Samantha at Saratoga [28]
and colors. And oh! what a immense display of parasols; why no parasol store in the land could begin with what I see there. I can truly say that I thought I knew somethin' about parasols;, havin' owned 3 different ones in the course of my life, and havin' one covered over. I thought I knew somethin' of their nater and habits, which is a good deal, so I had always s'posed, like a umbrell's. But good land! I gin up that I knew them not, nor never had. Why anybody could learn more on 'em through one jerney down that street, than from a hull lifetime in Jonesville. Truly travel is very upliftin' and openin' and spreadin' out to the mind, both in parasols and human nater. Wall, them 2 masses over our heads wuz 2, then the one in which we wuz a strugglin' and the one opposite to it made 4. For anybody with any pretence to learnin' knows that twice 2 is 4. And then in the middle of the broad street was a bigger mass of chariots and horsemen, and carts and carriages, and great buggies and little ones, and big loads of barrels, and big loads of ladies, and then a load of wood, and then a load of hay, and then a pair of young folks pretty as a picture. And then came some high big coaches as big as our spare bedroom, and as high as the roof on our horse barn, with six horses hitched to e'm, all runnin' over on top with men; and wimmen, and children, and parasols, and giggles, and ha ha's. And a man wuz up behind a soundin' out on a trumpet, a dretful sort of a high, sweet note, not dwindlin' down to the end as some music duz, but kinder crinklin' round and endin' up in the air every time. Josiah wuz dretful took with it and he told me in confidence that he laid out when he got home to buy a trumpet and blow out jest them strains every time he went into Jonesville or out of it. He said it would sound so sort a warlike and impressive. I expostulated aginst the idee. But sez he, "You'll enjoy it when you get used to it." "Never!" sez I. "Yes you will," sez he, "and while I live I lay out that you shall have advantages, and shall enjoy things new and uneek." "Yes," sez I feelin'ly, "I expect to, Josiah Allen, as long as I live with you." And I sithed. But I had little time to enjoy even sithin', for oh! the crowd that wuz a pressin' onto us and surroundin' us on every side, some on 'em curius and strange lookin', some on 'em beautiful and grand. Pretty young girls lookin' sweet enough to kiss, and right behind 'em a Chinese man with a long dress, and wooden shoes, and his hair in a long braid behind, and his eyes sot in sideways. And then would come on a hull lot of wimmen in dresses ev'ry color of the rainbow, and some men. Then a few childern, lookin' sweet as roses, with their mothers a pushin' the little carts ahead on 'em. And if you'll believe it, I don't s'pose you will, but it is true, that lots of black ma's had childern jest as white as snow, and pretty as rosebuds, took after their fathers I s'pose. But I don't believe in a mixin' of the races. And when I see 'em a kissin' the pretty babys, I begun to muse a very little on the feelin's of the indignent South, at havin' a colered girl set in the same car with 'em, or on a bench in the same school room. I mewsed on how they held the white forms clost to their black breasts at birth, and in the hour of death -- the black lips pressed to the white cheeks and lips, in both cases. And all the way between life and death they mingle clost as they can, some in some cases like the hill of knowledge. Then the contact is too clost, when they sot out to climb up by 'em. Truly there are deep conundrums and strange ones, all along through life; though the white man may be, and is, cleer up out of his way, on the sunshiny brow of the hill, and the black man at the foot, way down amongst the shadows and darkness of the low grounds. They don't come very nigh each other. But the arms that have felt the clasp and the lips that have felt the kisses of that very same black climber all through life, moves 'em and shouts 'em to "go down," to "go back," "The contact is getting