“I’d like it first-rate,” sez he, “if I could be the 10. I’d like to shake some of the sins and foolishness out of Brother Gowdey and Deacon Henzy,” sez he, “and bring ’em into my way of thinkin’.”
“There it is!” sez I. “Intolerance, bigotry, persecution, how fresh they be to-day in the human heart! Jest as ready to spring up and act in 1895 as a thousand years ago.”
“Wall, I hain’t said I wuz a-goin’ to start it up agin,” sez he, kinder cross like; “I only spoke on’t.”
I expected trials when I sot out to take my pardner through Europe, and I wuzn’t dissapinted in it. But if it hadn’t been for his ambition for display, and his bein’ carried away by novelties, and his appetite, he would have acted real well. But, anyway, act or not, he’s the one man in the world for me, and visey versey.
But, as I wuz a-sayin’, the palaces of them old Doges rousted lots of emotions in my brain, and the fantoms of their victims seemed to hover round them old palaces as thick as the pigeons that come with a rush of wing down into the great square of St. Mark at jest two o’clock, where they are fed by order of the government.
The grand old Church of St. Mark interested me dretfully. It is built in the form of a Greek cross, with a big dome in the centre, and full, full to overflowin’ with glory of mosaic, precious stuns, picters, monuments, altars, pillars, colenades, gold, silver, and splendor of all sorts.
Josiah sez to me, “Our Jonesville meetin’-house wouldn’t show off much compared to this.”
But I wuz some consoled in this by thinkin’ that if our meetin’-house wuzn’t so gorgeous, there wuz jest as big a lack of beggars and poor people of all kinds a-hoverin’ on the outside on’t, and sez I—
“If they should sell off some of their costly things and try to improve the condition of these poor beggars, they would raise themselves as much as twenty-five cents in my estimation, and I d’no but more.”
And Josiah sez, “It is hard to make a rotten string stand up straight—it is hard to brace up laziness, and dissipation, and improvidence, and make anything on’t.”