Napoleon, ambitious creeter! wuz crowned king of Italy in Milan. And I guess old Charlemaigne himself wuz, ’tennyrate a good many kings here had the iron crown set on their forwards. I d’no what made ’em have iron crowns, though Josiah said it would be real handy sometimes. He said if a king wuz in a hurry, and you know they are sometimes in a dretful hurry to be crowned before their heads are took off, it would be real handy, for they could take the rim to a stove griddle, and stand up some velvet pints on it and it would fit most any head. He also spoke of a coal-scuttle.
But I said that I guessed they used iron to show that crowns are so heavy and bore down on their heads so.
We visited Lake Como, Dorothy specially wantin’ to see the palace of Carlotta. Poor, broken-hearted Carlotta, whose mind and happiness wuz destroyed by the shot that put an end to Maximilian’s brave, misguided life.
Poor Maximilian! poor Carlotta! victims of the foolish ambitions of an empress, so they say. I wuz glad to throw the blossom of a pitying thought onto their memory as I passed her house, opposite Belajio, thinkin’ that it wuz befittin’ a American to do so. Tears stood in Dorothy’s eyes as we recalled the sad tragedy.
Lake Como deserves all that has been said of it, and more 324 too. The slopes of the mountains are dotted with vineyards, hamlets and beautiful villas. And we see many little cabins where the familys of organ-grinders live. Mebby the wife and children lived here of some swarthy creeter that I’ve fed offen my own back steps in Jonesville for grindin’ out music for the children.
It is only a journey of eight hours from Milan to Venice, and Verona is about half way. And it is almost like travellin’ through a mulberry grove. The valley of Lombardy is a silk-producing country and the diet of silkworms is mulberry leaves and the trees also serve as handsome props to the grape vines that hang from tree to tree.
Fur off, like cold, sad thoughts that will come in warm happy hearts, we see the snow-capped mountains, and bime by it grew so cold that we wuz glad and grateful when we had cans of hot water handed to us at the station.
Josiah thought they wuz full of hot coffee and proposed to once that we should take some to meetin’ with us in Jonesville to warm our feet. Sez he, “How delightful it would be, Samantha, to take a good drink of hot coffee in meetin’.”
“Yes,” sez I, “it would look nice to be drinkin’ in meetin’.”
“Oh,” sez he, “I mean to do it sly; I could scrooch down and pretend to be fixin’ my shues.” But it proved to be nothin’ but hot water in the cans, but real comfortable to our feet. And the mulberry groves put Josiah in mind of another innovation that might be made in Jonesville ways.