lion clung tenaciously to
its wheels. I opened the door; the stage creaked easily, and in the
gloomy abyss the swaying straps beckoned me, like ghostly hands, to come
in now and have my sufferings out at once.

I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a circumstance which struck
me as appalling and mysterious. A lounger on the steps of the hotel,
who I had reason to suppose was not in any way connected with the stage
company, gravely descended, and walking toward the conveyance, tried
the handle of the door, opened it, expectorated in the carriage, and
returned to the hotel with a serious demeanor. Hardly had he resumed
his position when another individual, equally disinterested, impassively
walked down the steps, proceeded to the back of the stage, lifted it,
expectorated carefully on the axle, and returned slowly and pensively to
the hotel. A third spectator wearily disengaged himself from one of
the Ionic columns of the portico and walked to the box, remained for a
moment in serious and expectorative contemplation of the boot, and then
returned to his column. There was something so weird in this baptism
that I grew quite nervous.

Perhaps I was out of spirits. A number of infinitesimal annoyances,
winding up with the resolute persistency of the clerk at the stage
office to enter my name misspelt on the waybill, had not predisposed
me to cheerfulness. The inmates of the Eureka House, from a social
viewpoint, were not attractive. There was the prevailing opinion--so
common to many honest people--that a serious style of deportment and
conduct toward a stranger indicates high gentility and elevated station.
Obeying this principle, all hilarity ceased on my entrance to supper,
and general remark merged into the safer and uncompromising chronicle of
several bad cases of diphtheria, then epidemic at Wingdam. When I left
the dining-room, with an odd feeling that I had been supping exclusively
on mustard and tea leaves, I stopped a moment at the parlor door. A
piano, harmoniously related to the dinner bell, tinkled responsive to
a diffident and uncertain touch. On the white wall the shadow of an
old and sharp profile was bending over several symmetrical and shadowy
curls. "I sez to Mariar, Mariar, sez I, 'Praise to the face is open
disgrace.'" I heard no more. Dreading some susceptibility to sincere
expression on the subject of female loveliness, I walked away, checking
the compliment that otherwise might have risen unbi