Part 17 (1/2)
I told him there wuz nothin' so beautiful as love. ”No, nor nothin' that makes folk act so like pesky fools, they don't act as though they knew putty.”
I hated such oncongenial idees. But couldn't deny they wuz spooney, for they wuz, not a small teaspoon but a big silver dinner spoon, and I believe it will last. Not the outward form of the spoon, oh, no, that would be too wearisome to the world and themselves, but the precious metal that forms it. Love is the greatest thing in the world.
Blandina had always lived in a back place and had never heard a graphophone, so bein' kinder tired, and bein' nigh a place where they had one, we went in at her request and sot for quite a spell.
And we heard voices and songs gay and sad, marches and melodies, loftiest oratory, maddest mirth and profoundest feeling all comin' out of a little square box, what a idee!
What a man that Edison is. It seems always like watchin' the wonderful onseen secrets of nater, like seein' the mortal made immortal to think that voices we've loved and mourned as they wuz hushed in the last stillness can sound out agin, breakin' our hearts with the same old echoes, the same old sweetness of the voice we loved and lost, talkin' in mortal words and axents to us when they've long, long ago learnt the immortal language, beheld the immortal seens.
Why Cleopatra's voice might have been stored up as she made love to Antony, or the voice of the relation on her own side, old Mr. Pharo himself orderin' the Hebrews to git out of his premises, and their back talk about plaguin' him till he wuz willin' they should go.
Why even Eve scoldin' Adam about slackness in gittin' kindlin' wood or her pardner complainin' about her wastefulness and extravagance in usin' so many fig leaves for her fall suit. Oh, how nateral, how nateral that would sound to wimmen.
Or old Noah's voice as he stood in the Ark door bagonin and shoutin' to the animals to walk in male and female. Or his voice kinder soothin' and patronizin' tellin' the female dove to go out and s.h.i.+rk round on the water and see if it wuz safe for the males in the party to go out. Oh, how nateral that would sound to wimmen, soundin' out through the centuries.
And on and on down the long years, Job's voice complainin' of the bitter comfort of his friend's familiar talk. He'd stood losin' family and fortune and had stood biles but the seven days' visitation and the ”I told-you-sos” and the advice of well wishers wuz too much for him.
And Solomon's talk to Miss Sheba and hem to him. And Daniel's talk by the deep waters, and mebby the Great Voice that said to him:
”Understand!”
And brave Queen Esther's voice facin' her enemies and a drunken king, and sweet Ruth's, and Paul's incomparable words, and St. John's. Or the lofty voices of the Patriot fathers as they n.o.bly shrieked for freedom as they threw their pardner's tea overboard, while they hung onto their whiskey and tobacco that wuz taxed twice as high.
Oh, how their impa.s.sioned cries for liberty, and how they would willin'ly sacrifice their wives favorite beveridge ruther than to yield to the tyrant. How nateral, how nateral them n.o.ble yells would sound to their descendant females, the Daughters of the Revolution, and all the rest. What would it be for us all to hear them axents, and it could have been done if Edison had been born sooner and that little box had been round.
I didn't wonder that Blandina wuz enthused, it is enough to enthuse anybody that never has hearn it, she said she laid out to go every day three or four times a day and stay jest as long as she could.
One of the most remarkable sights we see on the Pike wuz Jim Key, a horse that is valued at a hundred thousand dollars, who travels in his own private car. A horse that can read and write, spell, understand mathematics, go to the post office, git mail from any box, give chapter and verse of Bible text where the horse is mentioned, uses the telephone, and is so intelligent you expect him to break out in oratory any time.
Josiah wuz spell bound here, I could hardly tear him away. And sez he:
”The first thing I do when I go home will be to send the colt to the deestrick school.”
I told him the teacher wouldn't want him whinnerin' round amongst her scholars, and mebby gallopin' and snortin' round the schoolroom.
But he wuz as firm as adamant in his idee. And Id'no what I shall do about it. But spoze the trustees will have to head him off.
Josiah wanted to go and see the Fire Fighters, he said he thought he could git some idees to tell the brethren that wuz in the fire company, and Blandina and I wanted to see the Esquimeaux Village. We went on, Josiah promisin' to meet us there. And as we went I said:
”I've sung for years about Greenland's icy mountains, but never spozed I should set my eyes on 'em.” For there towerin' up to the skies wuz immense ice mountains peaked and desolate lookin', and inside it looked worse yet. A bare snowy place broken by cold lookin' water dotted with ice islands and surrounded by tall ice peaks. I don't spoze it wuz real ice and snow, but looked like it.
And there wuz reindeers. .h.i.tched to sleds, and the low round huts of the natives lookin' jest like the pictures in our old Gography. And there wuz some white bears natural as life, and dog teams haulin' sledges, toiling up the steep cliffs. .h.i.tched tantrum. The natives wuz queer lookin' little creeters, dark complexioned, dressed in furs and thick costooms. But little Nancy Columbus born at the World's Fair, Chicago, wuz cute as she could be.
There wuz a big street show at the other end of the Pike and this place wuz most deserted by sight-seers, and Blandina and I sot down on a bench by the side of one of these little housen to rest. As we did so we hearn the voice of oratory comin' from the other side, where some Esquimeaux seemed to be gathered with open mouths and wonderin' linements. The orator seemed to be finis.h.i.+n' his address in words as follers:
”Let us not permit ourselves to be spiritually incapacitated by quandaries regarding the control of earthly matter. Let us circ.u.mnavigate the ethereal realms of unexplored ether, quander the unquanderable until the everlastin' stupendiousness of the whyness of the what shall dawn on the enraptured vision, and precipitate the effulgent tissues of ethereal matter in one glorious pulchritude of transcendentalism.”
As the speaker paused for needed breath Blandina clasped her hands and sithed out, ”Oh, what glorious eloquence! I never hearn anything like it!”
And I sez, ”I never did but once, I know that voice, though I hain't hearn it for twenty years; that is Prof. Aspire Todd.” And I thought to myself, he is practicin' over a speech, and thought the Esquimeaux would stand it better than tribes less humble and good natered. And so it turned out; he hoped he would be invited to speak at a scientific meetin' to take place in Festival Hall in a day or two, and bein' to the Inside Inn he'd tried to orate his speech in his own room, but it is built so shammy you can hear things from one end to the other, and they threatened him with horse whippin' on one side and lynchin' on the other, and bein' drove to it he tried it on the Esquimeauxs. They stood it pretty well, though I noticed one or two on 'em weepin' bitterly, not knowin' what ailed 'em.