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

‘For the few shall not forever sway

 The many toil in sorrow,

We’ll sow the golden grain to-day,

 The harvest comes to-morrow.’”

But the greatest sight in Cairo and mebby the hull world is the Pyramaids.

I d’no as I had so many emotions in the same length of time durin’ my hull tower as I did lookin’ at them immense structures. It don’t seem as if they wuz made by man; they seem more like mountains placed there by the same hand that made the everlastin’ hills. They say that it took three hundred thousand men twenty years to build the biggest one. And I don’t doubt it. If I had been asked to draw up specifications I wouldn’t have took the job for a day’s work less. Why, they say it took ten years to build the road over which them stuns wuz brought from the Nile, and good land! how did they ever do it? No hands nor no machinery that we know anything about at the present day could move one of them stuns, let alone bringin’ ’em from heaven knows where. They couldn’t have been got into any boat, and how did they do it? I d’no nor Josiah don’t. Mebby the sphynx knows, most probable she duz, but she’s a female that don’t git herself into trouble talkin’ and gossipin’. Lots of wimmen would do well to foller her example.

From the first minute we got to Cairo and long enough before that we had lotted on seein’ the Pyramaids, Josiah had 273 talked about ’em a sight, and told me time and agin that he did want to see the spink, he had got to see the spink.

Sez I, “You mean the Sphynx, Josiah.”

“Yes,” sez he, “the spink; I’m bound to see that. I want to tell Deacon Henzy and Brother Bobbett about it; they crowed over me quite a little after they went to Loontown to see them views of the spink and the Pyramaid of Chops. You know I wuz bed-sick at the time with a crick in my back. I guess they’ll have to quirl down a little when I tell ’em I’ve walked round the spink and seen old Chops with my own eyes.”

Well, I know lots of folks travel with no higher aim than to tell their exploits, so I didn’t argy with him. And the hull party of us sot off one pleasant day to view them wonders; they’re only six miles from Cairo. The Pyramaid of Cheops is higher than any structure in Europe; the Strassburg Cathedral is the highest––that is four hundred and sixty feet, and Cheops is four hundred and eighty feet high. Each of its sides is seven hundred and sixty feet long above the sand, and I d’no how much bigger it is underneath. The wild winds from the desert piles up that sand everywhere it can; it was blowin’ aginst that pyramaid three or four thousand years before Christ wuz born, and has kep’ at it ever sense; so it must have heaped up piles about it. The pyramaid is made of immense blocks of stun, and I hearn Josiah explainin’ it out to Tommy. Sez he, “It is called Chops because the stun is chopped off kinder square.”

But I interrupted and sez, “Josiah Allen, this wuz named after Cheops, one of the kings of Egypt; some say it wuz his tomb.”

Miss Meechim sez, “They say it took three hundred thousand men twenty years to build it,” and she remarked further, “How many days’ work this king did give to the poor, and how good it wuz in him!” And Robert Strong said:

“Their work has lasted while the king is forgotten; labor against capital, labor ahead.”

Dorothy looked dreamily up onto the immense pile and said nothin’.

Arvilly said if she had a long whitewash brush she would advertise her book, the “Twin Crimes,” by paintin’ a drunken man in a hovel beatin’ his wife and children, whilst America wuz furnishin’ him with the clubs, and the “Wild and Warlike Deeds of Men” in different wild and warlike attitudes.

And little Tommy wonnered if he could climb up on it and wonnered what anybody could see from the top.

And I looked on it and felt as if I could almost see the march of the centuries defile by its stubborn old sides, and I wondered like Tommy what one could look off and see from the top, gazing out acrost our centuries so full of wonders and inventions, into the glowin’ mysteries of the twentieth century.

Robert Strong said that some thought it wuz built for astronomical purposes, for there is a passage down three hundred and twenty feet from the bed rock from which you can view the sky.

“And some think,” sez Dorothy, “it wuz built to measure distances correctly, it stands true east, north, south, west.”

And Miss Meechim sez, “I believe it wuz built for religious purposes: the interior passages have many stones and symbols that are a mystery to every one unless it is explained in this way.”

Sez Arvilly, “I believe it wuz made to shet up folks in that got drunk and acted. Probable there wuz some even in that fur-off time that made fools of themselves jest as they do now, and old Chops built it to shet ’em up in, and mebby he wuz shet up in it, too; mebby he took to drinkin’. I wish I could have sold him the ‘Twin Crimes’; it would have helped him a sight, but I wuzn’t born soon enough,” sez she, sithin’.

