e Hotel.

It is different from the Fifth Avenue in many ways. In the first place
there is not so much travel and business in its neighborhood. As I said
before, this is where two railroads fork. In fact that is the leading
industry here. The growth of the town is naturally slow, but it is a
healthy growth. There is nothing in the nature of dangerous or wild-cat
speculation in the advancement of this place, and while there has been
no noticeable or rapid advance in the principal business, there has been
no falling off at all and these roads are forking as much to-day as they
did before the war, while the same three men who were present for the
first glad moment are still here to witness the operation.

Sometimes a train is derailed, as the papers call it, and two or three
people have to remain over as we did all night. It is at such a time
that the Fifth Avenue Hotel is the scene of great excitement. A large
codfish, with a broad and sunny smile and his bosom full of rock salt,
is tied in the creek to freshen and fit himself for the responsible
position of floor manager of the codfish ball.

A pale chambermaid, wearing a black jersey with large pores in it
through which she is gently percolating, now goes joyously up the stairs
to make the little post-office lock-box rooms look ten times worse than
they ever did before. She warbles a low refrain as she nimbly knocks
loose the venerable dust of centuries and sets it afloat throughout the
rooms. All is bustle about the house.

Especially the chambermaid.

We were put in the guests' chamber here. It has two atrophied beds made
up of pains and counterpanes.

This last remark conveys to the reader the presence of a light, joyous
feeling which is wholly assumed on my part.

The door of our room is full of holes where locks have been wrenched off
in order to let the coroner in. Last night I could imagine that I was
in the act of meeting, personally, the famous people who have tried to
sleep here and who moaned through the night and who died while waiting
for the dawn.

I have no doubt in the world but there is quite a good-sized delegation
from this hotel, of guests who hesitated about committing suicide,
because they feared to tread the red-hot sidewalks of perdition, but who
became desperate at last and resolved to take their chances, and they
have never had any cause to regret it.

[Illustration]

We washed our hands on doorknob soap, wiped them on a slippery elm