However, If I Go To Rolla Again During The War, I
Will At Any Rate Leave The Books Behind Me.
What a night we spent in that inn!
They who know America will be
aware that in all hotels there is a free admixture of different
classes. The traveler in Europe may sit down to dinner with his
tailor and shoemaker; but if so, his tailor and shoemaker have
dressed themselves as he dresses, and are prepared to carry
themselves according to a certain standard, which in exterior does
not differ from his own. In the large Eastern cities of the States,
such as Boston, New York, and Washington, a similar practice of life
is gradually becoming prevalent. There are various hotels for
various classes, and the ordinary traveler does not find himself at
the same table with a butcher fresh from the shambles. But in the
West there are no distinctions whatever. A man's a man for a' that
in the West, let the "a' that" comprise what it may of coarse attire
and unsophisticated manners. One soon gets used to it. In that inn
at Rolla was a public room, heated in the middle by a stove, and
round that we soon found ourselves seated in a company of soldiers,
farmers, laborers, and teamsters. But there was among them a
general; not a fighting, or would-be fighting general of the present
time, but one of the old-fashioned local generals, - men who held, or
had once held, some fabulous generalship in the State militia.
There we sat, cheek by jowl with our new friends, till nearly twelve
o'clock, talking politics and discussing the war.
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