Humorous stories; Valets -- Fiction; Washington (State) -- Fiction
It here becomes difficult for me to be lucid about the succeeding
events of the day. I was conscious of a mounting exhilaration as my
beast swept me around the circle, and of a marked impatience with many
of the proprieties of behaviour that ordinarily with me matter
enormously. I swung my cap and joyously urged my strange steed to a
faster pace, being conscious of loud applause each time I passed my
companions. For certain lapses of memory thereafter I must wholly
blame this insidious motion.
For example, though I believed myself to be still mounted and whirling
(indeed I was strongly aware of the motion), I found myself seated
again at the corner public house and rapping smartly for drink, which
I paid for. I was feeling remarkably fit, and suffered only a mild
wonder that I should have left the carrousel without observing it.
Having drained my glass, I then remember asking Cousin Egbert if he
would consent to change hats with the cabby, which he willingly did.
It was a top-hat of some strange, hard material brightly glazed.
Although many unjust things were said of me later, this is the sole
incident of the day which causes me to admit that I might have taken a
glass too much, especially as I undoubtedly praised Cousin Egbert’s
appearance when the exchange had been made, and was heard to wish that
we might all have hats so smart.
It was directly after this that young Mr. Elmer, the art student,
invited us to his studio, though I had not before remarked his
presence, and cannot recall now where we met him. The occurrence in
the studio, however, was entirely natural. I wished to please my
friends and made no demur whatever when asked to don the things--a
trouserish affair, of sheep’s wool, which they called “chapps,” a
flannel shirt of blue (they knotted a scarlet handkerchief around my
neck), and a wide-brimmed white hat with four indentations in the
crown, such as one may see worn in the cinema dramas by cow-persons
and other western-coast desperadoes. When they had strapped around my
waist a large pistol in a leather jacket, I considered the effect
picturesque in the extreme, and my friends were loud in their approval
of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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