Says I, “What under the sun would you do with it Josiah Allen?”
“Oh,” says he, “it might come handy sometime, I am liable to accidents.”
“Why,” says I, “your eyes are as blue as indigo.”
“Well,” says he, “I always liked black eyes, and that is such a awful smart lookin’ eye, it would give anybody such a knowin’ look.”
I told him I guessed he would look knowin’; I guessed he would know it when he went round with one black eye, and one blue one. I didn’t encourage the idee. He looked wishful at it to the last, and he has said sense, that that was the smartest lookin’ eye he ever see in his life.
And such sights and sights of glass ware, and crystal fountains. I told Josiah that I had sung about ’em all my life, but never did I expect to see one. But I did, here it was; handsomer than song could sing. About three feet from the floor was a basin twelve feet wide, and round this, seventy-two cut glass vases for flowers, and four pillows havin’ twelve lights and four more for flowers. In the centre column half way up, was the most beautiful crystal ornaments and doins you ever see, with burnin’ jets inside; and over all was a dome held up by three columns, topped off with spread eagles. The age of this dome was all trimmed off with red, white, and blue, and under it was the Goddess of Liberty standin’ on the globe. There is between three and four thousand pieces of glass in this fountain—so they told me—and they said it was the nicest one in the world; and I told ’em I didn’t dispute it, for I had travelled round a good deal, and I never see the beat on’t. And here it was that I got agitated and frightened; skairt most to death, and I wont deny it. I was a walkin’ along, cool as a cluster cucumber at sunrise, and as calm, when I looked up and thinks’es I, there comes a woman that looks jest like the Smiths; thinks’es I, she looks jest like me, only not quite so good lookin’. I stopped completely dumbfoundered, and she stopped also in dumbfounder. I looked her in the face with a almost wild mean, and her mean looked almost wild.
I give right up that she was a Smith, and then realizin’ what sort of a tower it was that I was on, I knew it was my place to make the first move towards gittin’ acquainted with her; so I made her a low curchy, and she made me a low curchy. And then I walked right up and held out my hand to her, and she walked right up to me a holdin’ out her hand. Says I, “Who you be mom, I don’t know, but I believe my soul you are one of the Smiths, for you look as near like me as two peas, only you are a little fleshier than I be, and not quite so light complected.” But what the next move would have been I don’t know if all of a sudden right over her shoulder I hadn’t seen the face of my Josiah, and I knew he was the other side of me. Cold shivers run over my back, when I felt a hand a seizin’ and a holdin’ of me back, and the voice of Josiah a sayin’:
“What under the heavens Samantha, are you a tryin’ to walk through that lookin’-glass for?”
ONE OF THE SMITH FAMILY.