bookssland.com Ā» Humor Ā» Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (life changing books TXT) šŸ“—

Book online Ā«Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (life changing books TXT) šŸ“—Ā». Author Marietta Holley



1 ... 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 ... 75
Go to page:
it wuz! My eloquence had rolled offen him like water from a tin eavespout; hadnā€™t touched him at all nor uplifted him, though I felt real riz up. You know you can talk yourself up onto quite a hite if you try; but Josiah wuznā€™t moved a mite from the place heā€™d stood on.

Well, that wuz one of the gouts in my yarn of life, but a twit wuz near byā€“ā€“it had its compensation. He worships 335 me! And I went on and eppisoded to myself to bring myself up to the mark as I wadded up my back hair. Sez I to myself: ā€œIf Josiah had the eye to see the onseen eagles soarinā€™ up in the sky above his head, mebby he would also see my faults too plain. If he could hear in winter midnights the murmur of dancinā€™ waters and the melogious voice of the south wind blowinā€™ over roses and voyalets, he might also hear the voice of Distrust. If he had the wisdom of Solomon he might also have his discursive fancies, his various and evanescent attachments. But as it is, his love is stiddy and as firm as a rock. So the gouts and the twits evened each other up after all, and the yarn run pretty smooth.ā€

336 CHAPTER XXVIII

The next morninā€™ Tommy wuz delighted with the idee of goinā€™ in a boat after some hair-pins for me and a comb for himā€“ā€“he had broke hisen. It wuznā€™t fur we went, and I spoze we might have walked by goinā€™ a little furder; but variety is the spice of life, and it seemed to kinder refresh us.

Floating in a gondola on the Grand Canal of Venice is a beautiful experience when the soft light of the moon and stars is restinā€™ on the stately old marble palaces, the tall pillars of St. Theodore and the Winged Lion, obelisk and spire. With other gondolas all about you, you seem to be on a sea of glory, with anon music from afar coming sweetly to your ears from some gondola or palace, and far up some narrow water street opens with long shafts of light flashing from the gondolierā€™s lantern or open window. It is all a seen of enchantment.

Though if you should foller up some of them narrow water streets by daylight, you would see and smell things that would roust you up from your dream. You would see old boats unloadinā€™ vegetables, taking on garbage, water-boats pumpinā€™ water into some house, wine shops, cook shops; you would see dilapidated houses with poorly clad people standinā€™ in the doorways; ragged, unkempt children looking down on you from broken windows, and about all the sights you see in all the poorer streets of any city, though here you see it from a boat instead of from a hack or trolley car. Green mould would be seen clinging to the walls, and you would see things in the water that ortnā€™t to be throwed there.

337

Moonlight and memory rares up its glittering walls, but reality and the searchinā€™ life of the present tears ā€™em down. Where are the three thousand warships, the three thousand merchant ships, that carried the wealth and greatness of Venice back in the fifteenth century; fifty-two thousand sailors, a thousand nobles and citizens and working people according? Gone, gone! Floated way off out of that Grand Canal and disappeared in the mists and shadows of the past, and you have to go back there to see ā€™em.

The Rialto, which we had dremp about, looked beautiful from the water, with its one single arch of ninety-one feet lifting up six arches on each side. But come to walk acrost its broad space you find it is divided into narrow streets, where you can buy anything from a crown to a string of beads, from macaroni to a china teapot.

The great square of St. Mark wuz a pleasant place on an evening. Little tables set out in the street, with gayly-dressed people laughing and talking and taking light refreshments and listening to the music of the band, and a gay crowd walking to and fro, and picturesque venders showing their goods.

But to Tommy nothing wuz so pretty as the doves of St. Mark, who come down to be fed at two oā€™clock, descending through the blue sky like a shower of snow.

The Campanile or bell-tower towers up more than three hundred feet above the pavement; way up on the tower two bronze statutes stand with hammers and strikes off the hours. Why is it that the doves pay no attention to any other hour they may strike but when the hour of two sounds out, a window on the north side of the square opens and some grain is thrown out to ā€™em (the Government throws it to ā€™em, dretful good natered to think onā€™t)? But how did them doves know two from three? I dā€™no nor Josiah donā€™t. I had provided Tommy with some food for ā€™em and they flowed down and lighted on him and Dorothy, who also fed ā€™em; it wuz a pretty sight. And Robert Strong thought so too, I could read it in 338 his eyes as he looked at Dorothy with the pretty doves on her shoulder and white hands.

I got some sooveneers for the children at Venice, some little ivory gondolas and photographs, etc., and Miss Meechim and Dorothy got sights of things, Venetian jewelry, handsome as could be, and Arvilly got a little present for Waitstill and a jet handkerchief pin for herself. She mourns yet on the inside and outside, yes, indeed! and I dā€™no but she always will.

And as you can git a relic of most everything at some of the shops I told Josiah I would love to git hold of one of them old rings that the Doges married the Adriatic with. And if youā€™ll believe it that man didnā€™t like it; sez he real puggicky:

ā€œI hope you hainā€™t any idee of marryinā€™ the Jonesville creek, Samantha, because it wonā€™t look well in a M. E. sister and pardner.ā€

Jealous of the creek! Thatā€™s the last thing I ever thought that man would be jealous on. The idee! I only wanted it out of curiosity.

