He used to grind the coffee at 2 A.M. The coffee mill was nailed up
against a partition on the opposite side from my bed. That is one reason I
did not stay any longer at the camp. It takes about an hour to grind
coffee enough for thirty men, and as my ear was generally against the pine
boards when the cook began, it ruffled my slumbers and made me a morose
man.
We had three men at the camp who snored. If they had snored in my own
language I could have endured it, but it was entirely unintelligible to me
as it was. Still, it wasn't bad either. They snored on different keys, and
still there was harmony in it--a kind of chime of imported snore as it
were. I used to lie and listen to it for hours. Then the cook would begin
his coffee mill overture and I would arise.
When I got home I slept from Monday morning till Washington's Birthday,
without food or water.
My Lecture Abroad.
Having at last yielded to the entreaties of Great Britain, I have decided
to make a professional farewell tour of England with my new and thrilling
lecture, entitled “Jerked Across the Jordan, or the Sudden and Deserved
Elevation of an American Citizen.”
I have, therefore, already written some of the cablegrams which will be
sent to the Associated Press, in order to open the campaign in good shape
in America on my return.
Though I have been supplicated for some time by the people of England to
come over there and thrill them with my eloquence, my thriller has been
out of order lately, so that I did not dare venture abroad.
This lecture treats incidentally of the ease with which an American
citizen may rise in the Territories, when he has a string tied around his
neck, with a few personal friends at the other end of the string. It also
treats of the various styles of oratory peculiar to America, with
specimens of American oratory that have been pressed and dried especially
for this lecture. It is a good lecture, and the few straggling facts
scattered along through it don't interfere with the lecture itself in any
way.
I shall appear in costume during the lecture.
At each lecture a different costume will be worn, and the costume worn at
the previous lecture will be promptly returned to the owner.
Persons attending the lecture need not be identified.
Polite American dude ushers will go through the audience to keep the flies
away from those who wish to sleep during the lecture.
Should the lecture be encored at its close, it will be repeated only once.
This encore business is being overdone lately, I think.
Following are some of the cablegrams I have already written. If any one
has any suggestions as to change, or other additional favorable
criticisms, they will be gratefully received; but I wish to reserve the
right, however, to do as I please about using them:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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