At Sidney I put on my revolver and went into the eating house to get my
dinner. A tall man met me at the door and threw me about forty feet in an
oblique manner. I asked him if he meant anything personal by that and he
said not at all, not at all. I then asked him if he would not allow me to
eat my dinner and he said that depended on what I wanted for my dinner. If
I would lay down my arms and come back to the reservation and remain
neutral to the Government and eat cooked food, it would be all right, but
if I insisted on eating raw dining-room girls and scalloped young ladies,
he would bar me out.
We landed at Chi-eene in the evening. They had hacks and 'busses and
carriages till you couldn't rest, all standing there at the depot, and a
large colored man in a loud tone of voice remarked: “INTEROCEAN
HO-TEL!!!!”
[Illustration: A REAL COWBOY.]
I went there myself. It had doors and windows to it, and carpets and gas.
The young man who showed me to my room was very polite to me. He seemed to
want to get acquainted. He said:
“You are from New Hampshire, are you not?”
I told him not to give it away, but I was from New Hampshire. Then I asked
him how he knew.
He said that several New Hampshire people had been out there that summer,
and they had worn the same style of revolver and generally had one thumb
done up in a rag. Then he said that if I came from New Hampshire he would
show me how to turn off the gas.
He also took my revolver down to the office with him and put it in the
safe, because he said someone might get into my room in the night and kill
me with it if he left it here. He was a perfect gentleman.
They have a big opera house there in Chi-eene, and while I was there they
had the Eyetalian opera singers, Patty and Nevady there. The streets were
lit up with electricity, and people seemed to kind of politely look down
on me, I thought. Still, they acted as if they tried not to notice my
clothes and dime museum hat.
They seemed to look at me as if I wasn't to blame for it, and as if they
felt sorry for me. If I'd had my United States clothes with me, I could
have had a good deal of fun in Chi-eene, going to the opera and the
lectures, and concerts, et cetera. But finally I decided to return, so I
wrote to my parents how I had been knocked down and garroted, and left for
dead with one thumb shot off, and they gladly sent the money to pay
funeral expenses.
With this I got a cut-rate ticket home and surprised and horrified my
parents by dropping in on them one morning just after prayers. I tried to
get there prior to prayers, but was side-tracked by my father's new
anti-tramp bull dog.
Boston Common and Environs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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