“Well, I’d like to have a picture of that hotel keeper. He must be a sight, his nose up, his mouth open.”
Still no answer. Finally, in despair, I went out in the middle of the road and surveyed the hotel. It was most attractive in the moonlight, but absolutely dead to the world.
“The blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank,” I called, resuscitating all my best and fiercest oaths. “To think that a blank, blank, blank, blank, blank could sleep that way anyhow. Here we are, trying to bring him a little business, and off he goes to bed, or she. Blank, blank, blank, the blank, blank, blanked old place anyhow,” and back I went and got into the car.
“Say,” called Speed, derisively, “ain’t he a bird? Whaddy y’know. He’s a great hotel keeper.”
“Oh, well,” I said hopelessly, and Franklin added, “We’re sure to get a good bed in Erie.”
So on we went, tearing along the road, eager to get anywhere, it was so late.
PLEASURE BEFORE BUSINESS
The Tackawanna Steel Works
But if we had known what was in store for us we would have returned to that small hotel, I think, and broken in its door, for a few miles farther on, an arrow, pointing northward, read, “Erie Main Road Closed.” Then we recalled that there had been a great storm a few days or weeks before and that houses had been washed out by a freshet and a number of people had been killed. The road grew very bad. It was a dirt road, a kind of marshy, oily, mucky looking thing, cut into deep ruts. After a short distance under darksome trees, it turned into a wide, marshy looking area, with a number of railroad tracks crossing it from east to west and numerous freight trains and switch engines jangling to and fro in the dark. A considerable distance off to the north, over a seeming waste of marshy land, was an immense fire sign which read, “Edison General Electric Company, Erie.” Overhead, in a fine midnight translucence, hung the stars, innumerable and clear, and I was content to lie back for a while, jolting as we were, and look at them.
“Well, there’s Erie, anyhow,” I commented. “We can’t lose that fire sign.”