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

Strong wanted to go to see the ruins of the enormous temple of Jupiter where chariot races were run and the Olympic games wuz fought that Paul speaks of so many times in his letters to the churches.

But time wuz passin’ fast away and we thought best to not linger there any longer and we went directly from there to Vienna, a longer journey than we had took lately, but Robert thought we had better not stop on the way.

Vienna is a beautiful city. I d’no as I would go so fur as the Viennesse myself and say it is the most beautiful in the world, but it stands up high amongst ’em.

The beautiful blue Danube makes a curve round it as if it wuz real choice of it and loved to hold it in its arms. I say blue Danube, but its waters are no more blue than our Jonesville creek is pink. But mebby if I wuz goin’ to sing about the creek I might call it blue or pink for poetical purposes.

We had rooms nigh to the river, the banks of which wuz terraced down to the water, and laid out in little parks, public gardens full of flowers and trees and flowering shrubs.

There are two massive stun bridges in this part of the city, and very handsome dwellin’ houses, churches, and the Swartzenburg palace. The buildings are very handsome here, more lofty and grand looking even than they are in Paris, and you know you would imagine that wuz the flower of the universe, and I needn’t mention the fact that I had to gin into it that it goes fur beyend Jonesville.

The street called the Ring Strasse, I spoze because it curves round some like a ring, is three milds long, and most two hundred feet wide. And along this broad beautiful avenue there are six rows of large chestnut trees. A track for 393 horseback riders on one side, a broad carriage driveway, two fine promenades, besides the walk.

Splendid buildin’s rise up on each side of this grand street, and parks and gardens abound. At intervals there are large roomy lawns, covered with velvety grass, where easy seats under the trees invite you to rest and admire the beauty around you, and the happy, gayly-dressed throng passing and repassing in carriages, on horseback or walkin’ afoot, thousands and thousands on ’em, and everyone, I spoze, a pursuin’ their own goles, whatever they may be.

The first place we went to see wuz St. Stephen’s Church. This is on a street much narrower than the Ring Strasse. The sidewalks wuz very narrer here, so when you met folks you had to squeeze up pretty nigh the curbstun or step out into the carriage way; but no matter how close the quarters wuz you would meet with no rough talk or impoliteness. They wuz as polite as the Japans, with more intelligence added.

St. Stephen’s Cathedral is a magnificent Gothic structure, three hundred and fifty-four feet long and two hundred and thirty broad, and is full of magnificent monuments, altars, statutes, carving, etc., etc. The monument to the Emperor Frederic III. has over two hundred figures on it.

Here is the tomb of the King of Rome, Napoleon’s only son, and his ma, Maria Louise. I had queer feelin’s as I stood by them tombs and meditated how much ambition and heart burnin’ wuz buried here in the tomb of that young King of Rome. I thought of how his pa divorced the woman he loved, breakin’ her heart, and his own mebby, for the ambitious desire to have a son connected with the royalty of Europe, to carry on his power and glory, and make it more permanent. And how the new wife turned away from him in his trouble, and the boy died, and he carried his broken heart into exile. And the descendant of the constant-hearted woman he put away, set down on the throne of France, and then he, too, and his boy, had to pass 394 away like leaves whirled about in the devastatin’ wind of war and change. What ups and downs! I had a variety of emotions as I stood there, and I guess Josiah did, though I don’t know. But I judged from his liniment; he looked real demute.

The catacombs under this meetin’-house are a sight to see I spoze, but we didn’t pay a visit to ’em. Josiah had a idee that they wuz built to bury cats in, and he said he didn’t want to go to any cat buryin’-ground. He said there wuzn’t a cat in Europe so likely as ourn, but he wouldn’t think of givin’ it funeral honors.

But he didn’t git it right. It wuz a place where they buried human bein’s, but I didn’t care anything about seein’ it.

Robert got a big carriage, and we all driv over to the Prater, a most beautiful park on an island in the Danube. The broad, flower-bordered avenues wuz crowded with elegant carriages and beautiful forms and faces wuz constantly passing hither and yon, to and fro, and the scene all round us wuz enchantin’ly beautiful. We had a delightful drive, and when we got back to the tarven we found quite a lot of letters that had been forwarded here. Josiah and I had letters from Jonesville, welcome as the voice of the first bird in spring, all well and hopeful of our speedy meetin’; but Miss Meechim had one tellin’ of dretful doin’s in her old home.

We’d heard that there had been a great labor strike out in California, but little did we know how severe it had struck. Rev. Mr. Weakdew had writ to Miss Meechim how some of the rebellious workmen had riz up against his son in his absence. He told how wickedly they wuz actin’ and how impossible it wuz in his opinion to make them act genteel, but he said in his letter that his son had been telegrafted to to come home at once. He said Mudd-Weakdew always had been successful in quelling these rebellious workmen 395 down, and making them keep their place, and he thought he would now as soon as he arrived there.

I know Arvilly and Miss Meechim had words about it when she read the letter. Miss Meechim deplored the state of affairs, and resented Arvilly’s talk; she said it was so wicked to help array one class aginst another.

“They be arrayed now,” sez Arvilly. “Selfishness and Greed are arrayed aginst Justice and Humanity, and the baby Peace is bein’ trompled on and run over, and haggard Want and Famine prowl on the bare fields of Poverty, waitin’ for victims, and the cries of the perishin’ fill the air.”

