Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
They name their streets real funny; one street is called Everlasting
Love, or it means that in our language, and there is Refreshing
Breezes, Reposing Dragons, Honest Gain, Thousand Grandsons, Heavenly
Happiness, and etc., etc.
Josiah said that he should see Uncle Sime Bentley and Deacon Henzy
about naming over the Jonesville streets the minute he got home. Sez
he, "How uneek it will be to trot along through Josiah's Never Ending
Success, or Prosperous Interesting Josiah, or the Glorious Pathmaster,
or the Divine Travellin' Deacon, or sunthin' else uneek and well
meanin'."
Sez I, "You seem to want to name 'em all after yourself, Josiah. Uncle
Sime and Deacon Henzy would probable want one or two named after
them."
"Well," sez he, "we could name one Little Uncle, and one Spindlin'
Deacon, if they insisted on't."
Josiah wuz in real good sperits, I laid it partly to the tea, it wuz
real stimulating; Josiah said that it beat all that the Chinese wuz so
blinded and out of the way as to do things so different from what they
did in Jonesville. "But," sez he, "they're politer on the outside than
the Jonesvillians, even down to the coolers."
Sez I, "Do you mean the coolies?"
"Yes, the coolers, the hired help, you know," sez he. "Catch Ury
fixin' his eye on his left side coat collar when he speaks to me not
dastin' to lift it, and bowin' and scrapin' when I told him to go and
hitch up, or bring in a pail of water, and catch him windin' his hair
in a wod when he wuz out by himself and then lettin' it down his back
when he came to wait on me."
Sez I, "Ury's hair is too short to braid."
"Well, you can spozen the case, can't you? But as I wuz sayin', for
all these coolers are so polite, I would trust Ury as fur agin as I
would any on 'em. And then they write jest the other way from we do in
Jonesville, begin their letters on the hind side and write towards
'em; and so with planin' a board, draw the plane towards 'em. I would
like to see Ury try that on any of my lumber. And because we
Jonesvillians wear black to funerals, they have to dress in white.
Plow would I looked at my mother-in-law's funeral with a white night
gown on and my hair braided down my back with a white ribbin on it?
It would have took away all the happiness of the occasion to me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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