Well, I spoze worldlings might mock at their love and their sad doings, but to me the air wuz full of romance and sadness and the presence of Juliet and Romeo.
The house where she once lived wuz a not over big house of brick, no bigger nor better than Bildad Henzy’s over in Zoar, and looked some like it.
Josiah said it wuz so silly to poke clear over to Italy to see this little narrer house when we could see better ones to home any day.
Miss Meechim said that it didn’t look so genteel as she expected, and Arvilly made a slightin’ remark about it.
But Robert Strong said kinder low, “He laughs at scars who never felt a wound.” His eyes wuz on Dorothy’s sweet face as he spoke.
And in her soft eyes as she looked at him I could almost see the meanin’ of Juliet’s vow, “To follow thee, my lord, throughout the world.”
We didn’t go to Friar Laurence’s cell where Mr. and Miss Romeo Montague wuz married and passed away, not knowin’ exactly where it wuz, old Elder Laurence havin’ 329 passed away some time ago, but we did go to the place they call her tomb; we rung a bell in the iron gate, paid a little fee, and was led by the hired girl who opened the gate to the place where they say she is buried. But I d’no as this is her tomb or not; I didn’t seem to feel that it wuz, ’tennyrate the tomb don’t look much like what her pa said he would raise above ’em:
“A statue of pure gold; that while Verona by that name is known, there shall no figure at such rate be set as that of true and faithful Juliet.” Josiah not havin’ come up to the mark in the way of sentiment at the house of Capulet, overdid the matter here; he took out his bandanna, and after flourishing it enough to draw everybody’s attention to it, pressed it to his eyes and sort o’ sithed.
But I doubted his grief, though he made such elaborate preparations for it, and I told him so afterwards. He acted real puggicky and sez:
“Can’t I ever please you, Samantha? At the widder Montague’s Pa’s you thought I wuzn’t sentimental enough, and I thought you would be tickled enough to have me shed tears at her tomb.”