The Holly-Tree eBook

day.  Again I stood in the bar-rooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail.  Again I listened to my friend the General,—­whom I had known for five minutes, in the course of which period he had made me intimate for life with two Majors, who again had made me intimate for life with three Colonels, who again had made me brother to twenty-two civilians,—­again, I say, I listened to my friend the General, leisurely expounding the resources of the establishment, as to gentlemen’s morning-room, sir; ladies’ morning-room, sir; gentlemen’s evening-room, sir; ladies’ evening-room, sir; ladies’ and gentlemen’s evening reuniting-room, sir; music-room, sir; reading-room, sir; over four hundred sleeping-rooms, sir; and the entire planned and finited within twelve calendar months from the first clearing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, at a cost of five hundred thousand dollars, sir.  Again I found, as to my individual way of thinking, that the greater, the more gorgeous, and the more dollarous the establishment was, the less desirable it was.  Nevertheless, again I drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in all good-will, to my friend the General, and my friends the Majors, Colonels, and civilians all; full well knowing that, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have descried in theirs, they belong to a kind, generous, large-hearted, and great people.

I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my solitude out of my mind; but here I broke down for good, and gave up the subject.  What was I to do?  What was to become of me?  Into what extremity was I submissively to sink?  Supposing that, like Baron Trenck, I looked out for a mouse or spider, and found one, and beguiled my imprisonment by training it?  Even that might be dangerous with a view to the future.  I might be so far gone when the road did come to be cut through the snow, that, on my way forth, I might burst into tears, and beseech, like the prisoner who was released in his old age from the Bastille, to be taken back again to the five windows, the ten curtains, and the sinuous drapery.

A desperate idea came into my head.  Under any other circumstances I should have rejected it; but, in the strait at which I was, I held it fast.  Could I so far overcome the inherent bashfulness which withheld me from the landlord’s table and the company I might find there, as to call up the Boots, and ask him to take a chair,—­and something in a liquid form,—­and talk to me?  I could, I would, I did.

SECOND BRANCH—­THE BOOTS

Where had he been in his time? he repeated, when I asked him the question.  Lord, he had been everywhere!  And what had he been?  Bless you, he had been everything you could mention a’most!

Seen a good deal?  Why, of course he had.  I should say so, he could assure me, if I only knew about a twentieth part of what had come in his way.  Why, it would be easier for him, he expected, to tell what he hadn’t seen than what he had.  Ah!  A deal, it would.