Arvilly turned real eloquent. I mistrusted mebby she’d catched it from me, but Miss Meechim turned up her nose and acted dretful high-headed and said there was nothing genteel in such actions and she wouldn’t gin in a mite till that day in Vienna she had a letter that brought her nose down where it belonged, and she acted different after readin’ it and didn’t talk any more about gentility or the onbroken prosperity of the Mudd-Weakdews, and I wuz shocked myself to hear what wuz writ.

As I say, Miss Meechim read it and grew pale, the letter dropped in her lap and she trembled like a popple leaf, for it told of a dretful tragedy. It wuz writ by a friend in Sacramento and the tragedy wuz concernin’ the Mudd-Weakdews. On hearin’ of the strike, the Mudd-Weakdews had hurried home from their trip abroad and he had tried to quell the strike, but found it wouldn’t quell. He had been shot at but not killed; the shot went through his eyes, and he would be blind for life. A deadly fever had broke out in the tenements on the street back of his palace, caused, the doctors said, by the terrible onsanitary surroundings, and helped on by want and starvation. The families of his workmen had died off like dead leaves fallin’ from rotten trees in the fall. The tenements wuz not fur from the Mudd-Weakdew garden where Dorris loved to stay, who had stayed at home with a governess and a genteel relative during her parents’ 396 absence. The garden wuz full of trees, blossoms and flowering shrubs, a fountain dashed up its clear water into the air and tall white statutes stood guard over Dorris in her happy play. But some deadly germ wuz wafted from that filthy, ghastly place, over the roses and lilies and pure waters, and sweet Dorris wuz the victim.

The clear waters and fresh green lawns and fragrant posies didn’t extend fur enough back; if they had her life might have been saved, but they only went as fur as the sharp wall her pa had riz up and thought safely warded his own child from all the evils of the lower classes.

No, it didn’t go fur enough back, and sweet Dorris had to pay the penalty of her pa’s blindness and selfishness. For what duz the Book say? “The innocent shall suffer for the guilty.”

Her broken-hearted mother followed her to the grave, and it wuz on that very day, Mudd-Weakdew bein’ shut up with doctors, that the little boy wuz stolen. The discharged workman, whose little boy had died of starvation, disappeared too. He wuz said to be half-crazy and had threatened vengeance on his old employer. There wuz a story that he had been seen with a child richly dressed, and afterwards with a child dressed in the coarse clothing of the poor, embarking on a foreign ship, but the clue wuz lost, so the living trouble wuz worse to bear than the dead one.

The strike wuz ended, Capital coming out ahead; the workmen had lost, and the Mudd-Weakdews had a chance to coin more money than ever out of the half-paid labor and wretched lives of their men. They could still be exclusive and foller the star of gentility till it stood over the cold marble palace of disdainful nobility. But the wall of separation he had built up between wealth and poverty had not stood the strain; Deadly Pestilence, Triumphant Hatred and sharp-toothed Revenge had clumb over and attacked him with their sharp fangs, him and his wife, and they had to bear it.

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I knowed it, I knowed that no walls can ever be built high enough to separate the sordid, neglected, wretched lives of the poor and the luxurious, pleasure-filled lives of the rich. Between the ignorant criminal classes and the educated and innocent. You may make ’em strong as the Pyramaids and high as the tower of Babel, but the passions and weaknesses of humanity will scale ’em and find a way through.

The vile air of the low lands will float over into and contaminate the pure air of the guarded pleasure gardens, and the evil germs will carry disease, crime and death, no matter how many fountains and white statutes and posies you may set up between. Envy, Discontent and Revenge will break through the walls and meet Oppression, Insolence and Injustice, and they will tear and rend each other. They always have and always will. Robert Strong, instead of buildin’ up that wall, spends his strength in tearin’ it down and settin’ on its crumblin’ ruins the white flowers of Love and Peace.

Holdin’ Oppression and Injustice back with a hard bit and makin’ ’em behave, makin’ Envy and Hatred sheath their claws some as a cat will when it is warm and happy. He tears down mouldy walls and lets the sunshine in. Pullin’ up what bad-smellin’ weeds he can in the gardens of the poor, and transplantin’ some of the overcrowded posy beds of the rich into the bare sile, makin’ ’em both look better and do better. I set store by him. But to resoom:

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CHAPTER XXXII

Amongst my letters wuz one from Evangeline Noble tellin’ of her safe arrival in Africa and of the beginning of her work there, some like strikin’ a match to light a lamp in a dark suller, but different from that because the light she lit wuz liable to light other lamps, and so on and on and on till no tellin’ what a glorious brilliance would shine from the one little rushlight she wuz kindlin’. She felt it, she wuz happy with that best kind of happiness, doin’ good. She spoke of Cousin John Richard, too; he wuz not in the same place she wuz, but she hearn of him often, for his life wuz like a vase filled with the precious ointment broke at the feet of Jesus. Broken in a earthly sense, but the rich aroma sweetened the whole air about and ascended to the very heavens.

A missionary she knew had seen him just before she wrote me. He wuz working, giving his life and finding it again, useful, happy, beloved. Not a success in a worldly way; Mudd-Weakdew would have called it