When I saw the two unfortunates about to leave the car, I called them back.
“Come,” I said; “you can have my seat. I cannot see a lady in a dilemma, when I can relieve her by making so slight a sacrifice.” And I arose, seized my crutch and was about to walk out from between the seats.
“No, no,” said the gentleman who occupied the seat behind me, and whose better nature began to show itself, while, at the same time a dozen others arose, ready to give up their seats. “No, you musn’t move. You’re crippled, and I am not. They can take my seat.” And he jumped up, with an agility that one could scarcely expect to see displayed by an invalid, and took a seat beside me; while the gentleman and his lady returned, and took possession of the vacated seat, without a single expression of thanks.
“Well,” said I, addressing my companion, “if you wish to take the end by the window, I will exchange with you—at least, for part of the journey.”
“O, never mind,” he replied: “I am only going as far as Wilmington.”
Here, then, was a man who was only going about twenty miles, who had at first refused to give up his seat for the accommodation of the lady, and yet expected me to give up mine, which I had secured for a ride of a hundred and forty miles. O, the selfishness of the traveler!
As I remarked before, there are always a dozen or two of passengers who come aboard the car at the eleventh hour, and have a time of it getting seated. Among them there are usually two or three gentlemen with their ladies, as in this case, and they always come to me, the first thing, and ask me to give up my seat. I have long since, however, adopted a course to pursue on such occasions, which, although it involves a little fib or two—which are certainly pardonable—spares me all controversy. On being asked to remove from my seat and take the wrong end of another, I smilingly state that I would cheerfully do so if I were alone, but that unfortunately, my wife and three little boys are out on the platform, bidding some friends good-by, and will presently come in to share the seat with me. Of course they don’t detect the “white one” till the train has started, and by that time, they have procured seats, by some means; and I don’t care how much I overhear them—as I often do—wondering “where that one-legged fellow’s wife and three little boys went to?”
CHAPTER XXII.
“The City of Magnificent Distances.”
WASHINGTON City is styled the “City of Magnificent Distances,” because it is laid out to cover a space four and a half miles long by two and a half miles wide, that is, eleven square miles. It is the Capital of the United States of America, and is composed of the Capitol building, the Treasury building, the Post-Office building, the Patent Office building, the Executive Mansion, War and State Department buildings, the Smithsonian Institute, Willard’s Hotel and five thousand gin-mills. Such is the Capital of our country, the “City of Magnificent Distances:” and if it were a magnificent distance from the Country, the Country would be much better off and much more well-to-do in the world. I regret that a city which bears the name of that noble and pure man, George Washington, should be such a concentration of vice, corruption, intrigue, fraud and iniquity, as it has become of late years.
It was night when I reached Washington, and going to an hotel and registering my name, John Smith, Major U. S. Army—I never go below the rank of major—I received every attention. While there, my bill was only twenty-five or thirty dollars a week, which they did not ask me to pay till I was ready to leave, several weeks after, and then I paid it without being asked. Meantime all the attaches of the hotel were so attentive, obliging and polite, that I did not find it necessary to kill a single one of them.