The was all said so honestly and so pleasantly that I had to believe he was sincere, but at the same time I knew it wasn't strictly correct, and I felt more and more uncomfortable.
“How do you like this hotel?”
“Pretty well; I'm not very particular.”
“You will be when you have been ten or fifteen years on the road. Hotels are a large part of your life. I left word at the Julian House, in Dubuque, to be called at six o'clock, the other night, and about four I heard some one pounding away, so I asked what was up. The musical voice of the watchmen came back: 'It's now 4 o'clock, and I'm going off watch, so yees has two hours yet to sleep before 6 o'clock.' Now that struck me as a family arrangement, and I'm going to have it extended to other houses.”
“There's something about hotels I don't like,” I said.
“What's that? The whisky? It is poor here, but you will find it better farther West.”
“No,” I said, “I'm not much interested in the whisky. What I dislike about hotels is the loneliness.”
“Yes, that's so. For that reason I like to travel with a party. I get Brother Little, he sells Pillsbury flour, and is a first-rate player on the harmonica, and Al Bevins (the talented sleigh-bell artist), who plays on a $2 music box, while I play on a double police whistle equal to any man in America. We take possession of the parlor and invite the landlord's family in, and, I tell you, we make it home-like! How would you like to try a little concert here to-night?”
I begged off most emphatically, and said I must go for business. “Hold on, we'll go together. Do you know any one here?”
I confessed that I did not.