I have wished a hundred times I could have been there, and neighbored with him and Josephine, and kinder kep’ ’em together, and quelled him down some in his ambitious views—things would have been different, no doubt; I presoom she wouldn’t have died of a broken heart—years in dyin’, but so much the harder.
He wouldn’t have had to be shet up in a lonesome island a prisoner, and all Europe would have fared better.
But it wuzn’t to be—it wuzn’t to be.
Pa Smith at that time wuzn’t married, and I wuz—wall, I don’t really know where I wuz at that time, nor Josiah don’t know; it looked kinder dubersome and vague about my ever bein’ born at all, and things had to go on jest as they did.
Wall, as I have said heretofore, that gallery of the Louvre is full, full to overflowin’ of the richest treasures of art, as my riz-up brain and my four weary legs testify—my own two extremities and my Josiah’s pair on ’em.
Hisen ached like the toothache, so he sed.
He didn’t bear his weariness silently and oncomplainin’ly, as I tried to—no, with groanin’s that couldn’t be uttered hardly he kep’ by my side through them interminable galleries.
Adrian asked a sight of questions—a sight of ’em. And when I proposed to go to the Bois de Boulogne, my poor pardner asked me feelin’ly if in the name of the gracious Peter I wanted another boy a-traipsin’ at our heels a-askin’ enough questions to tire out a regiment of soldiers.
But I explained it all out to him, and we took considerable comfort there.
The place wuz more beautiful than tongue could tell. Jest as a French woman always looks better dressed up than an American or an English woman, and their cities more brilliant and beautiful, jest so are these woods fur more beautiful than Jonesville or New York woods.