"Why, yes, if convenient; but I should like to go to my room, at any rate; I am very tired."
After puffing and spitting for a moment, he rose and pulled a bell; then took his seat again. In about five minutes a negro came in, and during all this time there was silence.
"What'll you drink, Baker?" said the lad, rising and going to the bar, and taking no notice of the negro's entrance. A boozy man followed him, and made some reply; the lad turned out two glasses of spirits, added water to one, and drank it in a gulp.[1]
"Can this boy show me to my room?" I asked.
"Anybody in number eleven, Peter?"
"Not as I knows on, sar."
"Take this man's baggage up there."
I followed the negro up to number eleven, which was a large back room in the upper story, with four beds in it.
"Peter," said I, "I want a fire made here."
"Want a fire, sar?"
"Yes, I want you to make a fire."
"Want a fire, master, this time o' night?"
"Why, yes; I want a fire. Where are you going with the lamp?"
"Want a lamp, massa?"
"Want a lamp? Certainly, I do."
After about ten minutes, I heard a man splitting wood in the yard, and, in ten more, Peter brought in three sticks of green wood, and some chips; then, the little bed-lamp having burned out, he went into an adjoining room, where I heard him talking to some one, evidently awakened by his entrance
- ↑ The mother of this young man remonstrated with a friend of mine, for permitting his son to join a company of civil engineers, engaged, at the time, in surveying a route for a road—he would be subject to such fatiguing labour, and so much exposure to the elements; and congratulated herself that her own child was engaged in such an easy and gentleman-like employment as that of hotel-clerk and bar keeper.
