Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
We laid out to go from Milan to Genoa till we changed our plans. I
thought it wuzn't no more'n right that we should pay Columbus that
honor, for I always wondered, and spoze always shall, what would have
become of us if we hadn't been discovered. I spoze we should have got
along some way, but it wouldn't have been nigh so handy for us. I
presoom mebby Josiah and I would have been warwhoopin' and livin' in
tepees and eatin' dogs, though it don't seem to me that any colored
skin I might have could have made me relish Snip either in a stew or
briled. That dog is most human.
I always felt real grateful to Columbus and knowed he hadn't been used
as he ort to be. And then Mother Smith left me a work-bag, most new,
made of Genoa velvet, and I awfully wanted to git a little piece more
to put with it so's I could make a bunnet out of it. But Dorothy
wanted to see Verona and her wish wuz law to the head of our party,
and when the head of a procession turns down a road, the rest of the
procession must foller on in order to look worth a cent. Miss Meechim
said that it wuz on her account that he favored Dorothy so. But it
wuzn't no such thing and anybody could see different if their eyes
wuzn't blinded with self-conceit and egotism. But take them two
together and there is no blinders equal to 'em. They go fur ahead of
the old mair's, and hern are made of thick leather.
Well, Robert thought we had better go on to Venice, stopping at Verona
on the way and so on to Naples, and then on our way back we could stop
at Genoa, and we all give up that it wuz the best way.
I always liked the name of Verona. Miss Ichabod Larmuth named her
twins Vernum and Verona. I thought it would be a real delicate
attention to her to stop there, specially as we could visit Genoa
afterwards.
Well, havin' such a pretty name I felt that Verona would be a real
pretty place, and it wuz. A swift flowing river runs through the town
and the view from all sides is beautiful. The fur off blue mountains,
the environin' hills, the green valleys dotted with village and
hamlet, made it a fair seen, and "Jocund day stood tip-toe on the
mountain tops."
But to sweet Dorothy and me, and I guess to the most of us, it wuz
interestin' because Juliet Montague, she that wuz Juliet Capulet, once
lived here. I spoke on't to Josiah, but he sez:
"The widder Montague; I don't remember her. Is she any relation of old
Ike Montague of North Loontown?"
But I sez: "She wuzn't a widder for any length of time. She died of
love and so did her pardner, Romeo Montague."
"Well," said Josiah, "that shows they wuz both sap heads. If they had
lived on for a spell they would got bravely over that, and had more
good horse sense."
Well, I spoze worldlings might mock at their love and their sad
doings, but to me the air wuz full of romance and sadness and the
presence of Juliet and Romeo.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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