We visited the Arsenal, another spot where the greatness of Venice in the past hanted our memory, when she had twenty thousand workmen there and now not two thousand. But we see queer lookinā€™ things thereā€“ā€“suits of armor, crossbows, helmets. Josiah took quite a fancy to one wore by Attila, king of the Huns, and wanted to put it on. Good land! his head went right up into it just as it would into a big coal-scuttle. What a mind Mr. Attila must have had if his brains wuz accordinā€™ to his head.

And we see infernal machines, thumb screws, spiked collars, and other dretful implements of torture like black shadders throwed from the past. A piece of the boat that the Doge went to his weddinā€™ in when he married the water wuz interestinā€™; weddinā€™s always did interest females and males too, no matter whether the bride wuz formed out of dust or nothinā€™ but clear water, and we also see a model of the boat Columbus sailed in to discover us.

339

Robert Strong who wuz always interested in the best things, said that the first newspaper ever published appeared in Venice three hundred years ago, and the first bank was started there.

You can walk all over Venice if you want to take the time to go furder round and cross the bridges and walk through narrer, crooked little streets, some on ā€™em not moreā€™n five or six feet wide, but the easiest and quickest way is to take a boat, as well as the most agreeable.

Venice is built on seventy-two islands besides the Grand Canal which takes the place of our avenues and streets. There is a charm about Venice that there is not about any other city I ever see. You dream about it before you see it and then you dream on and keep dreaminā€™ as long as you stay there, a sort of a wakinā€™ dream, though you keep your senses.

Memories of the past seem to hant you more, mebby it is because them old memories can slip along easier over them glassy streets, easier than they can over our hard rocky pavements. ā€™Tennyrate they meet you on every side and stay right with you as long as you are there and hant you. As you float down them liquid roads you seen face to face sweet, wise Portia, ā€œfair and fairer than that word;ā€ and gallant Bassanio who made such a wise choice, and Shylock, the old Jew. And if you happen to git put out with your pardner, mebby heā€™ll find fault with you, and say demeaninā€™ words about wimmen or sunthinā€™ like that, whilst sweet Portiaā€™s eyes are on you, if you feel like reprovinā€™ him sharp, then youā€™ll remember: ā€œThe quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven, it blesseth him that gives and him that takes.ā€

And so you forgive him. And then beautiful, sad Beatrice de Cenci will meet you by moonlight in front of some of them old marble palaces and her pa, about as mean a man as they make, and his sister, Lucretia de Borgia, that wicked, wicked creeter. Why, it beats all what mean folks Beatriceā€™s relation wuz on her paā€™s side.

340

And you thought of any number of queer old Doges, raininā€™ and pizeninā€™ and actinā€™, some on ā€™em, and marryinā€™ the Adriatic; a poor match in my opinion and one that you couldnā€™t expect to turn out well, the bride beinā€™ slippery and inconstant and the bridegroom mean as pusley, cruel and cunning, besides beinā€™ jest devoted to the Council of Ten. Queer works them Tenā€“ā€“made and cut a great swath that wonā€™t be forgot and they neednā€™t expect it. The page of history is sticky and bloody with their doinā€™s. But they move along in front of you, the Doges, the Ten and the Three. And any number of conquerors and any number of Popes and Kings down to Victor Emanuel.

And I dā€™no as I thought of anybody or anything there in Venice so much as I did of John Ruskin, who give even the stuns of Venice a language that will go on speakinā€™ long after the stuns have mouldered back into dust. And then the dust will keep his memory green, and folks will ponder the ā€œEthics of the Dustā€ long after that dust has passed into other changing forms and disappeared.

Great mind, great lovinā€™ heart, who had but one thought, to make the world more full of beauty, knowledge, sincerity and goodness. His pure, bright intellect, his life white as the lilies, his living thoughts and noble idees they rap at the human heart, as well as mind, with their powerful sesame, and you have to open your heartā€™s door and take them in. Prophet of earth and heaven, the air, the clouds, the birds and trees, the rocks and waters, translatinā€™ the marvellous words so our duller eyes and ears can see and hear.

As I walked along over them stones of Venice, and in the Galleries of Modern Painters and ancient ones, my heart kepā€™ sayinā€™ onbeknown to myself and them round me, ā€œJohn Ruskin, noble soul, great teacher, childlike, wise interpreter of the beauty and ministry of common things, hail and farewell!ā€ For he had goneā€“ā€“it wuz true that he who had loved the flowers so and said to a friend who had sent him some: ā€œI am trying to find out if there are flowers that do not 341 fade.ā€ He had found out now, wreathes of heavenly immortelles are laid on his tired forward, not tired now, and he has his chance to talk to Moses and Plato, as he said he wanted to, and he is satisfied. Love and Sympathy that he longed for comforts and consoles him, and Beauty and Goodness wait on him.

Robert Strong felt just as I did about Ruskin, their idees about helpinā€™ the poor, and the brotherhood of man, and fatherhood of God, wuz as congenial and blent together like sun and dew on a May morning. Robert Strong said no other writer had done him the good Ruskin had.

And I guess Dorothy thought so too; she almost always thought jest as Robert did.

In wanderinā€™ round this uneek city Josiah said the most he thought on wuz of tellinā€™ Deacon Henzy and Uncle Sime Bentley about what he see there. And shadowy idees seemed to fill his mind about tryinā€™ to turn the Jonesville creek through the streets and goinā€™ from our house to Thomas Jeffersonā€™s in a gondola.

Arvilly said she would gin anything to canvas some of them old Doges for the ā€œTwin Crimesā€. But I told her I guessed they

1 ... 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 ... 75
Go to page:

Free e-book Ā«Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (life changing books TXT) šŸ“—Ā» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment