CHAPTER TEN
We Hear a Great Temperance Sermon, but Josiah Still Hankers for Coney Island
CHAPTER TEN
WE HEAR A GREAT TEMPERANCE SERMON, BUT JOSIAH STILL HANKERS FOR CONEY ISLAND
Ever since I had been to the Thousand Island Park, my mind had roamed onto that idee of the Tabernacle with a sort of or. It is a big impressive word and one calculated to impress a stranger and sojourner. And so when we made up our minds to attend to it I almost instinctively put on my best alpacky dress (London brown) and I also run a new ribbin into my braize veil and tied it round my bunnet so it would hang in graceful folds adown the left side of my frame, I also put on my black mitts and my mantilly with tabs; of course I carried my faithful umbrell.
I looked well. Faith had a bad headache, I guess the job of gittin’ that information into Mr. Pomper’s head had tuckered her out, so I and my pardner sot off alone. All the way there my mind wuz real riz up thinkin’ I wuz 166 goin’ to see sunthin’ very grand lookin’ and scriptural, and I said over and over to myself a number of times with deep respect and or, “Tabernacle! Tabernacle!”
Yes, I felt some as if I wuz the Queen of Sheba and Josiah wuz Solomon, though I might have knowed, my pardner lacked the first ingregient in Solomon’s nater, wisdom. And I probable wuzn’t so dressy as Miss Sheba, ’tennyrate I hadn’t no crown or septer, a brown straw bunnet and umbrell meetin’ my wants better, but not nigh so dashy lookin’. But my feelin’s all come from the name of the place we wuz bound for, and the patriarchical, Biblical past my mind wuz rovin’ round in. Yes, my mind wuz rousted up and runnin’ on the trimmin’s of the Ark and Temple. I thought like as not I should see purple curtains hung on shinin’ poles, jest so many cubits long and high, and gorgeous carpets to walk on and ornaments and fringes and tossels.