uining his
reference books, three of his best shirts, and the only decent pair of
russet shoes he had left. The other shoes have been ruined in various
ways; one pair was spoiled in a possum hunt at Clinton, North
Carolina--and it was worth it, and worth the overcoat that was ruined at
the same time; two pairs of black shoes have been caked up with layers
and layers of sticky blacking, and one pair of russets was ruined by a
well intentioned negro lad in Memphis, who thought they would look
better painted red. His traveler's checks are running low and he is
continually afraid that, amid his constantly increasing piles of notes
and papers, he will lose the three books in each of which remains a few
feet of "yellow scrip"--the mileage of the South--which will take him on
his return journey as far as Washington.

Nor is that all. The determining factor in his decision to go home lies
in the havoc wrought by a long succession of hotel laundries--laundries
which starch the bosoms of soft silk shirts, which mark the owner's name
in ink upon the hems of sheer linen handkerchiefs which already have
embroidered monograms, which rip holes in those handkerchiefs and then
fold them so that the holes are concealed until, some night, he whips
one confidently from the pocket of his dress suit, and reveals it
looking like a tattered battle-flag; laundries which leave long trails
of iron rust on shirt-bosoms, which rip out seams, tear off buttons,
squeeze out new standing collars to a saw-tooth edge, iron little pieces
of red and brown string into collars, cuffs, and especially into the
bosoms of dress shirts, and "finish" dress shirts and collars, not only
in the sense of ending their days of usefulness as fast as possible, but
also by making them shine like the interiors of glazed porcelain
bathtubs. But the greatest cruelty of the hotel laundry is to socks. It
is not that they do more damage to socks, than to other garments, but
that the laundry devil has been able to think of a greater variety of
means for the destruction of socks than for the destruction of any other
kind of garment. He begins by fastening to each sock a cloth-covered tin
tag, attached by means of prongs. On this tag he puts certain marks
which will mean nothing to the next laundry. The next laundry therefore
attaches other tin tags, either ripping off the old ones (leaving holes
where the prongs went through) or else letting them remain in place, so
that, after a