Josiah sez: “If Ury and I can turn the creek, Samantha, so it will run through the dooryard, you shall have a fountain right under your winder. Ury and I can rig up a statter for it out of stuns and mortar that will look first-rate. And I spoze,” sez he, “the Jonesvillians would love to see my linimen sculped on it, and it might be a comfort to you, if I should be took first.”
“No, Josiah,” sez I, “not if you and Ury made it; it would only add to my agony.”
We had quite a good hotel. But I see the hired girl had made a mistake in makin’ up the bed. Mebby she wuz absent minded or lovesick; ’tennyrate she had put the feather bed top of us instead of under us.
As Josiah laid down under it he said words I wouldn’t have had Elder Minkley heard for a dollar bill, and it didn’t nigh cover his feet anyway. What to do I didn’t know, for it wuz late and I spozed the woman of the house had gone to bed and I didn’t want to roust her up. And I knew anyway it would mortify her dretfully to have her help make such a mistake. Good land! if Philury should do such a thing I should feel like a fool. So I had Josiah git up, still talkin’ language onfit for a deacon and a perfessor, and I put the bed where it belonged, spread the sheets over it smooth, put my warm woollen shawl and our railway rug on it and made a splendid bed.
The food wuz quite good, though sassage and cheese wuz too much in evidence, and beer and pipes and bears. I always kinder spleened aginst bears and wuz afraid on ’em and wouldn’t take one for a present, but it beat all how much they seem to think of bears there, namin’ the place for ’em to start with, and they have bears carved and painted on most everything. Bears spout water out of their mouths in the fountains, they have dead ones in their museums, and they have a big bear den down by the river where great live ones can growl and act all they want to. And bears show off in a wonderful clock tower they have built way back in the ’leventh century. I never see Tommy so delighted with anything hardly as he wuz with that, and Josiah too. Every hour a procession of bears come out, led, I believe, by a rooster who claps his wings and crows, and then they walk round a old man with a hour glass who strikes the hour on a bell. But the bears lead the programmy and bow and strut round and act.
The manufactures of Berne are mostly cloth, silk and cotton, straw hats, etc. It has a great university with seventy-three professors. Good land! if each one on ’em knowed a little and would teach it they ort to keep a first-rate school.
And it also uses a Referendum. Arvilly disputed me when I spoke on’t; she thought it wuz sunthin’ agin ’em, but it hain’t. It helps the people. If they don’t like a law after it passes the legislature they have a chance to vote on it. And it keeps ’em from bein’ fooled by politicians and dishonest statesmen. I approve on’t and Arvilly did when she got more acquainted with the idee. I wish America would get hold of one, and I guess she will when she gits round to it, though Arvilly don’t believe they will. Sez she: “Our statesmen ruther spend their time votin’ on the length of women’s hat-pins, and discuss what a peril they are to manhood.” Sez she: “Why don’t they vote agin men’s suspenders? Everybody knows a man could hang a woman with ’em, hang ’em right up on the bed post.” Sez Arvilly: “Why not vote that men shall fasten their trousers to their vests with hook and eyes, they are so much less dangerous?” But I don’t spoze they ever will. It is a job to fasten your skirt to your waist with ’em. But they are real safe and I wish men would adopt ’em. But don’t spoze they will, they hate to be bothered so.
Another thing I liked first-rate there and Arvilly did, the corporation of the city is so rich it furnishes fuel for its citizens free. Arvilly sez: