Or can it
be the life after all? In any case it is too attractive, and I wish you
could see them, Mamma?
They welcomed the Senator and his party as friends, and as we went at
walking pace they conducted us to the hotel. And it was a hotel!!! Think
of one long, long board barn of two storeys high, not finished quite,
being built, with kind of little rabbit hole rooms off each side of a
long passage on both floors, in some the boards not meeting, so that you
can see into the next person's apartment, or into the open air as the
case may be, and in all, if a knot is out of the wood, a peep hole! The
flimsiest door not fitting, with the number of each room printed on a
bit of paper and fastened on with a tack; furniture consisting of a
rickety iron bed, a box that has been a packing case for a table,
another for a washstand, a rough single chair, sometimes a rocking
chair, and all crowned by a looking-glass that makes half your nose in
one part of your face, and one eye up in your forehead--too deliciously
comic. It was all very clean, except the bed clothes, but we won't speak
of them; their recollection shivers me.
Octavia and Tom had one room at the very end, and the rest of our
party had to scatter where we could, as numbers were taken, and it was
difficult to get even enough to go round.
Pages:
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206