Samantha at the St. Louis ExpositionHolley, Marietta
General
Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition
Holley, Marietta
Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : Saint Louis, Mo.) -- Fiction
And Josiah sez, "I shall spend my money on sunthin' of more importance;
it probable all runs to crazy quilts and tattin."
But it wuz no such thing, it wuz perfectly beautiful, as I've hearn
folks say that have been there. But I see he wuz beginnin' to look
kinder mauger, and as first chaperone I sez anxiously, "Where do you
want to go, dear Josiah? Do you want to go to Hagenbecks Animal Show?"
"No, I don't; I shall see animals enough when I git home in my own
barnyard."
"Well, do you want to go to the Hereafter, Josiah?"
"No, we shall git there all right if we keep on without my payin' out
money. I told you I wuzn't goin' to pay to go in to all these places."
"Well, do you want to go to France or Ceylon or Persia? Or Cairo? Or
where do you want to go?"
Sez he, cross as a bear, "I want to go where I can git sunthin' to eat."
And I sez, "Dear Josiah, I've been so took up I forgot your appetite; we
will go to once." And havin' heard that good food could be got in Japan
we hastened thither.
CHAPTER XI.
We entered Fair Japan through a big gateway a hundred feet high. It wuz
called the Temple of Kiko, it wuz all covered with carvin' and gold
ornaments. And they say it couldn't be made now of the same materials
for a million dollars. It would been magnificent lookin' if it hadn't
been for what looked like serpents wreathin' up the pillars in front. I
hate snakes! and they're the last ornaments I would ever sculp over my
front door.
Blandina said they wuz dragons, and mebby they wuz. 'Tennyrate they wuz
fastened to the pillars and didn't offer to hurt us. We got quite a good
meal, but queer, in a tea-house on the borders of the lake. They had the
best tea I ever drinked. I asked 'em how long they steeped it, and how
much they put in for a drawin', but they bein' ignorant didn't seem to
understand me. But I enjoyed bein' there, for whilst our inner men and
wimmen wuz bein' refreshed our minds wuz enriched by this real picture
of life in Japan, for in there it is jest as if we had traveled
thousands of milds and wuz sot down in the real Japan.
After the edge of Josiah's hunger wuz squenched he begun to look about
him and praise up the looks of the Geisha girls that wuz dancin' or
rather posterin' in their pretty modest way, and some on 'em playin' on
queer lookin' instruments that looked some like my carpet sweeper.
These girl musicians wuz settin' on the floor dressed in what seemed to
be gay colored night gowns, and they looked well enough, kinder innocent
and modest lookin'. But I told him it wuzn't becomin' in a old man and a
professor to be so enthusiastick over young girls dancin' and playin'.
And he sez, "Oh, well, fetch on your girl blinders and I'll put 'em on.
But till you git 'em for me and harness me up in 'em I've got to look
round some."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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