“Well, then,” sez I, “shet up!” I wuz out of patience with his giddy idees, and wouldn’t brook ’em.
We laid out to go from Milan to Genoa till we changed our plans. I thought it wuzn’t no more’n right that we should pay Columbus that honor, for I always wondered, and spoze always shall, what would have become of us if we hadn’t been discovered. I spoze we should have got along some way, but it wouldn’t have been nigh so handy for us. I presoom mebby Josiah and I would have been warwhoopin’ and livin’ in tepees and eatin’ dogs, though it don’t seem to me that any colored skin I might have could have made me relish Snip either in a stew or briled. That dog is most human.
I always felt real grateful to Columbus and knowed he hadn’t been used as he ort to be. And then Mother Smith left me a work-bag, most new, made of Genoa velvet, and I awfully wanted to git a little piece more to put with it so’s I could make a bunnet out of it. But Dorothy wanted to see Verona and her wish wuz law to the head of our party, and when the head of a procession turns down a road, the rest of the procession must foller on in order to look worth a cent. Miss Meechim said that it wuz on her account that he favored Dorothy so. But it wuzn’t no such thing and anybody could see different if their eyes wuzn’t blinded with self-conceit and egotism. But take them two together and there is no blinders equal to ’em. They go fur ahead of the old mair’s, and hern are made of thick leather.
Well, Robert thought we had better go on to Venice, stopping at Verona on the way and so on to Naples, and then on our way back we could stop at Genoa, and we all give up that it wuz the best way.
I always liked the name of Verona. Miss Ichabod Larmuth named her twins Vernum and Verona. I thought it would be a real delicate attention to her to stop there, specially as we could visit Genoa afterwards.
Well, havin’ such a pretty name I felt that Verona would 328 be a real pretty place, and it wuz. A swift flowing river runs through the town and the view from all sides is beautiful. The fur off blue mountains, the environin’ hills, the green valleys dotted with village and hamlet, made it a fair seen, and “Jocund day stood tip-toe on the mountain tops.”
But to sweet Dorothy and me, and I guess to the most of us, it wuz interestin’ because Juliet Montague, she that wuz Juliet Capulet, once lived here. I spoke on’t to Josiah, but he sez:
“The widder Montague; I don’t remember her. Is she any relation of old Ike Montague of North Loontown?”
But I sez: “She wuzn’t a widder for any length of time. She died of love and so did her pardner, Romeo Montague.”
“Well,” said Josiah, “that shows they wuz both sap heads. If they had lived on for a spell they would got bravely over that, and had more good horse sense.”