“I’ve thought of that. If I could
get a good bed, I’d try it awhile anyhow.
You see the hotels have raised. I used to get
a lodgin’ and a nice breakfast for a half a
dollar, but now it is as much as you can do to get
a lodgin’ for the money, and it’s just
as dear in the Port as it is in the city. I’ve
tried hotels pretty much everywhere, and one’s
about as bad as another.”
If he had been a travelled Englishman writing a book,
he could not have spoken of hotels with greater disdain.
“You see, the trouble with me is, I ain’t
got any relations around here. Now,” he
added, with the life and eagerness of an inspiration,
“if I had a mother and sister livin’ down
at the Port, say, I wouldn’t go hunting about
for these mean little jobs everywheres. I’d
just lay round home, and wait till something come
up big. What I want is a home.”
At the instigation of a malignant spirit I asked the
homeless orphan, “Why don’t you get married,
then?”
He gave me another smile, sadder, fainter, sweeter
than before, and said: “When would you
like to see me again, so I could work out this dollar?”
A sudden and unreasonable disgust for the character
which had given me so much entertainment succeeded
to my past delight. I felt, moreover, that I
had bought the right to use some frankness with the
veteran, and I said to him: “Do you know
now, I shouldn’t care if I never saw you
again?”
I can only conjecture that he took the confidence
in good part, for he did not appear again after that.
Walking for walking’s sake I do not like.
The diversion appears to me one of the most factitious
of modern enjoyments; and I cannot help looking upon
those who pace their five miles in the teeth of a north
wind, and profess to come home all the livelier and
better for it, as guilty of a venial hypocrisy.
It is in nature that after such an exercise the bones
should ache and the flesh tremble; and I suspect that
these harmless pretenders are all the while paying
a secret penalty for their bravado. With a pleasant
end in view, or with cheerful companionship, walking
is far from being the worst thing in life; though
doubtless a truly candid person must confess that
he would rather ride under the same circumstances.
Yet it is certain that some sort of recreation is necessary
after a day spent within doors; and one is really obliged
nowadays to take a little walk instead of medicine;
for one’s doctor is sure to have a mania on
the subject, and there is no more getting pills or
powders out of him for a slight indigestion than if
they had all been shot away at the rebels during the
war. For this reason I sometimes go upon a pedestrian
tour, which is of no great extent in itself, and which
I moreover modify by keeping always within sound of
the horse-car bells, or easy reach of some steam-car
station.
