Well, me and friend Buggins inhabited that place—about as big as one of Man Friday's footprints—for going on four weeks. When tide was in, I held the box on my head to keep my powder dry. 'Long toward the end of my visit, just before the ship that saved me hove in sight, I began to feel a mite tired of that place. I kind o' felt as if I'd saw about all that was int'resting on that there island. I thought I was unhappy and I had a sneaking idea I was lonesome. But I see I was mistaken. I hadn't spent a Christmas night alone in a big city then.
Then once when I was prospecting for our mine, I was snowed up in a pass. I reckon I've told you how I got typhoid fever and wrestled it out all day by my lonesome; unparalleled thirst, Boston baked brains, red flannel tongue, delirium dreamins, and self-acting emetic, down to the final blissful "Where am I at?" and on through the nice long convalescence till my limbs changed from twine strings to human members. Six weeks doing time as doctor, patient, trained nurse and fellow-Mason all in one, was being alone right smart. But it wasn't a patch on the little metrolopis of Manhattan on Santy Claus day.
Then once I had a rather unrestful evening out in the western part of Texas. A fellow sold me a horse right cheap, and later a crowd of gentlemen accused me of stealing it, and I was put in jail with a promise of being lynched before breakfast. That was being uncomfortable some, too. But I wished last night that my friend, Judge Watson, hadn't come along that night and identified me. It would have saved me from New Yorkitis.
Then there was the night when I proposed for your hand and you sent me to your pa, and he said if I ever come near again he'd sic the dogs on me. I spent that night at a safe distance from the dogs, leaning on a fence, and not noticing it was barb wire till I looked at my clothes and my hide next day. I watched your windows till the light went out and all my hope with it—and on after that till, as the poet says, till daylight doth appear.
Then there's the time I told you about, when—but there's no use of making a catalog of every time I've been lonesome. I have taken my pen in hand to inform you that last night beat everything else on my private list of troubles. My other lonely times was when I was alone, but the lonesomest of all was in the heart of the biggest crowd on this here continent.
There was people a-plenty. But I didn't know one gol-darned galoot. I had plenty of money, but nobody to spend it on—except tiptakers. I was stopping at this big hotel with lugsury spread over everything, thicker than sorghum on corn pone. But lonely—why, honey, I was so lonely that, as I walked along the streets, I felt as if I'd like to break into some of the homes and compel 'em at the point of my gun to let me set in and dine with 'em.
I felt like asking one of the bell-boys to take me home and get his ma to give me a slice of goose and let her talk to me about her folks.