Having been thoroughly cooked by the broiling sun, which had unremittingly paid me his ardent devotions during the whole day--having been alternately melted and blistered--having had my skin peeled by the sun like a wet shirt from a little boy's back--having made a perfect aqueduct of myself for twelve hours in the fruitless attempt to keep cool, and having swallowed so much dust that I had a large sand-bar in my stomach, I sat down to write in as enviable a state of mind as can perhaps be imagined. I soon found that this was one of those stranger-traps into which unwary travellers are decoyed, and made to pay enormous prices for being rendered supremely unhappy--a place where _comfort_ is mercilessly sacrificed to _show_--where the furniture is too nice to use, the landlord of too much consequential importance to treat people decently, and where there are so many dishes on the table that there is not room for anything to eat--where the waiters run in multitudinous directions at the tap of the bell, and seem to occupy most of their time stepping on each other's heels, and spilling soup into the laps of the ladies. Every one of these woolly-headed nuisances expects to be handsomely fed before he will condescend to pay the slightest attention to a guest, and a stranger must disburse an avalanche of "bits," "pics," and "levys," before he can get even a plate of cold victuals. My experience at the house of entertainment at present under consideration is somewhat as follows: I endure the inconveniences of the day with what philosophy I may, and retire, to "sleep, perchance." During the night I endeavor to bear without complaining the savage onslaught of ferocious fleas, the odoriferous attacks of bloodthirsty bed-bugs, and the insatiable and impetuous assaults of musically murderous mosquitoes, and eventually fall into a troubled doze, in which, like a modern Macbeth, who is doomed to "sleep no more," I tumble about until I am roused by the infernal clang of that most diabolical of all human contrivances--a gong, a dire invention of the enemy, a metallic triumph of the adversary, compounded of copper, and hammered upon with an "overgrown" drumstick, by a perspiring darkey who does not "waste his sweetness in the desert air" (more's the pity). After an abortive attempt to wash my face in what is truly _living_ water, with a piece of marbleized soap, and hastily drying it upon three inches of towel with a ragged edge and iron rust in the corners, I proceed to dress. Button off my shirt neck, which, being a matter of course, does not affect my equanimity half as much as finding that one of the sleeves is torn nearly across, and is only connected with the main body by a narrow isthmus of seam, which is momentarily growing "small by degrees and beautifully less."