you see them officers last night to the table eatin’ sass with a knife? I should thought they’d cut their mouths open.”

“Well, it is their way here, Josiah. Let’s keep up and look forrerd to goin’ home; that’s the best fruit of travellin’ abroad anyway, unless it is seein’ Tommy so well and hearty.”

Josiah looked at his rosy face and didn’t complain another word. He jest worships Thomas Josiah. Well, after we eat this meal we went out walkin’, Josiah and I and Tommy, and I spoze Carabi went along, too, though we didn’t see him. But then what two folks ever did see each other? Why I never see Josiah, and Josiah never see me, not the real us.

Well, it wuz a strange, strange seen that wuz spread out before us; the place looked more’n half asleep, and as if it had been nappin’ for some time; the low odd lookin’ houses looked too as if they wuz in a sort of a dream or stupor. The American flag waved out here and there with a kind of a lazy bewildered floppin’, as if it wuz wonderin’ how under the sun it come to be there ten thousand milds from 143 Washington, D. C., and it wuz wonderin’ what on earth it floated out there in the first place for. But come to look at it clost you could see a kind of a determined and sot look in the Stars and Stripes that seemed to say, “Well, now I am here I hain’t goin’ to be driv out by no yeller grounded flags whatsumever.”

Some of the carriages that we met wuz queer lookin’, rough wooden two-wheeled carts, that looked as if they’d been made by hand that mornin’. Josiah said that he could go out into the woods with Ury and cut down a tree and make a better lookin’ wagon in half an hour, but I don’t spoze he could. Some on ’em wuz drawed by a buffalo, which filled Josiah with new idees about drivin’ one of our cows in the democrat.

Sez he: “Samantha, it would be real uneek to take you to meetin’ with old Line back or Brindle, and if the minister got dry in meetin’, and you know ministers do git awful dry sometimes, I could just go out and milk a tumbler full and pass it round to him.”

But I drawed his attention off; I couldn’t brook the idee of ridin’ after a cow and havin’ it bellerin’ round the meetin’ house. The native wimmen we met wuz some on ’em dressed American style, and some on ’em dressed in their own picturesque native costoom. It wuz sometimes quite pretty, and one not calculated to pinch the waist in. A thin waist, with immense flowing sleeves and embroidered chemise showing through the waist, a large handkerchief folded about the neck with ends crossed, a gay skirt with a train and a square of black cloth drawn tight around the body from waist to knees. Stockings are not worn very much, and the slippers are not much more than soles with little strips of leather going over the foot, and no heels. Anon we would meet some Chinamen, with eyes set in on a bias, and their hair hanging in two long tails down their backs; lots of them we see, then a priest would move slowly along, then a Spanish señora, then a sailor, then perhaps a native 144 dressed partly in European costoom lookin’ like a fright. The street cars are little things drawed by one horse, and the streets are badly paved when they’re paved at all.

There wuz some handsome houses in the residence portion of the city, but aside from the Cathedral there are few public buildings worth seeing. But one thing they have here always beautiful, and that is the luxuriant tropical vegetation, beautiful blossoming trees and shrubs, and the multitude of flowers, tall palms, bamboo, ebony, log-wood, mangoes, oranges, lemons, bread fruit, custard apples, and forty or fifty varieties of bananas, from little ones, not much more than a mouthful, to them eighteen or twenty inches long. Josiah enjoyed his walk, finding many things to emulate when he got back to Jonesville. Among ’em wuz the Chinamen’s hair; he thought it wuz a dressy way to comb a man’s hair, and he wondered dreamily how his would look if he let it grow out and braid it. But he said if he did, he should wear red ribbons on it, or baby blue. But I knew there wuz no danger of his hair ever stringin’ down his back, for I could, if danger pressed too near, cut it off durin’ his sleep, and would, too, even if it led to words.

Wall, Arvilly’s first work, after she had canvassed the hotel-keeper for the “Twin Crimes,” and as many of the guests as she could, wuz to find out if Waitstill wuz there. And sure enough she found her. She wuz in one of the hospitals and doin’ a good work, jest as she would anywhere she wuz put. She come to the hotel to see us as soon as she could, and Arvilly seemed to renew her age, having Waitstill with her agin. We writ to once to Cousin John Richard.

