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

As we approached Calcutta we seemed to be travellin’ through big gardens more beautiful than our own country can boast of; rich, strange, tropical trees and shrubs and flowers grew luxuriant around the pleasant villas. The English district with its white two-story houses made me think some of an American village. We went to the Great Eastern Hotel, right opposite the gardens of the Viceroy’s palace.

We had pleasant rooms that would have been pretty hot, but great fans are swung up in our room and the hired help swing ’em by a rope that goes out into the hall. It beats all how much help there is here, the halls seemed full on ’em, but what would our hired help say if we made ’em dress like these Hindus? They wear short pantaloons that don’t come down to their knees and then they wind a long strip of white cloth round their thighs and fasten it round their waist, leavin’ their right shoulder and arm bare naked. An American family of four livin’ in Calcutta have thirty servants, ten of ’em pullin’ at these punkeys or fans. They don’t eat in the house of their employer; but in a cabin outside.

There is a long, beautiful street called The Strand, shaded by banyan and palm trees; on one side on’t is the park so lovely that it is called the Garden of Eden, full of beautiful trees, shrubs and flowers, pagodas, little temples and shrines. Josiah and I and Tommy went there in the evenin’ and hearn beautiful music. Josiah wanted to ride in a palanquin. It is a long black box and looks some like a hearse. I hated to see him get in, it made me forebode. But he enjoyed his ride, and afterwards I sot off in one, Josiah in one also 238 nigh by with Tommy. One side of it comes off so you can git in and set on a high cushion and read or knit. I took my knittin’ and most knit one of Josiah’s heels whilst I rid by palaces and elephants and camels and fakirs and palm trees. Oh, Jonesville yarn! you never expected to be knit amid seens like this. I can knit and admire scenery first rate, and my blue and white yarn seemed to connect me with Jonesville in some occult way, and then I knew Josiah would need his socks before we got home.

Seein’ that the other ladies did so I had throwed my braize veil gracefully over my head instead of my bunnet. The natives are as fond of jewels here as they are in Ceylon. Women with not a rag on down to their waists will have four or five chains on, and bangles on their naked arms. They spend all their earnin’s on these ornaments and wear ’em day and night. Well, seein’ they don’t have any other clothes hardly, mebby it is best for ’em to keep holt on ’em.

We went by some wimmen preparin’ manure for fuel; it wuz made into lumps and dried. The wimmen wuz workin’ away all covered with chains and bangles and rings; Josiah looked on ’em engaged in that menial and onwelcome occupation, and sez he:

“To see wimmen to work in the barnyard, Samantha, has put a new idee into my head.”

I never asked him what it wuz, but spozed it had reference to Philury and mebby me, but I shall never go into that work, never.

One day we went to the American mission school and see the native children settin’ flat on the floor. Josiah wuz awful worked up to see ’em settin’ down in such a oncomfortable posture, and he said to me that if he had some tools and lumber he would make ’em some seats. But that is their way of settin’ to study their lessons.

Among ’em wuz a little girl with a red spot on her forward, indicatin’ that she wuz married, but don’t spoze that she had gone to keepin’ house yet. Girls are married sometimes 239 at six or seven, but their husbands don’t claim ’em till they’re ten or twelve. Good land! they’re nothin’ but babies then; I used to hold Tirzah Ann on my lap at that age. Widders never marry again, and are doomed to a wretched life of degradation and slavery; I guess that is the reason why some on ’em had ruther be burnt up with their relics than to live on to suffer so. How much they need the religion of love and mercy our Saviour come to teach! Our missionaries are doin’ a blessed work, literally loosin’ the chains of the captives, and settin’ at liberty them that are bound.

One evenin’ we met a bridal procession, the groom was ridin’ in a peacock-shaped gilt chariot drawed by four horses, accompanied by a band of music; a big crowd of friends follered him, and coolies bearing torches; it seemed as if he wanted to show himself off all he could. When they got to the house of the bride, they took her in a closed palanquin and meached away to the house of the groom. As in some other countries, females play a minor part in the tune of life; wimmen and children can’t eat at the table with their husband and father, and he sets to the table and she sets down on the floor.

Miss Meechim exclaimed loudly about the awful position of wimmen here, but Arvilly told her that “though wimmen at home had crep’ up a little so she could set to the table and pour the tea, yet at banquets of honor she wuz never seen and at the political table, where men proudly sot and partook, wimmen still sot on the floor and couldn’t git a bite.”

Miss Meechim didn’t dain a reply, but turned her talk onto the dretful idee of widders bein’ burnt with their dead husbands. The English won’t allow it where they can help it, but it is still practised in way back regions, and Arvilly said that she believed that some American widders, who had had their property took from them by the family of the deceased and had their unborn children willed away from ’em 240 by law, suffered enough sight more than they would if they had burnt themselves up with their relics; to say nothin’ of widders bein’ burnt up twice in America, first through their own fiery agony, and then seein’ their children sot fire to by whiskey dealt to ’em by the will of the rulers of the land.

Arvilly always would have the last word. Miss Meechim kinder snorted and tosted her head and held in.

I spoze it wuz partly on Robert Strong’s account, he bein’ high connected and rich, that we wuz all invited to a garden party gin by Mr. and Miss Curzon, she that wuz Miss Leiter, who used to be one of our neighbors, as you may say, out in Chicago, U.S. And then I spoze that it wuz partly on my account, they’d hearn of me, without any doubt, and craved a augience. Josiah thought that it wuz on his account that we wuz invited; he thinks he is a ornament to any festive throng.

But ’tennyrate invited we wuz, and go we did, the hull caboodle on us, all but Tommy, who stayed to home with the good English maid that Miss Meechim had hired to take Aronette’s place, but never, never to fill it.

Oh, Aronette! sweet girl! where are you? Where are you? So my heart called out time and time agin; sometimes in the dead of night on my wakeful pillow, and anon when I wuz lookin’ for her in places that I didn’t want to find her. So did Dorothy’s heart call out to her. I knew she wuz lookin’ for her always, seekin’ her with sad eyes full of tears, looking, longing for the playmate of her childhood, the loving, gentle helper and companion of her youth.

Miss Meechim didn’t speak of her so often as she thought of her, I believe; but she grew thin after her loss, and when grief for a person ploughs away your flesh you can call yourself a mourner. She lost five pounds and a half in less than a month; next to Dorothy she loved her.