Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (ebook reader android txt) đź“–
- Author: Marietta Holley
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“Fifty years hence I spoze the money will all be safe and gainin’ interest, so if that is what a woman is married for she will keep her attraction and even increase it. But fifty years hence where will her beauty be, if she wuz married alone for that? Where are its powerful attractions? All gone. If she had nothing but the beauty of snowy brow and brilliant eye and clustering locks and perfect features.
“But beauty that looks from the soul through the face. Ah! that is another thing! That still remains when the dusky hair is changed to white, when the glow is turned to shadows in the eyes, when the lithe form is bent. That is a bit of the eternal, and forever young like its Creator. You have got that beauty, my dear, as well as proppity, so don’t worry.”
I felt real eloquent, and I could see by her looks that I wuz impressin’ her powerfully and givin’ her sights of comfort in her tryin’ place.
But I knew that eppisodin’, though interestin’ and agreeable, devoured time, and I knew that I must hold my eloquent emotions back and let Common Sense take the reins and conclude my remarks, so I sez:
“I hope from the bottom of my heart that your pardner is a good man, one that hain’t too uppish, and is willin’ to chore round the house a little if necessary, and set store by you in youth and age, and that you and he will live happy and reign long over a peaceful and happy land.”
I see her companion in the distance comin’ slowly back as if not hardly dastin’ to interrupt our conversation, and I sez, “Good-by, my dear, and God bless you. Give my respects to your pardner and Queen Emma, and if you ever come to Jonesville I would love to have you make me a all 424 day’s visit, and I’ll invite the children and kill a hen and make a fuss.
“I don’t spoze Jonesville is so neat as Amsterdam; I spoze you can set down and eat offen the sidewalk in Holland most anywhere, but I am called a good housekeeper, and will do the best I can. And now I don’t want you to put yourself out in the matter, but if you should come and could manage it handy, if your ma would bring me some of your tulip seeds I’d swop with her and give her some of the handsomest sunflowers she ever laid eyes on, and they make splendid food for hens to make ’em lay.”
She didn’t give me any answer about this either way, and I thought mebby her ma might be short on it for bulbs, and I wouldn’t say anything more about it. But she bid me good-by real pleasant and we shook hands and wuz jest partin’ away from each other when I thought of another very important thing that I wanted to warn the dear young queen about, and I turned round and sez:
“Oh, I must warn you solemnly of one thing more before we part; I have worried a sight about it; thinkin’ so much on you as I do, I have been dretful afraid that you would be overflowed. If there should be big rains and the ocean should rise half an inch I’ve felt I didn’t know what would become of you. You had better keep wash-tubs and pails handy and don’t be ketched out without rubber boots, and keep your eye on leakages in the ground as well as govermuntal and financial affairs. And now again I will say, my dear, God bless you and farewell.”
She shook hands agin quite warm, and with a sweet smile on a pretty young face she assured me that she would be careful, and she jined her companion and went on towards the spring. And I know she wuz dretful pleased with what I’d said to her for I hearn her fairly laugh out as she told the lady about it.
Whilst we wuz in Carlsbad Miss Meechim took the mud baths. She said they wuz considered very genteel and I 425 guess mebby they wuz, so many things are genteel that are kinder disagreeable. They wuz also said to be first-rate for the rumatiz and the nerves. But it seemed to me I had almost ruther have nerves than to be covered all over with that nasty black mud.
They take about sixty pounds of clay and mix it with the hot spring water till it is just about as thick as I make the batter for buckwheat cakes in Jonesville, and I make that jest about as thick as I do my Injin bread. And you git into this bath and stay about half an hour. Then of course before you’re let loose in society you’re gin a clean water bath to git the mud off. Miss Meechim thought they helped her a sight, and mebby they did, and she boasted a lot how genteel they wuz.
But I told her I had never been in the habit of settin’ store by mud and lookin’ up to it, and didn’t believe I should begin at this late day, but Josiah’s rumatiz wuz so bad I didn’t know but he had better take one. But he said he had took one in Jonesville some years ago that would last him durin’ his nateral life.
He did fall into a deep mud-puddle one night goin’ to sister Celestine Gowdey’s for a bask pattern for Tirzah Ann. And it bein’ dark and the puddle a deep one he floundered round in it till he looked more like a drownded rat than a human bein’. He never could bear basks from that hour till this, and he has always dated his rumatiz from that time, but it hain’t so; he had it before. But ’tennyrate he wouldn’t take the mud baths at Carlsbad, nor none of us did but Miss Meechim. Howsumever there are lots of folks that set store by ’em.
Well, we went back to Vienna, and from there set sail for Berlin, homeward bound. Josiah was in dretful good sperits, and said that no monument or obelisk we had seen on our tower could ever roust up his admiration like the Jonesville M. E. steeple when he should first ketch sight on’t loomin’ up beautiful and glorious from the enrapturin’ Jonesville seenery.
