“Not oncommon at all,” sez Arvilly. “If you read the daily papers you will see such things as this, the direct work of the saloon, are continually occurring, too common in fact to attract much attention.”
He couldn’t deny this, for he knew that we read the papers jest the same as he did, and the fact that he couldn’t deny it seemed to kinder tire him, and he sez, getting up:
“I guess I will go and smoke a cigar.” And he went. And I went up to my room, too, to pack my satchel bag, for we expected to start the very next mornin’ and to be gone about a week or ten days.
Well, the steamer took us to Hilo, and the panorama that swep’ by us on that steamer can’t never be reproduced by any camera or kodak; the sapphire blue water, the hills standing like mountains of beaten gold and velvety green verdure, and beyond the soft blue and purple mountain ranges, agin deep clefts and cliffs of richest colored rocks with feathery white waterfalls floating down on ’em like a veil, anon pleasant landscapes, sugar cane plantations, picturesque houses, windmills, orchards, dancing brooks and broad green fields. No dissolvin’ view wuz ever so entrancin’, but like all others it had to dissolve.
We reached Hilo the second day and we all went to a comfortable tarven, and the next mornin’ bright and early we sot off on the stage for the volcano over, I state, and state it fearlessly, the most beautiful road that wuz ever built towards any volcano or anything else. Why, I’ve thought that the road between Jonesville and Loontown wuz beautiful and easy travellin’. Old Hagadone is path-master and vain of the road, and calls the men out twice a year to pay poll taxes and such by workin’ it. Sugar maples, elder bushes, and shuemakes, and wild grapes and ivy run along the side of the stun wall, makin’ it, I always had thought, on-approachable in beauty. But, good land! if old Hagadone 123 had seen that road he would have turned green as grass with envy.
Imagine a wide road, smooth as glass, cut right out of a glowing tropical forest with a almost onimagined splendor, that I spoze was meant to be onseen by mortal eyes, risin’ up on each side on’t. Why, I’ve been as proud as a peacock of my little hibiscus growin’ in grandma Allen’s old teapot, and when that blowed out one little blow I called the neighbors in to witness the gorgeous sight. Imagine a hibiscus tree, as big as one of our biggest maples, fairly burnin’ all over with the gorgeous blossoms, and bananas with their great glossy leaves, and lantannas. Wuzn’t I proud of my lantanna growin’ in Ma Smith’s blue sugar bowl? I thought it wuz a lovely sight when it had three blows on it at one time. But imagine milds and milds of ’em risin’ up thirty feet on each side of the road, and little spindlin’ palms, that we envy if growin’ two feet high, growin’ here to a hundred feet or more, and begonias and geraniums growin’ up into tall trees and of every color, tuberoses and magnolias loadin’ the air with fragance, the glossy green of the ohia tree with the iaia vine climbing and racing over it all, mingled in with tamarind and oranges and bamboo, and oleanders with their delicious pink and white blossoms. Sez I: “Do you remember my little oleander growin’ in a sap bucket, Josiah? Did you ever think of seein’ ’em growin’ fifty feet high? What a priceless treasure one would be in Jonesville.”
And he whispered back real voyalent: “Don’t think, Samantha, of gittin’ me to lug one of them fifty-foot trees all the way hum. I’ve broke my back for years luggin’ round your old oleander in a tub, but never will I tackle one of them trees,” and he looked up defiantly into the glossy boughs overhead.
“I hain’t asked you to, Josiah, but,” sez I dreamily: “I would love to git some slips of them fuchia and begonia trees, and that jasmine,” sez I, pintin’ up to the emerald waves of foliage enriched by them I have named, and as many other 124 glowin’ with perfume and beauty as there are stars in the heavens, or so it seemed to me. Sez I: “What a show I could make in Jonesville with ’em.” Sez I: “What would Miss Bobbett and Sister Henzy say if they could see ’em?” And I pinted up at a gigantick trumpet creeper and convolvuli, festooned along the boughs of a giant geranium and hanging down its banner of bloom.
“They’d say, let well enough alone. I tell you I can’t break up my trip diggin’ dirt and tendin’ to a lot of houseplants from Dan to Beersheba.”
“We’re not goin’ to Dan,” sez I, “and if we wuz a man might meet Dan doin’ worse than pleasin’ his pardner. Look at that jasmine,” sez I. “Is that much like that little slip of Sister Bobbett’s growin’ in a tea-cup? And see! oh, do see, Josiah, them night bloomin’ ceriuses! Oh, take it on a moonlight night, the walls of fragrant green on either side, and them lovely blows, hundreds and thousands of ’em shinin’ out like stars of whiteness, full of the odor of Paradise. Oh, what a sight, Josiah Allen, for us to see!”