Samantha in Europe

“GOOD-NIGHT, LITTLE PARDNER.”

Samantha
in
Europe

by

Josiah Allen’s Wife
(Marietta Holley)

Illustrated
by
C DeGrimm

Printed in the United States

New York · Funk and Wagnalls Company 1896

London and Toronto

Copyright, 1895, by
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

Registered at Stationers’ Hall
London, England

Dedication.

TO THE WEARY TRAVELLER WHO YEARNS TO SEE UNDER STRANGE SKIES THE LIGHT OF THE
OLD HOME FIRE,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY

Samantha and Josiah
.

PREFACE.

Sez Josiah, as he see me writin’ this preface:

“Seems to me, Samantha, you’ve writ enough prefaces.”

(He wanted me to start the supper; but, good land! it wuzn’t only half past five, and I had a spring chicken all ready to fry, and my cream biscuit wuz all ready for the oven, on the kitchen table.)

Sez he, “It seems to me you’ve writ enough on em.”

And I sez, “Wall, Josiah, I’d hate to sadden the world by sayin’ I wouldn’t write any more.”

And he sez, “How do you know it would sadden the world—how do you know it would?” And he continued: “Samantha, I hain’t wanted to dampen you, but I have always considered your writin’s weak; naterally they would be, bein’ writ by a woman; and,” sez he, as he looked longin’ly towards the buttery door and the plump chicken, “a woman’s spear lays in a different direction.”

And I sez, “I thought I’d write some of our adventures in our trip abroad—that happy time,” sez I, lookin’ inquirin’ly at him.

“Happy time!” sez he, a-kinder ’nashin’ his teeth—“happy! gracious Heavens! Do you want to bring up my sufferin’s agin, when I jest lived through ’em?”

“Wall,” sez I, a-gittin’ up and approachin’ the buttery, and takin’ down the tea-kettle and fryin’-pan and coffee-pot, “I have writ other things in the book that I am more interested in myself.”

He sot kinder still and demute as I put the chicken on to fry in butter, and put the cream biscuit in the oven, and poured the bilein’ water on the fragrant coffee; his mean seemed to grow softer, and he sez:

“Mebby I wuz too hash a-sayin’ what I did about your writin’s, Samantha; I guess you write as well as you know how to; I guess you
mean
well;” and as he see me a-spreadin’ the snowy table-cloth on the little round table, and a-puttin’ on some cream cheese and some peach sass, he sez further:

“Nobody is to blame for what they don’t know, Samantha.”

I looked down affectionately and pityin’ly on his old bald head and then further off—way off into mysterious spaces no mortal feet has ever trod, and I sez:

“That is so, Josiah.”

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

“He riz right up and shook his fist at the man with the nightcap”

Twilight on the broad ocean

Asleep in his narrer bunk

Two prettier, winnin’er creeters never lived than them two

“Aunt Samantha, where is Heaven? Is it up in the sky?”

He sassed him and yelled out, “You dum fool, you, throw me a board!”

“It depends on whose lives they be”

Josiah and me put on our strongest specks

It wuz very dressy when it wuz done

A dark figger that riz up like a strange picter aginst the sunset

“I don’t love to hear that; that sounds bad”

“‘That man is a Christian.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘Because he is drunk’”

“Uncle Sam a-wadin’ in sin up to his old knee jints”

The game of Bulls and Bears

Al Faizi made a deep bow, almost to the floor

Sez I, a-risin’ up in the democrat, “I’ll git out”

She met me with a sweet smile

Finally, he got to be quarrelsome

Ellick lay drunk in the office

It wuz Ellick Gurley

“Yes, it
wuz
sunthin’ else; it wuz
you
”

“Save the Sam, it may come in handy in the futer”

With one of his low, reverential bows

As the elder took it he turned pale

I took down my old Atlas

In time to kiss us and clasp our hands in partin’

Her big blue eyes wuz full of tears

Then took his umbrell and started for the door

We tottered up on deck, two pale, thin figgers

The lord with a pink paper suit on

With a stern look, calculated to wither him

We went in what they call a “jauntin’ car”

Three beautiful lakes

Drinkin’ and tobacco-smokin’ in the little hovel drove ’em out

Drippin’ wet when he come back

Alice stood there, white and tremblin’

A dark figger a-standin’ up on a little rock

I laid out to talk to Victoria on the subject

Samantha and Ellen Douglas

This immortal pair of lovers

The same furies that pursued the drunken Tam

Edinburgh Castle

The National Covenant signed by the Earl of Sutherland

When Prince Charlie and Flora Macdonald parted

“I could sing to you,” sez he

“When they got dirty, jest wet a towel and clean ’em off”

“I never should think of usin’ it”

Josiah wuz dretful took with it

“What a sensation it would create in Jonesville!”

That sentinul twelve or fourteen hundred years ago

“With the ends of the fingers a-hangin’ down”

Robin Hood

“It don’t pay to tussel with ’em”

Martin sent his card in

Josiah’s home-made waterfall

Her common-sense shoe

A quaint, old-fashioned tarvern

Says he, “I’m a-goin’ back—it is my duty”

Shakespeare’s ghost reading the effusions on the walls of his house

A great many portraits of Shakespeare

The font in which Shakespeare was baptized

The supper that man eat wuz enormous

“You couldn’t eat that full of porridge”

“The more I see of moats, the more determined I be to have one round our house”

“I am going to work for the poor”

My tone chilled him to the veins

Martin with his patronizin’ ways

A livin’ poem bound up in a girl’s sweet body

Them letters wuz a stroke of genius

A hull soap-box full

We stood long and silently by the graves of the great dead

An immense chair, the four legs bein’ four animals

“When I’m elected to Congress I’m goin’ to wear my hat the hull time”

That little dude doctor, with his cane and his eyeglass

“I have had some trouble with my back lately, and I want you to look at it”

Samantha’s faith cure

“Yes,” sez Josiah, “old Domono probble had his hands full with her”

“Almost in the shadow of the Bank of England, I found the greatest want and wretchedness”

Right in front of the tarvern, I have seen with my own eyes as many as five teams and two open buggies

“Be you any kin of Bildad Henzy, of Jonesville?”

Napoleon’s tooth

Josiah at the London “Zoo”

“Calf-o-lay! I hain’t a calf or a ox!” he shouted

“How stylish I would look”

“I don’t spoze I could ever git to be nigh so graceful as she is”

Josiah, “cultered and travelled,” schemes for Jonesvillian out-door dinner parties, à la Paris, and how Samantha foresees the result

There wuz the clothes he wore that he ust to button over that restless, ambitious heart

With his arms folded, and that old hat of hisen on, and his inscrutable eyes fixed on the heights

A-wipin’ my face on sech genteel towels

“I believe he’d sell the steelyards that Jestice weighs things in, if he could git a few cents for ’em”

“No attention paid to rumatiz, or meal times, or corns”

“A woman jest dressin’ herself—she seems all broke up”

I thought more’n likely I should be melted into tears

A-leadin’ Adrian and a-plannin’ sunthin’ with him relatin’ to a whistle

A hogsit as big as the Jonesville tarvern

We did indeed go slow, but sure; for in two hours’ time we arrove on the summit

“They have emulative Mas, who are bound that they shan’t be out-travelled”

Ye-o-lo-leo-leo-leo—the melogious cry of the Alpine shepherds

Listening to the organ’s grand, melancholy voice

I thought considerable about William Tell and his exploits with Gessler, apples, etc.

Divine realms of melody wuz brung to view by his heavenly vision

“If this smell keeps on, and the dum muskeeters keeps on a-bitin’, one man will ‘see Venice and die’”

“Next thing I’d know you’d have a inquisition a-goin’ on”

The Tower of Pisa

The Colosseum

“The guides went ahead with flarin’ lights”

Mr. Goldwind, one of Martin’s business rivals

“I have faith that it aches like the old Harry”

I see one of the officials take up my sheep’s-head nightcap

A smile of admiration swep’ over his dark visage

Heavey, rough carts, drawed by an ox and a cow lashed together by ropes wound round their horns

At my request he hooked up my dress skirt in the back

She knowed me to once—a happy smile curved her pretty lips

The Matador

His victim

How cold his feet must have been cold mornin’s

“I go back to my own country—I have many things to teach my people—to avoid”

They had sent Philury out, like a dove, on the front doorstep to meet us

His looks wuz so onbecomin’ to a deacon and a path-master

Sez Martin agin, “I am sick to death of these everlasting complaints”

He fell down jest like a log at my feet

A faithful creeter with a strong breath, caused by stimulants, I believe

He busted out into tears and buried his face in his hands

Finis