Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
There is a long, beautiful street called The Strand, shaded by banyan
and palm trees; on one side on't is the park so lovely that it is
called the Garden of Eden, full of beautiful trees, shrubs and
flowers, pagodas, little temples and shrines. Josiah and I and Tommy
went there in the evenin' and hearn beautiful music. Josiah wanted to
ride in a palanquin. It is a long black box and looks some like a
hearse. I hated to see him get in, it made me forebode. But he enjoyed
his ride, and afterwards I sot off in one, Josiah in one also nigh by
with Tommy. One side of it comes off so you can git in and set on a
high cushion and read or knit. I took my knittin' and most knit one of
Josiah's heels whilst I rid by palaces and elephants and camels and
fakirs and palm trees. Oh, Jonesville yarn! you never expected to be
knit amid seens like this. I can knit and admire scenery first rate,
and my blue and white yarn seemed to connect me with Jonesville in
some occult way, and then I knew Josiah would need his socks before we
got home.
Seein' that the other ladies did so I had throwed my braize veil
gracefully over my head instead of my bunnet. The natives are as fond
of jewels here as they are in Ceylon. Women with not a rag on down to
their waists will have four or five chains on, and bangles on their
naked arms. They spend all their earnin's on these ornaments and wear
'em day and night. Well, seein' they don't have any other clothes
hardly, mebby it is best for 'em to keep holt on 'em.
We went by some wimmen preparin' manure for fuel; it wuz made into
lumps and dried. The wimmen wuz workin' away all covered with chains
and bangles and rings; Josiah looked on 'em engaged in that menial and
onwelcome occupation, and sez he:
"To see wimmen to work in the barnyard, Samantha, has put a new idee
into my head."
I never asked him what it wuz, but spozed it had reference to Philury
and mebby me, but I shall never go into that work, never.
One day we went to the American mission school and see the native
children settin' flat on the floor. Josiah wuz awful worked up to see
'em settin' down in such a oncomfortable posture, and he said to me
that if he had some tools and lumber he would make 'em some seats. But
that is their way of settin' to study their lessons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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