Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
And I sez agin with dignity, "I don't know what you mean." And he sez
to me: "I am talkin' Chinese, Samantha; that means 'hurry up.' I shall
use that in Jonesville. When you're standin' in the meetin' house door
talkin' about bask patterns and hired girls with the female sisters,
and I waitin' in the democrat, I shall holler out, 'Fie tea,
Samantha;' it will be very stylish and uneek."
I didn't argy with him, but got in well as I could, but havin' stepped
on my dress and most tore it, Josiah hollered out, "See sum! see sum!
Samantha!"
And I, forgittin' his fashionable aims, sez to him, "See some what,
Josiah?"
"See sum, Samantha. That means 'be careful.' I shall use that too in
Jonesville. How genteel that will make me appear to holler out to
Brother Gowdey or Uncle Sime Bentley, in a muddy or slippery time,
'See sum, Brother Gowdey; see sum, Uncle Sime!' Such doin's will make
me sought after, Samantha."
"Well," sez I, "we'd better be gittin' back to the tarven, for Arvilly
will be wonderin' where we are and the rest on 'em."
"Well, just as you say, Samantha," and he leaned back in his chair and
waved his hand and says to the men, "Fey tea, fey tea; chop, chop."
I expect to see trouble with that man in Jonesville streets with his
foreign ways.
Well, we wuz passin' through one of the narrer streets, through a
perfect bedlam of strange cries in every strange language under the
sun, so it seemed, and seein' every strange costoom that wuz ever
wore, when, happy sight to Jonesville eyes, there dawned on my weary
vision a brown linen skirt and bask, made from my own pattern.
Yes, there stood Arvilly conversin' with a stately Sikh policeman. She
held up the "Twin Crimes" in a allurin' way and wuz evidently
rehearsin' its noble qualities. But as he didn't seem to understand a
word she said she didn't make a sale. But she wuz lookin' round
undanted for another subscriber when she ketched sight of us. And at
my request we dismissed the jinrikishas and walked back to the tarven
with her.
Dorothy and Miss Meechim and Robert Strong come back pretty soon from
a tower of sight-seein', and they said we'd all been invited to tiffen
with the Governor-General the next day. Well, I didn't have the least
idee what it wuz, but I made up my mind to once that if tiffenin' wuz
anything relatin' to gamblin' or the opium trade, I shouldn't have a
thing to do with it. But Josiah spoke right up and sez he had rather
see tiffen than anybody else in China, and mistrustin' from Robert's
looks that he had made a mistake, he hastened to add that tiffenin'
wuz sunthin' he had always hankered after; he had always wanted to
tiffen, but hadn't the means in Jonesville.
Sez Robert, "Then I shall accept this invitation for breakfast for all
our party." And after they went out I sez: "I'd hold myself a little
back, Josiah. To say that you'd never had means to take breakfast in
Jonesville shows ignorance and casts a slur on me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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