Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
"Arvilly, for pity sake help me find Robert and Dorothy." She turned
with me, and my soul soared up considerable to think I had already
begun to help the powers and lighten their burdens. And pretty soon
the rest of our party jined us, and we returned home to our tarven.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Miss Meechim wanted to visit Carlsbad, the great Bohemian watering
place. She said it wuz a genteel spot and very genteel folks went
there to drink the water and take the mud baths. And so we took a trip
there from Vienna. It is only a twelve-hours' journey by rail. Our
road lay along the valley of the Danube, and seemed to be situated in
a sort of a valley or low ground, till we reached the frontiers of
Bohemia, but it wuz all interestin' to us, for novelty is as
refreshin' to older ones as to children. Cheerful, clean-lookin'
little villages wuz scattered along the way, flourishin' orchards and
long fields of grass and grain, and not a fence or hedge to break the
peaceful beauty of the picture.
Anon we entered a mountainous country with blue lakes and forests of
tall pine trees and knowed we had entered Bohemia. We see gypsy tents
anon or oftener, for what are gypsies but true Bohemians, wanderers at
will, hither and yon.
Josiah mentioned the idee of our leavin' the train for an hour or two
and havin' our fortunes told by a real gypsy, but I told him _sotey
vosey_ that my fortune come along about as fast as I wuz ready for it,
and I didn't know as I wanted to pay these swarthy creeters for lyin'
to me. And he didn't contend for it, for which I wuz thankful.
All along the way we see shrines with the faces of our Lord and Mary
and Joseph lookin' out of 'em. And anon a little hamlet would appear,
a meetin'-house with five or six dwellin' houses clustered round it
like a teacher in the midst of half a dozen scholars. Flowering shrubs
and fruit trees almost hid the houses of the quiet little hamlets,
and then we'd go by a village with forty or fifty houses, and as I
told Arvilly, in all these little places so remote from Jonesville and
its advantages, the tragedy of life wuz goin' on just as it did in
bigger places.
And she said she wondered if they drinked; sez she, "If they do there
is tragedies enough goin' on."
Bohemia is a country of orchards. I should say there was fruit enough
there so every man, woman and child there could have bushels and
bushels of it to spare after they had eat their fill. Even along the
highways the bending trees wuz loaded with fruit. A good plan, too,
and I told Josiah I would love to introduce it into Jonesville. Sez I,
"How good it would be to have the toil-worn wayfarers rest under the
shady branches and refresh themselves with good fruit."
And he said "He didn't want to toll any more tramps into Jonesville
than there wuz already."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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