Last week, a young man from the country west of here came in on the
evening train and walked up to Grand avenue, with a fresh looking young
woman hanging on to one handle of a satchel while he held the other.
They turned into the Plankinton House, and with a wild light in his eye
the man went to the book and registered his name and that of the lady
with him.
While the clerk was picking out a couple of rooms that were near
together, the man looked around at the colored man who had the satchel,
and as the clerk said, “Show the gentleman to No. 65 and the lady to
67,” he said, “Hold on, 'squire! One room will do.”
On being shown to the room, the bridegroom came right out with the
bell boy and appeared at the office. Picking out a benevolent looking
gentleman, with a good place to raise hair on his head, who was behind
the counter, the groom said:
“Say, can a man enjoy religion in this house?”
Mr. White said a man could if he brought it with him. They had none on
hand to issue out to guests, but they never interfered with those who
had it when they arrived.
“Why,” says the manager of the house, “has anybody interfered with your
devotions here?”
“No, not here,” said the man, wiping his fore-head with a red
handkerchief. “But they have at Dubuque. I'll tell you how it was. I
was married a couple of days ago, and night before last I put up at a
Dubuque hotel. My wife never had been married before, any at all, and
she is timid, and thinks everybody is watching us, and making fun of us.
“She jumps at the slightest sound. Well, we went to our room in the
afternoon, and she began to cry, and said if she wasn't married she
never would be the longest day she lived. I sort of put my arm around
her, and was just telling her that everybody had to get married, when
there was a knock on the door, and she jumped more than thirty feet.
“You see that finger. Well, a pin in her belt stuck clear through,
and came near making me faint away. I held my finger in my mouth, and
telling her the house was not on fire, I went to the door and there was
a porter there who wanted to know if I wanted any more coal on the fire.
I drove him away, and sat down in a big rocking chair with my wife in my
lap, and was stroking her hair and telling her that if she would forgive
me for marrying I never would do so again, and trying to make her feel
more at home, when there came another knock at the door, and she jumped
clear across the room and knocked over a water pitcher.
“This seal ring on my finger caught in her frizzes and I'll be cussed if
the whole top of her head didn't come off. I was a little flurried and
went to the door, and a chambermaid was there with an armful of towels
and she handed me a couple and went off. My wife came into camp again,
and began to cry and accuse me of pulling her hair, when I went up to
her and put my arm around her waist, and was just going to kiss her,
just as any man would be justified in kissing his wife under the
circumstances, when she screamed murder and fell against the bureau.
“I looked around and the door had opened, and there was a colored man
coming into the room with a kerosene lamp, and he chuckled and said he
begged my pardon. Now, I am a man that don't let my temper get away with
me, but as it was three hours before dark I didn't see what was the use
of a lamp, and I told him to get out of there. Before 6 o'clock that
evening there had been twenty raps at the door, and we got sick. My
wife said she would not stay in that house for a million dollars. So we
started for Milwaukee.
“I tried to get a little sleep on the cars, but every little while a
conductor would wake me up and roll me over in the seat to look at my
ticket, and brake-men would run against my legs in the aisle of the car,
and shout the names of stations till I was sorry I ever left home. Now,
I want to have rest and quietude. Can I have it here?”
The manager told him to go to his room, and if he wanted any coal or ice
water to ring for it, and if anybody knocked at his door without being
sent for, to begin shooting bullets through the door. That settled
it, and when the parties returned to Iowa they said this country was a
mighty sight different from Dubuque.