Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
I remembered my crash and huck-a-buck towels and thought to myself I
didn't know what she would do if she ever come to see me, unless I
took one of Josiah's silk handkerchiefs for her to wipe her hands on.
But concluded I would do that if she ever paid my visit. And I thought
the minute I got home I would paint the bowl of the pipe we had used
for tizik, a pale blue or pink, and dry some extra fine mullen leaves
and catnip blows, they smell real sweet to me, and I knew they would
be good for her bronkial tubes anyway. And I laid out to make up in a
warm welcome what we lacked in luxury.
Well, the last room we went into we wuz served in tiny cups with a
delicate drink. Lemonade, I guess it wuz, or orange and fruit juice of
some kind. It wuz served to us in jewelled cups and we had gold
embroidered napkins. Here the Princess thanked us for our visit and
retired, followed by the slaves who had gone with us through the
palace.
And we went down the staircase with a girl on each side on us jest as
we went up, so if Miss Meechim and I had had any mind to break away
and act, we couldn't, and went to our carriage waited on jest as when
we come. Miss Meechim said as we started back:
"Did you ever see the like? Was you prepared to see such magnificence,
Josiah Allen's wife?"
And I told her I wuz partly prepared, for I had read the Arabian
Night's Entertainment.
"Well," sez she, "it goes fur beyend my wildest dreams of luxury."
When we got back to the tarven we found that Robert Strong had been
delayed by a visitor and wuz jest startin' for Heliopolis, and Miss
Meechim and I bein' all ready we turned round and went with 'em.
Heliopolis hain't so grand lookin' as its name. It is a little Arab
town six miles from Cairo. The low houses are made of mud and nasty
inside, I believe; they don't look much like Jonesville houses. The
oldest and greatest college once stood here. Here, too, wuz the hant
of that immortal bird, the Phenix, who raised himself to life every
five hundred years. (Josiah don't believe a word on't, and I don't
know as I do.) But we do spoze that wuz the very place where Joseph
married the daughter of Mr. Potiphar, doin' dretful well, it wuz
spozed by her folks, but he wuz plenty good enough for her, I think,
and so Josiah duz.
And right in this neighborhood Alexander the Great marched round and
camped on his way to Memphis. So you can see it wuz interestin' in a
good many ways.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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