“Here, please take it,” said she.
Take——not the hand, but a ten-cent note which she held out and desired me to “take” in return for my distinguished services. I felt the hot blood rush to my cheeks, but mastering my emotion, I said:
“O, no, miss, I thank you, indeed. I am not the porter here now. I used to be, but my Uncle Charles Exeter Johnson Smith died two days before last Christmas a year ago, and left me a large fortune; since which time, I have only been a boarder here. I thank you. Good evening.” And I turned and walked away, while they drove slowly toward the city.
I can only impute the young lady’s conduct to the grossest ignorance. I was not miserably clad, or any thing of that sort, and her reason for offering me the little contribution could only have been that I had lost a leg, and she no doubt thought it naturally followed that I was “needy.” A great mistake. The wealthiest man in the world would have lost his leg had he been standing where I was when I was shot.
Having spent a week at Cleveland, I departed for the smoky city of Pittsburg; where I arrived one evening at five o’clock. Before returning to Philadelphia, I desired to visit the celebrated “White Rocks,” near Uniontown, about seventy miles south of Pittsburg; and as no train was to leave for Uniontown till next morning, I was obliged to remain in Pittsburg all night—a thing I never do if I can help it, because I never spent a comfortable night in the smoky old place: nor do I believe any other civilized person ever did.
Before the train reached Pittsburg, I had given orders to a baggage-expressman to send my trunk to the St. Charles hotel, which had once been a first-class house, but which, without my knowledge, had of late degenerated to some extent. At the depot I got into a “bus” and rode to the St. Charles; when I saw at a glance that it had changed proprietors and was not conducted as of yore. It was in the hands of two or three brothers who were lineal descendants of the patriarch Abraham. One of them was acting as clerk. He was blustering about the office, like a rat that had got into a hot brick-kiln and couldn’t find its way out, giving orders to the porter, talking to several guests at once, and getting very little accomplished.
“Can I get a single room, to-night?” I asked.
“I ton’t knows,” he said, in the odious dialect of a Teutonic Jacobite, “I sees apout it pretty soons direcklies leetle whiles;” and he kept on talking with some body about nothing.
I stood by the counter for some minutes, entirely unnoticed by the contemptible fellow; and beginning to think that “pretty soons direcklies leetle whiles” had about expired, I said:
“My friend, my trunk will be here presently, and I would like to know if you can accommodate me with a room.”