Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
Some wimmen would have held a grudge aginst the man that murdered her
husband and not bore the sight of the one who loved and mourned him so
constant. But Arvilly had too much good horse sense for that; she
contends that neither of the men who wuz fightin' wuz much to blame.
She sez that if a sane, well man should go out and dig a deep pit to
catch men for so much a head, and cover it all over with green grass
and blossoms and put a band of music behind it to tempt men to walk
out on it, to say nothin' of a slidin' path leadin' down to it, all
soft with velvet and rosy with temptations, if a lot of hot-headed
youth and weak men and generous open-minded men who wuzn't lookin' for
anything wrong, should fall into it and be drownded for so much a
head, she sez the man who dug the pit and got so much apiece for the
men he led in and ruined would be more to blame than the victims, and
she sez the man who owned the ground and encouraged it to go on would
be more to blame than the man who dug the pit. And further back the
men who made the laws to allow such doin's, and men who voted to allow
it, and ministers and the Church of Christ, who stood by like Pilate,
consenting to it and encouraged by their indifference and neglect what
they might have stopped if they wanted to--they wuz most to blame of
all.
Well, this is what Arvilly has went through.
Day by day we sailed onwards, and if the days wuz beautiful, the
nights wuz heavenly, lit by the glowin' moon that seemed almost like
another sun, only softer and mellerer lookin'; and the lustrous stars
of the tropics seemed to flash and glitter jest over our head almost
as if we could reach up and gather 'em in our hands into a sheaf of
light.
The weather seemed to moderate and we had to put on our thinnest
garments in the middle of the day. But my poor Josiah could not make
much change; he had to wear his pepper-and-salt costoom in publick,
which wuz pretty thick, but I fixed sunthin' for him to wear in our
state-room, where we passed considerable time. I took one of my outing
jackets that was cut kinder bask fashion, trimmed with lace and bows
of ribbon and pinned it over in the back, and it fitted him quite well
and wuz cool. He liked it; he thought it become him, it wuz so
dressy, but I wouldn't let him appear in publick in it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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