Josiah gin orders that I overheard to “go at a pretty good jog past the stores where wimmen buy sooveneers,” but I presoomed that they didn’t understand a word he said, so it didn’t do any hurt and I laid out to git some all the same. But what a sight them streets wuz; they wuz about twenty feet wide, and smooth and clean, but considerable steep. To us who wuz used to the peaceful deacons of Jonesville and their alpaca-clad wives and the neighbors, who usually borry sleeve and skirt and coat and vest patterns, and so look all pretty much alike, what a sight to see the folks we did in goin’ through just one street. Every sort of dress that ever wuz wore we see there, it seemed to me––Europeans, Turks, Mohomadeans, Malays, Japanese, Javanese, Hindoos, Portuguese, half castes, and Chinese coolies. Josiah still called ’em “coolers,” because they wuz dressed kinder cool, but carryin’ baskets, buckets, sedans, or trottin’ a sort of a slow trot hitched into a jinrikisha, or holdin’ it on each side with their hands, with most nothin’ on and two pigtail braids hangin’ down their backs, and such a jabberin’ in language strange to Jonesville ears; peddlers yellin’ out their goods, bells ginglin’, gongs, fire-crackers, and all sorts of work goin’ on right there in the streets. Strange indeed to Jonesville eyes! Catch our folks takin’ their work outdoors; we shouldn’t call it decent.
We went to the Public Gardens, which wuz beautiful with richly colored ornamental shrubbery. I sez to Josiah:
“Did I ever expect to see allspice trees?”
And he sez: “I can’t bear allspice anyway.”
“Well,” sez I, “cinnamon trees; who ever thought of seein’ cinnamon trees?”
An’ he looked at ’em pretty shrewd and sez: “When I git home I shan’t pay no forty cents a pound for cinnamon. I can tell ’em I’ve seen the trees and I know it ort to be cheaper.” Sez he, “I could scrape off a pound or two with my jack-knife if we could carry it.”
But I hurried him on; I wuzn’t goin’ to lug a little wad of cinnamon ten thousand milds, even if he got it honest. Well, we stayed here for quite a spell, seein’ all the beautiful flowers, magnificent orchids––that would bring piles of money to home, jest as common here as buttercups and daisies in Jonesville, and other beautiful exotics, that we treasure so as houseplants, growin’ out-doors here in grand luxuriance––palms, tree-ferns, banian trees, everything I used to wonder over in my old gography I see right here growin’ free. Tommy wuz delighted with the strange, beautiful flowers, so unlike anything he had ever seen before. We had got out and walked round a spell here, and when we went to git into our sedan chairs agin, I wuz a little behind time, and Josiah hollered out to me:
“Fey tea, Samantha!”
“Tea?” sez I. “I hain’t got any tea here.” And I sez with dignity, “I don’t know what you mean.”