Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
Wantin' to go a considerable ways, we hired two jinrikishas, and I
took Tommy in my lap, and I must say that I felt considerable like a
baby in a baby carriage carryin' a doll; but I got over it and felt
like a grandma before I had gone fur. How Josiah felt I don't know,
though I hearn him disputin' with the man about his prices--we had
took a interpreter with us so we could know what wuz said to us. The
price for a jinrikisha is five sen, and Josiah thought it meant five
cents of our money, and so handed it to him. But the man wuz so
ignorant he didn't know anything about Jonesville money, and he kep'
a-callin' for sen, and the interpreter sez "Sen," holdin' up his five
fingers and speakin' it up loud, and I hearn Josiah say:
"Well, you fool, you, I have given you five cents! What more do you
want?" But at last he wuz made to understand; but when Josiah made him
know where he wanted to go the interpreter said that the sedan
carriers wanted a yen, and my poor pardner had another struggle. Sez
he:
"You consarned fool, how do you spoze I can give you a hen? Do you
spoze I can git into my hen house ten thousand milds off to git you a
hen? Or do you want me to steal one for you?"
"A yen," sez the interpreter, and the way he said it it did sound like
hen.
"Well, I said hen, didn't I?" said my pardner.
But I leaned out of my baby cart and sez, "Y-e-n, Josiah. A yen is
their money, a dollar."
"Oh, why don't they call it a cow or a brindle calf?" He wuz all het
up by his efforts to understand. They call one of their dollars a yen,
a sen is a cent, and a rin is the tenth part of a cent. Josiah fell in
love with the copper rins with square holes in the centre. Sez he:
"How I would love to furnish you with 'em, Samantha, when you went to
the store in Jonesville. I would hand you out five or six rins and you
could string 'em and wear 'em round your neck till you got to the
store."
"Yes," sez I, "half a cent would go a good ways in buyin' family
stores."
"Well, it would have a rich look, Samantha, and I mean to make some
when I git home. Why, Ury and I could make hundreds of 'em out of our
old copper kettle that has got a hole in it, and I shouldn't wonder if
I could pass 'em."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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