Samantha at the St. Louis ExpositionHolley, Marietta
General
Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition
Holley, Marietta
Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : Saint Louis, Mo.) -- Fiction
But to resoom forward. The Four Cowboys on a Tear guardin' the entrance
to the Pike confronted us and in their wild and boysterous hilarity
seemed to my agitated and forebodin' sperit to shadow forth what we
would find inside their domain. They wuz a strange and skairful set,
their clothes wuz rough and disheveled and so wuz their linements. They
all on 'em brandished aloft a pistol, seemin' to be on the lookout for
someone to shoot. Their horses wuz on the dead gallop and you knowed by
the expression on their faces jest what blood curdlin' yells wuz issuin'
from their throats.
Why, if you'll believe it they wuz goin' at such a gallopin' prancin'
gait that the feet of one of their horses never touched the ground, all
four of his feet wuz gallopin' through the air. Josiah sez as he looked
at it:
"I would give a dollar bill to Ury in a minute if he could learn the
colt to do that trick, gallop along without his feet touchin' the
ground. Jest think what a sensation it would make to the Jonesville
fair. The old mair is too old of course to git the trick."
"Yes," sez I, "I guess her feet will never be lifted altogether from the
ground till they are turned up in their last rest. But I wouldn't try,
Josiah Allen, to imitate that roarin' and rakish set if I wuz in your
place, you a member of the meetin' house."
"Oh, keep throwin' that meetin' house in my face, I should think you'd
git tired ont but don't spoze you will."
And Blandina sez, "Oh, Aunt Samantha, don't be too harsh on them happy
young men, it is only their high sperits. They would probable settle
down and make the best of husbands if they had a tender and loving
companion. I wonder," sez she, "if they wuz took from life and if
they're here to the Fair I do so like the looks of one on 'em, I believe
we would be congenial."
I hurried 'em along, the one she pinted out had his pistol raised the
highest of the lot and he looked the most rakish.
But you forgot the looks of the cow-boys as you stood at the entrance
and got a full view of the Pike. A perfect flood of all the colors of
the rainbow, and towers and steeples and domes and crescents, and
ornaments of all kinds busts on your vision, and at the same time your
ear-pans are assailed by a noise like the sound of many waters, it is
the big crowd that is surgin' through the Pike to and fro, fro and to,
and keep at it night and day.
The great crowd seen here all the time shows how much the average human
craves amusement and recreation. For the Pike is the amusement street of
the Exposition. And a bystander standin' by told us that it extended a
mild and a half from the Lindel entrance where we entered clear up to
the Skinker road.
"What Skinker is that?" sez Josiah to the man. "Is he any relation to
the Skinkerses up in Zoar? Old Ethan Skinker had a boy who come West.
Most probable you've seen him here; I know most every stranger that
comes to Jonesville."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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