After we left the Horticultural Buildin' I proposed that we should
branch out for once and git a fashionable dinner.
"Dinner!" sez Josiah. "Are you crazy, or what does ail you? Talk about
gittin' dinner at this time of day--most bedtime!"
But I explained it out to him that fashion called for dinner at the hour
that we usually partook of our evenin' meal at Jonesville.
Sez I, "Josiah, I would love for jest once to go to a big fashionable
restaurant and mingle with the fashionable throng--jest for instruction
and education, Josiah, not that I want to foller it up."
But sez he, "We'd better go to the same old place where we've got good,
clean dinners and supperses, and enough on 'em, and at a livin' price."
But he argued warm at the foolishness of the enterprise.
But onlucky creeter that I wuz, I argued that, bein' a woman in search
of instruction and wisdom, I wanted to see life on as many sides as I
could; while I was at Columbuses doin's I wanted to look round and see
all I could in a social and educational way.
Poor deceived human creeters, how they will blind their own eyes when
they pursue their own desires!
I do spoze it wuz vanity and pride that wuz at the bottom of it.
And truly, if I desired to see life on a new side I wuz about to have my
wish; and if I had a haughty sperit when I entered that hall of fashion,
it wuz with droopin' feathers and lowered crest that I went out on't.
Josiah wuz mad when he finally gin up and accompanied and went in with
me.
It wuz a beautifully decorated room, and crowds of splendidly dressed
men and wimmen wuz a-settin' round at little tables all over the room.
And as we went in, a tall, elegant-lookin' man, who I spozed for a long
time wuz a minister, and I wondered enough what brung him there, and why
he should advance and wait on me, but spozed it wuz because of the high
opinion they had of me at Chicago, and their wantin' to use me so awful
well.
But for all his white collar, and necktie, and sanctimonious look, I
found out that he wuz a waiter, for all on 'em looked jest as he did,
slick enough to be kept in a bandbox, and only let out once in a while
to air.
Wall, he led the way to a little table, and we seated ourselves, Josiah
still a-actin' mad--mad as a hen, and uppish.
And then the waiter put some little slips of paper before us, one with
printin' and one with writin' on it, and a pencil, and sez he, "I will
be back when you make out your order."
And Josiah took out his old silver spectacles and begun to read out
loud, and his voice wuz angry and morbid in the extreme.
Sez he, loud and clear, "Blue pints--pints of what, I'd love to know? If
it wuz a good pint of sweetened vinegar and ginger, I'd fall in with the
idee."
Sez I, "Keep still, Josiah; they're a-lookin' at you."
"Wall, let 'em look," sez he, out loud and defiant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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