Humorous stories; Washington (State) -- Fiction; Western stories
"So Ellabelle's health broke down. Yes, sir, she got to be a total
wreck. Of course the fool doctor in Wallace couldn't find it out. She
tried him and he told her she was strong as a horse and ought to be
doing a tub of washing that very minute. Which was no way to talk to the
wife of a rich mining man, so he lost quite a piece of money by it.
Ellabelle then went to Spokane and consulted a specialist. That's the
difference. You only see a doctor, but a specialist you consult. This
one confirmed her fears about herself in a very gentlemanly way and
reaped his reward on the spot. Ellabelle's came after she had convinced
Angus that even if she did have such a good appetite it wasn't a normal
one, but it was, in fact, one of her worst symptoms and threatened her
with a complete nervous breakdown. After about a year of this, when
Angus had horned his way into a few more mines--he said he might as well
have a bunch of them since he couldn't be there on the spot anyway--they
went to New York City. Angus had never been there except to pass from a
Clyde liner to Jersey City, and they do say that when he heard the
rates, exclusive of board, at the one Ellabelle had picked out from
reading the papers, he timidly asked her if they hadn't ought to go to
the other hotel. She told him there wasn't any other--not for them. She
told him further it was part of her mission to broaden his horizon, and
she firmly meant to do it if God would only vouchsafe her a remnant of
her once magnificent vitality.
"She didn't have to work so hard either. Angus begun to get a broader
horizon in just a few days, corrupting every waiter he came in contact
with, and there was a report round the hotel the summer I was there that
a hat-boy had actually tried to reason with him, thinking he was a
foreigner making mistakes with his money by giving up a dollar bill
every time for having his hat snatched from him. As a matter of fact,
Angus can't believe to this day that dollar bills are money. He feels
apologetic when he gives 'em away. All the same I never believed that
report about the hat-boy till someone explained to me that he wasn't
allowed to keep his loot, not only having clothes made special without
pockets but being searched to the hide every night like them poor
unfortunate Zulus that toil in the diamond mines of Africa. Of course I
could see then that this boy had become merely enraged like a wild-cat
at having a dollar crowded onto him for some one else every time a head
waiter grovelled Angus out of the restaurant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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