Samantha at the St. Louis ExpositionHolley, Marietta
General
Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition
Holley, Marietta
Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : Saint Louis, Mo.) -- Fiction
Horticultural Buildin' is big enough and full enough to keep folks busy
a month. Right in the centre, in a place as long as from our house clear
over to she that wuz Submit Tewksbury's and I d'no but furder, wuz a
display of fruit, all kinds of fruit of every shape and size that grow
in every climate from frigid to torrid, and every country from Greenland
to Asia, it wuz a sight. Then there wuz a display of every kind of
horticultural machinery and implements, glass housen, aquariums,
ferneries, all sorts of ornaments for gardens.
All kinds of small fruits and how to grow 'em, everything relating to
the culture of vines, vineyards, wine cellars. All sorts of ornamental
plants and flowers, models of fruit in wax and plaster, baskets and
bunches of flowers, conservatories, all flowering plants from every
country and the way to grow them. All sorts of seeds, grass, fruit trees
of all kinds, and the best way to prune and plant them.
Josiah told me he thought we could git round and see what wuz in this
buildin' in four weeks, but I felt dubersome about it and told him we
would have to go a pretty good jog if we did. Blandina thought she could
git round in three weeks if she had some good man's arm to lean on the
most of the time.
But 'tennyrate, after stayin' there and lookin' round a long time, I
told Josiah I wuz tired enough to go home, so we went.
I wuz most melted too, for St. Louis weather is tuckering to them that
can't stand heat. It made Josiah real worrisome time and agin. And one
thing he said about it put a idee into my head that I never had thought
on, I thought it wuz real smart.
Somebody wuz lamentin' the fact in our hearin' that so many thieves and
villains of all sorts had congregated at St. Louis this summer, and
Josiah sez:
"It's a first rate thing for sinners to come here to git acclimated, as
it were, before they die."
I hadn't thought on't, but felt there wuz sunthin' in it, for truly the
burnin' climate of the place I don't want to speak on by name, must be
easier to bear after visitin' St. Louis than to plunge into it from
cooler and more northern States. And still I don't know why we should
want to make it easier for 'em, I spoze it wuz our pityin' naters that
made us think ont.
The weather wuz simply burnin' hot, no other word describes it, oveny,
furnacy hot! and Josiah said, and well said, it set folks to thinkin'
and inclined 'em to take warnin' and mend their ways. Sez he, "Two days
of St. Louis weather wuz worth more to sinners than the sermons of a
month of winter Sundays."
Truly in heat it wuz a great object lesson. I wore my brown lawn dress
day after day, havin' no chance to wear my rich alpacky, as I wanted to,
to kinder show off before Miss Huff, and Blandina presented the wilted
appearance of a long slim cabbage leaf plunged in bilin' water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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