Read Ebook: The Drummer Boy by Trowbridge J T John Townsend

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Ebook has 1447 lines and 71883 words, and 29 pages

"What if the poor hotel-keeper is sick?" inquired Mrs. Lawyer.

"Neither illness, nor insanity, nor lunacy, nor idiocy, nor hypochondriacism, nor hypochondriasis, nor vapors, nor absence, nor intended absence, can avail the landlord as an excuse for refusing admission. Although the illness or desertion of his servants, if he has not been able to replace them, might be an excuse; and perchance his own infancy, and perchance not."

"What can you do if he refuses to let you in?" asked my friend. "Break open the door?"

"No, that might lead to a breach of the peace. You may either sue him for damages, or have him indicted and fined; and it is also said in England that the constable of the town, if his assistance is invoked, may force the recalcitrant publican to receive and entertain the guest. If you sue him you will have to prove that he kept a common inn; that you are a traveler, and came to the inn and demanded to be received and lodged as a guest; that he had sufficient accommodation, and refused to take you in, although you were in a fit and proper state to be received, and offered to pay a reasonable sum for accommodation."

"An innkeeper has no right to pry into a guest's affairs, and insist upon knowing his name and address," I replied.

"Talking about registers," began my friend Jones, but in tones so low that what he said must go in the foot notes.

"Last summer," continued talkative Jones, "I tried to get quarters late one Saturday night at a village inn, but the proprietor refused to admit me; and a venerable female put her head out of the window, like Sisera's mother, and told me that they were all in bed, and that they could not take in those who profaned the Sabbath day."

"You might have sued for damages," I said, "for the innkeeper being cosily settled in his bed for the night, or it being Sunday, makes no difference in a traveler's rights; at least where, as in England, it is not illegal to travel on that sacred day."

"I think you said that one must be a traveler before one could claim the rights of a guest--is that an essential?"

"What wretched food!" said my wife, as she helped herself to a biscuit. "'Tis enough to poison one."

"It is by no means a feast of delicacies--the brains of singing birds, the roe of mullets, or the sunny halves of peaches," returned our friend.

"Well, my dear," I replied, "a publican selling unwholesome drink or victuals may be indicted for a misdemeanor at common law; and the unhappy recipient of his noxious mixtures may maintain an action for the injury done; and this is so even if a servant provides the goods without the master's express directions."

A stroll through the village, and a little moralizing beside the scarcely cold embers of the rival inn, where

"Imagination fondly stooped to trace The parlor splendors of that festive place, The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor, The varnish'd clock that clicked behind the door,"

passed the time until Darkness spread her sable robe over all the earth. We sat outside our inn in the fresh air, and listened while the myriad creatures which seem born on every summer night uplifted in joy their stridulous voices, piping the whole chromatic scale with infinite self-satisfaction. Innumerable crickets sent forth what, perhaps, were gratulations on our arrival; a colony of tree-toads asked, in the key of C sharp major, after their relatives in the back country; while the swell bass of the bull-frogs seemed to be, with deep and hearty utterances, thanking heaven that their dwelling-places were beside pastures green in cooling streams. For a while we listened to this concert of liliputians rising higher and higher as Nature hushed to sleep her children of a larger growth. Ere long, the village bell tolled the hour for retiring. I told the landlady to call us betimes, and then my wife and self shut ourselves up in our little room for the night.

Very weariness induced the partner of my joys and sorrows to commit her tender frame to the coarse bedclothes; but before "tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep" arrived, and with repose our eyelids closed, an entomological hunt began. First a host of little black bandits found us out, and attacked us right vigorously, skirmishing bravely and as systematically as if they had been trained in the schools of that educator of fleas, Signor Bertolotto, only his students always crawl carefully along and never hop, as we found by experience that our fierce assailants did. After we had disposed of these light cavalry--these F sharps--for a time, and were again endeavoring to compose our minds to sleep, there came a detachment of the B-flat brigade, of aldermanic proportions, pressing slowly on. Again there was a search as for hidden treasures. Faugh! what a time we had, pursuing and capturing, crushing and decapitating, hosts of creatures not to be named in ears polite. Most hideous night, thou wert not sent for slumber! It would almost have been better for us had we been inmates of the hospital for such creatures at Surat, for there we would have been paid for the feast we furnished. Here we had the prospect of paying for our pains and pangs.

I am an ardent entomologist; but I solemnly avow I grew tired that night of my favorite science. 'Twas vain to think of slumber--

Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,

nor yet the plan adopted by the Samoan islanders, who place a snake, imprisoned in bamboo, beneath their heads and find the hissing of the reptile highly soporific, could medicine us to that sweet sleep which nature so much needed. At length we arose in despair, donned our apparel, and sat down beside the window to watch for the first bright tints heralding the advent of the glorious king of day.

