Humorous stories; Mistaken identity -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
The earl drifted here and there through the swarming lobby, and finally
took a waiting position in the neighborhood of the elevator. During an
hour crowds went up and crowds came down; and all complete as to limbs;
but at last the watcher got a glimpse of a figure that was
satisfactory—got a glimpse of the back of it, though he had missed his
chance at the face through waning alertness. The glimpse revealed a
cowboy hat, and below it a plaided sack of rather loud pattern, and an
empty sleeve pinned up to the shoulder. Then the elevator snatched the
vision aloft and the watcher fled away in joyful excitement, and
rejoined the fellow-conspirator.
“We’ve got him, Major—got him sure! I’ve seen him—seen him good; and I
don’t care where or when that man approaches me backwards, I’ll
recognize him every time. We’re all right. Now for the requisition.”
They got it, after the delays usual in such cases. By half past eleven
they were at home and happy, and went to bed full of dreams of the
morrow’s great promise.
Among the elevator load which had the suspect for fellow-passenger was
a young kinsman of Mulberry Sellers, but Mulberry was not aware of it
and didn’t see him. It was Viscount Berkeley.
CHAPTER VII.
Arrived in his room Lord Berkeley made preparations for that first and
last and all-the-time duty of the visiting Englishman—the jotting down
in his diary of his “impressions” to date. His preparations consisted
in ransacking his “box” for a pen. There was a plenty of steel pens on
his table with the ink bottle, but he was English. The English people
manufacture steel pens for nineteen-twentieths of the globe, but they
never use any themselves. They use exclusively the pre-historic quill.
My lord not only found a quill pen, but the best one he had seen in
several years—and after writing diligently for some time, closed with
the following entry:
p071.jpg (18K)
BUT IN ONE THING I HAVE MADE AN IMMENSE MISTAKE, I OUGHT TO HAVE
SHUCKED MY TITLE AND CHANGED MY NAME BEFORE I STARTED.
He sat admiring that pen a while, and then went on:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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