Humorous stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
A wicker chair does not interfere with the lamp at all, or cut off the
heat, and one is so swathed in blankets and rubber overcoats that he
can't help himself.
I seated myself in that way, and then the torch was applied. Did the
reader ever get out of a bath and sit down on a wire brush in order to
put on his shoes, and feel a sort of startled thrill pervade his whole
being? Well, that is good enough as far as it goes, but it does not
really count as a sensation, when you have been through the Home
Treatment Turkish Bath.
My wife was in another room reading a new book in which she was greatly
interested. While she was thus storing her mind with information, she
thought she smelled something burning. She went all around over the
house trying to find out what it was. Finally she found out.
It was her husband. I called to her, of course, but she wanted me to
wait until she had discovered what was on fire. I tried to tell her to
come and search my neighborhood, but I presume I did not make myself
understood, because I was excited, and my personal epidermis was being
singed off in a way that may seem funny to others, but was not so to one
who had to pass through it.
It bored me quite a deal. Once the wicker seat of the chair caught fire.
"Oh, heavens," I cried, with a sudden pang of horror, "am I to be thus
devoured by the fire fiend? And is there no one to help? Help! Help!
Help!"
I also made use of other expressions but they did not add to the sense
of the above.
I perspired very much, indeed, and so the bath was, in a measure, a
success, but oh, what doth it profit a man to gain a bath if he lose his
own soul?
A JOURNEY WESTWARD
V
I once visited my old haunts in Colorado and Wyoming after about seven
years of absence. I also went to Utah, where spring had come in the rich
valley of the Jordan and the glossy blackbird, with wing of flame,
scooted gaily from bough to bough, deftly declaring his affections right
and left, and acquiring more wives than he could support, then clearing
his record by claiming to have had a revelation which made it all right.
One could not shut his eyes to the fact that there was great real estate
activity in the West that spring. It took the place of mining and stock,
I judge, and everywhere you heard and saw men with their heads together
plotting against the poor rich man. In Salt Lake I saw the sign, "Drugs
and Real Estate."
I presume it meant medicine and a small residence lot in the cemetery.
In early days in Denver, Henry C. Brown, then in the full flush and
vigor of manhood, opened negotiations with the agent of the Atchison
stage line for a ticket back to Atchison, as he was heart-broken and
homesick. He owned a quarter-section of land, with a heavy growth of
prairie dogs on it, and he had almost persuaded the agent to swap him a
ticket for this sage brush conservatory, when the ticket seller backed
gently out of the trade. Mr. Brown then sat him down on the sidewalk and
cried bitterly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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