"Must we pay for such wretched accommodation?" asked my wife, mournfully. I shook my head as I replied:

"I fear me so. We might escape; but I don't want to have a row about my bill in a dollar house."

As soon as morning broke we began our preparations for an early departure from the purgatory in which we had passed the night. When we had descended, and had summoned the lady of the house to settle with her, my wife spoke strongly about the other occupants of our bed.

The woman hotly exclaimed, "You are mistaken, marm; I am sure there is not a single flea in the whole house!"

"Yes," I added,

CITY HOUSE AND MANNERS.

I replied: "The definitions of an inn, like those of lovely woman, are very numerous: but perhaps the most concise is that given by old Petersdorff, who says it is 'a house for the reception and entertainment of all comers for gain.' Judge Bayley defined it to be a house where the traveler is furnished with everything he has occasion for while on the way."

"I should dearly love to stop at such an inn," broke in my wife. "The worthy host would find my wants neither few nor small."

Here I stopped because I had nothing more to say; but seeing that my wife was gazing out of the window in a most inattentive manner, yet not wishing her to think that my fund of knowledge was exhausted, I added: "But a truce to this style of conversation. Remember that we are a newly married couple, and are not expected to talk so rationally."

A pause ensued, during which, with great amusement and no little surprise at the facts and doctrines enunciated, we listened to the following dialogue between two rosy-cheeked Englishmen sitting in the seat behind us:

First Briton .--"How disgusting it is to see those vile spittoons in hotels, in private houses, in churches--everywhere; and notwithstanding that their name is legion, the essence of nicotine is to be seen on all sides, dyeing the floors, the walls, the furniture."

Second Briton.--"I have sometimes doubted whether the Americans expectorate to obtain good luck, or whether it is that they have such good fortune ever attending upon their designs and plans because they expectorate so much."

First B. .--"I don't understand you."

Second B. .--"Don't you know that many Englishmen spit if they meet a white horse, or a squinting man, or a magpie, or if, inadvertently, they step under a ladder, or wash their hands in the same basin as a friend? In Lancashire, boys spit over their fingers before beginning to fight, and travelers do the same on a stone when leaving home, and then throw it away, and market people do it on the first money they receive."

First B. .--"But, if these dirty people do indulge in this unseemly habit, what then?"

Second B.--"Why, they consider it a charm that will bring good luck, or avert evil. Swedish peasants expectorate thrice if they cross water after dark. The old Athenians used to spit if they passed a madman. The savage New Zealand priest wets two sticks with his saliva when he strives to divine the result of a coming battle."

First B.--"But the why and the wherefore of all this expectoration?"

Second B.--"Because the mouth was once considered the only portal by which evil spirits could enter into a man, and by which alone they could be forced to make their exit; and the idea was to drive the fiends out with the saliva. The Mussulmans made spitting and nose-blowing a part of their religious ceremonies, for they hoped thereby to free themselves from the demons which they believed filled the air; and a Kamtschatkan priest, after he has sprinkled with holy water the babe brought to the baptismal font, spits solemnly to north and south, to east and west."

A wild shriek of the locomotive, announcing that we were drawing near our destination, and the necessary preparations consequent upon such arrival, prevented us listening further to this conversation. I remarked to my wife that if I had never known of evil spirits being laid by the efflux of saliva, I had at least heard of their being raised thereby, and instanced Shylock and Signor Antonio.

We drove up to the "Occidental House" in the bus belonging to that famous establishment. The satchel of a fellow-traveler was lost off the top of the carriage. I endeavored to console him with the information that years ago, where the keeper of a public house gave notice that he would furnish a free conveyance to and from the cars to all passengers, with their baggage, and for that purpose employed the owner of certain carriages to take passengers and their baggage, free of charge, to his house, and a traveler, who knew of this arrangement, drove in one of these cabs to the hotel, and on the way there had his trunk lost or stolen through the want of skill or care of the driver, the innkeeper was held liable to make good the loss. The court that decided the point held that it was immaterial whether he was responsible as a common carrier or as an innkeeper, as in either case the consideration for the undertaking was the profit to be derived from the entertainment of the traveler as a guest, and that an implied promise to take care of the baggage was founded on such consideration.

My fellow-traveler seemed not a little pleased with my information, and expressed his intention of seeking an early interview with the landlord of the "Occidental" on the subject of the lost satchel.

While in the bus, a man who appeared to be an agent for a rival house made some very disparaging remarks with regard to the "Occidental," with more vehemence than elegance or truthfulness, evidently with the design of inducing some intending guests to change their minds and go elsewhere. It was well for him that none of the "Occidental" people heard him, for if they had he might speedily have become the defendant in an action at law, for misstatements like his are actionable.

