CHAPTER IX.
A good hotel is a blessing, but the best hotel is still a hotel, and can be nothing more. One feels all right until the bellboy has fixed the key in the door and gone. Then you begin to realize that you are alone. There's but little difference, I imagine, in the feelings of a prisoner going into his cell at the close of day and those of a man in his lonely bed room in a hotel. There may be noises and voices, even songs and laughing, on either side of you, but these only serve to show you how lonesome you are.
I dislike to go to my room until I am forced to do so by the hour. I want to be among people and to see them about me. I go to my room under protest; I turn the key, fix the bolt, look at the window, open my valise, and wish I was at home. I think of fires, of sudden sickness, of to-morrow's trade, of to-day's orders, and of all the pros and cons of business. Through the night I hear scurrying feet in the hall, the late arrivals, the early risers, the bell-boy's raps on the doors, and finally the chambermaid's clatter, and her occasional turn on the knob, as a broad invitation to get up and out of the way that she may do her work.
I started out in the morning at B——, determined to do all in my power to make a good showing for myself. There is but one gun-store, but all the hardware dealers handled something in my line. It is a sleepy town. Time was when it had a large trade in the surrounding States, but of late it sells near home. A town of its size might and ought to support two or three good gun stores. I called on Bell & Co., gave the man who looked most like the buyer my card, and proceeded to say a word or two about something else than business.
“We have had some goods from your house,” said Mr. Bell, “but we never get our orders filled. There's always something left out. I don't like it. When I order an article I want it.”
Our house had always made a specialty of filling orders complete, and I was surprised at what I had just heard. I remarked this, and that I was the stock-clerk, and that I feared he was visiting on our heads the sins of others.
“No, I am not,” said he. “In the last bill we sent you there were two items left out;” and he found the bill and showed me our own memorandum regarding the items. To be sure they were goods we never kept in stock and never intended to. I explained this, but he took the ground that, in the first place, a house should keep everything in its line, and if they happened to be out of anything should buy it.
I did not attempt to contradict him, for it's a mighty poor time for that when you are hunting for an order, but I tried to change the conversation into some other channel.
“How is your stock of guns?”
“Full. What do you ask for the Lafoucheaux, twist barrels?”