And I felt a good deal as he did, but knowed that his feelin’s made him go too fur, for Jonesville seenery hain’t enrapturin’, and the M. E. steeple hain’t glorious in aspect. But truly Love is the greatest sculptor and gilder in the world, and handles his brush in the most marvellous way. Under his magic touch the humblest cottage walls glows brighter than any palace. We had turned our footsteps toward home sweet home, and a light from above gilt them sacred precincts, and my own heart sung as glad a tune as Josiah’s, though I tried to sing it as much as I could in the key of common sense.
Well, we found that Berlin wuz a big, beautiful clean city. It is the capital of Prussia and the German empire, which we all know is divided up into little kingdoms, some as the Sylvester Bobbett farm is divided up, but kinder lookin’ up to Sylvester as the head on’t. The old part of the city hain’t so remarkable attractive, but the new part is beautiful in its buildings and streets. And somehow the passersby look cleaner and better off than in most cities. We didn’t see a blind beggar man led by a dog or a ragged female beggin’ for alms whilst we wuz there, which is more than our cities at home can boast of.
427But in spite of all this, I spoze there is a good deal of cuttin’ up and behavin’ there.
And I don’t spoze that the name of the river that runs through it has anything to do with that, though Josiah thought it did. He said: “You couldn’t expect many morals or much stiddy behavior round a river Spree.”
But I don’t spoze the name made a mite of difference. The water seemed to run along as smooth and placid as Dove Creek, that bathes the streets of Loontown at home. Indeed, the waters of the Spree runs along real slow and quiet. And I spoze the inhabitants there are about on a equality with the dwellers in other cities in the old and new world. Human nater is a good deal the same wherever you find it. And I’ve always said that if I wanted to write a heart-searchin’, heart-meltin’ tragedy, I had just as soon turn away from the big cities and go into some lonesome hamlet of New England, into some big faded farmhouse standin’ by a dark weed-bordered sluggish creek, shaded by tall pollard willers. And there, behind the scraggly lilocks and cinnamon roses, and closed blinds of solid wood, with a little heart-shaped hole in the centre that casts strange shadders on the clean painted floor within, there I would find my tragedy material.
Mebby in some tall, scrawny woman’s form, clad in brown calico, with scanty gray hair drawed tightly back from a pale face and imprisoned in a little hard knob at the back.
When that hair wuz brown, and the mornin’ sun wuz ketched in its glistenin’, wavin’ tendrils, and the sunken cheeks wuz round and pink as one of the cinnamon roses, and the faded ambrotype of the young soldier in her red wooden chest upstairs wuz materialized in a handsome young man, who walked with her under the old willows when the slow-moving brook run swift with fancy’s flight and her heart beat happily, and life wuz new and radiant with love and joy–––
428Before the changes come that swept them apart and left only a hollow, empty chamber in each heart, echoin’ with footsteps that are walkin’ heavily fur apart.
Then, if I could write the full history of that life, its joys and its sorrows, its aspirations, its baffled hopes, its compensations that didn’t compensate, the bareness of the life, the dagger-sharp trials with what is called small things, the wild heart struggles veiled by the New England coldness of expression, some as her sharp crags and stuns are covered with the long reign of ice and snow. The heartsick loneliness of oncongenial surroundin’s, the gradual fading away of hope and fears into the dead monotonous calm of hopelessness and despair.
There is a tragedy ready for the pen that would stand out as much more striking and sharp-edged as the stun on a ontravelled highway is rougher than one worn down to smoothness by the feet of the multitude, a tragedy that would move the world could I tell it as it really is.
But good land! What a hand to eppisode I be when I git to goin’. I must stop this very minute, or I’ll have the tragedy Alfred Tennyson speaks on “Dyin’ a Listener,” on my hands.
Unter der Linden is as beautiful and imposing an avenue as I see on my tower, with tall, handsome houses risin’ up on each side on’t. And there are beautiful parks and pleasure ground and places of recreation of all kinds.
The Academy of Music is famous for its fine concerts, the city seems the very home of melody, and beautiful statutes are seen on every side. The equestrian statute of Frederic the Great is a grand one, and Josiah got all rousted up lookin’ at it, and talked considerable to me about what a imposin’ figger he himself would make if he could be sculped settin’ on the mair. He said it would be a lovely sight a loomin’ up in front of the M. E. meetin’-house in Jonesville. But I got his mind off from it quick as I could.
One day when we wuz out drivin’ through the handsome 429 streets we went to see the palace of Bismark. It wuz a large, stately mansion, opposite a pretty little park. But though this seemed the very abode of luxury, I wuz told that Bismark loved the country fur better, and as Josiah and I delighted in the fields of Jonesville, so he loved sweet Nature, and follered her all he could into her hants in the country. Josiah sot store by Bismark, and honors his memory, and he seemed real tickled when I sez to him:
“Bismark always reminded me of you, Josiah, from what I’ve read of him.”
Josiah was very tickled, and he sez with a proud happy look, “Yes, I spoze I am a good deal like him, he wuz as brave as a lion, had good sound horse sense and–––”
But I sez calmly, “I dare presoom to say, Josiah, that that is so. But I wuz alludin’
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