Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (good non fiction books to read .TXT) đ
- Author: Marietta Holley
Book online «Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (good non fiction books to read .TXT) đ». Author Marietta Holley
But I sez, âI do hope the bill will pass for the sake of Justice, if nothinâ else. Justice,â sez I, âmust have been so shamed to see such things goinâ on that she wuz glad she wore bandages over her eyes; and her hands have shook so she hainât weighed even for some time; to see her sect taxed without representation, punished and hung by laws she has no voice in makinâ.â
Josiah sez, âI admit that that is ruther hard, Samantha, but that hainât the nick onât. The pint is that wimmen hainât got the self-control that men has. The govermunt is afraid of her emotional nater; she gits wrought up too quick. She is good as gold, almost a angel, in fact, as we male voters have always said. But she is too hasty; she hainât got the perfect calmness, the firm onmovable sense of right and wrong, the patience and long sufferinâ that we men have; 191 she flies off too sudden one way or tâother; govermunt well fears she would be a dangerous element in the body politick.â
Jest as Josiah finished this remark Arvilly read out a thrillinâ editorial about the war between Russia and Japan; the editor commented on the wickedness of men plunginâ two great empires into warfare, slaughterinâ thousands and thousands of men, bringinâ ontold wretchedness, distress, pestilence and destitution just to gratify ambition or angry passion. For it wuz this, he said, in the first place, whatever it became afterward.
A war of defence, of course, argued an aggressor, and he talked eloquent about Courts of Arbitration which would do away with the wholesale butchery and horror of war. And he called eloquent on Peace to fly down on her white wings bearing the olive branch, to come and stop this unutterable woe and crime of war.
(Arvilly left off readinâ to remind Josiah that Peace wuz always depictered as a female, and then resoomed her readinâ.)
In conclusion, the editor lamented the fact that in the annals of our nation men so often forgot the Golden Rule and gin vent to voylent passions and onbecominâ behavior.
Sez Josiah, âI guess I will take Tommy and go out for a little walk, Samantha, I feel kinder mauger.â
âI should think you would!â sez Arvilly, lookinâ hull reams of by-laws and statutes at him.
And I sez, âWhilst youâre walkinâ, dear Josiah, you might meditate on the danger to the govermunt from wimmenâs emotional nature, and the patience and long sufferinâ of men voters.â I said it real tender and good, but he snapped me up real snappish.
Sez he, âI shall meditate on what Iâm a minter. Come, Tommy,â and they went out.
And the next day we started for Yokohama. I had felt kinder dubersome about goinâ through countries that wuz plunged in a great war, but we got along all right, nobody shot at us or made any move to, and we didnât see anybody hurt. But knowed that the warfare wuz raginâ away somewhere out of our sight.
Death wuz marchinâ along on his pale horse in front of the army, and hearts wuz breakinâ and the light of the sun and of life darkened in thousands and thousands of grand and humble homes.
I felt dretful when I thought onât, but hainât goinâ to harrow up the readerâs feelinâs talkinâ about it, knowinâ it wonât do any good, and anyway theyâve all read the particulars in the daily papers.
Well, we reached Yokohama with no fatal casualties to report, though my pardner wuz real seasick, but brightened up as we drew nigh to shore. Here and there a little village with quaint houses could be seen, and anon a temple or shrine riz up above the beautiful tropical foliage and further off the Fujiyama, the sacred mountain, riz up above the other mountains.
We come into the harbor about half-past three and arrove at our tarven about five. When we drew nigh the shore almost naked boatmen come out to meet us in their sampans, as they call their little boats (Josiah called âem âsass pansâ right to their face, but I donât spoze they understood it). They wuz to take us into the shore and they wuz yellinâ to each other fearful as they pushed their boats ahead. Their toilettes consisted mostly of figgers pricked into their skins, 193 dragons and snakes seemed their favorite skin ornaments, the color wuz blue mostly with some red. Josiah sez to me as we looked down on âem from the dock:
âThem coolers wouldnât have to carry a Saratoga trunk with âem when they travel; a bottle of ink and a pin would last âem through life.â It wuz a real hot day, and Josiah continered, âWell, their clothinâ is comfortable anyway, thatâs why they are called coolers, because theyâre dressed so cool,â and, sez he, âwhat a excitement I could make in Jonesville next summer in dog-days by introducinâ this fashion.â
I looked on him in horrow, and he added hastily, âOh, I should wear a short tunic, Samantha, cominâ down most to my knees, with tossels on it, and I shouldnât wear snakes or dragons on my skin, I should wear some texts of Scripter, or appropriate quotations, as Josiah the fair, or Josiah the pride of Jonesville, runninâ down my legs and arms, and I shouldnât have âem pricked in, I could have âem painted in gay colors.â
âOh, heavens!â sez I, lookinâ up to the sky, âwhat wonât I hear next from this man!â
âI hadnât said I should do it, Samantha; and âtennyrate it would be only through dog-days. I said what a excitement it would make if I concluded to do it.â
Sez I, âIt is a excitement that would land you in Jonesville jail, and ort to.â
But at that minute Arvilly and Miss Meechim come up to us and broke off the conversation. Japan boatmen jest wear a cloth round their loins, and some of âem had a little square of matting fastened by a rope round their necks to keep the rain offen their backs.
