HIS MOURNFUL PILGRIMAGE THROUGH DESOLATE WILDS IN COMPANY WITH THE
SOULFUL HOOSIER POET--A TALE OF GLOOM WITHOUT A RAY OF HOPE.
We are moving about over the country, James Whitcomb Riley and I, in the
capacity of a moral and spectacular show, I attend to the spectacular
part of the business. That is more in my line.
I am writing this at an imitation hotel where the roads fork. I will
call it the Fifth Avenue Hotel because the hotel at a railroad junction
is generally called the Fifth Avenue, or the Gem City House, or the
Palace Hotel. I stopped at an inn some years since called the Palace,
and I can truly say that if it had ever been a palace it was very much
run down when I visited it.
Just as the fond parent of a white-eyed, two-legged freak of nature
loves to name his mentally-diluted son Napoleon, and for the same reason
that a prominent horse owner in Illinois last year socked my name on a
tall, buckskin-colored colt that did not resemble me, intellectually or
physically, a colt that did not know enough to go around a barbed-wire
fence, but sought to sift himself through it into an untimely grave, so
this man has named his sway-backed wigwam the Fifth Avenue Hotel.
It is different from the Fifth Avenue in many ways. In the first place
there is not so much travel and business in its neighborhood. As I said
before, this is where two railroads fork. In fact, that is the leading
industry here. The growth of the town is naturally slow, but it is a
healthy growth. There is nothing in the nature of dangerous or wild-cat
speculation in the advancement of this place, and while there has been
no noticeable or rapid advance in the principal business, there has
been no falling off at all, and these roads are forking as much to-day
as they did before the war, while the same three men who were present
for the first glad moment are still here to witness its operation.
Sometimes a train is derailed, as the papers call it, and two or three
people have to remain over, as we did, all night. It is at such a time
that the Fifth Avenue Hotel is the scene of great excitement. A large
codfish, with a broad and sunny smile, and his bosom full of rock salt,
is tied in the creek to freshen and fit himself for the responsible
position of floor manager of the codfish ball.
A pale chambermaid, wearing a black jersey with large pores in it,
through which she is gently percolating, now goes joyously up the stairs
to make the little post-office lock-box rooms look ten times worse than
they ever did before. She warbles a low refrain as she nimbly knocks
loose the venerable dust of centuries, and sets it afloat throughout the
rooms. All is bustle about the house.
Especially the chambermaid.
We were put into the guest's chamber here. It has two atrophied beds
made up of pains and counterpanes.
This last remark conveys to the reader the presence of a light, joyous
feeling which is wholly assumed on my part.
The door of our room is full of holes where locks have been wrenched off
in order to let the coroner in. Last night I could imagine that I was in
the act of meeting, personally, the famous people who have tried to
sleep here and who moaned through the night and who died while waiting
for the dawn.
I have no doubt in the world but there is quite a good-sized delegation
from this hotel of guests who hesitated about committing suicide,
because they feared to tread the sidewalks of perdition, but who became
desperate at last and resolved to take their chances, and they have
never had any cause to regret it.
We washed our hands on door-knob soap, wiped them on a slippery elm
court-plaster, that had made quite a reputation for itself under the
non-de-plume of "Towel," tried to warm ourselves at a pocket inkstand
stove, that gave out heat like a dark lantern and had a deformed elbow
at the back of it.
The chambermaid is very versatile, and waits on the table while not
engaged in agitating the overworked mattresses and puny pillows
upstairs. In this way she imparts the odor of fried pork to the pillow
cases and kerosene to the pie.
She has a wild, nervous and apprehensive look in her eye as though she
feared that some Herculean guest might seize her in his great, strong
arms and bear her away to a justice of the peace and marry her. She
certainly cannot fully realize how thoroughly secure she is from such a
calamity. She is just as safe as she was forty years ago, when she
promised her aged mother that she would never elope with anyone.
Still, she is sociable at times and converses freely with me at the
table, as she leans over my shoulder, pensively brushing the crumbs into
my lap with a general utility towel which accompanies her in her various
rambles through the house, and she asks which we would rather have--"tea
or eggs?"
This afternoon we will pay our bill, in accordance with a life-long
custom of ours, and go away to permeate the busy haunts of men. It will
be sad to tear ourselves away from the Fifth Avenue Hotel at this place;
still, there is no great loss without some small gain, and at our next
hotel we may not have to chop our own wood and bring it up-stairs when
we want to rest. The landlord of a hotel who goes away to a political
meeting and leaves his guests to chop their own wood, and then charges
them full price for the rent of a boisterous and tempest-tossed bed,
will never endear himself to those with whom he is thrown in contact.
We leave at 2:30 this afternoon, hoping that the two railroads may
continue to fork here just the same as though we had remained.