llin', as it would be vulgar tu go
tu tarverns. I asked him if the St. Nicholas Hotel was common. He said
that nobody but those that wasn't no great shakes went there. We finally
come to a real big, purty stun house, and the man jumped off from the
carriage. He told me again that if he was rich he wasn't proud, and it
was a way he had of always ridin' outside and drivin'. I told him I
always done so, only in the consarn I had they all rode outside, for the
reason that there warn't no inside. With that he larfed, and said that
all folks didn't have jest the same way of doin' things, and we went tu
the door. A nigger come and opened the door, and we went in. There was
about twenty gentlemen, fixed off tu kill, and a table sot with bottles,
and everything as slickery as could be. The man who brought me took me
tu a fine-looking gentleman and told me that he was his brother, that he
was obleeged tu go out on business connected with his office, but that
he would be back by 11 o'clock; he said his brother would see tu me, and
do the scrumptious while he was gone; well, we set down to the table; he
was orful kind, for he helped me tu everything he could on the
table--all kinds of chicken-fixens and gingerbread arrangements; he then
asked me tu take a glass of wine; I told him I was a little tew much of
a temperance man for that; he said certainly he wouldn't ask me if I had
any scrooples agin' it; he asked me if I was opposed to drinkin' cider;
I said no, if it was sweet; he said that they had got in, about a week
before, a barrel of sweet cider, which had jest enough snap in it tu
make it taste good; he told the nigger to take a bottle of wine up
stairs tu his sick nephew, and tu bring a pitcher full of cider up
stairs from the new barrel; the nigger left with the bottle and the
pitcher, and in about five minutes came back intu the room with the
pitcher full of the slickest cider I ever seen; I drunk some of it, and
it tasted so good that I drunk more; when I had taken almost enough,
the gentleman asked me tu go into the back room where a lot of men was a
setting around a table, holdin' little round pieces of bone in their
hands and puttin' 'em down, and another man was fumblin' with some
pieces of paper; I asked him if they wasn't playin' cards, 'cause I
thought they looked as if they was; he said no, that they was Wall
street stock-dealers, and that the pieces of bone stood for so many
shares of stock; he asked if I wouldn't