I was mad, but what could I do? They was too many for me, and I couldn't
coerce the white livered aristocratic mob, for quicker'n scat they could
have hollored into a little cupboard they had there in the corner, and in
less'n two minits they'd of had the whole police department and the hook
and ladder company down there after me with a torch-light procession.
So I swallowed my wrath and a tame drink of cultivated whiskey with Apollo
Belvidere on the side, and went out into the auditorium of the hotel.
Here I was very unhappy, being, as the editor of the Green River _Gazette_
would say, “the cynosure of all eyes.”
I would rather not be a cynosure, even at a good salary; so I thought I
would ask the proprietor to build a fire in my room. I went up to the
recorder's office, where the big hotel autograft album is, and asked to
see the proprietor.
A good-looking young man came forward and asked me what he could do for
me. I said if it wouldn't be too much trouble, I wisht he would build a
little fire in my room, and I would pay him for it; or, if he would show
me where the woodpile was, I would build the fire myself--I wasn't doing
anything special at that time.
He then whistled through his teeth and crooked his finger in a shrill tone
of voice to a young party who was working for him, and told him to “build
a fire in four-ought-two.”
I then sat down in the auditorium and read out of a railroad tract, which
undertook to show that a party that undertook to ride over a rival road,
must do so because life was a burden to him, and facility, and comfort,
and safety, and such things no object whatever. But still I was very
lonely, and felt as if I was far, far away from home.
I couldn't have been more uncomfortable if I'd been a young man I saw
twenty-five years ago on the old overland trail. He had gone out to study
the Indian character, and to win said Indian to the fold. When I next saw
him he was twenty miles farther on. He had been thrown in contact with
said Indian in the meantime. I judged he had been making a collection of
Indian arrows. He was extremely no more. He looked some like Saint
Sebastian, and some like a toothpick-holder.
I was never successfully lost on the plains, and so I started out after
supper to find my room. I found a good many other rooms, and tried to get
into them, but I did not find four-ought-two till a late hour; then I
subsidized the night patrol on the third floor to assist me.
This is a nice place to stop, but it is a little too rich for my blood, I
guess Not so much as regards price, but I can see that I am beginning to
excite curiosity among the boarders. People are coming here to board just
because I am here, and it is disagreeable. I do not court notoriety. I
have always lived in a plain way, and I would give a dollar if people
would look the other way while I eat my pie.
Yours truly,
E.O.D.
To E. Wm. Nye, Esq.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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