Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition, Marietta Holley [classic english novels txt] 📗

"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.

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."

But I told him there wuz enough for him to see besides girls and there wuz. For it beats all what long strides the Japans have made in every branch of education and culture. If they keep on in the next century as they have in this some of the so-called advanced nations will have to take a back seat and let this little brown, polite people stand to the head. But then they have been cultured for hundreds of years, though lots of folks don't seem to know it.

But I am sorry to say it wuzn't the high art and culture of Japan that Josiah wuz most interested in, but the queer things, such as the strange stunted trees trained into forms of men and animals hundreds of years old and no higher than a common chair, and lots of 'em not so high. And there wuz roosters with tails twenty-five feet long.

Josiah said he wuz bound to git an egg and see if he could hatch one.

And I sez, "Where would it roost? It's tail is long agin as the hen house is high."

Well, he said in the summer it could roost on top of the barn with its tail kinder hangin' down and out over the smoke house.

But it wuzn't a minute before his eyes wuz took up with some images, some big ones covered with the most exquisite carvin', down to them so small, if you'll believe it, they wuz carved out of a single kernel of rice. And there wuz gold fish and a hundred other kinds of fishes, and you see there the common houses of the people and people livin' in them jest as they do in their own country, and a royal palace, arched bridges, lanterns hangin' everywhere, pagodas, temples, lagoons with ornamental boats, cascades, etc. All made a pretty picture, though curious.

Then in Asakusa, a native village of Japan, is forty stores and there you see the most beautiful display of rugs, carved ivory and wood, porcelain, jewels, fans, paintings, etc., and the workmen busy making 'em right before your eyes. And in the narrer streets jugglers, acrobats, fortune tellers are giving their mysterious performances. There are bands of music, jinrikishaws with men harnessed up in 'em, and you can ride in 'em if so inclined.

There wuz quite a number of places on the Pike that we passed that I kinder wanted to see, but Josiah wuzn't willin' to pay out too much money, and what interested me most wuz the foreign countries that I had never had a chance to see, they havin' the misfortune to be so fur from Jonesville. But when we got to the Chinese Village, it had such a magnificent and showy front that Josiah never made an objection to goin' inside.

I wuz dretful glad to go there, you know it is nater to want to do what you can't. And China has been so determined to keep Josiah and I and the world out of her empire, I wuz glad enough to git in, and wuz real interested lookin' at them queer yeller pig-tailed little creeters with dresses on, and their funny little houses.

There wuz a big Chinese theatre, and a Joss house where they worship Joss, whoever he or she may be, I wanted to have their religion explained to me, there wuz a guide there to do it.

But Josiah said that as a deacon he wouldn't countenance it, for I might be led into idolatry. And when I argued with him he whispered to me:

"Samantha, if you insist on hangin' round their meetin' house here any longer I shall say out loud, 'By Joss!'"

At that fearful threat I started on, I wouldn't let him demean himself before the heathen.

You can see here in this country, as in Japan, native workers plyin' their different trades, mechanics, painters, jewelers, etc., etc. Silk weavers usin' the same old, onhandy looms they used centuries ago, ivory carvers fashionin' elephants and other animals, and all on 'em tryin' to sell to us in their high-pitched voices.

I had quite a number of emotions here in China a musin' on the oldness and strangeness of their civilization, and wonderin' if it would ever be merged into a newer, fresher life.

Blandina didn't share my lofty emotions, she simpered some and said, "I believe they would make lovely husbands if their eyes wuz sot in straighter and they dressed different."

And I sez, "I wouldn't admire 'em in that capacity, but after all they would be equinomical husbands. If you had a calico dress kinder wore off round the bottom you could cut it off and make 'em wear it, men's clothes are so expensive it would be quite a savin'. And you could pass him off for the hired girl if strangers come onexpected, though that is sunthin' I wouldn't approve on, fur from it, a hauty sperit goes before a fall, as I told Josiah once when he got on a new kind of collar that held his head up so high he fell over the wood-box."

But to resoom. The Chinese are curious lookin', but equinomical, they can live on a few grains of rice a day, and America owes 'em a debt of gratitude anyway for tunnelin' her Rocky Mountains, buildin' her big railroads and diggin' ditches to water the land and make it beautiful that they're shet out of.

Blandina sez to me as we wended our way out, "No man ort to be turned back out of this country." She said the Chinee wuz good, industrious, equinomical and peaceable.

And I sez, "Yes, they work well and don't go round like some other foreigners with a chip on their shoulder. But," sez I, "Blandina, I will not tell the nation what to do in this matter; there is so much to be said on both sides it must not depend on me to settle it, and they needn't ask me to."

I hadn't more than said these words as we wuz strollin' along when who should we meet but Royal and Rosy Nelson. I knowed they wuz to be married the very day after we left for St. Louis. We wuz invited but couldn't go, our plans bein' all laid and tickets bought, but I sent 'em a handsome present, for I wuz highly tickled with the match.

Truly no rose ever looked sweeter hangin' on its bough than did Rosy Nelson hangin' onto the arm of her devoted consort, and he I thought wuz well named, so royal and proud wuz his mean as he introduced his wife.

I kissed her warmly right there in China and promised to make her a all day's visit soon as I got home, I'm lottin' on't.

We talked a little about past troubles caused by Jabezeses and inventions, and the glories of the Fair, and then they strolled off happy as two turkle doves, not needin' or desirin' any other company than their own, and showin' it plain by their actions. Josiah was put out about it for he wanted to find out about how things wuz to home, bein' highly tickled to meet a male Jonesvillian.

Blandina sez as they walked away, bound up in each other and both on 'em wropped up in the glowin' mantilly of youth and joy: "Oh, happy, happy wedded souls! how I envy you."

And Josiah sez in a fraxious axent, "How queer it is that two such smart young folks can look and act so spooney, but thank heaven! it won't last. It won't be long before Royal will be willin' to pass the time o' day with a Jonesvillian."

I told him there wuz nothin' so beautiful as love. "No, nor nothin' that makes folk act so like pesky fools, they don't act as though they knew putty."

I hated such oncongenial idees. But couldn't deny they wuz spooney, for they wuz, not a small teaspoon but a big silver dinner spoon, and I believe it will last. Not the outward form of the spoon, oh, no, that would be too wearisome to the world and themselves, but the precious metal that forms it. Love is the greatest thing in the world.

Blandina had always lived in a back place and had never heard a graphophone, so bein' kinder tired, and bein' nigh a place where they had one, we went in at her request and sot for quite a spell.

And we heard voices and songs gay and sad, marches and melodies, loftiest oratory, maddest mirth and profoundest feeling all comin' out of a little square box, what a idee!

What a man that Edison is. It seems always like watchin' the wonderful onseen secrets of nater, like seein' the mortal made immortal to think that voices we've loved and mourned as they wuz hushed in the last stillness can sound out agin, breakin' our hearts with the same old echoes, the same old sweetness of the voice we loved and lost, talkin' in mortal words and axents to us when they've long, long ago learnt the immortal language, beheld the immortal seens.

Why Cleopatra's voice might have been stored up as she made love to Antony, or the voice of the relation on her own side, old Mr. Pharo himself orderin' the Hebrews to git out of his premises, and their back talk about plaguin' him till he wuz willin' they should go.

Why even Eve scoldin' Adam about slackness in gittin' kindlin' wood or her pardner complainin' about her wastefulness and extravagance in usin' so many fig leaves for her fall suit. Oh, how nateral, how nateral that would sound to wimmen.

Or old Noah's voice as he stood in the Ark door bagonin and shoutin' to the animals to walk in male and female. Or his