The Other Fellow

THE stage stopped at a disheartened-looking tavern with a sagging porch and sprawling wooden steps. A fat man with a good-natured face, tagged with a gray chin whisker, bareheaded, and without a coat—there was snow on the ground, too—and who said he was the landlord, lifted my yellow bag from one of the long chintz-covered stage cushions, and preceded me through a sanded hall into a low-ceiled room warmed by a red-hot stove, and lighted by windows filled with geraniums in full bloom. The effect of this color was so surprising, and the contrast to the desolate surroundings outside so grateful, that, without stopping to register my name, I drew up a chair and joined the circle of baking loungers. My oversight was promptly noted by the clerk—a sallow-faced young man with an uncomfortably high collar, red necktie, and stooping shoulders—and as promptly corrected by his dipping a pen in a wooden inkstand and holding the book on his knee until I could add my own superscription to those on its bespattered page. He had been considerate enough not to ask me to rise.