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

Well, we went back to Vienna, and from there set sail for Berlin, homeward bound. Josiah was in dretful good sperits, and said that no monument or obelisk we had seen on our tower could ever roust up his admiration like the Jonesville M. E. steeple when he should first ketch sight on’t loomin’ up beautiful and glorious from the enrapturin’ Jonesville seenery.

And I felt a good deal as he did, but knowed that his feelin’s made him go too fur, for Jonesville seenery hain’t enrapturin’, and the M. E. steeple hain’t glorious in aspect. But truly Love is the greatest sculptor and gilder in the world, and handles his brush in the most marvellous way. Under his magic touch the humblest cottage walls glows brighter than any palace. We had turned our footsteps toward home sweet home, and a light from above gilt them sacred precincts, and my own heart sung as glad a tune as Josiah’s, though I tried to sing it as much as I could in the key of common sense.

Well, we found that Berlin wuz a big, beautiful clean city. It is the capital of Prussia and the German empire, which we all know is divided up into little kingdoms, some as the Sylvester Bobbett farm is divided up, but kinder lookin’ up to Sylvester as the head on’t. The old part of the city hain’t so remarkable attractive, but the new part is beautiful in its buildings and streets. And somehow the passersby look cleaner and better off than in most cities. We didn’t see a blind beggar man led by a dog or a ragged female beggin’ for alms whilst we wuz there, which is more than our cities at home can boast of.

But in spite of all this, I spoze there is a good deal of cuttin’ up and behavin’ there.

And I don’t spoze that the name of the river that runs through it has anything to do with that, though Josiah thought it did. He said: “You couldn’t expect many morals or much stiddy behavior round a river Spree.”

But I don’t spoze the name made a mite of difference. The water seemed to run along as smooth and placid as Dove Creek, that bathes the streets of Loontown at home. Indeed, the waters of the Spree runs along real slow and quiet. And I spoze the inhabitants there are about on a equality with the dwellers in other cities in the old and new world. Human nater is a good deal the same wherever you find it. And I’ve always said that if I wanted to write a heart-searchin’, heart-meltin’ tragedy, I had just as soon turn away from the big cities and go into some lonesome hamlet of New England, into some big faded farmhouse standin’ by a dark weed-bordered sluggish creek, shaded by tall pollard willers. And there, behind the scraggly lilocks and cinnamon roses, and closed blinds of solid wood, with a little heart-shaped hole in the centre that casts strange shadders on the clean painted floor within, there I would find my tragedy material.

Mebby in some tall, scrawny woman’s form, clad in brown calico, with scanty gray hair drawed tightly back from a pale face and imprisoned in a little hard knob at the back.

When that hair wuz brown, and the mornin’ sun wuz ketched in its glistenin’, wavin’ tendrils, and the sunken cheeks wuz round and pink as one of the cinnamon roses, and the faded ambrotype of the young soldier in her red wooden chest upstairs wuz materialized in a handsome young man, who walked with her under the old willows when the slow-moving brook run swift with fancy’s flight and her heart beat happily, and life wuz new and radiant with love and joy–––

Before the changes come that swept them apart and left only a hollow, empty chamber in each heart, echoin’ with footsteps that are walkin’ heavily fur apart.

Then, if I could write the full history of that life, its joys and its sorrows, its aspirations, its baffled hopes, its compensations that didn’t compensate, the bareness of the life, the dagger-sharp trials with what is called small things, the wild heart struggles veiled by the New England coldness of expression, some as her sharp crags and stuns are covered with the long reign of ice and snow. The heartsick loneliness of oncongenial surroundin’s, the gradual fading away of hope and fears into the dead monotonous calm of hopelessness and despair.

There is a tragedy ready for the pen that would stand out as much more striking and sharp-edged as the stun on a ontravelled highway is rougher than one worn down to smoothness by the feet of the multitude, a tragedy that would move the world could I tell it as it really is.

But good land! What a hand to eppisode I be when I git to goin’. I must stop this very minute, or I’ll have the tragedy Alfred Tennyson speaks on “Dyin’ a Listener,” on my hands.

Unter der Linden is as beautiful and imposing an avenue as I see on my tower, with tall, handsome houses risin’ up on each side on’t. And there are beautiful parks and pleasure ground and places of recreation of all kinds.

The Academy of Music is famous for its fine concerts, the city seems the very home of melody, and beautiful statutes are seen on every side. The equestrian statute of Frederic the Great is a grand one, and Josiah got all rousted up lookin’ at it, and talked considerable to me about what a imposin’ figger he himself would make if he could be sculped settin’ on the mair. He said it would be a lovely sight a loomin’ up in front of the M. E. meetin’-house in Jonesville. But I got his mind off from it quick as I could.

One day when we wuz out drivin’ through the handsome 429 streets we went to see the palace of Bismark. It wuz a large, stately mansion, opposite a pretty little park. But though this seemed the very abode of luxury, I wuz told that Bismark loved the country fur better, and as Josiah and I delighted in the fields of Jonesville, so he loved sweet Nature, and follered her all he could into her hants in the country. Josiah sot store by Bismark, and honors his memory, and he seemed real tickled when I sez to him:

“Bismark always reminded me of you, Josiah, from what I’ve read of him.”

Josiah was very tickled, and he sez with a proud happy look, “Yes, I spoze I am a good deal like him, he wuz as brave as a lion, had good sound horse sense and–––”

But I sez calmly, “I dare presoom to say, Josiah, that that is so. But I wuz alludin’