Well, me and friend Buggins inhabited that place—about as big as one of Man Friday's footprints—for going on four weeks. When tide was in, I held the box on my head to keep my powder dry. 'Long toward the end of my visit, just before the ship that saved me hove in sight, I began to feel a mite tired of that place. I kind o' felt as if I'd saw about all that was int'resting on that there island. I thought I was unhappy and I had a sneaking idea I was lonesome. But I see I was mistaken. I hadn't spent a Christmas night alone in a big city then.
[16]
Then once when I was prospecting for our mine, I was snowed up in a pass. I reckon I've told you how I got typhoid fever and wrestled it out all day by my lonesome; unparalleled thirst, Boston baked brains, red flannel tongue, delirium dreamins, and self-acting emetic, down to the final blissful "Where am I at?" and on through the nice long convalescence till my limbs changed from twine strings to human members. Six weeks doing time as doctor, patient, trained nurse and fellow-Mason all in one, was being alone right smart. But it wasn't a patch on the little metrolopis of Manhattan on Santy Claus day.
[17]
Then once I had a rather unrestful evening out in the western part of Texas. A fellow sold me a horse right cheap, and later a crowd of gentlemen accused me of stealing it, and I was put in jail with a promise of being lynched before breakfast. That was being uncomfortable some, too. But I wished last night that my friend, Judge Watson, hadn't come along that night and identified me. It would have saved me from New Yorkitis.
Then there was the night when I proposed for your hand and you sent me to your pa, and he said if I ever come near again he'd sic the dogs on me. I spent that night at a safe [18] distance from the dogs, leaning on a fence, and not noticing it was barb wire till I looked at my clothes and my hide next day. I watched your windows till the light went out and all my hope with it—and on after that till, as the poet says, till daylight doth appear.
Then there's the time I told you about, when—but there's no use of making a catalog of every time I've been lonesome. I have taken my pen in hand to inform you that last night beat everything else on my private list of troubles. My other lonely times was when I was alone, but the lonesomest of all was in the heart of the biggest crowd on this here continent.
He said if I ever come near again he'd sic the dogs on me
He said if I ever come near again he'd sic the dogs on me
[19]
There was people a-plenty. But I didn't know one gol-darned galoot. I had plenty of money, but nobody to spend it on—except tiptakers. I was stopping at this big hotel with lugsury spread over everything, thicker than sorghum on corn pone. But lonely—why, honey, I was so lonely that, as I walked along the streets, I felt as if I'd like to break into some of the homes and compel 'em at the point of my gun to let me set in and dine with 'em.
I felt like asking one of the bell-boys to take me home and get his ma to give me a slice of goose and let her talk to me about her folks.
There was some four million people [20] in a space about the size of our ranch. There was theatres to go to—but who wants to go to the theatre on Christmas?—it's like going to church on the Fourth of July. There were dime muzhums, penny vawdevilles, dance-halls.
There was a big dinner for news-boys. The Salvation Army and the Volunteers gave feeds to the poor. But I couldn't qualify. I wasn't poor. I had no home, no friends, no nothing.
The streets got deserteder and deserteder. A few other wretches was marooned like me in the hotel corridors. We looked at each other like sneak-thieves patroling the same [21] street. Waiters glanced at us pitiful as much as to say, "If it wasn't for shrimps like you, I'd be home with my kids."
The worst of it was, I knew there were thousands of people in town in just my fix. Perhaps some of them were old friends of mine that I'd have been tickled to death to fore-gather with; or leastways, people from my State. Texas is a big place, but we'd have been brothers and sisters—or at least cousins once removed—for Christmas' sake. But they were scattered around at the St. Regis or the Mills Hotel, the Martha Washington or somewhere, while I was at the Waldorf-hyphen-Astoria.
[22]
It was like the two men that Dickens—I believe it was Dickens—tells about: Somebody gives A a concertina, but he can't play on it; winter coming on and no overcoat; he can't wear the concertina any more than he can tootle it. A few blocks away is a fellow, Mr. B. He can play a concertina something grand, but he hasn't got one and his fingers itch.
