‘There was no pain like silence, no constraint
So dull as unanimity. He breathed
An atmosphere of argument, nor shrunk
From making, where he could not find, excuse
For controversial fight.’”
“But I have the best of it,” said my antagonist. “It is a case of New York State, like Athanasius, contra mundum.”
“At all events, you will agree with me that an innkeeper will not be liable for loss of his guest’s money when he has intrusted it to the care of some one else on the premises in whom he reposes confidence,”[252] I replied.
“Certainly; and I remember a case where a man gave a bag of money to the step-daughter of an innkeeper with whom he was particularly intimate, having courted her in marriage, and the bag having disappeared, the owner thereof got nothing.[253] And I trust that you will not deny that the innkeeper is responsible, notwithstanding any notices up about depositing in the safe, if the guest has not had time to get his valuables put in there after his arrival.”[254]
“Oh, yes; and he is liable for their loss after the visitor has taken them out preparatory to his departure.”[255]
Here two bows were exchanged, two backs turned, and four legs walked off.
Chapter VI.
FIRE, RATS, AND BURGLARS.
After a time, business called me in the direction in which the “tide of empire rolls,” and we took a long, but by no means tedious or monotonous journey, along that metal ribbon which, stretching from ocean to ocean, unites the Atlantic to the Pacific. The train was well supplied with saloon cars, balcony cars, restaurants, smoking cars, palace cars, and sleeping cars. We encountered none of the adventures so graphically described by the writer of the veracious history of Phineas Fogg; no herd of ten thousand buffaloes delayed, no daring band of Sioux attacked, our train; we had neither duel nor flying leap over bridges, crashing down into abysmal depths. We ate, we drank, we slept, we talked, we gazed; we gazed, we talked, we slept, we drank, we ate; and that was all.
At last we reached the wondrous “City of the West,” and beheld the mighty waters of the Pacific throbbing upon the shores and along the piers of San Francisco. To the Palace Hotel we drove, and there we took up our quarters, glad enough to rest our brains, dizzied and dazed with our flight across the continent.
Refreshed by the quiet rest and needful repose of a long night’s sleep, my wife insisted upon taking a stroll through the magnificent hotel in which we were now quartered.