“Samantha, wouldn’t it be uneek for you and me to climb up the steps of the Jonesville meetin’-house a-sayin’ over some hymn, or one of the Sams? And you could take your mother’s gold string of beads, and I could buy a string of glass ones for two or three cents, or I could make a string with a little of Ury’s help—whittle ’em out of wood. And how impressive it would be! how it would attract attention to us! how foreign it would look, and show plain how travelled and cultivated we wuz! You know, folks that come home from Europe always bring lots of strange ways with ’em and airs; and this would be one of the most uneekest and impressive that wuz ever brung into Jonesville or America.”
Sez I, “Gin up that idee to once, Josiah Allen, for I will never jine in with it in the world. The idee!” sez I, “that you and me, with our age and our rumatiz, should go a-creepin’ up on our knees into the meetin’-house. Why, to say nothin’ of spilein’ our clothes, our knee-pans wouldn’t be good for nothin’ after one venter.” Sez I, “The pans would be perfectly useless forever afterwards, and,” sez I, “what good would it do? The aid we invoke hain’t bought with beads. The God we worship hain’t reached by creepin’ up a pair of stairs; He is right with us to the foot of the stairs or anywhere. Give up the idee immegiately and to once.”
He acted real fraxious, but I drawed his attention off, and mebby he’ll forgit it.
The beauty of Naples has been sed and sung in so many different words and tunes that it don’t need the pen or voice of a Samantha, specially as I hain’t much of a singer, nor wuzn’t even in my young days, so I will be content with singin’ to myself at times a rapt sort of a soul song, as I look back on the enchantin’ beauty of the Bay of Naples.
Beautiful for situation indeed is Naples! clusterin’ round the clear, blue waters, that sweep round in a sort of a crescent.
The city occupies the centre—the inside on’t, little villages and tree-embowered castles and villas a-linin’ the shores on each side, and on the off side, addin’ the one touch of mystery that gives a vivid but dark charm to the picter, rises Mount Vesuvius, a-standin’ there all the time as if protestin’ aginst the poor wisdom of the ages.
Who knows what’s a-goin’ on in her insides? Who knows what she’s mad about? Who knows what makes her act so puggicky, and every now and then bust out into blood-red indignation, that carries death and ruin all round her? Queer, hain’t it?
Queer, that havin’ in mind jest what she’s done and is liable to do any time agin, that men and wimmen go on, gay and happy, and lean up aginst her old feet, and nestle down in her shadder, and build homes of love there, liable any minute to be swep’ away by her red-hot wrath!
Passin’ strange! jest as singular as it is to think all of us in Jonesville and the world at large will build fair homes of love and content, and anchor ’em to livin’ hearts alone, in the same world where Death is.
But to resoom. My recollections of this city, like so many others, is one vast paneramy, framed in by the blue Mediterranean, and ornamented on top by Vesuvius, of picter galleries, tall palaces, broad avenues, narrer streets, in which we see many seens that in Jonesville is kep’ under cover, and stately castles—sights and sights of castles, and immense ones; seems as if they wuz immenser and more numerous than in any other city I see on my tower, and fountains, and aqueducts, and churches, and colleges, and theatres, and operas, etc., etc., etc. Plenty of chances for bein’ good, and plenty of modes of recreations, the Neapolitans have, and they seem to take advantage on ’em all. But it seemed as if I couldn’t never forgit that tall, warnin’ figger that looms up forever in the background. But, then, agin, mebby I should; I forgit the graveyard in Jonesville lots of times, though I ride by it every Sunday to meetin’.