Sez I, “It would be a lot of fun to set down in a lot of burdocks and mullin full of dirt; and what would happen when Deacon Small driv his big herd of cows by? You know they always will go a-prancin’ and a-kickin’ up the dust and a-actin’ because he wants ’em to eat the grass along the side of the road.
“How would you like to have the table overturned by his critters, and you prostrated by a kick in the stumick as you tried vainly to protect the teapot? How would you like to have that Jersey entangle his huffs in the tossels of your dressin’-gown, and drag you at his heels?” sez I.
“And who’d bring the food out there and bear it in agin? And if you think I’m a-goin’ to learn the accordeon at my age and with my rumatiz, you’re mistakened.”
He see it wuzn’t feasible, but he wouldn’t gin in.
He drawed my attention off by pintin’ down the magnificent vista of broad avenues, three hundred feet wide, smooth as glass, and full of gay vehicles, and beyend, risin’ up like a dream of beauty and grandeur and strength, the great Arch d’Etoile.
This can never be described by Josiah or me; it must be seen to be appreciated. It is the grandest monument Napoleon has left, and cost over two millions of dollars.
But as you go on you see fountains and columns and gardens and arches and booths and groves and singers and amusements of all kinds for the people, and everything else that is beautiful and impressive and etc., etc., etc., etc.
The Place Vendôme, where memories of the great king-maker hover round the tall columns that picters out his grand, melancholy career; the Tuileries and the Louvre.
How be I a-goin’ to make the public and Betsy Slimpsey git any idee of them palaces, adorned with all that is most beautiful in art and sculpter, and that cover sixty acres of ground!
Mebby I could gin Drusilly Henzy a little idee on’t, for that is jest the number of acres of solid ground that fell onto ’em from her father.