I had
a piece of soap that smelled like a tannery, and if the towel was not a
recent damp diaper than I have never raised six children.
"At one hotel I was the first man at the table, and two families came in
and were waited on before the Senegambian would look at me, and after an
hour and thirty minutes I got a chance to order some roast beef and baked
potatoes, but the perspiring, thick-headed pirate brought me some boiled
mutton and potatoes that looked as though they had been put in a wash-tub
and mashed by treading on them barefooted. I paid twenty-five
cents for a lemonade made of water and vinegar, with a piece of something
on top that might be lemon peel, and it might be pumpkin rind.
"The only night's rest I got was one night when I slept in a car seat. At
the hotel the regular guests were kept awake till 12 o'clock by number six
headed boys and girls dancing until midnight to the music of a
professional piano boxer, and then for two hours the young folks sat on
the stairs and yelled and laughed, and after that the girls went to bed
and talked two hours more, while the boys went and got drunk and sang
'Allegezan and Kalamazoo.'
"Why, at one place I was woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning by what I
thought was a chariot race in the hall outside, but it was only a lot of
young bloods rolling ten pins down by the rooms, using empty wine bottles
for pins and China cuspidores for balls.
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