DS TIRZAH ANN'S COTTAGE WITH
STRANGE INVENTIONS AND ADDITIONS

CHAPTER NINETEEN

WE RETURN TO JONESVILLE AND JOSIAH BUILDS TIRZAH ANN'S COTTAGE WITH
STRANGE INVENTIONS AND ADDITIONS

I told Josiah I hoped my vision would come true, and they would make
an open park of Dreamland, so the millions who visit Coney Island
could git a good look at Mom Nater and old Ocean. "And heaven knows,"
sez I, "there would be amusements enough left in Luny, and Steeple
Chase Park, and other resorts all along the shore." And he said he
didn't care a dum what they did with it. Sez he, "They needn't build
it up on my account, for I won't patronize 'em any more!" And I told
him, "I guessed he wouldn't be missed, specially Sundays and
holidays." And he said, "Miss me or not, they needn't try to git me
there agin, and they may jest as well give up hopin' to, first as
last."

Sez I, "Can't you be megum, Josiah? You wuz all carried away with it,
and now you're turned agin it; what makes you turn so _fur_? Can't
you see the good side to it?"

"No, I can't, and won't!"

So we went home some like the Baptist and the Methodist who had a
public meetin' to argy their two beliefs, on which they wuz dretful
sot, and they converted each other, so the Baptist went home a
Methodist, and the Methodist a Baptist.

I'd been considerable sot agin it, but I went home with the eye of my
spectacles able to look on both sides. The side I didn't like, that it
shares with other Pleasure Resorts. And its good side, as a care
lightener, and diversion to toil. And a golden Pleasure House to the
millions of children who go there every year, many of 'em poor
children who get there their only glimpse of rest and light hearted
enjoyment.

But my dear pardner can't be megum; that quality wuz left out when he
wuz manufactured. And now if anyone sez Coney Island, he starts for
the barn.

Serenus come home a few days after we did. He'd been on the Bowery of
Coney Island that night, Josiah havin' refused to go to such a lowdown
place with him. So as it often is in this strange world, the
wrong-doer comes out ahead, for the _present_. He made a night of it
with Jim Cobb, a rural cousin, and not a hair of his head wuz
scorched, nor the smell of fire on his garments.

But I wuz proud that Josiah withstood temptation, and told him that I
would ruther he had got afire, and burned considerable, than had him
yield to the tempter.

I myself never sot foot on the