Robert Strong and Dorothy wuz dretful interested in Waitstill, I could see, and they asked a great many questions about her work in the hospital. And I see that Robert wuz only grounded in his convictions when Waitstill told him of the sickness the doctors and nurses had to contend with, and how largely it wuz caused by liquor drinking. 145 Hundreds of American saloons in Manila, so she said, and sez she, “How can the hospitals hope to undo the evils that these do to men’s souls and bodies?” Sez she, “You know what a fearful disease and crime breeder it is in a temperate climate, but it is tenfold worse here in this tropical land.”

She wuz anxious to hear all the news from Jonesville, and I willin’ly told her what Phila Ann had told me about Elder White, and the noble work he was doin’ in East Loontown, and I sez, “Missionary work is jest as necessary and jest as important and pleasin’ to God if done in Loontown as in the Antipithies.”

And she said she knew it. And I sez: “Elder White is working himself to death, and don’t have the comforts of life, to say nothin’ of the happiness he ort to.”

Waitstill didn’t say nothin’, but I fancied a faint pink flush stole up into her white cheeks, some like the color that flashes up onto a snowbank at sunset. Life wuz all snow and sunset to her, I could see, but I knowed that she wuz the one woman in the world for Ernest White, the ideal woman his soul had always worshipped, and found realized in Waitstill––poor little creeter!

I didn’t know whether the warm sun of his love could melt the snow and frozen hail or not––the sun duz melt such things––and I knew love wuz the greatest thing in the world. Well, I had to leave the event to Providence, and wuz willin’ to; but yet, after a woman duz leave things to the Most High to do, she loves to put in her oar and help things along; mebby that is the way of Providence––who knows? But ’tennyrate I gin another blind hint to her before we left the conversation.

Sez I, “Ernest White is doin’ the Lord’s work if ever a man did, and I can’t think it is the Lord’s will that whilst he’s doin’ it he ort to eat such bread as he has to––milk emtin’s and sour at that, to say nothin’ of fried stuff that a anaconda couldn’t digest. He deserves a sweet, love-guarded 146 home, and to be tended to by a woman that he loves––one who could inspire him and help him on in the heavenly way he’s treading alone and lonesome.” Her cheeks did turn pink then, and her eyes looked like deep blue pools in which stars wuz shinin’, but she didn’t say anything, and Robert Strong resoomed his talk with her about her hospital work. And before she left he gin her a big check to use for her patients; I don’t know exactly how big it wuz, but it went up into the hundreds, anyway; and Dorothy gin her one, too, for I see her write it; Miss Meechim gin her her blessin’ and more’n a dozen tracts, which mebby will set well on the patients, if administered cautious. I myself gin her the receipt for the best mustard poultice that ever drawed, and two pairs of clouded blue-and-white wool socks I had knit on the way, and though it wuz a warm country she said they would come handy when her patients had chills.

There wuz two young American girls at the hotel, and they happened to come into the parlor while we wuz talkin’ and they sent a big present to the hospital. I guess they wuz real well off and good dispositioned. They wuz travellin’ alone and seemed to be havin’ a real good time. One on ’em wuz sunthin’ of a invalid, but wuz outdoors all day, I spoze tryin’ to git well. They minded their own bizness and didn’t do any hurt so fur as I could see, but Elder Wessel couldn’t bear ’em. Sez he to me one day:

“I spoze they represent the new young woman?”

He said it real skornful, and Arvilly, who wuz present, took him up real snappish. “Well, what of it? What have they done?” If that poor man had said that black wuz black and white wuz white, Arvilly would found fault with it.

“I don’t object to what they have done,” sez he, “so much as to what they are. Young American women know too much.” And Arvilly sez with a meanin’ glance at him, “That is sunthin’ that everybody don’t have to stand.”

She might just as well have called him a fool, her axent wuz such. Arvilly is too hash. Sez he: “Now my Lucia is 147 different. She knows nothing about sin and wickedness, and I got this position for her, so that as soon as she left the convent she was placed directly in the care of this good woman and her little innocent child. What does she know of sin or sorrow, or worldliness or vanity?”

“Or danger?” sez I meanin’ly. “If she always has some one at her side to guard her, her perfect ignorance and innocence is a charm, but how would it be in the hour of danger and temptation? Why should anybody fear being burned if they had no knowledge of fire?”

“Oh,” sez he, “her divine innocence is her safeguard. Evil would retire abashed before the timid glance of her pure eyes.”

“I hope so,” sez I dryly. “I hope so. But I never knew the whiteness of its wool to help