Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
"I d'no," sez she, and she added dreamily, "I wonder if he would want
a copy of the 'Twin Crimes,' or the 'Wicked and Warlike.' If I do sell
any here to the natives it'll put some new idees in their heads about
idol worship wickeder and warliker than they ever had." Miss Meechim
and Dorothy wuz approachin' and Robert Strong I see looked off with
rapt eyes onto the glorious seen. And as no two can see the same
things in any picture, but see the idees of their own mind, blended in
and shadin' the view, I spozed that Robert Strong see rared up on the
foreground of that enchantin' seen his ideal City of Justice, where
gigantic trusts, crushin' the people's life out, never sot its feet,
but love, equality and good common sense sot on their thrones in the
middle on't, and the people they ruled wuz prosperous and happy. And
anon he looked down into Dorothy's sweet face as if no foreign shore
or any inner vision ever looked so good to him.
Miss Meechim hated to have Dorothy see them natives, I see she did;
actin' so skittish towards the male sect always, it wuz dretful
galdin' to her to see 'em in that state and specially to have Dorothy
see 'em. She looked awful apprehensive towards them swimmers and board
riders and then at her niece. But when she catched sight of Robert by
her side a look of warm relief swep' over her anxious face, as if in
her mind's eye she see Dorothy by his help walkin' through the future
a prosperous and contented bacheldor maid.
Tommy wuz kinder talkin' to himself or to his invisible playmate. He
wonnered how he wuz goin' to git on shore, wonnerin' if he could stand
up on one of them little boards and if his grandpa and grandma would
each have one to stand up on, and kinder lookin' forward to such an
experience I could see, and Josiah wuz wonderin' how soon he could
git a good meat dinner. And so as on shore or sea each one wuz seein'
what their soul's eye had to see, and shakin' ever and anon their own
particular skeletons, and shettin' 'em up agin' in their breast
closets.
Well, as we approached nigher and nigher the wharf we see men dressed
in every way you could think on from petticoats to pantaloons, and men
of every color from black down through brown and yeller to white, and
wimmen the same. Well, it wuzn't long before we wuz ensconced in the
comfortable tarven where we put up. Elder Wessel and his daughter and
Evangeline Noble went to the same tarven, which made me glad, for I
like 'em both as stars differin'. Elder Wessel I regarded more as one
of the little stars in the Milky Way, but Evangeline as one of the big
radiant orbs that flashed over our heads in them tropic nights.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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