Antwerp, Düsseldorf, Cologne, how they kinder swim along in my mind as I think of ’em—picters, picters, church towers, bells, gardens, steeples, music, stained-glass winders, quiet seenery, grand, impressive ditto, big carriages, dorgs harnessed up as horses.
As we noticed the number of these latter, my companion begun to lay on plans agin. Sez he—
“Take our brindle, and she that wuz Submit Tewksbury’s yeller dorg—and she’d lend her in a minute—and what a team I could rig up with a little of Ury’s help. I could take you to meetin’ to Jonesville as easy as nothin’, and how uneek we would look drawed along by a brindle and yeller dorg-team. It will, perchance, inaugerate a new era in navigation in Jonesville, and dorg-teams will be in voge.
“What a sensation we will create amongst the Jonesvillians: you in your parasol and I in my dressin’-gown, mebby. What a uneek spectacle!”
“Yes,” sez I, coldly, “when you ketch me a-ridin’ in that way, Josiah Allen, it will indeed create a sensation, for I shall be no more. It will be when my corse is senseless and cold.”
“Oh, shaw! What comfort could I take then, Samantha? It wouldn’t look very well for me to be a-enjoyin’ myself a-swingin’ out in fashion then, and I couldn’t wear the dressin’-gown or the tossels, anyway. It beats all how you love to break up all my plans for astonishin’ the Jonesvillians. You know well enough that folks when they git back from European towers always act different—more riz up like, and reminescent, and astonishin’, and everything. And you frown down all my plans, every one on ’em”; and he sithed bitterly. But I wouldn’t gin in to him, for I felt that Samantha and a dorg-team wuz not synonomous terms; no, fur from it.
Wall, in Cologne I’d been glad to bought a hull bottle of cologne, but Josiah said to his mind there wuz nothin’ on earth so sweet as the smell of caraway.
I most always do up a little sprig on’t in my handkerchief when I go to meetin’, to kinder chirk me up in my head some as the minister and my mind are a-wanderin’ up from the 12thlies to the “Finally, my dear hearers.”
“But,” sez I, attacktin’ the weakest jint in his armor, “cologne is so stylish.”
“But,” sez he, and I couldn’t scold him for sayin’ it—sez he, “don’t you remember how the caraway grew amongst the roses in the old front yard to Mother Smith’s?” Sez he, “You had a sprig of caraway in your hand the very minute I asked you to be my bride—I had a little snip on’t in my pocket when I led you to the altar, and a big vase of the white blows kinder riz up above the June roses like a halo, right there on the altar.”