I accosted a small, dried-up, hard-featured old fellow of eighteen or nineteen:
“Any hotels here?”
Answer (in an intensely contemptuous manner): “No!”
“Any restaurants—eating-houses?”
“Yes, four on ’em: the ’Merik’n House, the Mansh’n House, the Pacific S’loon, and Jack Langford’s dug-out.”
Finding the old juvenile so communicative, and having more questions to propound, we propitiate him by offering a cigar in recognition of his social and chronological equality, and in proof that we are not “stuck-up snobs from the East.” He takes the cigar brusquely without oral signification of acceptance or expression of thanks. He bites the end off wolfishly, and places the cigar as near his ear as possible. We offer him a match. He takes it, puts it into his vest-pocket, saying:
“Guess I’ll take a dry smoke.”
“Which is the best of the hotels or eating-houses?”
“All doggoned bad.”
“Which is the cleanest?”