Bowls of rice wuz passed round last. Between the courses we had the best tea I ever tasted of; only a few of the first leaves that open on the tea plant are used for this kind of tea, and a big field would be gone over for a pound of it. After it is cured it is flavored with the tea blossom. I had spozed I had made good tea to home on my own hot water tank, and drinked it, but I gin up that I had never tasted tea before.
On our way home we went through the Street of Benevolence and I wuz ashamed to run Miss Meechim in my mind.
They name their streets real funny; one street is called Everlasting Love, or it means that in our language, and there is Refreshing Breezes, Reposing Dragons, Honest Gain, Thousand Grandsons, Heavenly Happiness, and etc., etc.
Josiah said that he should see Uncle Sime Bentley and Deacon Henzy about naming over the Jonesville streets the minute he got home. Sez he, "How uneek it will be to trot along through Josiah's Never Ending Success, or Prosperous Interesting Josiah, or the Glorious Pathmaster, or the Divine Travellin' Deacon, or sunthin' else uneek and well meanin'."
Sez I, "You seem to want to name 'em all after yourself, Josiah. Uncle Sime and Deacon Henzy would probable want one or two named after them."
"Well," sez he, "we could name one Little Uncle, and one Spindlin' Deacon, if they insisted on't."
Josiah wuz in real good sperits, I laid it partly to the tea, it wuz real stimulating; Josiah said that it beat all that the Chinese wuz so blinded and out of the way as to do things so different from what they did in Jonesville. "But," sez he, "they're politer on the outside than the Jonesvillians, even down to the coolers."
"Yes, the coolers, the hired help, you know," sez he. "Catch Ury fixin' his eye on his left side coat collar when he speaks to me not dastin' to lift it, and bowin' and scrapin' when I told him to go and hitch up, or bring in a pail of water, and catch him windin' his hair in a wod when he wuz out by himself and then lettin' it down his back when he came to wait on me."
Sez I, "Ury's hair is too short to braid."
"Well, you can spozen the case, can't you? But as I wuz sayin', for all these coolers are so polite, I would trust Ury as fur agin as I would any on 'em. And then they write jest the other way from we do in Jonesville, begin their letters on the hind side and write towards 'em; and so with planin' a board, draw the plane towards 'em. I would like to see Ury try that on any of my lumber. And because we Jonesvillians wear black to funerals, they have to dress in white. Plow would I looked at my mother-in-law's funeral with a white night gown on and my hair braided down my back with a white ribbin on it? It would have took away all the happiness of the occasion to me.