"Wal, what's the damage?"
"Only a dollar," sez he, a giving my saddle-bags and trunk a jerk onto the steps, and eying my old dandy clothes sort of supercilious, as if he thought it would be a tough job for me to hand over the chink. I begun to rile up a leetle, but arter a minit I happened to think that no ginuine gentleman ever gits mad with sich a ruff scuff, so I jest looked in his face, and sez I,
"How you talk!"
With that I gin him a quarter of a dollar, for I didn't want to be mean; but the varmint begun to bluster up as if he wanted to kick up a tantrum. I didn't seem to mind it, but the critter hung on yit for a whole dollar, like a dog to a sassafras root, and when some waiters cum down and took away my things, he followed, and ketching hold of the saddle-bags, said the things shouldn't go till he'd got his pay. With that I went up to him agin, and sez I,
"Make yourself scarce, you etarnal mean coot, or I'll give you the purtyest specimen of Weathersfield sole leather that you ever sot eyes on—one that'll send you up them wheelbarrow steps of yourn swifter than you cum down, a darned sight. You needn't look at me—I'm in arnest, and I'll du it, or my name aint Jonathan Slick."
Oh human natur', how the varmint wilted down when I said this; he took off his hat, and sez he—as mean as a frozen potater—says he,
"I didn't know as it was you."
"I rather guess you didn't," says I.
The feller seemed to feel so sheepish that it sort of mollified me, and so I up and gave him another four-pence-ha'penny. With that I went up the steps, up and up till I cum to a great long stun hall that reached tu all creation, with a kind of a bar-room at one end. It was a sort of a stun side-walk a shut up in a house; for lots of men were talking and walking about as easy as if they'd been in the street. I went up to the bar-room, where a chap sot with sour looks, as if he felt to hum all over, and says I—
"Do you take in boarders here?"