Wall, so far as exhaustion wuz concerned I felt that we wuz havin’ a success, for I wuz as tired as a dog from day to day, and tireder than any dogs I ever see from all appearance.
But Martin sed that we would visit Madrid before we left the country, for he sed that he wouldn’t want to be asked if he had been to the capital of Spain and be obliged to say no. Al Faizi spoke of wantin’ to see the Alhambra, and I myself, havin’ been introduced to it by Washington Irving and my boy, had a sort of a longin’ to explore its wonders. But Martin sed that he had studied the Alhambra exhaustively at Chicago, and he felt, seein’ he had got all the information that could be got on the subject, it wuz useless to prolong our trip by goin’ there.
Sez he, “If there was anything new to learn I would go, for it is my way to go to the very bottom of things in exploration or discovery; but,” sez he, “I spent over half an hour in the Alhambra in Chicago, and I have no more to learn.”
I had been in that place myself, and had got lost, and felt like a fool there. I remembered well how I roamed through them curous labrinths, and had been brought up standin’ in front of myself repeatedly, and had bowed to myself real polite, thinkin’ that I recognized some familar form from Jonesville.
And there it wuz myself, in one of them countless lookin’-glasses. I felt cheaper than dirt.
Sometimes I would think it wuz two or three somebody elses, and I’d wonder how so many other wimmen could look so much like me as these several ones did, a-appearin’ right up in front and on both sides of me.
Only I would always give up every time that there didn’t none on ’em look nigh so well as I did. They didn’t somehow have sech a noble look to ’em, and their clothes didn’t hang so well as mine did, and their bunnet strings wuz more rumpled up, and their front hair wuzn’t so smooth, and they looked fur more tired out than I ever looked, and bewildered like, and kinder wan.
Yes, I’d been through them labrinths. I had enough of Moorish palaces by the time I got out, a plenty.
And if, as Martin sed, there wuz nothin’ more to see in Grenada, I didn’t care a cent to go. And I thought more’n as like as not I should lose Josiah in a labrinth—lose him for good and all.
So I gin a willin’ consent to proceed onwards to Madrid. The children wuz willin’ to go anywhere, and so wuz Al Faizi, for, as he sed to me: