"Well," said he, "I cahnt give you any hot supper, you'll have to take what's on hand."
So saying, he opened a tin of Boston beans, emptied them on to a plate, and put before me a saucerful of those little salt biscuits called oysterettes. My supper!
In the bar, deprived of ale, sat half a dozen youths eating chocolate and birch beer, and talking excitedly of a baseball match that was to be played on the morrow. Mine host was a portly American of the white-nigger type. The villagers, exercising their local option, had taken away his right to sell intoxicating liquor, and now on the wall he had an oleographic picture of an angel guiding a little girl over a footbridge, and saving her from the water. Somehow I think this was unintentional humour on the part of mine host. He was an obtuse fellow, who mixed the name Jesus Christ inextricably with his talk, and swore b'God. But he gave me a warm bed. And he had his dollar.
Another evening, about a month later, I sought a lodging in a town on Erie Shore. The weather was very hot, and I was tramping beside marshes over which clouds of mosquitoes were swarming. There was no good resting-place in the bosom of Nature, so I imagined in my heart, vainly, that I might find refuge with man.
I came to a town and went into the store and asked where I would be likely to find a night's lodging. The storekeeper mentioned a house in one of the bye-streets. But when I applied there the landlady said her husband was away, and she would be afraid to have a stranger in his absence. I went to another house: they hadn't any room. I went to a third: they told me a man there was on the point of death and must not be disturbed. I returned to the store, and the storekeeper said it would be impossible to be put up for the night anywhere in the village. I told him I considered the harbouring of travellers a Christian duty.
"They don't feel it so about here," said he politely.
There was an empty park-seat at the end of the main street, I went and sat on it and made my supper. Whilst I sat there several folk came and gazed at me, and thought I might be plotting revenge. In America they are very much afraid of the refused tramp—he may set houses on fire.
But I was quite cheerful and patient. I had been sleeping out regularly for weeks, and shelter refused did not stir a spirit of revenge in me. In any case, I was out to see America as she is, not simply to be entertained. I was having my little lesson—"and very cheap at the price."
But I found hospitality that night. As I sat on the park-seat a tall labourer with two water-pails came across some fields to me, passed me, and went to the town pump and drew water. "Surely," said I to myself, "that is a Russian."
I hailed him as he came back.