Samantha at Saratoga, Marietta Holley [most romantic novels TXT] 📗

Wall, the next mornin’ Josiah and me sallied out middlin’ early to explore still further the beauties and grandness of Saratoga. I had on a black straw bonnet, a green vail, and a umbrell. I also have my black alpacky, that good moral dress.

My dress bein’ such a high mission one choked me. It wuz so high in the neck it held my chin up in a most uncomfortable position, but sort a grand and lofty lookin’. My sleeves wuz so long that more’n half the time my hand wuz covered up by ’em and I wuz too honerable to wear ’em for mits; no, in the name of principle I wore ’em for sleeves, good long sleeves, a pattern to other grandmas that I might meet.

I felt that when they see me and see what I wuz a doin’ and endurin’ fur the cause of female dressin’ they would pause in their wild career, and cover up their necks and pull their sleeves down.

Wall, it haint to be expected that I could walk along carryin’ such hefty emotions as I wuz a carryin’, and havin’ my neck held high and stiddy both by principle and alpacky, and see to every step I wuz a takin’. And, first I knew, right while I was enjoyin’ the loftiest of these emotions, I ketched my foot in sunthin’, and most fell down. Instinctively (such is the power of love) I put out my hand and clutched at the arm of my pardner. But he too wuz nearly fallin’ at the same time. It wuz a narrow chance that we wuz a runnin’ from having our prostrate forms a layin’ there outstretched on the highway.

Instinctively I sez, “Good land!” and Josiah sez—wall, it is fur from me to tell what he said, but it ended up with these words, “Dumb them dumb sidewalks anyway;” and sez he, “I should think it would pay to have a little less gilt paint and spangles and orniments overhead and a few more solid bricks unless they want more funerals here, dumb ’em!”

Sez I,”Be calm! who be you a talkin’ about? who do you want to bring down your fearful curses on, Josiah Allen?”

“Why, onto the dumb bricks,” sez he.

He wuz agitated and I said no more. But four times in that first walk, did I descend almost precipitously into declivities amongst the bricks, risin’ simultaneously on similar elevations.

It wuz a fearful ordeel and I felt it so, but upheld by principle and Josiah, I moved onwards, through what seemed to be 5 great throngs and masses of people, 3 on the ground and 2 hinted up above us on tall pillows.

Them immense places overhead long as the streets, wuz kinder scalloped out and trimmed off handsum with railin’s, etc. And on it—oh! what a vast congregation of heads of all sorts and sizes and colors. And oh! what a immense display of parasols; why no parasol store in the land could begin with what I see there.

I can truly say that I thought I knew somethin’ about parasols;, havin’ owned 3 different ones in the course of my life, and havin’ one covered over. I thought I knew somethin’ of their nater and habits, which is a good deal, so I had always s’posed, like a umbrell’s. But good land! I gin up that I knew them not, nor never had.

Why anybody could learn more on ’em through one jerney down that street, than from a hull lifetime in Jonesville. Truly travel is very upliftin’ and openin’ and spreadin’ out to the mind, both in parasols and human nater.

Wall, them 2 masses over our heads wuz 2, then the one in which we wuz a strugglin’ and the one opposite to it made 4. For anybody with any pretence to learnin’ knows that twice 2 is 4. And then in the middle of the broad street was a bigger mass of chariots and horsemen, and carts and carriages, and great buggies and little ones, and big loads of barrels, and big loads of ladies, and then a load of wood, and then a load of hay, and then a pair of young folks pretty as a picture. And then came some high big coaches as big as our spare bedroom, and as high as the roof on our horse barn, with six horses hitched to e’m, all runnin’ over on top with men; and wimmen, and children, and parasols, and giggles, and ha ha’s. And a man wuz up behind a soundin’ out on a trumpet, a dretful sort of a high, sweet note, not dwindlin’ down to the end as some music duz, but kinder crinklin’ round and endin’ up in the air every time.

Josiah wuz dretful took with it and he told me in confidence that he laid out when he got home to buy a trumpet and blow out jest them strains every time he went into Jonesville or out of it. He said it would sound so sort a warlike and impressive.

I expostulated aginst the idee. But sez he, “You’ll enjoy it when you get used to it.”

“Never!” sez I.

“Yes you will,” sez he, “and while I live I lay out that you shall have advantages, and shall enjoy things new and uneek.”

“Yes,” sez I feelin’ly, “I expect to, Josiah Allen, as long as I live with you.” And I sithed. But I had little time to enjoy even sithin’, for oh! the crowd that wuz a pressin’ onto us and surroundin’ us on every side, some on ’em curius and strange lookin’, some on ’em beautiful and grand. Pretty young girls lookin’ sweet enough to kiss, and right behind ’em a Chinese man with a long dress, and wooden shoes, and his hair in a long braid behind, and his eyes sot in sideways. And then would come on a hull lot of wimmen in dresses ev’ry color of the rainbow, and some men. Then a few childern, lookin’ sweet as roses, with their mothers a pushin’ the little carts ahead on ’em. And if you’ll believe it, I don’t s’pose you will, but it is true, that lots of black ma’s had childern jest as white as snow, and pretty as rosebuds, took after their fathers I s’pose. But I don’t believe in a mixin’ of the races. And when I see ’em a kissin’ the pretty babys, I begun to muse a very little on the feelin’s of the indignent South, at havin’ a colered girl set in the same car with ’em, or on a bench in the same school room.

I mewsed on how they held the white forms clost to their black breasts at birth, and in the hour of death—the black lips pressed to the white cheeks and lips, in both cases. And all the way between life and death they mingle clost as they can, some in some cases like the hill of knowledge. Then the contact is too clost, when they sot out to climb up by ’em. Truly there are deep conundrums and strange ones, all along through life; though the white man may be, and is, cleer up out of his way, on the sunshiny brow of the hill, and the black man at the foot, way down amongst the shadows and darkness of the low grounds. They don’t come very nigh each other. But the arms that have felt the clasp and the lips that have felt the kisses of that very same black climber all through life, moves ’em and shouts ’em to “go down,” to “go back,”

“The contact is getting too clost, danger is ahead.” Curious, haint it? Jest as if any danger is so dangerous as ignorance and brutality. Curious, haint it? But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom.

Wall, right after the babies we’d meet a Catholic priest with a calm and fur away look on his face, a lookin’ at the crowd as if he wuz in it, but not of it. And then a burgler, mebby, anyway a mean lookin’ creeter, ragged and humble. And then 2 or 3 men foreign lookin’, jabberin’ in a tongue I know nothin’ of, nor Josiah either. And then some more childern, and wimmen, and dogs, and parasols, and men, and babies, and Injuns, and Frenchmen, and old young wimmen, and young old ones, and handsome ones, and hombly ones, and parasols, and some sweet young girls ag’in, and some black men, and some white men, and some more wimmen, and parasols, and silk, and velvet, and lace, and puckers, and raffles, and