“Wall, I knew there would be where you would want to go.” And he drove on at a good jog. But no better jog than we had been a goin’ on.
Wall the weather wuz delightful. It wuz soft and balmy. And my feelin’s towered my pardner (owin’ to his linement) wuz soft and balmy as the air. And so we moved onwards, past the home of one who wuz true to his country, when all round him wuz false, who governed his state wisely and well, held the lines firm, when she wuz balky, and would have been glad to take the lines in her teeth and run away onto ruin; past the big grand house of him who carried a piece of our American justice way off into Egypt and carried it firm and square too right there in the dark. I s’pose it is dark. I have always hearn about its bein’ as dark as Egypt. Wall, anyway he is a good lookin’ man. They both on ’em are and Josiah admitted it - after some words.
Wall anon, or perhaps a little after, we came to where we could see the face of Beautiful Saratoga Lake, layin’ a smilin’ up into the skies. A little white cloud wuz a restin’ up on the top of the tree-covered mountain that riz up on one side of the lake, and I felt that it might be the shadow form of the sacred dove Saderrosseros a broodin’ down over the waters she loved.
That she loved still, though another race wuz a bathin’ their weary forwards in the tide. And I wondered as I looked down on it, whether the great heart of the water wuz constant; if it ever heaved up into deep sithes a thinkin’ of the one who had passed away, of them who once rested lightly on her bosem, bathed their dark forwards and read the meanin’ of the heavens, in the moon and stars reflected there.
I don’t know as she remembered ’em, and Josiah don’t. But I know as we stood there, a lookin’ down on her, the lake seemed to give a sort of a sithe and a shiver kind a run over her, not a cold shiver exactly, but a sort of a shinin’, glorified shiver. I see it a comin’ from way out on the lake and it swept and sort a shivered on clean to the shore and melted away there at our feet. Mebby it wuz a sort o’ sithe, and mebby agin it wuzn’t.
I guess it felt that it wuz all right, that a fairer race had brought fairer customs and habits of thoughts, and the change wuz not a bad one. I guess she looked forward to the time when a still grander race should look down into her shinin’ face, a race of free men, and free wimmen; sons and daughters of God, who should hold their birthright so grandly and nobly that they will look back upon the people of to-day, as we look back upon the dark sons and daughters of the forest, in pity and dolor.
I guess she thought it wuz all right. Any way she acted as if she did. She looked real sort o’ serene and calm as we left her, and sort o’ prophetic too, and glowin’.
Wall, we went by a long first rate lookin’ sort of a tarven, I guess. It wuz a kind of a dark red color, and dretfully flowered off in wood - red wood. And there we see standin’ near the house, a great big round sort of a buildin’, and my Josiah sez,
“There! that is a buildin’ I like the looks on. That is a barn I like; built perfectly round. That is sunthin’ uneek. I’ll have a barn like that if I live. I fairly love that barn.” And he stopped the horse stun still to look at it.
And I sez in sort o’ cool tones, not entirely cold, but coolish: “What under the sun do you want with a round barn? And you don’t need another one.”