But Josiah took it as a tribute to our style, and he leaned back in perfect delight, and sez he, a-wavin’ his hand with a kind of hauty wave—
“Drive by Alameda!”
Come to find out the reasons he gin his orders wuz he’d heard Alameda talked about, and he thought she wuz a woman, and mebby a American, and he wanted to show off before her.
But it wuzn’t a woman. It wuz a pretty park, and we driv along and crost the river, and went through a long avenue of ellum trees each side on’t, and anon we found ourselves on top of a noble hill in front of a Monastery.
Here we rung the bell at a gate for admission, and a small grated winder wuz opened and a man’s face appeared with a dark-colored nightcap on.
He asked if there wuz wimmen in the party. If there wuz we couldn’t come in.
I guess he wuz fraxious, bein’ waked up sudden. I jedged from his nightcap. But little did I think it would have sech a effect on my pardner.
He could not at first comprehend the indignity offered to his beloved pardner. But the driver repeated it; sez he—
“The Friar says you can come in, but no woman could be admitted.”
Then I see the power of cast-iron devotion made harder by the hammers of Joy and Sorrer a-hammerin’ down on the anvil of Time. That noble but too hasty man riz right up in the vehicle and shook his fist at the man with the nightcap, and hollered out—