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Sometimes a patient Chinaman, flappin' of the flies with his pigtail, will industrusly manufacture that same per schedule out of common, ordinary lead, and, by exercisin' the art of gildin', almost whip-saw people by the name of Scraggs, if so it hadn't 'a' been their gardeen angel moved 'em to try a sample with the edge of a knife. "Was I warned?
Truly, I felt that I had seen enough of paint and gildin' to last me through a long life, and it did seem such a treat to me to see a board ag'in, jest a plain rough bass-wood board, and some stuns a lyin' in the road, and some deep tall grass that you had to sort a wade through. Miss Flamm seemed to enjoy it some down there, though she spoke of the dog, which she had left up with her relatives.
Wall, after we left the Transportation Buildin', sez Josiah, "I am dead sick of grandeur, and palaces 30 and 40 acres big, and gildin', and arches, and pillars, and iron." Sez he, "I would give a cent this minute to see our sugar house, and if I could see Sam Widrig's hovel, where he keeps his sheep, and our old log milk house, I'd be willin' to give a dollar bill."
We would always lay our plans in the mornin', and that mornin' I said, "I would love to tackle the Agricultural Buildin'." And Josiah gin his willin' consent. He said, "After so much gildin' and orniments, he would love to look at a potato, or a rutabagy, or a cowcumber." And I sez, "If you lay out to git rid of seein' orniments, you had better not stir out of your tracks."
They orniment the high front of their houses with the paint, the gildin', the fashion, and the show of enormous wealth, and while the crowd of fashion-seekers and fortune-hunters pour in and out of the lofty doorway they set out on the back stoop a groanin' and a sithin' at the cares and sleepless anxietes of their big wealth, and then they git up and go down street and try their best to heap up more treasure to groan over.
You know there is so much orniment and gildin' and art in the landscape and folks, that mebby they might forget the great mother of us all, that is, right in the thickest of the crowd they might, but they have only to take these few steps and they will see Ma Nater with her every-day dress on, not fixed up a mite. And I s'pose she looks good to 'em.
Knowin' that, helps it a lot, an' its yieldin' up good food helps it more. The sun is gildin' the trees, an' the bushes an' the mud an' the water a heap, an' all them things don't hurt my eyes when they linger on 'em." "Jim is turnin' into a poet," said the shiftless one, "but I reckon he hez cause. I'm gittin' to feel 'bout the swamp jest ez he does. It's a splendid place, jest full o' beauty!"
One's arm gets plaguy tired, that's a fact. I often think of a lesson I larnt Jehiel Quirk once, for lettin' his tongue outrun his good manners. "I was down to Rhode Island one summer to larn gildin' and bronzin', so as to give the finishin' touch to my clocks. Well, the folks elected me a hog-reave, jist to poke fun at me, and Mr. Jehiel, a bean pole of a lawyer, was at the bottom of it.
I felt I'd seen too many ornaments, I most knowed I should never hanker agin for a minaret or a mosque, or a steeple or a crescent, or a wavin' banner, or gildin', I felt that my heart would never more long and pine for water to squirt up in the air or drizzle down three or four hundred feet, nor for statutes or peaks or pillers.
But seein' that I still looked dubersome he sez, "I don't feel very rugged this mornin' and I dread the crowded car; Id'no but I should faint away in 'em if I sot out." That of course settled the matter. As his anxious chaperone I consented to the project and he went and got the showiest one he could find. He didn't look for character or stability, only for gildin' and red paint.
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