But when I brung that up, Josiah waved the subject off with a shrug of his shoulders in the true French way, though a little too voyalent. I had ketched him practicin' that movement of the shoulders before the glass. He had got so he could do it first rate, I had to own to myself, though I hated to see him practise it so much, mistrustin' that it wuz liable to bring on his rumatiz. And I see in a letter he writ home: "Be sure, Ury, and weed the _jardin_, specially the onions," and he ended the letler: "_Oh revwar, mon ammy._" I knowed that it would make Ury crazy as a hen, and Philury, too, wonderin' what it meant, but couldn't break it up. But speakin' of "jardins," we went to several on 'em, the last one we see the most beautiful seemin'ly of the lot. Jardin de Luxemburg Palais Royal, Tuilleries, Acclimation, Jardin des Plantes. There are hundreds of 'em scattered through the city, beautiful with flowers and shrubbery and statutes and fountains and kept in most beautiful order and bloom at public expense. And we visited cathedrals, missions, churches, museums, the sewers, libraries, went through the galleries of the Louvre--milds and milds of beauty and art, as impossible to describe as to count the leaves in Josiah's sugar-bush or the slate stuns in the Jonesville creek, and as numerous as if every one of them leaves and slate stuns wuz turned into a glorious picter or statute or wondrous work of ancient or modern art. I hain't a-goin' to try to describe 'em or let Josiah try, though he wouldn't want to, for he whispered to me there in a sort of a fierce whisper: "Samantha Allen, I never want to set my eyes agin on another virgin, if I live to be as old as Methulesar or a saint." Well, there wuz sights on 'em, but they looked real fat and healthy, the most on 'em; I guess they enjoyed good health. And one afternoon when the sky wuz blue, the sun shone and the birds sung merrily, we went to that dretful place, the Paris morgue. There wuz a crowd before the doors, for the Seine had yielded a rich harvest that mornin'; there wuz five silent forms, colder than the marble they lay on, one a young woman with long hair falling about her white shoulders. Amongst the crowd that pressed forward to look at that unfortunate wuz a bent, haggard form that I thought I recognized. But if it wuz a father watching and waiting in dretful hope and still more dretful fear for the best beloved, I couldn't tell, for the crowd pressed forward and he disappeared almost before I saw him. And I too wuz agitated, for when I catched sight of the clustering hair, the pretty rounded arms and form, an awful fear clutched my heart that I trembled like a popple leaf and I see Dorothy turn white as a sheet and Arvilly and Miss Meechim looked like them that sees a tragedy and so did Robert Strong and Josiah.