Josiah hadn’t see ’em yet; he wuz layin’ on the lounge, but he sez: “I don’t see why you’re so took up with them geese.”
“Geese!” sez I; “look here, Josiah Allen”––and I took a cookie I had got for Tommy––“see here; see me feed these geese ten feet from the ground.” He could see their heads come up to take it out of my hand.
“Good land!” sez he, “you don’t say they stretch their necks clear up here.” And he jined in our astonishment then and proposed that he should be let down from the winder in a sheet and git me a few feathers. But I rejected the idee to once. I sez: “I’d ruther go featherless for life than to have a pardner commit rapine for ’em.”
And he sez: “If some Egyptian come to Jonesville and wanted a rooster’s tail feather, we wouldn’t say nuthin’ aginst it.”
But I sez: “This is different; this would spile the looks of the ostriches.”
And he said there wuz sunthin’ said in the Bible about “spilin’ the Egyptians.” But I wouldn’t let him wrest the Scripters to his own destruction, and told him I wouldn’t, and then sez I, “I never could enjoy religion settin’ under a stolen feather.”
As you pass through these picturesque streets memories of them that have made this city historic crowd upon your mind. You think of Saladin, Christian, Mameluke and Islamite.
You think of the Bible and you think of the “Arabian Nights,” and you almost expect to see the enchanted carpet 257 layin’ round somewhere, and some one goin’ up to the close shet doors sayin’, “Open sesame.”
And as you stroll along you will hear every language under the sun, or so it seems, and meet English, Italian, French, Bedowins, soldiers, footmen, Turks, Arabs, all dressed in their native costumes. Anon close shet up carriages in which you most know there are beautiful wimmen peerin’ out of some little corner onbeknown to their folks; agin you meet a weddin’ procession, then a trolley car, then some Egyptian troops, then some merchants, then mysterious lookin’ Oriental wimmen, with black veils hangin’ loose, then a woman with a donkey loaded with fowls, then some more soldiers in handsome uniform.
Agin every eye is turned to see some high official or native prince dressed in splendid array dashin’ along in a carriage with footmen runnin’ on before to clear the way. And mebby right after comes a man drivin’ a flock of turkeys, they feelin’ jest as important and high-headed to all appearance.