But I sez, “Nobody can dive into deeper depths than I have doven to-day.”
“The ocean?” sez she.
“Oceans of anxiety,” sez I, “rivers of grief.” I spoze my dretful emotions showed on my linement, and to git my mind off she sez, “You ort to see the aligators.”
I’d hearn they had immense tanks of water as long as from our house to Philander Dagget’s, 284 holdin’ thousands and thousands and thousands of aligators, from them jest born, to them a hundred years old, from them the size of your little finger weighin’ a few ounces, to them big as elephants, weighin’ two tons.
But I told her I could worry along for years without aligators, I never seemed to hanker for ’em, I wouldn’t take ’em as a gift if I had to let ’em have the run of the house. Humbly things! though I spoze they hain’t to blame for their looks, or their temperses, which are fierce. And I didn’t go into the big animal house, thinkin’ I wuz so dog tired that I would go back to Bildad’s and come back the next day and see all the animals and birds and the hundreds of other shows I’d had to slight that day, enough to devour days of stiddy sight seein’. The Siege of Richmond, The Great Divide, Switzerland, Congress of Nations, Indian Village, The Orient, Bathin’ Pavilions, Japanese Tea Gardens, and etc.
I did want to see the Shimpanzee who duz everything but talk. And I thought mebby the reason he wuz so close-mouthed wuz because he hearn so much talkin’ he wuz sick on’t, as I wuz, and made a sample of himself. But if he did nobody follered it, no indeed! Why, 285 you jest spozen a hundred swarms of bees big as giants, with buzzes big accordin’, all a swarmin’ and a buzzin’, and you’ll git a little idee of the noise and tumult of Coney Island. But you won’t spozen’ fur enough, I don’t believe. Yes, I laid out to spend considerable time in Dreamland next day. But little did I think of what a day might bring forth, and have got it to think on like them that lose friends, “Oh why didn’t I do thus and so? And now it is too late to wait on ’em, and pay attention to ’em?” But I’m leadin’ a melancholy horse up to a mournin’ wagon, before the thills are on, so I’ll stop eppisodin’ and resoom forwards. Jest outside the gate of Dreamland I met Bildad, and he sez, “Have you found Josiah yet?”
“No,” I sez in despairin’ axents, “I hain’t seen hide nor hair on him.”
And he sez, “Mebby he’s gone in bathin’.”
“No,” I sez, “He took a bath in the wash-tub the night before he come here, and he hain’t a man that will wash oftener than he has to.”
Sez he, “Hundreds of folks take sand baths, lay in the sand and throw it at each other, cover themselves up in it.”