[¹] From “Sweet Cicely.” Permission of Funk & Wagnalls.
ND so we wended our way down the broad, beautiful streets towards the White House. Handsomer streets I never see. I had thought Jonesville streets wus middlin’ handsome and roomy. Why, two double wagons can go by each other with perfect safety, right in front of the grocery-stores, where there is lots of boxes too; and wimmen can be a-walkin’ there too at the same time, hefty ones.
But, good land! loads of hay could pass each other here, and droves of dromedaries, and camels, and not touch each other, and then there would be lots of room for men and wimmen, and for wagons to rumble, and perioguers to float up and down—if perioguers could sail on dry land.
Roomier, handsomer, well-shadeder streets I never want to see, nor don’t expect to. Why Jonesville streets are like tape compared with ’em; and Loontown and Toad Holler, they are like thread, No. 50 (allegory).
Bub Smith wus well acquainted with the President’s hired man, so he let us in without parlay.
I don’t believe in talkin’ big as a general thing. But think’es I, Here I be, a-holdin’ up the dignity of Jonesville: and here I be, on a deep, heart-searchin’ errent to the Nation. So I said, in words and axents a good deal like them I have read of in “Children of the Abbey” and “Charlotte Temple,”—
“Is the President of the United States within?”
He said he was, but said sunthin’ about his not receiving calls in the mornings.
But I says in a very polite way,—for I like to put folks at their ease, presidents or peddlers or anything,—