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“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
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