Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (ereader with dictionary .TXT) 📕

‘Knowest thou the land where citron apples bloom,

And oranges like gold amidst the leafy gloom?’

“You remember it, Josiah. I’ve seen you shed tears when he wuz readin’ about her.”

And Josiah whispered back in a loud shrill whisper that I know they hearn: “If they wanted to see Go-ethe, why didn’t they say Go-ethe?” (He always would pronounce his name to rhyme with sheath.)

I felt mortified, nothin’ seems worse when you’re tryin’ to quell a pardner down than to have him whisper back so loud. Why, I have had Josiah right to my own table when I’ve had company and he wuz makin’ onlucky remarks, I’ve known him to ask me right out what I wuz steppin’ on his 433 toe for, and I wuz worse off than as if I hadn’t tried to curb him in. But then he has a host of good qualities, and pardners are dretful handy lots of times. But life is a kind of a warfare to the best and happiest on us.

Well we all went to see the statute to Goethe; it stands in a pleasant spot in the Thiergarten surrounded by shrubs and trees. The face of the great poet is full of the sadness and glory of them that see visions and dream dreams. Grouped about him are the sculptured forms of Tragedy, Lyrical Poetry, and Research. It wuz a impressive monument and rousted up more emotions in me than any that I see in Berlin.

Well, we didn’t stay long in Prussia, for the cords that wuz drawin’ us home tightened from day to day, the children and Philury drawin’ them cords closter ever and anon with long and loving letters, and we hastened on to Hamburg. It wuz a lovely day when we sot out on our journey and we wuz all feelin’ well, specially Josiah and I, for every revolution of the wheels brought us nigher to our beloved Jonesville and every toot of the engine seemed to shout afresh the joyful tidin’s to us that we had sot our faces towards the bright hearth stun of home.

We had no eventful experiences on the journey to relate, unless it wuz a interview we had with a young man, a Freshman I believe he wuz from some college, travellin’ with his tutor, and he seemed real fresh, he seemed to have plenty of money but a scarcity of brains, or mebby he had enough brains, but they seemed to be in a sort of a soft state, and I guess they’ll harden up some when he gits older if he has good luck with them.

I wuz most a good mind to advise him to set in the sun bareheaded all he could, thinkin’ mebby it might harden ’em some, but didn’t know how it would be took.

He thought he knew a sight, but the shadder he really cast on worldly affairs wuz exceedingly small, he could step over it the hull time, but he felt that it reached the horizon. 434 Robert talked quite a good deal with him, to pass away the time I spoze, but there wuz a queer smile in his eyes and kinder patient and long sufferin’ as if to say:

“You’ll know more in the future than you do now and I’ll bear with you.”

The young man thought he wuz patronizin’ Robert, I knew from his liniment. He wuz a infidel, and seemed to think it made him very smart. You know some folks do think it is real genteel to doubt and a mark of a deep thinker.

I hearn him go on for quite a spell, for Robert wouldn’t argy with him, thinkin’ I spoze it might strain his arm to hit at vacancy. But at last I seemed to have to speak up to Miss Meechim and say:

“How strange it is that some folks think the less they believe the bigger it makes ’em, but good land! it don’t take much intellect to believe in nothin’, it don’t strain the mind any if it is ever so weak.”

I guess he hearn me, for he kinder changed his talk and went to patronizin’ the seenery. Well, it wuz beautiful a good deal of the way, though at the last of our journey it broke out rainy all of a sudden right whilst Josiah wuz all engaged in admirin’ a particular view, and it grew cold and disagreeable. And he bein’ tired out, worried a sight about the rain and the suddenness on’t and how it stopped his sight-seein’ and brung on his rumatiz, and he complained of his corns and his tight boots, and said that I had ort to seen that he wuz dressed thicker, and fretted and acted. And I sez:

“You’ve got to take things as they come, Josiah. I couldn’t send anybody out this mornin’ to bring in a pail of weather to see if it wuz goin’ to rain. You’ve got to take it as it comes, and when it comes, and make the best on’t.”

But he still acted restless and oneasy, and most cried, he felt so bad. And I went on and dilated on the merits of calmness and serenity and how beautiful traits they wuz and how much to be desired.

And he snapped me up enough to take my head off, and said that he “couldn’t always be calm and wuzn’t goin’ to try to be.”

“No,” sez I reasonable, “you’ve got to be megum in that, or in eatin’ bread and milk; of course, you could kill yourself on that, though it seems innocent and harmless; you can carry everything too fur.”

And seein’ that his liniment still bore the marks of restless oneasiness and onhappiness, I eppisoded a little on his side of the question, for what will not a woman do to ease a pardner’s mind and comfort him?

“Yes, Josiah, Cousin Joel Smith’s life used to be so serene and so deadly calm on all occasions that she used to mad Uncle Joel, who wuz of a lively and active temperament, like the most of the Smiths.

“I asked Joel once on a visit there, when she had been so collected together and monotonous in aspect, and talked with such oneven and sweetness of tone that I got dead tired on’t myself, and felt that I had been lookin’ on a sunbaked prairie for months,