Wall, when the time come for me to leave France I felt bad, for besides all the reasons I have named, lots of thoughts hovered over the land and made it dretful interestin’ to me.
Victor Hugo, brave old exile, trompled on, but like a rich flower, the tromplin’ brought out their rarest odor.
Who knows whether we should ever had “Les Miserables” if he had stayed to home and been made much on?
Mebby the sentences of that incomparable book, that stun our minds and hearts, like the quick, sharp echoes of artillery at sea—mebby they would have been longer drawed out, and less apt to strike the mark, if he hadn’t been sent into exile.
And Josephine, and Napoleon, and Louis, and Eugenie, and the poor young Prince Louis—memories of all on ’em jest walked up and down the bright, beautiful streets with me, and cast a sort of a melancholy shadder on the brightness, some like the soft, deep shadders of a cypress-tree on a clean flower-bed.
Yes, I had emotions enough while I wuz in France, if that wuz all—I didn’t suffer for them—not at all.
Martin, from the first to the last, through every country we visited, drawed up comparisons between ’em and America—to the great advantage to America.
He boasted over our country on our tower as eloquent as a Fourth of July oriter ever did from the wilds back of Loontown.
I hated to hear him callin’ every other country all to nort, and told him so. And in the cause of Duty I told him of several things these countries went ahead of ourn in; but he waved ’em off, and sez he, with a dignified sort of scorn:
“Bring up one, if you can.”