Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (life changing books TXT) 📗

Josiah thought that would be a splendid thing for him. Sez he, “I believe I shall have Ury help me and build a barrier in front of my house and take a tax for big loads that go by. Why,” sez he, “at a cent a load I could make a splendid livin’.”

But he won’t try it. As I told him he might just as well lanch right out on Jonesville creek as a corsair, “and I’ve always said,” sez I, “that never would I live on brigandage.”

Some of the streets of Naples are narrer and noisy as Bedlam with market men and women cryin’ out their wares and all sorts of street noises. Little donkeys carryin’ loads fur too big for our old mair. A sort of a big loose bag hangs on each side on ’em piled up as high as they will hold with fruit, vegetables, flowers, etc.

Sometimes you will see such a big load walkin’ off and can’t for your life tell what propels it till bime by you will hear a loud bray from underneath. It sounds quite scareful. The little ridin’ wagons of the poor people are packed too as I never see a hoss car in the U. S. Sometimes you will see more’n two dozen folks, priests, soldiers, men, women and children, and sometimes baskets full of vegetables and babies swingin’ underneath and all drawed by a donkey; it hain’t right and I wanted to talk to ’em about it, but didn’t know as they would hear to me. But our old mair is used fur different.

The Cathedral is quite a noble lookin’ buildin’ and contains tombs of many noted people, Pope Innocent, King Andrew, Charles I. of Anjou, and many, many others. The Piazza del Municipio has a beautiful fountain, and there is one fashionable promenade over two hundred feet wide containing all sorts of trees and shrubs where you can see the Neopolitans dressed in fine array. There is a terrace extending into the sea, temples, winding paths, grottos, etc.

The Piazza del Plebiscito has an equestrian statute that 375 wuz taken in the first place for Napoleon, then changed to General Murat and finally to Charles III. It made me think considerable of the daily papers who use one picture for all social and criminal purposes, and for Queen Victoria and Lydia Pinkham.

Some of the principal streets are straight and handsome, with blocks of lava right out of the bosom of the earth for pavement. It give me queer feelin’s to tread on’t thinkin’ that it come from a place way down in the earth that we didn’t know anything about and thinkin’ what strange things it could tell if stuns could talk. Some of the best streets had sidewalks. It is well lighted by gas.

As you walk along the streets you see rich and poor, beggar and priest, soldier and peasant, every picturesque costoom you can think on and all sorts of faces. But there seems to be a kind of a happy-go-lucky air in ’em all, even to the beggars and the little lazy, ragged children layin’ in the sunshine. The people live much out of doors here, you can see ’em washin’ and dressin’ the children, and doin’ housework, and everything right from the street, and though I don’t spoze the poor suffer so much here on account of the warm climate, yet dirt and rags and filth and vermin didn’t look any better to me here than they did in Jonesville.

In Naples as a rule the lower parts of the houses are shops, restaurants, etc., and the upper stories are used for dwellings. The beautiful terraces of the city and the flat roofs of the houses are covered with shrubs and flowers, and filled with gayly dressed promenaders, givin’ it a gay appearance. And you don’t see in the faces of the crowd any expression of fear for the danger signal that smokes up in the sky, no more than our faces to home show signs of our realizin’ the big danger signals on our own horizon.

I d’no as I ever had hearn of the third city that wuz destroyed when Herculaneam and Pompeii wuz. But Vesuvius did put an end to another city called Stabea at that time, most two thousand years ago, but that is some years back 376 and I d’no as it is strange that the news hadn’t got to Jonesville yet.

Naples has three hundred meetin’-houses, enough you would say to make the citizens do as they ort to. But I don’t spoze they do. I hearn, and it come quite straight, too, that it is a dretful city for folks to act and behave, though it used us real well.

It has a good many theatres and has a large museum where I would be glad to spent more time than I did. Dretful interestin’ to me wuz the rich frescoes and marbles dug up in the buried cities. Just to think on’t how long they stayed down there under the ground, and now come out lookin’ as well as ever whilst the Love or the Ambition that carved the exquisite lines have gone away so fur that we can’t foller ’em; way into some other planet, mebby. Bronze statutes, the finest collection in the world they say, and all sorts of weapons, Etruscian vases, coins, tablets, marbles, ornaments of all kinds enough to make your head feel dizzy to glance at ’em.

Some of the statutes I didn’t want Josiah to see; they wuzn’t dressed decent to appear in company, but then agin I knew he wuz a perfessor and had always read about the Garden of Eden and Eve when she and Adam first took the place and wuz so scanty on’t for clothes, but I didn’t like their looks. Miss Meechim thought they wuz genteel and called it high art, and Josiah, for a wonder, agreed with her; they hardly ever think alike.

But I sez, “Josiah Allen, while I am a livin’ woman, and a Methodist sister, you never will be sculped with nothin’ but a towel hung over one arm, not even a paper collar on, and,” sez I, “what should we think to go into a photograph gallery to home and see Sister Bobbett and Sister Gowdey portrayed with a little mosquiter nettin’ slung over one shoulder?” Sez I, “It would be the town’s talk and ort to be––you can call it high art, Miss Meechim, if you want to, but I shall always call it low art.”

