And Robert Strong jined in with Dorothy, and so Miss Meechim subsided, and I see a dark shadder creep over her face, too, and tears come into her pale blue eyes. She hain't forgot Aronette, poor little victim! Crunched and crushed under the wheels of the monster Juggernaut America rolls round to crush its people under. I wuz some like Arvilly. When I thought of that I didn't feel to say so much aginst them foreign idols, though they wuz humbly lookin' as I ever see. And speakin' of idols, one day we see twelve fat hogs in a temple, where they wuz kept as sacred animals, and here agin Miss Meechim wuz horrified and praised up American doin's, and run down China, and agin Arvilly made remarks. Sez she: "The hogs there wallowing in their filth are poor lookin' things to kneel down and worship, but they're shut up here with priests to tend to 'em; they can't git out to roam round and entice innocents into their filthy sties and perpetuate their swinish lives, and that is more than we can say of the American beastly idols, or our priesthood who fatten them and themselves and then let 'em out to rampage round and act." Miss Meechim sithed deep and remarked to me "that the tariff laws wuz a absorbin' topic to her mind at that time." She did it to change the subject. We went to a Chinese crematory and the Temple of Longevity, where if you paid enough you could git a promise of long life. Josiah is clost, but he gin quite a good deal for him, and wuz told that he would live to be one hundred and twenty-seven years of age. He felt well. Of course we had a interpreter with is who talked for us. Josiah wanted me to pay, too, for a promise. Sez he with a worried look: "I shall be wretched as a widower, Samantha; do patronize 'em, I had ruther save on sunthin' else than this." So to please him I gin 'em a little more than he did, and they guaranteed me one hundred and forty years, and then Josiah worried agin and wanted me to promise not to marry agin after he wuz gone. He worships me. And I told him that if I lived to be a hundred and forty I guessed I shouldn't be thinkin' much about marryin', and he looked easier in his mind. One day we met a weddin' procession, most a mild long, I should say. The bride wuz ahead in her sedan chair, her dress wuz richly embroidered and spangled, a veil fringed with little pearls hung over her face. Pagodas with tinkling gilt bells, sedan chairs full of silk and cloth and goods of all kinds wuz carried in the procession by coolies. Idols covered with jade and gilt jewelry, a company of little children beatin' tom-toms and gongs, and the stuffed bodies of animals all ornamented with gilt and red paper riggers wuz carried, and at the tail end of the procession come the friends of the family. The bridegroom wuzn't there, he wuz waitin' to hum in his own or his father's house for the bride he'd never seen. But if the bride's feet wuz not too large he would most likely be suited.