They name their streets real funny; one street is called Everlasting Love, or it means that in our language, and there is Refreshing Breezes, Reposing Dragons, Honest Gain, Thousand Grandsons, Heavenly Happiness, and etc., etc.
Josiah said that he should see Uncle Sime Bentley and 187 Deacon Henzy about naming over the Jonesville streets the minute he got home. Sez he, “How uneek it will be to trot along through Josiah’s Never Ending Success, or Prosperous Interesting Josiah, or the Glorious Pathmaster, or the Divine Travellin’ Deacon, or sunthin’ else uneek and well meanin’.”
Sez I, “You seem to want to name ’em all after yourself, Josiah. Uncle Sime and Deacon Henzy would probable want one or two named after them.”
“Well,” sez he, “we could name one Little Uncle, and one Spindlin’ Deacon, if they insisted on’t.”
Josiah wuz in real good sperits, I laid it partly to the tea, it wuz real stimulating; Josiah said that it beat all that the Chinese wuz so blinded and out of the way as to do things so different from what they did in Jonesville. “But,” sez he, “they’re politer on the outside than the Jonesvillians, even down to the coolers.”
Sez I, “Do you mean the coolies?”
“Yes, the coolers, the hired help, you know,” sez he. “Catch Ury fixin’ his eye on his left side coat collar when he speaks to me not dastin’ to lift it, and bowin’ and scrapin’ when I told him to go and hitch up, or bring in a pail of water, and catch him windin’ his hair in a wod when he wuz out by himself and then lettin’ it down his back when he came to wait on me.”
Sez I, “Ury’s hair is too short to braid.”
“Well, you can spozen the case, can’t you? But as I wuz sayin’, for all these coolers are so polite, I would trust Ury as fur agin as I would any on ’em. And then they write jest the other way from we do in Jonesville, begin their letters on the hind side and write towards ’em; and so with planin’ a board, draw the plane towards ’em. I would like to see Ury try that on any of my lumber. And because we Jonesvillians wear black to funerals, they have to dress in white. Plow would I looked at my mother-in-law’s funeral with a white night gown on and my hair braided down my back 188 with a white ribbin on it? It would have took away all the happiness of the occasion to me.
“And then their language, Samantha, it is fixed in such a fool way that when they want a word different, they yell up the same word louder and that makes it different, as if I wuz to say to Ury kinder low and confidential, ‘I shall be the next president, Ury;’ and then I should yell up the same words a little louder and that would mean, ‘Feed the brindle steer;’ there hain’t no sense in it. But I spoze one thing that ails them is their havin’ to stand bottom side up, their feet towards Jonesville. Their blood runs the wrong way. Mebby I shouldn’t do any better than they do if I stood so the hull of the time; mebby I should let my finger nails grow out like bird’s claws and shake my own hands when I meet company instead of theirn. Though,” sez Josiah, dreamily, “I don’t know but I shall try that in Jonesville; I may on my return from my travels walk up to Elder Minkley and the bretheren in the meetin’-house, and pass the compliments with ’em and clasp my own hands and shake ’em quite a spell, not touchin’ their hands. I may, but can’t tell for certain; it would be real uneek to do it.”