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 forehead 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.
[Illustration: AN INTRUSIVE NIGGER.]
"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 brakemen 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.