Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
And Tommy wonnered, wonnered who measured it, and if they did it with
a yard stick as his ma measured cloth, and then he wonnered if his ma
missed her little boy, and then he laid up aginst me and kinder cried
a little, evanescent grief soon soothed.
We stayed in Denver two days, sallyin' out to different points of
interest about it, and here I see irrigation carried on, water carried
into the channels around the crops and trees some as I've dug little
holes round my house-plants to hold water; only of course Denver wuz
carryin' it on, on a bigger scale. It is a handsome city with the
water of the Platte river brung in and running along in little streams
by the curbstones. We rode out to Idaho Springs on a narrer railroad
but easy goin', through Clear Creek Canon. I liked the looks of the
Springs first-rate (they made me think of Josiah).
All the way we see Chinamen workin' hard and patient, as is their
wont, and their long frocks they had on made me think of him I mourned
for, and their hair hangin' in long braids down their back. So would
_his_ hair look if he had any, and let it grow.
We had to go a little out of our straight way to visit Salt Lake City
but felt that it paid.
CHAPTER IV
Salt Lake lays in a rich valley at the foot of a range of snow-capped
mountains that tower up 'round it, seemin' to the saints, I spoze, as
if they wuz heavenly ramparts to protect 'em from evil; and lookin' to
them that despise the saints' ways and customs, as if the very earth
itself was liftin' up its high hands in horrow at their deeds. But to
me, hanted as I wuz by a memory, the mountains looked some like old
men with white hair; as his would be when he got older if he wuzn't
bald. I knew that I ort not to think on it, but it would come onbid.
It is a beautiful city with electric lights, electric railways, broad
streets lined with lofty trees, and little rivulets of pure cold
snow-water runnin' along the side of 'em. The houses are clean and
comfortable looking, with well-kep' lawns and gardens about 'em and
flowering shrubs. The temple is a magnificent building; it towers up
to heaven, as if it wuz jest as sure of bein' right as our Methodist
Episcopal steeple at Jonesville. Though we know that the M. E.
steeple, though smaller in size, is pintin' the right way and will be
found out so on that day that tries souls and steeples and everything
else.
The old Bee Hive (where the swarm of Mormons first hived and made gall
or honey--or mebby both)--is also an interestin' sight to meditate on.
It is shaped a good deal like one of them round straw bee hives you
see in old Sabbath School books. The bride and groom went to their own
home to live, on whom we called, or Tommy and I did, and left 'em well
situated and happy; and I told him, sez I: "If you 'tend strict to the
eighth commandment, you'll git along first rate."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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