Samantha at the St. Louis ExpositionHolley, Marietta
General
Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition
Holley, Marietta
Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : Saint Louis, Mo.) -- Fiction
There is another wireless telegraph and telephone station in the Model
City that we visited another time. You walk into this room and you don't
hear anything more than the ordinary noise the big crowd makes passin'
to and fro. And the air about you don't seem any different from jest
plain Jonesville air. Your human eyes and ears can't discover any
difference.
But you jest take up a receiver and put it to your ear and lo, and
behold the atmosphere all about you is full of voices, near and fur off,
strains of music. It's a sight.
And I sez to Josiah, "Who knows but some happy soul some happy day may
discover the secret of _seeing_? Who knows what divine visitors are this
minute coming and going over these onseen routes connecting our souls
with distant ones, connecting one land to another, one planet to another
like as not."
And growin' some eloquent, I kep' on, "We don't hear the sound of their
footsteps lighter and more noiseless than the down of a blossom, shod as
they are with the softness of silence. We don't hear the rustle of their
garments, woven of frabic [sic] lighter than air. We can't see their
tender faces no more than we can see the sweet breath of the rose. If
they lay their tender hands on our foreheads they rest there so light
and tender we fancy it is only a breath of air touchin' our fevered
brows bringing a sudden rest and comfort.
"If they speak to us when we're tired out and heartbroken we hear their
voices only in our souls that are suddenly and strangely consoled. If
their eyes ever look into our eyes filled with the divine pity and
sweetness of their all comprehendin' love and sympathy, we only know it
by the sudden sunshiny light and warmth that fills our being. But
sometime, somewhere, some happy soul may see and comprehend what we now
faintly apprehend."
Josiah whispered, "Samantha Allen, do you realize what you're doin'?
You're attractin' attention and makin' talk, come along! this is no time
for eppisodin', if there ever _is_ a right time."
And bein' brung down to earth agin I found to my great surprise I wuz
sayin' this out loud entirely unbeknown to myself. And I follered my
pardner out of the buildin'.
But to resoom backwards. We thought we would go from the Palace of
Electricity to that of Transportation, and I feelin' real tired thought
I would take a chair a spell (eloquence is tuckerin' specially when
you're walkin' afoot), and I proposed that we should all take chairs for
a spell. But Josiah said he didn't want any chair, and Blandina of
course follered suit and said she felt jest like Uncle Josiah, she
wouldn't set down if she could.
But I sez, "Well, I think I will take one," and Josiah ruther
onwillin'ly said he would git one for me, and sez he, "I'll see how much
the man will throw off if I push the chair myself."
Sez I, "The man wouldn't trust a perfect stranger with a chair."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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