“’Tain’t that kind of animile I mean. I mean the kind they eat—in Coney Island.”
“Do they eat dogs in Coney Island?” I asks in a faint voice.
“Yes,” sez he.
“And would you eat enny on’t?”
“Why not?” sez he.
“Why not?” I cries regainin’ my voice to once. “Josiah Allen, have you became a canibal like them as lives in heathen lands and welcomes civilized folks with open mouths?”
“Oh,” sez he, “’tain’t nothin’ like that. These dogs hain’t made o’ people. No, they air made from sassiges and cooked in front of 46 a open grate fire. They call ’em hot dogs and Serenus sez—”
I didn’t gin him no chance to tell what Serenus sez. I sez many things to him there and then that wuz calculated to make him forgit Coney Island for awhile.
But to resoom forwards. We went by a big castle that wuz built up on a hill on a island of considerable size with quite a grove of trees on it. It wuz a noble, gray stun castle, with high towers and pinnacles shinin’ up toward the blue sky—Castle Rest, its name wuz, and I thought most probable anybody could rest there first rate. The one that built it and the one it wuz built for, had gone up into another castle to rest, the great Castle of Rest, whose walls can’t be moved by any earthly shock. A good little mother it wuz built for, a hard-workin’, patient, tired-out little mother, who wuz left with a house full of boys, and not much in the house, only boys. How she worked and toiled to keep ’em comfortable and git ’em headed right, washin’, cookin’, makin’, and mendin’; learnin’ ’em truthfulness, honesty, and industry with their letters; teachin’ ’em the multiplication table and the commandments; trimmin’ off their childish faults, same 47 as she did their hair; clippin’ ’em off with her own anxious lovin’ hands. Mebby puttin’ a bowl on their heads and cuttin’ round it, or else shinglin’ ’em. But ’tennyrate doin’ her best for them, soul and body, till she got ’em headed right. Some on ’em givin’ their hull lives to help men’s souls, lovin’ this old world mebby for their ma’s sake, because it held so many other good wimmen; for they jest about worshipped her all on ’em. And one of her boys, while the rest of ’em wuz helpin’ men and wimmen to build up better lives, he wuz buildin’ up his creed of helpfulness and improvement in bricks and mortar, tryin’ to do good, there hain’t a doubt on’t.
Mebby them walls didn’t stand so firm as the others did, and tottled more now and then. Strange, hain’t it, that solid bricks and stuns, that you feel and see, are less endurin’ and firm than the things you can’t see—changed lives, faith, hope, charity, love to God, good-will to man, and that whiter ideals and loftier aims and desires may tower up higher than any chimbly that ever belched out smoke.