Samantha at the World's Fair

by Marietta Holley

"What be you a-doin', Josiah Allen, rigged up as you be in the middle of the night, with the lights all a-burnin'?"

For every gas jet in the room was a-blazin' high.

Sez he, "I am posin' for a statute, Samantha."

And come to look closter, I see he had took off the blanket and bedspread and had swathed 'em round his form some like a toga.

And I see it wuz them that he wuz apostrofizin' and orderin' to lay down in folds and fall graceful.

And somehow the idee of his takin' the bedclothes offen me seemed to mad me about as much as his foolishness and vanity did.

And sez I, "Do you take off them bedclothes offen you, and put 'em back agin, and come to bed!"

But he didn't heed me, he went on with his vain doin's and actin'.

"I am impersonatin' Apollo!" sez he, a-layin' his head onto one side and a-lookin' at me over his shoulder in a kind of a languishin' way.

Sez he, a-liftin' his heel, and holdin' it up a little ways, "I did think I would be Mercury, but I hadn't any wing handy for my off heel. I would be strikin' as Mercury," sez he, "but I think I would be at my best as Apollo. What do you think I had better be, Samantha?"