“What if the light should blow out, as I’ve seen so many lights do in my day, and we should be doomed to forever more wander here, and die at last fur from Jonesville, and the light of day. But as I whispered to Josiah—
“We shall die together at least, which will be a comfort.”
He, too, felt the pathos and danger of the seen, and sez he—
“Hurry up, or the guide will be out of sight!” and he added almost tenderly, “You’re too fat, Samantha, to take many sech trips.”
And I sez, “Wall, I don’t expect to travel habitually under the ground.”
And we had some words. It madded me considerable to be twitted of my heft both on top of the ground and in the bowels of the earth, till I recollected where I wuz and what had once gone on here; then a deep or took holt on me, and I sez to myself—
“What must the Christians have felt who fled here for safety from persecution and death! What did the saints and martyrs think on as they jined in their hymns of praise and victory? A few pounds of flesh, more or less, what would they have thought on’t, or the teasin’ words of their pardners? No, lions and tigers and the headsman’s axe wuz what wuz before their eyes, and, what wuz worse, before the eyes of ’em they loved best.”
Endless rooms, so it seemed to me, we went through, narrer passages and chambers, arched overhead, and the walls lined, some on ’em with dead bodies. Mummies, tombs, picters, windin’ ways, Josiah, Martin, torches—them wuz the idees that come back to me as I think on’t now.
Wall, Josiah wuz dretful impressed with the Holy Staircase, up which the members of the meetin’-house went on their knees, a-sayin’ their prayers as they went, and it wuz a impressive sight to look way up the stairs and see the bretheren and sistern a-creepin’ up and a-fingerin’ their strings of beads and a-prayin’ to the Virgin Mary or some other saint or ’postle, mebby.
And here I had another trial with my dear, but too ardent and impressible pardner. He looked on in deep thought for anon or a little longer, and then he sez—