Leavin’ Japan, I told Josiah I guessed we would not go to Denmark, and he said he might live through it, and he might not, he was so near starved. But he hadn’t hardly got into that country when all of a sudden he laid holt of me and pulled me out one side, and says he:
“Look out my dear Samantha, or you’ll git hurt.”
I looked up and I was most startled for a minute myself, for a man stood there holdin’ a great stun over his head, a lookin’ down as if he was a goin’ to throw it right at our heads. But in a minute I says, “It is a statute, Josiah, it wont hurt us.”
And he cooled down; he hadn’t called me “dear Samantha” before, for over fourteen years; but truly danger is a blister that draws love to the outside. He almost worships me, but like other married men, he conceals it a good deal of the time. His affectionate mean had softened up my own feelins too, so I didn’t stay to Denmark only jest long enough to see some very beautiful crockery, and a large collection of exceedinly curious curiosities from Greenland, and then Josiah and me (at his request) went and took a lunch at a little tarvern right in the buildin’.
I felt kinder disappointed about not stayin’ no longer in Denmark, on account of Hamlet (he come from that neighborhood, you know) and I always did think so much of him, and Ophelia too. I have often heerd Thomas J. read about ’em; and I’ve always thought if they had been let alone they would have done well, for she seemed to think everything of him, and he of her. I got to thinkin’ over her affection and her disappointment while I was eatin’ my dinner. Thinks’es I, love is too sacred and holy a emotion to be dickered and fooled with; it is a great emotion, and ort to be treated greatly and reverently; but their haint a single emotion in the hull line of emotions that is so meddled and fooled round with as this is. Folks that have it seem to be ashamed of it, and other folks make fun of ’em for havin’ it. Curious! you haint ashamed of havin’ gratitude, or pity, or generosity in your heart, and other folks don’t make light of you for havin’ ’em; but when it comes to love, which is the holiest of all, the shadder of the Infinite, the symbol of all that is heavenly and glorious, the brightest reflection we catch on earth of the Divine Nature, folks giggle at it and snicker; curious, very! But I always felt sorry for Ophelia and Hamlet.