And Tommy wondered how the little boys could play ball, and if they didn’t want to slide down hill, or climb trees, or pick berries, and so on and so on. And every one on us see what wuz for us to see in the movin’ panoramy.
Canton is a real queer city. The streets are so narrer that you can almost reach out your hands and touch the houses on both sides, they are not more than seven or eight feet wide. There are no horses in Canton, and you have to git about on “shanks’s horses,” as Josiah calls it, your own limbs you know, or else sedan chairs, and the streets are so narrer, some on ’em, that once when we met some big Chinese man, a Mandarin I believe they called him, we had to hurry into one of the shops till he got by, and sometimes in turnin’ a corner the poles of our chairs had to be run way inside of the shops, and Josiah said:
“I would like to see how long the Jonesvillians would stand such doin’s; I would like to see old Gowdey’s fills scrapin’ my cook stove, it is shiftless doin’s, and ort to be stopped.”
But I knew he couldn’t make no change and I hushed him up as well as I could. Robert Strong got quite a comfortable tarven for us to stay in. But I wuz so afraid all the time of eatin’ rats and mice that I couldn’t take any comfort in meat vittles. They do eat rats there, for I see ’em hangin’ in the markets with their long tails curled up, ready to bile or fry. Josiah said he wished he had thought on’t, he would brung out a lot to sell, and he wuz all rousted up to try to make a bargain to supply one of these shops with rats and mice. Sez he:
“It will be clear profit, Samantha, for I want to get rid on ’em, and all the Jonesvillians do, and if I can sell their carcasses I will throw in the hide and taller. Why, I can make a corner on rats and mice in Jonesville; I can git ’em by the wagon load of the farmers and git pay at both ends.” But I told him that the freightage would eat up the profits, and he see it would, and gin up the idee onwillin’ly.
Though I don’t love such hot stuff as we had to eat, curry, and red peppers, and chutney, not to home I don’t, but I see it wuz better to eat such food there on account of the climate. Some of our party had to take quinine, too, for the stomach’s sake to keep up, for you feel there like faintin’ right away, the climate is such.
It must be that the Chinese like amusements, for we see sights of theatres and concert rooms and lanterns wuz hangin’ everywhere and bells. And there wuz streets all full of silk shops, and weavers, and jewelry, and cook shops right open on either side. All the colors of the rainbow and more too you see in the silks and embroideries, and jewelry of all kinds and swingin’ signs and mat awnings overhead, and the narrer streets full of strange lookin’ folks, in their strange lookin’ dresses.
We visited a joss house, and a Chinaman’s paradise where opium eaters and smokers lay in bunks lookin’ as silly and happy as if they wouldn’t ever wake up agin to their tawdy wretchedness. We visited a silk manufactory, a glass blowing shop. We see a white marble pagoda with several tiers of gilded bells hangin’ on the outside. Inside it wuz beautifully ornamented, some of the winders wuz made of the inside of oyster shells; they made a soft, pleasant light, and it had a number of idols made of carved ivory and some of jade stun, and the principal idol wuz a large gilded dragon.
Josiah said the idee of worshippin’ such a looking creeter as that. Sez he, “I should ruther worship our old gander.” And Miss Meechim wuz horrified, too, at the wickedness of the Chinese in worshippin’ idols.