Tommy stood back a little, lookin’ up and seein’ some people half-way to the top, lookin’ like flies on the side of the meetin’ house, said:

“I wonner, oh, I wonner who made it and what it wuz made for, and oh, how I do wonner how they ever got them big stones to the top.”

And I sez to myself, “the child is wiser than any of us. He don’t try to measure his weak surmises on them great rocks and problems, but jest wonders at it all,” and I thought I would foller his example, and I felt considerable better after I gin up.

Robert Strong and Dorothy and Arvilly clumb clear to the top, helped by Arab lifters and boosters. Arvilly and Dorothy wuz tuckered when they come down and they both said they wouldn’t have undertook it if they had known what a job it wuz, but they said the view from the top wuz wonderful, wonderful! and I spoze it wuz, but I thought I would ruther hear ’em tell on’t than to go through what they did gettin’ up and down, and Miss Meechim, I guess, felt so too.

The other two pyramaids in this group wuz smaller than Cheops and stood not fur away. The Sphynx stands about a quarter of a mild off, lookin’ off towards the east, facin’ the risin’ sun. I wonder if she expects the sunrise of civilization to dawn ag’in into her sight. ’Tennyrate she seems to be lookin’ out for sunthin’.

There she has sot, meditatin’ all these years. She wuz old, old as the hills when Christ wuz born. What hain’t them old eyes seen if she senses anything?

From Cairo we went to Alexandria, where we made a short stay; we couldn’t stay long anyway, we had loitered so on the journey. Here it wuz June. Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Nazareth we must visit, and still how could we hurry our footsteps in these sacred places that our soul had so longed to see?

Alexandria was considerable interestin’ on several accounts; it wuz the home of Cleopatra, and the home of Hypatia, 276 the friend and teacher of women. A smart creeter Hypatia Theon wuz, handsome as a picter, modest, good appearin’, and a good talker. ’Tennyrate the rooms where she lectured on philosophy and how to git along in the world wuz crowded with appreciative hearers, and I spoze Mr. Cyrel, who wuz preachin’ there at the time, and didn’t get nigh so many to hear him, wuz mad as a hen at her for drawin’ away the head men and wimmen. ’Tennyrate she wuz killed and burnt up some time ago, a-goin’ on two thousand years. Yes, they burnt up all they could of her; they couldn’t burn up her memory, nor liberty, nor the love of wimmin for talkin’, and her stiddy practice on’t when she gits a chance, not bein’ able to. But to resoom:

The evenin’ we got there Josiah looked out of our winder and see a camel kneelin’ to take on its load, and sez Josiah: “If I could train the old mair to kneel down in front of the Jonesville meetin’ house for me to git onto her back, how uneek it would look.”

Sez I coldly, “Then you lay out to go to meetin’ horseback, do you? And where should I be?”

“Oh, I might rent a camel for you from some circus; you know what big loads camels can take on, they can carry a ton or more, and it could carry you all right.”

I despise such talk, I don’t weigh nigh so much as he makes out.

But Josiah went on, “I d’no but a camel could carry both on us, I wouldn’t add much to the load, I don’t weigh very hefty.”

“No,” sez I, “you’re not very hefty anyway.”

But good land! I knew he couldn’t rent any camel; circuses need ’em more than we do.

The next day we all went out to see Pompey’s Piller which we had seen towerin’ up before we landed, all on ’em ridin’ donkeys but me, but I not being much of a hand to ride on any critter’s back, preferred to go in a chair with long poles on each side, carried by four Arabs. Pompey’s Piller is 277 most a hundred feet high. Cleopatra’s Needles wuz brought from Heliopolis. One is standing; the other, which lay for a long time nearly embedded in the drifting sand, wuz given as a present by Egypt to America, where it stands now in Central Park, New York. To see the mate to it here made us feel well acquainted with it and kinder neighborly. But we couldn’t read the strange writin’ on it to save our life. Some say that they wuz raised by Cleopatra in honor of the birth of her son, Cæsarion. But I d’no if she laid out to write about it so’s I could read it, she’d ort to write plainer; I couldn’t make out a word on’t nor Josiah couldn’t.

Cleopatra wuz dretful good lookin’, I spoze, and a universal favorite with the opposite sect. But