"All the rest of us,
men, women, and livestock, save only these four porkers, are
bedevilled with one grief or another; they alone are happy,--and you
mean to cut their throats and eat them! It would be more for the
general comfort to let them eat us; and bitter and sour morsels we
should be!"
XVII. THE HOTEL
Arriving in town (where my bachelor-rooms, long before this time, had
received some other occupant), I established myself, for a day or two,
in a certain, respectable hotel. It was situated somewhat aloof
from my former track in life; my present mood inclining me to avoid
most of my old companions, from whom I was now sundered by other
interests, and who would have been likely enough to amuse themselves
at the expense of the amateur workingman. The hotel-keeper put me
into a back room of the third story of his spacious establishment.
The day was lowering, with occasional gusts of rain, and an ugly
tempered east wind, which seemed to come right off the chill and
melancholy sea, hardly mitigated by sweeping over the roofs, and
amalgamating itself with the dusky element of city smoke. All the
effeminacy of past days had returned upon me at once. Summer as it
still was, I ordered a coal fire in the rusty grate, and was glad to
find myself growing a little too warm with an artificial temperature.
My sensations were those of a traveller, long sojourning in remote
regions, and at length sitting down again amid customs once familiar.
There was a newness and an oldness oddly combining themselves into
one impression.
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