I have struck ten different
hotels, and if you ever hear of my leaving town again during the hot
weather, you can take my head for a soft thing," and he wiped a cinder out
of his eye with what was once a clean handkerchief.
"Had a good, cool time, I suppose, and enjoyed yourself," said the man who
had not been out of town.
"Cool time, hell," said the man, who has a pew in two churches, as he
kicked his limp satchel of dirty clothes under the car seat. "I had rather
been sentenced to the House of Correction for a month."
"Why, what's the trouble?"
"Well, there is no trouble, for people who like that kind of fun, but this
lets me out. I do not blame people who live in Southern States for coming
North, because they enjoy things as a luxury that we who live in Wisconsin
have as a regular diet, but for a Chicago or Milwaukee man to go into the
country to swelter and be kept awake nights is bald lunancy. Why, since I
have been out I have slept in a room a size smaller than the closet my
wife keeps her linen in, with one window that brought in air from a
laundry, and I slept on a cot that shut up like a jack-knife and always
caught me in the hinge where it hurt.
"At another hotel, I had a broken-handled pitcher of water that had been
used to rinse clothes in, and I can show you the indigo on my neck.
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