Also we didn’t see any chamois, nor any chamois hunters, nor any sweet Swiss maidens in picturesque costumes. Like the fever and ague in the West, “there ain’t none of it here, but there’s any quantity of it over in the next county.”
That evening, in the hotel, Tibbitts became indignant. He noticed for the first time that the sheets and pillow cases on his bed were marked with the name of the hotel in indelible ink.
“What is this for?” he demanded.
“To keep guests of the house from carrying them off, I suppose.”
“Then the prevailing impression is that everybody in the world is a thief? The idea is that I, Tibbitts, am going to snake off these sheets and cram them in my valise and tote them all over the continent, and finally take them to Oshkosh for my mother’s use!
“It is my opinion, and I say it deliberately, that the vices of one-half of mankind keep the other half of mankind busy. It is the wickedness of man that makes courts necessary, and sheriffs and policemen, and all that sort of thing. But for vice we could dispense with nine-tenths of the churches and ministry, and we could let up on standing armies. All the locksmiths and the time wasted upon marking these sheets and pillow cases could have been devoted to the multiplication of the wealth of the world. Think of the number of hotels in the world, and the number of sheets and pillow cases in them, and the quantity of indelible ink and the time spent in using it, just to keep them from being stolen! The grand aggregate is appalling. And then add to that all the rest of the precautions, and mighty expensive they are, that have to be taken to keep the property you have, and it amounts to the absorption of fully a half of the industry of the world.
“I have made up my mind what I am going to do. I am going home, and shall immediately organize societies for the promotion of common honesty. I shall have to pay for the marking of these sheets and pillow-cases in my bill to-morrow. In self-defense these societies must be organized, and this sort of thing done away. Had the time employed in marking these sheets been used in making cheese, we should not have to pay such prices for it in America. Vice is an expensive luxury—it eats two ways; it consumes the time of the vicer, and the time of another man to watch him. It must be crushed out!”
And Tibbitts went to bed full of projects for the suppression of vice and for the eventual universality of virtue.
We had at the hotel, of course, the everlasting talker—that man is ubiquitous, and as frequent as sin. The class was represented with us by a commission merchant from Milwaukee.
One evening the discussion happened to turn upon the tariff question, and overflowing its banks, as conversation always does, meandered off into a variety of channels.