So the next day we started for Paris.
As I have sed heretofore, Martin wuz a very enthusiastick and ambitious traveller; that is, he wanted to tell what he’d seen in foreign lands, whether he’d seen ’em or not; but he wuz ambitious to have his body trailed through ’em. And it made it very good and instructive for me, though wearisome, for, of course, the more you see, the more you know, and he had to take the hull circus with him wherever he went. And when he promulgated the wild idee that we wuz to go to Spain, I acquiesced immegiately and to once, and after a private interview I held with Josiah, he did.
Sez Martin—“We won’t make a long stay there; but we will go over the Pyrenees anyway, and step onto the soil; and when we go back to America it can’t be said by any one that we did not see Spain.”
Oh, how different folkses key-notes is! Now, the key-note to his character wuz—what would folks say?—the outside of the platter; while, as for me, my key-note wuz—what I could see and learn, and what wuz inside of the platter. And that wuz Al Faizi’s key-note, only his key wuz stronger and deeper even than mine. Josiah and the children had their own keys and notes, which it is needless to peticularize.
Wall, I had become some acquainted with Spain through my friend, Washington Irving, and Mr. Bancroft, and then I wuz quite familar with its literature. I had learned at a early age one of its poems, runnin’ thus:
“When it rains,
Do as they do in Spain—
Let it rain.”
I had often hearn and repeated this national epick to my relief and consolation on stormy days. And though I felt that our trip bid fair to be a hasty and sweepin’ one, yet I felt that if I could jest stand on the top of the Pyrenees, and look down into the land, I would like it, even if I did not step my foot into it.
So, after stayin’ a short time in Paris—for Martin to do his errents there, I spoze—we sot sail for Spain, and the first night come to the river Garonne, and acrost the long bridge into Bordeaux.