Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
These girls took Miss Meechim's cape and my mantilly and laid 'em
away. Then we went through a long hall and up a magnificent marble
staircase, with a girl on each side on us agin jest as if we wuz bein'
took to jail. We then went into a large beautiful room where the
Princess' Lady of Honor wuz tryin', I spoze, to be jest as honorable
as she could be. But to my surprise she handed us the first thing some
coffee and pipes to smoke. But such a pipe never entered Jonesville.
Why, the pipe stem was six feet long, amber and gold, diamonds and
rubies. Good land! it wuz most enough to get a perfessor and a member
of the W.C.T.U. to smokin'. But I wuzn't to be enticed; I sort o'
waved it off graceful and drinked a little coffee, which wuz good, and
if you'll believe it the little holders that held our cups wuz all
covered with diamonds. Then six more slaves, jest as pretty, with jest
as fine clothes and with as many jewels, came to tell us the Princess
would see us. And we went with them through room after room, each one
seemin'ly more elegant than the others, till we reached the door of a
great grand apartment, and here the Princess wuz surrounded by more
slaves, dressed handsomer than any we'd seen yet.
She come forward to meet us and led the way to a beautiful divan,
where we sot down. Here they offered us some more of the beautiful
jewelled pipes agin, and agin I stood firm and so did Miss Meechim,
but the Princess smoked a little. But the tobacco wuz perfumed so
delightfully that there wuz no tobacco smell to it.
Then coffee wuz passed agin in a jewelled cup and agin I sipped a
little on't, thinkin' like as not it would keep me awake it wuz so
strong, but knowin' that I had got to be polite anyway in such a time
as this.
She talked quite good English and we had a pleasant visit with her,
and anon she took each on us by the hand--for all the world they
acted as if we wuz infants and couldn't walk alone--and led us through
the magnificent rooms with lofty mirrors, furniture covered with
costly Persian cloth embroidered with gold and silver, great rugs of
the most exquisite color and texture, mounds of flowers, baskets and
vases everywhere running over with them, makin' the air sweet with
their perfume.
In one room there wuz no winders, the walls bein' made of glitterin'
mirrors sot in gilded frames, light comin' down through stained glass
in the gilded ceiling.
On the Princess' toilet table wuz a large gold tray holdin' a basin of
perfumed water, and white silk towels embroidered in gold and silver.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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