After goinâ through the custom house, where we got off easy, we went to a tarven called the Grand Hotel and had a good nightâs rest.
The next morninâ, after tiffen, which wuz what they call breakfast, beinâ just so ignorant of good Jonesville language, Josiah and I and Tommy sallied out to see what we could see, the rest of our party havinâ gone out before.
Wantinâ to go a considerable ways, we hired two jinrikishas, and I took Tommy in my lap, and I must say that I felt considerable like a baby in a baby carriage carryinâ a doll; but I got over it and felt like a grandma before I had gone fur. How Josiah felt I donât know, though I hearn him disputinâ with the man about his pricesââwe had took a interpreter with us so we could know what wuz said to us. The price for a jinrikisha is five sen, and Josiah thought it meant five cents of our money, and so handed it to him. But the man wuz so ignorant he didnât know anything about Jonesville money, and he kepâ a-callinâ for sen, and the interpreter sez âSen,â holdinâ up his five fingers and speakinâ it up loud, and I hearn Josiah say:
âWell, you fool, you, I have given you five cents! What more do you want?â But at last he wuz made to understand; but when Josiah made him know where he wanted to go the interpreter said that the sedan carriers wanted a yen, and my poor pardner had another struggle. Sez he:
âYou consarned fool, how do you spoze I can give you a hen? Do you spoze I can git into my hen house ten thousand milds off to git you a hen? Or do you want me to steal one for you?â
âA yen,â sez the interpreter, and the way he said it it did sound like hen.
âWell, I said hen, didnât I?â said my pardner.
195But I leaned out of my baby cart and sez, âY-e-n, Josiah. A yen is their money, a dollar.â
âOh, why donât they call it a cow or a brindle calf?â He wuz all het up by his efforts to understand. They call one of their dollars a yen, a sen is a cent, and a rin is the tenth part of a cent. Josiah fell in love with the copper rins with square holes in the centre. Sez he:
âHow I would love to furnish you with âem, Samantha, when you went to the store in Jonesville. I would hand you out five or six rins and you could string âem and wear âem round your neck till you got to the store.â
âYes,â sez I, âhalf a cent would go a good ways in buyinâ family stores.â
âWell, it would have a rich look, Samantha, and I mean to make some when I git home. Why, Ury and I could make hundreds of âem out of our old copper kettle that has got a hole in it, and I shouldnât wonder if I could pass âem.â
Miss Meechim had a idee that the Japans wuz in a state of barbarism, but Arvilly who wuz always at swordsâ pints with her threw such a lot of statistics at her that it fairly danted her. There are six hundred newspapers in Japan. The Japanese daily at Tokio has a circulation of 300,000. She has over 3,000 milds of railroads and uses the American system of checking baggage. Large factories with the best machinery has been built late years, but a great part of the manufacturing is done by the people in their own homes, where they turn out those exquisite fabrics of silk and cotton and rugs of all the colors of the rainbow, and seemingly as fadeless as that bow. Slavery is unknown, and there is very little poverty with all the crowded population. The Japans are our nearest neighbors acrost the Pacific and weâve been pretty neighborly with âem, havinâ bought from âem within the last ten years most three hundred millions worth of goods. She would miss us if anything should happen to us.
Yokohama is a city of 124,000 inhabitants, most all Japans, though in what they call the settlement there are 196 fifteen or twenty thousand foreigners. There are beautiful homes here with flower gardens containing the rarest and most beautiful flowers, trees and shrubs of all kinds.
The day Josiah had his struggle with the interpreter and Japan money we rode down the principal streets of Yokohama. And I would stop at some of the silk shops, though Josiah objected and leaned out of his jinrikisha and sez anxiously:
âDonât spend moreân half a dozen rins, Samantha, on dress, for you know weâve got more than 10,000 milds to travel and the tarven bills are high.â
Sez I in real dry axents, âIf I conclude to buy a dress I shall have to have as much as a dozen rins; I donât believe that I could git a handsome and durable one for less.â My tone was sarcastical. The idee of buyinâ a silk dress for half a cent! But I didnât lay out to buy; I wuz jest lookinâ round.
I saw in those shops some of the most beautiful silks and embroideries that I ever did see, and I went into a lacquer shop where there wuz the most elegant furniture and rich bronzes inlaid with gold and silver. They make the finest bronzes in the world; a little pair of vases wuz fifteen hundred dollars and you couldnât get âem for less. But why shouldnât there be beautiful things in a country where every one is a artist?
We stopped at a tea house and had a cup of tea, delicious as I never spozed tea could be and served by pretty young girls with gay colored, loose silk suits and hair elaborately dressed up with chains and ornaments; their feet and legs wuz bare, but they wuz covered with ornaments of brass and jade. Afterwards we passed fields of rice where men and wimmen wuz working, the men enrobed in their skin toilette of dragons and other figures and loin cloth and the wimmen in little scanty skirts cominâ from the waist to the knees. Their wages are eight cents a day. I wondered what some of our haughty kitchen rulers, who demand a dollar a day and the 197 richest of viands would say if they wuz put down on a basis of eight cents a day and water and rice diet.
The little bamboo cottages are lovely lookinâ from the outside with their thatched roofs, some on âem with little bushes growinâ out on the thatch and little bunches of grass growinâ out under the eaves. The children of the poor
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