Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
The tarven we went to wuz called the Hawaiian Hotel. We got good
comfortable rooms, Arvilly's bein' nigh to ourn and Dorothy's and Miss
Meechim's acrost the hall and the rest of the company comfortably
located not fur away. Well, the next mornin' Josiah and I with Tommy
walked through some of the broad beautiful streets, lined with houses
built with broad verandas most covered with vines and flowers and
shaded by the most beautiful trees you ever see, tall palms with their
stems round and smooth as my rollin' pin piercin' the blue sky, and
fur, fur up the long graceful leaves, thirty feet long some on 'em.
And eucalyptus and begoniea and algebora with its lovely foliage, and
pepper trees and bananas and pomegranates and tamarind and bread fruit
and rose apples, tastin' and smellin' a good deal like a rosy. And
magnificent oleanders and fuchias and geraniums and every other
beautiful tree and blossom you ever hearn on.
And take it with these rich colored posies and luxuriant green foliage
and the white suits and hats of the men, and the gay colored clothing
of the women we met, lots of them with wreaths of flowers round their
necks hangin' most to their feet, take it all together it wuz a seen
long, long to be remembered. And then we walked up on Punch Bowl
Hill, five hundred feet above the level of the sea, and looked off on
a broad beautiful picture of sea, mountain and valley soft and
beautiful and a-bloom with verdure, and anon bold, rugged and sublime,
and I sez to Josiah:
"This very place where we're standin' now wuz once a volcano and
belched forth flames, and that also," sez I, pintin' to Tantalus that
riz up two thousand feet. "And," sez I, "they say that the view from
that is glorious."
"Well," sez he, "I guess we hadn't better climb up there; it might
bust out agin. And I wouldn't have you sot fire to, Samantha, for a
thousand worlds like this," (he didn't want the work of climbin', that
wuz it). And I didn't argy with him, for I thought it would be quite a
pull for us to git up there and git Tommy up, and I didn't know as the
child ort to climb so fur, so I didn't oppose my pardner when he
propsed to go back to the tarven, and we santered back through the
streets filled with citizens of all countries and dressed accordin',
to the grounds around the tarven. We put Tommy into a hammock and sot
down peaceful nigh by him. The sun shone down gloriously out of a
clear blue sky, but we sot in the shade and so enjoyed it, the bammy
air about us seemed palpitating with langrous beauty and fragrance,
and I sez to my pardner:
"Don't this remind you, Josiah, of what we've heard Thomas J. read
about:
"'The island valley of Avileon
Where falls not rain nor hail nor any snow.'"
"Where it seems always afternoon."
"I d'no," sez Josiah, "as I ever hearn of such a land. I never wuz any
hand to lay abed all the forenoon."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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