Fool
that I am! As if the taverns did not know that if it was good it would
be eaten, which is not what they want. Then the waiters, with their
napkins,--what don't they do with those napkins! Mention any one thing
of which you think you can say with truth, "_That_ they do not
do."...
I have a really fine parlor, but every time I enter it I perceive that
"Still, sad 'odor' of humanity"
which clings to it from my predecessor. Mr. Hogan got home yesterday,
I believe. I saw him for the first time to-day. He was civil--they all
are civil. I have no fault to find except with taverns here and pretty
much everywhere.
Every six months a tavern should burn to the ground, with all its
traps, its "properties," its beds and pots and kettles, and start
afresh from its ashes like John Phoenix-Squibob.
No; give me home, or a home like mine, where all is clean and sweet,
where coffee has preexisted in the berry, and tea has still faint
recollections of the pigtails that dangled about the plant from which
it was picked, where butter has not the prevailing character which
Pope assigned to Denham, where soup could look you in the face if it
had "eyes" (which it has not), and where the comely Anne or the
gracious Margaret takes the place of these napkin-bearing animals.
Enough! But I have been forlorn and ailing and fastidious--but I am
feeling a little better, and can talk about it. I had some ugly nights
tell you; but I am writing in good spirits, as you see.
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