Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
They keep him in the Museum of Cairo now, a purpose, I spoze, to scare
folks from doin' what he did, for a humblier lookin' creeter I never
see, and hard lookin'; I don't wonder a mite at the bad things I've
hearn tell on him; why, a man that looked like that wuz sure to be
mean as pusley. He looked as if he wuz bein' plagued now with every
single plague that fell on him for his cruelty and I d'no but he is. I
wonder that the Israelites got along with him so long as they did;
Josiah wouldn't have stood it a week, he's that quick-tempered and
despises the idee of bein' bossed round, and how Pharo did drive them
poor children of Israel round; ground 'em right down to his terms,
wouldn't let 'em say their soul wuz their own, worked 'em most to
death, half starved 'em, wouldn't give 'em any rights, not a single
right. But as I sez to Josiah, he got his come-up-ance for his
heartless cruelty, he got plagued enough and drownded in the bargain.
He's a mummy now. Yes, as Josiah sez when he looked on him:
"You've got to be mum now, no givin' orders to your poor overworked
hired help in your brick-fields, not lettin' 'em have even a straw
that they begged for to lighten their burden. The descendants of them
folks you driv round can stand here and poke fun at you all day and
you've got to keep your mouth shet. Yes," sez he, "you've got to a
place now where you can't be yellin' out your orders, you've got to be
mum, for you're a mummy."
I didn't love to have Josiah stand and sass Pharo right to his face,
but it seemed so gratifyin' to him I hated to break it up, and I felt
towards him jest as he did, and Arvilly and Miss Meechim felt jest as
we did about it; they loathed his looks, hatin' what he'd done so bad.
But I thought from what I hearn Robert Strong sayin' to Dorothy that
he had doubts about his being the real Bible Pharo, there wuz quite a
lot of them kings by the same name, you know. But Miss Meechim hearn
him and assured him that this was the very Pharo who so cruelly
tortured the Israelites and who was drownded by the Lord for his
cruelty, she knew it by her feelings. And she said she was so glad
that she had seen for herself the great truth that the Pharo spirit of
injustice and cruelty wuz crushed forever.
But Robert said that Pharo's cruelty sprang from unlimited power and
from havin' absolute control over a weaker and helpless class; he said
that would arouse the Pharo spirit in any man. That spirit, he said,
was creeping into our American nation, the great Trusts and Monopolies
formed for the enrichment of the few and the poverty of the many; what
are they but the Pharo spirit of personal luxury and greed and
dominion over the poor?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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