Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
And he whispered back real voyalent: "Don't think, Samantha, of
gittin' me to lug one of them fifty-foot trees all the way hum. I've
broke my back for years luggin' round your old oleander in a tub, but
never will I tackle one of them trees," and he looked up defiantly
into the glossy boughs overhead.
"I hain't asked you to, Josiah, but," sez I dreamily: "I would love to
git some slips of them fuchia and begonia trees, and that jasmine,"
sez I, pintin' up to the emerald waves of foliage enriched by them I
have named, and as many other glowin' with perfume and beauty as
there are stars in the heavens, or so it seemed to me. Sez I: "What a
show I could make in Jonesville with 'em." Sez I: "What would Miss
Bobbett and Sister Henzy say if they could see 'em?" And I pinted up
at a gigantick trumpet creeper and convolvuli, festooned along the
boughs of a giant geranium and hanging down its banner of bloom.
"They'd say, let well enough alone. I tell you I can't break up my
trip diggin' dirt and tendin' to a lot of houseplants from Dan to
Beersheba."
"We're not goin' to Dan," sez I, "and if we wuz a man might meet Dan
doin' worse than pleasin' his pardner. Look at that jasmine," sez I.
"Is that much like that little slip of Sister Bobbett's growin' in a
tea-cup? And see! oh, do see, Josiah, them night bloomin' ceriuses!
Oh, take it on a moonlight night, the walls of fragrant green on
either side, and them lovely blows, hundreds and thousands of 'em
shinin' out like stars of whiteness, full of the odor of Paradise. Oh,
what a sight, Josiah Allen, for us to see!"
And he sez, "Don't git any idee, Samantha, of you and me comin' way
back here by moonlight, for we can't do it. The road is thirty milds
long, and if we tried it we shouldn't git here till they had done
blowin'."
"I hain't no idee of tryin' it, Josiah, I wuz only revellin' in the
idee of what the glory of the sight must be."
"Well," sez he, "I am revellin' in the idee of havin' a good meat
dinner if we ever git to Hilo." And he added with a sarcastick smile,
"Don't that make you think of poker? High, low--all it wants is Jack
and the Game."
I gin him a stern look and sez, "Some knowledge is demeanin' to a
perfessor." And he acted puggicky and didn't say another word for a
mild or so. But I sot calm and looked away into the entrancin' seen.
And all the time we wuz rollin' on towards the volcano.
Robert and Dorothy seemed to be enjoying the seen as much as I did,
and Arvilly wuz tryin' to canvass the Scotchman. The Englishman had
already bought the "Twin Crimes," and so she wuz as happy as she ever
would be, I spozed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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