But I see that here, too, wuz a picter that no artist could reproduce, and so it wuz in every winder that you could look out of. A green, velvety lawn a hundred feet wide and over five hundred long, bordered by most beautiful colored flowers, and out of another winder you could see the velvety slopes, with walks and river and bridge, and way off the noble trees and terraces, one risin’ above another, all full of beautiful plants and shrubs. And in the centre from the top down, hundreds of feet, wuz a great flight of stun steps, thirty feet wide, down which flows and sparkles a sheet of water, reflectin’ in its mirror-like surface all the white statutes on its margin, till it reaches the edge of the broad gravel walk, when it disapears right down into the earth and flows off in some curous, underground way to the river.
Josiah wuz all rousted up when he see this, and, as is the way of my dear, ardent-souled companion, he tore a page out of his account-book, and begun to make calculations on’t.
And I sez with a sithe—“What are you a-figgerin’ on now, Josiah Allen?”
“Oh! I’m plottin’ out a lovely addition to the beauty of our home, Samantha—I’m a-plannin’ sunthin’ so uneek and fascinatin’ that it will make the Jonesvillians open their eyes in astonishment and or.”
“What is it?” sez I.
“I’m a-plannin’ on how we can have a waterfall on our back doorsteps.” Sez he, “I hain’t seen anything so perfectly beautiful and strikin’ as this sence I come to the Old Country, and we can have one jest as well as not. You know our back steps are quite high, and how beautiful they would look with the sparklin’ water flowin’ down ’em—how refreshin’ it would be in hot weather to have a waterfall right on your own doorsteps, and set in the open back door, right on its banks, as it were, and hear the murmur of the water, and see it a-glidin’ down towards the smoke-house. We might have it dissapear,” sez he, “between the smoke-house and the ash-barrel.”
Josiah’s home-made waterfall.
“Where would you git your water?” sez I coldly.
“Wall,” sez he, a-holdin’ up the paper with quite a lot of figgers and marks on it, “I figgered it out that we might have a pipe go from the kitchen pump, cut a little hole in the thrasholt to let it go in, and there you would be.”