As we were ascending in the luxuriously furnished, brilliantly lighted and gently moving elevator, a ninnyhammer tried to get on after the conductor had started. In doing so he well nigh severed the connection between his ill-stored head and well-fed body. I told him that his conduct was most foolhardy, for if he had been injured he could have recovered nothing from the hotel proprietor, for the accident would have been directly traceable to his own stupid want of ordinary care and prudence.

At the dinner table we found that many of the people, notwithstanding the luxurious surroundings, seemed quite oblivious of the sage advice given by Mistress Hannah Woolley, of London, in the year of grace 1673. That worthy says in her "Gentlewoman's Companion": "Do not eat spoon-meat so hot that tears stand in your eyes, or that thereby you betray your intolerable greediness. Do not bite your bread, but cut or break it; and keep not your knife always in your hand, for that is as unseemly as a gentlewoman who pretended to have as little a stomach as she had mouth, and therefore would not swallow her peas by spoonfuls, but took them one by one and cut them in two before she would eat them. Fill not your mouth so full that your cheeks shall swell like a pair of Scotch bag-pipes."

One of the company near by ate as if he had never eaten in any place save a shanty all the days of his life; he was not quite so bad, however, as the celebrated Dr. Johnson, who, Lord Macaulay tells us, "tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling in his forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks;" but yet, in dispatching his food, he swallowed two-thirds of his knife at every mouthful with the coolness of a juggler.

"Such a savage as that ought not to be permitted to take his meals in the dining-room," said my wife.

"I am not sure that he could be prevented on account of his style of eating," I replied, as the man began shoveling peas with a knife into his mouth, which could not have been broader unless Dame Nature had placed his auricular appendages an inch or two further back.

"Do you mean to say that if an individual makes himself so extremely disagreeable to all other guests, the proprietor has no right to ask him to leave?" queried Mrs. L.

"Well, my dear, it was held in Pennsylvania that the host might request such an one to depart; and that if he did not, the hotel-keeper might lay his hands gently upon him and lead him out, and if resistance was made might use sufficient force to accomplish the desired end."

"Then please tell that waiter to take that man out," broke in my wife.

"Not so fast, my dear; that decision was reversed afterward, and it was said to be assault and battery so to eject a guest. I have known 0 damages given to a guest for an assault on him by his landlord. I remember, too, a case where a man rejoicing in the trisyllabic name of Prendergast was coming from Madras to London round the Cape of Storms, having paid his fare as a cabin passenger. His habit was to reach across others at table to help himself, and to take potatoes and broiled bones in his fingers, devouring them as was the fashion in the days when Adam delved and Eve span, if they had such things then. The captain, offended at this ungentlemanly conduct, refused to treat Master P. as a first-class passenger, excluded him from the cabin, and would not allow him to walk on the weather side of the ship. On reaching England, Prendergast sued the captain for the breach of his agreement to carry him as a cuddy passenger; the officer pleaded that the conduct of the man had been vulgar, offensive, indecorous and unbecoming, but the son of Neptune was mulcted in damages to the tune of ?25, Chief Justice Tindal observing that it would be difficult to say what degree of want of polish would, in point of law, warrant a captain in excluding one from the cuddy. Conduct unbecoming a gentleman in the strict sense of the word might possibly justify him, but in this case there was no imputation of the want of gentlemanly principles. But here, at last, comes our dinner; let us show our neighbors how to handle knife and fork aright."

And a very good dinner it was, too, although dished by a cook who had not the talents of the ancient knights of the kitchen who could dexterously serve up a sucking-pig boiled on one side and roasted on the other, or make so true a fish out of turnips as to deceive sight, taste, and smell. These antique masters of the gastronomic art knew how to suit each dish to the need and necessity of each guest. They held to the doctrine that the more the nourishment of the body is subtilized and alembicated, the more will the qualities of the mind be rarefied and quintessenced, too. For a young man destined to live in the atmosphere of a royal court, whipped cream and calves' trotters were supplied by them; for a sprig of fashion, linnets' heads, essence of May beetles, butterfly broth, and other light trifles; for a lawyer destined to the chicanery of his profession and for the glories of the bar, sauces of mustard and vinegar and other condiments of a bitter and pungent nature would be carefully provided. As Lord Guloseton says, "The ancients seem to have been more mental, more imaginative, than we in their dishes; they fed their bodies, as well as their minds, upon delusion: for instance, they esteemed beyond all price the tongues of nightingales, because they tasted the very music of the birds in the organ of their utterance. That is the poetry of gastronomy."

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