Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
Dorothy and Robert Strong and Miss Meechim wanted to go to Kandy, the
capital of Ceylon, only seventy milds away, to see the tooth of
Boodha. Miss Meechim said she wanted to weep over it. She is kinder
romantic in spots, and Josiah hearn her and said, soty vosey, to me,
"You won't ketch me weepin' over any tooth unless it is achin' like
the Old Harry."
But I kinder wanted to see the tooth. I had hearn Thomas J. read a
good deal about Prince Siddartha, Lord Buddha, and how he wuz "right
gentle, though so wise, princely of mean, yet softly mannered, modest,
deferent and tender hearted, though of fearless blood," and how he
renounced throne and wealth and love for his people, to "seek
deliverance and the unknown light."
I had always pictured him as looking more beautiful than any other
mortal man, but of this more anon.
Josiah and Arvilly concluded to go too; it wuz only a four hours'
ride. We passed coffee plantations, immense gardens and forests full
of ebony trees, the strange banion tree that seems to walk off all
round itself and plant its great feet solidly in the earth, and then
step off agin, makin' a hull forest of itself, and satin wood trees,
and India rubber, bamboo, balsam, bread fruit, pepper and cinchony or
quinine bushes, tea and rice plantations. Our road led up the mountain
side and anon the city of Kandy could be seen sot down in a sort of a
valley on the mountain. We had our dinner at the Queen's Hotel, and
from there sallied out to see the sights. Not fur from the hotel wuz a
artificial lake three milds round, built by some king. His very name
is forgotten, whilst the water of this little lake he dug out splashes
up on the shore jest as fresh as ever. All round the lake is a
beautiful driveway, where all sorts of vehicles wuz seen. Big
barouches full of English people, down to a little two-wheeled cart
drawed by one ox. Crowds of people, jewels, bright color, anon a poor
woman carrying her baby astride her hip, men, wimmen, children, a
brilliant, movin' panorama.
The tooth of Buddha is kep' in a temple called Maligawa, or Temple of
the Tooth, and I laid out to have a considerable number of emotions as
I stood before it. But imagine a tooth bigger than a hull tooth brush!
What kind of a mouth must Lord Buddha have had if that wuz a sample of
his teeth? Why, his mouth, at the least calculation, must have been as
big as a ten-quart pan! Where wuz the beauty and charm of that
countenance--that mouth that had spoke such wise words?
I don't believe it wuz his tooth. I hain't no idee it wuz. No human
bein' ever had a mouth big enough to hold thirty odd monsters like
that, let alone this noble prince, "with godlike face and eyes
enwrapped, lost in care for them he knew not, save as fellow lives."
There is a mistake somewhere. There wuz lots of natives round
worshippin' it. But I felt that if Prince Siddartha could speak out of
Nirvana he would say:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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