Miss Meechim murmured sunthin’ about its bein’ genteel, and Josiah looked round and didn’t pay the attention to my earnest words that he ort to. I believe they did for a spell shet up them statters of Venus, but they had let ’em out agin when we wuz there. There wuz one statter of a woman with the top of her head and her arms off. Josiah said to me:

“The idee of puttin’ that poor cripple in here amongst decent lookin’ wimmen; if they pictured her at all they ought to pictured her as bein’ carried to a hosspital.”

Miss Meechim wuz nigh by and I see she had gone almost into spazzums of admiration over it, and on our family’s account, didn’t want to fall too low down in her estimation, so I wunk at him and whispered, “Josiah, that is the celebrated Sikey; it is the proper thing to fall into extacies of admiration and wonder when you see it.” And I as I say not wantin’ to demean myself any further before Miss Meechim, put up my two hands in an attitude of wonder, but which she could take for admiration if she wanted to, but I didn’t say it wuz.

But Josiah sez, “Catch me a praisin’ up a no armed female, one who has been scalped, too, in the bargain.”

I hope Miss Meechim didn’t hear him. She always praised just what wuz proper to praise, she always read in her guide book just what she ought to admire and then proceeded to admire it to once. As she boasted her mind wuz a eminently conservative and genteel mind.

As for me my mind and sperit loved to grope around more and find out things to praise and blame by rote and not by note, and Dorothy and Robert Strong was some so.

Arvilly wuz more bent on disseminatin’ her books to help and instruct, and would have canvassed Michael Angelo himself for the “Twin Crimes,” turning her back onto his most wonderful creations. As for Josiah, a wild goat leapin’ through museums and picture galleries couldn’t have been 378 more scornful of contemporaneous judgment exceptin’ when he tried to be fashionable.

Dear little Tommy would wander round with his arms clasped behind him under his velvet jacket and wonner at things to himself, and I spoze Carabi walked up and down beside him though we couldn’t see him. Sometimes I felt kinder conscience smitten to think I couldn’t honestly admire what seemed to be the proper thing to, and then agin I kinder leaned up agin the memory of John Ruskin and how he liked in art what he did like, and not what it was fashionable to, and I felt comforted.

One day, tired out with sightseein’ and havin’ sunthin’ of a headache, I stayed to home while all the rest of the party went out and Miss Meechim invited me into their settin’-room as it wuz cooler there, so I had sot there for some time readin’ a good book and enjoyin’ my poor health as well as I could, when a card wuz brung in for Robert Strong. I told the hall boy that he wuz out but wuz expected back soon, and in a few minutes he come back usherin’ in a good lookin’ man who said he wuz anxious to see him on business and that he would wait for him. I knowed him from his picture as well as his card; it wuz Mr. Astofeller, a multi-millionaire, who had got his enormous wealth from trusts and monopolies.

I couldn’t go back into my room for Josiah had the key, and so we introduced ourselves and had quite a agreeable visit, when all of a sudden right whilst we wuz talkin’ polite and agreeable two long strings dangled down in front of the eyes of my soul, strings I had often clung to. Well I knowed ’em, and I sez to myself almost wildly:

Oh, Duty! must I cling to thy apron-strings here and now, enjoyin’ as I do poor health and in another woman’s room? For reply, them strings dangled down lower yet, and I had to reach up the arms of my sperit and gently but firmly grip holt on ’em and stiddy myself on ’em whilst I tackled him on the subject of monopolies, having some hopes I could 379 convert him and make him give ’em up then and there and turn round and be on the Lord’s side.

And bein’ so dretful anxious to convince him, I begun some as the M. E. ministers sometimes do in a low, still voice, gradually risin’ higher and deeper and more earnest. I told him my idees of trusts and monopolies and what a danger I thought they wuz to individual and national life. And I described the feelin’s I felt to see such droves of poor people out of work and starvin’ for the necessaries of life, whilst a few wuz pilin’ up enormous and onneeded wealth, and I sez:

“Mr. Astofeller, what good does it do to heap up such a lot of money jest to think you own it and hide it from the tax collector? And bring up your daughters to luxury and foolish display, their gole being to give you a titled son-in-law who will bend down toward you from his eminence jest fur enough to reach your pockets, and if you refuse to have them emptied too many times you will anon or oftener have your daughter returned to you, her beauty eat up by sorrow, her ears tinglin’ and heart burnin’ with experiences a poor girl would never know. And bring up your sons to idleness and temptation, when you know, Mr. Astofeller, that it is Earnest Toil, wise-headed, hard-handed step-ma, that goads her sons on to labor and success. And it is not, as a rule, the sons of millionaires who are our great men. It is the sons of Labor and Privation that hold the prizes of life to-day and will to-morrow.”

And sez I, reasonable: “What is the use, Mr. Astofeller, of so much money, anyway? You can’t ride in but one buggy at a time, or wear more than one coat and vest, or sleep on more than one bed and three pillers at the outside, or eat more than three meals a day with any comfort, so why not let poorer folks have a chance to eat one meal a day––lots of ’em would be