Oh, dear me! oh, dear me suz!
Wall, I went through them streets, so many centuries buried and forgot, in a state of mind I can’t describe. It seemed some like goin’ through any city. The streets wuz middlin’ narrer, but the housen stood on each side; good roads wore down by the steps of the multitude. So wuz the fountains that stood on every hand; you could see where the lips of the public had wore ’em away. Palaces, little housen, shops, temples, amphitheatres. One house we went through looked as though it had been built yesterday for some rich American; it wuz over three hundred feet long and over a hundred feet broad, and all ornamented off beautiful with statutes and mosaics and things good enough for a Vanderbilt.
In some things the old inhabitants did better than they do now. They had sidewalks—pretty narrer, but fur better than none—and more facilities for gittin’ water. I wish the Italians used more now—they would feel as well agin for it, jest as Josiah duz when I can git him to use it free.
CHAPTER XXXII.
FASHIONABLE WATERING-PLACES.
Mr. Goldwind, one of Martin’s business rivals.
Wall, in the streets of Naples Martin met a man that he knew at home—a man most as rich as Martin—a Mr. Goldwind, a sort of a rival in business, I guess, and he had jest been travellin’ through Spain.
And what should P. Martyn Smythe do but proclaim it to us that evenin’ that we wuz to go to Spain.
I hearn him say to Alice—“It will be asked of me if we have been there. Gertrude Goldwind will ask you if you have been there. Alice, we must be able to say ‘Yes.’ So we will start immegiately. I have got to go back to Paris anyway on important business.”